It’s Walker’s call

Bayshore’s death spiral

After years of decline, the new Bayshore Town Center management has finally admitted the obvious: They need taxpayers to bail them out of what now appears to be a death spiral (“Bayshore plan includes housing, offices, hotel,” Nov. 8).

It’s absolutely true that the growth of online retailing has altered how people shop in this country. But, apparently, that has not stopped the growth of bricks and mortar retail in other regions of the city.

Bayshore never provided the type of destination shopping that could have built traffic. Adding a fire pit, another clinic and yet another hotel will not build the kind of traffic existing storefronts need.

This is a poorly conceived plan, and I am deeply saddened that North Shore is facing a further decline in retail options. Poor management has pushed Glendale into the unsavory position of asking taxpayers to support this ridiculous redevelopment plan or let Bayshore slip further.

Todd Parrish

Another election: bad idea

Editor’s note: This letter was signed by 30 other county clerks across Wisconsin.

Republican lawmakers are floating the idea of adding an election in 2020 between the February primary and the April election. They will be hardpressed to find a clerk who thinks this is a good policy change or even, frankly, doable.

Currently, the presidential primary is on a consolidated spring election ballot. Importantly, this consolidated ballot also condenses the many costs and complicated procedures of administering an election.

Elections require weeks of intense preparation. Clerks must hire and train poll workers, administer absentee balloting, register voters, secure polling locations, publish a multitude of election notices and much more. Moreover, voter registration deadlines, absentee ballot deadlines, including UOCAVA (military and overseas) deadlines, are all election-specific deadlines. Having a March and April election with intersecting deadlines would be highly confusing to voters and be needlessly onerous for Wisconsin’s 1,852 municipal clerks.

Another real concern is time. Counties use hundreds of tabulators each election, all which read polling-place specific ballots, all which are tested by the county and municipality. There is simply not enough time to interject another election between the alreadyshort timeline between the February primary and the April election.

Asking clerks to engage in overlapping elections — February to March to April — is unwise from security and procedural perspectives.

Finally, there is the overall price tag of any election. Past spring elections have cost around $7 million statewide. A larger amount would be needed to carry out two elections in the same period. It would be an unfunded mandate that would waste taxpayer money, create logistical nightmares for clerks and greatly confuse voters.

George L. Christenson Milwaukee County Clerk

Scott McDonell Dane County Clerk

Lisa Freiberg Fond du Lac County Clerk

Kathleen Novack Waukesha County Clerk

The price for looking other way

President Donald Trump has declared that American jobs tied to arms sales are the only price to pay for craven indifference to human rights and international norms (“Trump says Saudis will remain a ‘steadfast partner,’ ” Nov. 21).

So where do the remaining despots and tyrants go to apply?

In justifying the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor, Trump says, “The world is a very dangerous place!” Not so dangerous, however, that we can’t look the other way if the pot is rich enough. “I don’t like the concept of stopping an investment of $110 billion into the United States,” he said a month ago, inventing an inflated figure.

Is $110 billion a floor or a ceiling? How much must Iran bid? How many American military-industrial jobs must they create to win the approval of this White House? Iranian terrorists have killed fewer Americans than Saudi terrorists have, so why hesitate?

Khashoggi made a name for himself defending human rights in a part of the world that often deeply undervalues them. His clear voice almost makes us forget his infamous uncle, Adnan, who made billions selling arms to any buyer who could pony up the cash.

How sad that Khashoggi’s death is now excused by an American president on the grounds of ensuring continued arms sales, apparently to anyone who can pay.

Nic Bernstein

Milwaukee

The Journal Sentinel’s headline on Nov. 16 front page, was: “GOP considers moving date of high court race.” Then immediately below, a smaller headline: “Lawmakers hope to help conservative justice before Evers is sworn in.” The referenced justice is Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice, Daniel Kelly, who was appointed by Walker in 2016.

The article goes on to say that if the GOP does move the date of the election, the move “could cost taxpayers millions of dollars and comes as part of an effort to limit the power of Democrat Tony Evers before he is sworn in as governor in January.”

Will somebody tell me again about the Republicans’ honesty and integrity? Will somebody tell me again about their efforts to reduce taxes in Wisconsin?

I’ve known Gov. Scott Walker since he was Milwaukee County executive, and I’ve always believed he was a man of honesty and integrity, even though I didn’t agree with some of the laws he championed since he became governor.

I guess politics does change some people, and if Walker goes along with some of these proposed changes by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and other Republicans, I’ll always believe that politics overrode the honesty and integrity I’ve always thought he possessed.

Casper T. Green

Franklin

Take care with wolf hunt

Once again the status of the gray wolf in the lower 48 states was headlined in the Nov. 17 Journal Sentinel detailing House passage on Nov. 16 of HR Bill 6784, the Manage Our Wolves Act (“House passes Duffy bill to drop protections for gray wolves”).

If made into law, this bill delists the currently endangered gray wolf and returns its “management” to individual states.

Unfortunately, in the light of Wisconsin’s recent wolf management history, this probably means a wolf hunting and trapping season will once again serve as the linchpin of state wolf management. Let’s hope Wisconsin proceeds more prudently than we did with our first managed hunt in 2012, when a makeshift wolf season was hastily put in place driven more by legislators than biologists.

As quoted in the Journal Sentinel’s article, Scott Walter, the Wisconsin Department of Resources large carnivore specialist, said wolves may have reached carrying capacity in Wisconsin. Their estimated winter numbers have hovered around 900-1,000 for a couple of years. The number of tertiary consumers (like the gray wolf) in any ecosystem is largely dictated by the availability of prey in levels of the food chain beneath them and is managed quite eloquently by the laws of nature.

Wildlife management means more than regulated hunting and trapping; it mean preservation of habitat and the creation and protection of diverse ecosystems and large, contiguous tracts of wild lands that serve the survival of a wide range of native species.

I regret this bill has originated from Wisconsin’s congressional delegation, not only because of its potential for state-legislated mismanagement of our wolf population, but because of its call for the elimination of judicial review of the law, and thus its frightening disrespect of our Constitutional system of checks and balances.

Stephen Anderson

We need the humanities

Leaders at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point are proposing cuts in the humanities, including the elimination of six majors: art, French, German, geography, geology and history (“UWStevens Point eyes big shift,” Nov. 13).

They’re in a tough situation, but this seems like the wrong remedy. As recent events in Baraboo and across America have shown, the need for the humanities is greater than ever.

Howard Hoffman

Please email your letters to jsedit@jrn.com, or mail them to Letters to the editor, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, P.O. Box 371, Milwaukee, Wis. 53201-0371. Letters should be about 200 words.