Author Archives: dave cieslewicz

Be careful what you wish for. For those who wanted to see Roe v. Wade overturned little has gone right since they got what they wanted exactly a year ago today in the Dobbs decision. The public is more pro-choice. According to Gallup polling, 69% of Americans think abortion should be legal in the firstContinue reading “A Year Since Dobbs”

Several years ago Sarah Godlewski led the effort to defeat a measure that would have abolished the state Treasurer’s office. Then she ran for that office and won. Then, last year, she was one of four serious contenders for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate.  In any plain reading of that record a serviceable wordContinue reading “Ambitious Women and Other Insults”

Thanks to Mayor Satya Rhodes Conway for declaring today (and last Tuesday) Mike May Days in the City of Madison. Mike was our beloved second-longest serving City Attorney and a very good friend of mine. This playful tribute to him is scheduled for June 20th and the 22nd — the second longest days of theContinue reading “Happy Mike May Day”

In a plea deal, Hunter Biden will plead guilty to Republican values. After an exhaustive five-year investigation it turns out that Biden is guilty of three things. He didn’t pay $200,000 in taxes, he illegally possessed a gun as a drug addict and he’s a monumental screw-up in a political family. For the record, heContinue reading “Hunter Biden Cops to Being a Republican”

I hope that the people on board the OceanGate submersible that has gone missing in the deep sea near the Titanic are saved. Then I hope they go bankrupt, the company that sent them down there goes bankrupt and maybe somebody goes to jail. Several countries are spending countless millions of dollars to save fiveContinue reading “Sunk Costs”

Donald Trump has taken a wrecking ball to America. He has undermined our most cherished institutions, destroyed norms of decent behavior, made racism and misogyny acceptable, disregarded facts, lied with impunity and stoked nutty conspiracy theories. And I could go on. But he’s done something more subtle to liberals. In this case I don’t meanContinue reading “The Damage Trump Has Done to Liberals”

I’ve always been skeptical about the idea of throwing a bunch of money at a problem. Even as a liberal mayor I launched a handful of programs that attempted to measure actual progress on the ground for the dollars spent. But one general area where I do think we need to do a lot moreContinue reading “The GOP’s Childish Cut”

Earlier this week I wrote that Republicans’ rejection of a much needed UW Madison engineering building expansion said all you need to know about the state of that party. It’s no longer the party of business, jobs and the economy. It’s now the party of culture war pettiness. Yesterday, Gov. Tony Evers made an unintendedContinue reading “DEI Isn’t Worth the Fight”

The Joint Finance Committee is wrapping up its work on the two-year state budget. For the most part it looks like pretty good. There will be a lot more money for local governments and schools, and the process involved actual discussion and negotiation between the governor and legislative leaders. This is a big improvement fromContinue reading “A Better Idea on DEI”

Nothing demonstrates what’s happened to the Republican Party more then one vote in the Joint Finance Committee last week. Republicans on the committee voted down the long-anticipated and much-needed new engineering building on the UW Madison campus. Not so long ago that would have been a slam dunk Republican priority. Consider: So what accounts forContinue reading “Why Does GOP Hate Engineers?”