I can't help but compare...
the micro/macro similarities between local and national leadership when I see the 16 golden shovelers depicted on the front page of the latest Advocate.

Instead of golden shovels Charlie and Company might like to wield a copy of MetaliCal, a free software program that calculates metal weight and cost. It includes 58 metals (including steel) and 50 profiles and shapes produced by the industry. Using MetaliCal will help them keep up with the rapid changes unfolding in the steel industry which are driving prices up in some unprecedented ways. By summer the industry is predicting that steel will be on allocation for the first time in US history with price increases expected to exceed 65%.

The Justice Center Diggers have much in common with theme park developers who complain, "This means that the price of a coaster or ride concept that was developed last autumn could as much as double by this summer. Further, it puts estimators in the difficult position of having to predict the cost of steel (not to mention the availability) one or even two years out."

One thousand board feet of lumber, the industry standard, sold for $446 last week, compared to $285 at the same time last year... and then there's the cost of fuel to consider. Each Bored County Member should pawn their golden shovel and buy a calculator, because your budgets are going haywire.

All I can think of when I hear Charlie Most say, "It’s very gratifying to stick this shovel in here and finally get this project going and out of our hair..." is GW Bush aboard the USS Lincoln last May Day saying, "Mission Accomplished."

Wisconsin legislators (aside from Garey Bies) are also sounding a wake up call to our local Diggers... "Limiting prison costs is a key to solving the state's fiscal problems," says state Rep. Dan Schooff, D-Beloit, a member of the Joint Finance Committee.

"If you can rein in corrections and stop the flow of dollars there, then you can free up dollars for elsewhere, whether it's teachers' salaries or the UW System," he says.

"To contain costs, the State corrections Department is turning its focus on job training, drug treatment and other forms of counseling to keep prisoners from committing new crimes after they are released. Cutting the number who return to prison will reduce the inmate population and prison costs," Frank says.

"We know that if you just lock people up and you don't deal with the underlying issues, you're going to continue to have those people committing crimes," he says, noting that 42 percent of the state's inmates have prior records.

Governor Doyle says he hopes the new focus programs and an emphasis on steering troubled young people away from crime will cut the state prison population of 22,000 by one-third over the next eight years.

"It's a long-term project, and what you really have to be doing is getting focused on the 12- and 13-year-olds today who eight years from now are going to be 20 and 21," Doyle says. "The things you do today for those 12-year-olds (are) going to make a big difference in what the prison population is going to be."

Meanwhile, in Door County, Diggers break ground with golden shovels to build the Taj Mahal of Drunk Tanks... Mission accomplished!

Door County recently made Coastal Living and MONEY Magazine editors' list of top spots to live. Listed in a special section entitled, "So You Want to Live on the Coast," in the June issue of MONEY and featured in the April issue of Coastal Living, the editors acclaim Door County, "as it offers a quiet pace, water everywhere, farm-fresh produce, the camaraderie of traditional fish boils, and more lighthouses (10) than any other U.S. county.

And low water levels are no problem...
Especially according to Gov. Jim Doyle who surprised a number of people with his remarks on Earth Day 2004. It wasn't Doyle's tough stand against diverting Great Lakes water to places like Arizona and Nevada - no one in Wisconsin supports exporting Great Lakes water to the arid West.

Doyle's surprise was the fact that he might support a diversion from Lake Michigan to Waukesha County. Seems harmless until you realize that this breaks all of the rules... by sending water out of the watershed and across the subcontinental divide.

Doyle has on his desk an August 2003 report from the city of Waukesha and the Waukesha Water Utility that asks for Doyle's help to convince other Great Lakes officials to approve the construction of a pipeline to carry 20 million gallons of water a day from Lake Michigan, to the city of Waukesha.

Any new diversion of water from the Great Lakes is made nearly impossible under the Great Lakes Charter and other agreements that cover eight Great Lakes states, including Wisconsin, and two Canadian provinces. But Waukesha is making its pitch at the right time, because the Great Lakes Charter is undergoing its first major review since its 1985 creation... and this summer Gov. Doyle will assume the chairmanship of the Council of Great Lakes Governors - a group with great influence in the charter review. So Doyle is in a pivotal position to carry Waukesha's water, so to speak, even if another Great Lakes governor blocks it.

Read the entire article, much of which I borrowed from in the above paraphrasing:
Milwaukee Insight: Lake Michigan Water Could Flow to Thirsty Suburbs as Doyle Gets Key Great Lakes Post
5/7/2004
By Jim Rowen