Budget Repair Bill passes

March 19 UPDATE: A slippery democratic Wis. judge has at least temporarily blocked implementation by the Republican senate of this law.

More semi-off-topic but important and relevant news: Gov. Walker's "budget repair" bill has passed--in an altered form that removed the actual budgetary aspects of it. Apparently, a quorum isn't required for non-spending bills, so the Republicans were able to go ahead and vote without those 14 missing Democrats!

This is disturbing on every level. At best, those Republicans are sleazy operators. But if they violated any senate rules, then they're bona fide crooks. The Democrats are crooks in either case for leaving the state three weeks ago and going into hiding like moles. The circuit courts are full of crooked/incompetent judges. The Wis. Supreme Court has an agenda to harm lower and middle class folks. We already knew that everyone in Wis. Union (UW) management is a crook, and many other UW administrators are, basically, crooks too for raising tuition and fees at three times the rate of inflation--every year for the past 15 years (on average). UW-Madison police are, by and large, sleazy abusive crooks (and in a pleasant twist, they weren't exempted from the bill, unlike most state police agencies).

So the question is: who does this leave in Wisconsin that isn't a crook? Such shenanigans in the highest levels of Wis. government reflects on Hoofers. After all, if everyone is a crook, then your being a crook doesn't seem quite so bad, does it..? OMG.

New head of instruction hired

The club's official site hasn't posted the news yet so we'll break it here:

Hoofers are thrilled to announce that the club has hired a new head of sailing instruction: Dave Elsmo, former coach of the Univ. of Minnesota sailing team.

HSC went with someone who has dinghy coaching experience rather than someone with more general teaching skill. This is understandable given the unimpressive achievements of the Hoofer racing team in recent years. Although they were thrilled to break into the top 20 last fall, the fact is that HSC is bigger than any of the other collegiate clubs (not including Navy or Coast Guard), yet only managed to creep in at #20.

Nor have Hoofers cleaned up in their division in recent years--despite, again, being the biggest sailing club competing. Hence the desire for a dedicated sailing team coach in lieu of someone with more general teaching experience. We invite Dave out for a ride on one of the large keelboats when he can take time away from the 420s and FJ's!