Friday, May 12, 2006

Milwaukee Connector - post mortem

I am still looking for the merits of the Milwaukee Connector. Yesterday, we talked about this on Eric Von's show. Right before we were on, the guests were Tom Barrett, Willie Hines and Bob Bauman. After our segment started, aldermen Willie Wade and Mike D'Amato called in. One of my colleagues on Backstory is Jim Rowen who was Norquist's chief of staff while this was being evaluated. Jim, while hopelessly liberal, is very informed and well-spoken. You'd think that in the midst of all those people (granted Bauman and Wade are opposed; if you can tell me what Barrett thinks of the thing itself, good on you) could articulate a good argument for the proposal. It's always stuff like "let's get into the 21st century" or "mass transit is good" or we want to be "progressive." I heard that people "don't like buses anymore" as if the GST were mass transit's version of the luxury box. That's just not going to do it. Not for $ 300 million.

I did get the impression that somebody ought to introduce Willie Hines to Tom Barrett. There are some real issues there.

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