Brookfield Basics

You don't need some blogger with a day job to tell you that what has been happening at Harley-Davidson recently is not happy news for our community or the greater Milwaukee area.

But there is a lesson here that we should consider and hopefully learn. The lesson is that people who own and manage capital will deploy that capital where they believe it will render the greatest return. We can spend countless hours debating whether this is "right" or "fair" or "good". But if we are interested in developing effective public policy in response to such developments, we must come to understand that it is TRUE.

This is certainly true in our personal lives, and we execute hundreds of decisions each week that reflect this reality. Ludwing von Mises, the founder of the Austrian School of Economics, understood that at its seminal level, economics is nothing more than the study of how people make decisions relative to their finite resources. His ground breaking treatise on economics was subsequently entitled Human Action.

If the bank down the street offers a better rate on deposits or CD's, we bid farewell to our current bank. If realtor "X" will sell your house for a lower commission than realtor "Y", and can offer comparable service, you choose "X", and so on. Now these are simplistic examples to be sure. But we err if we think that men and women who are responsible for the stewardship of capital and the long term interests of their share-holders, employ a different rationale.

You can draw your own conclusions about what has happened at Harley. But a clear thinking approach to the formation of public policy should at least begin with the recognition of this reality. And because the driving factors of this dynamic lay in the foundational constructs of human behavior, no politician from either party, no matter how insistent, can change it. No legislation, no matter how well intended or artfully crafted, can change it. And no podium-thumping rhetoric from social activists of either political persuasion can change it.

The laws of economics are immutable. It is within our power to ignore them, but we cannot suspend them.

That is the lesson of recent developments at Harley-Davidson.

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite Holiday. There are many reasons for this and I won't bore you with them. But at the risk of saying the obvious, it is time for all of us to, along with the difficulties and challenges we face, take stock of the blessings and good fortune that we have.

The historian in me cannot help but look back, and on this occasion; I do so to the winter of 1620-1621, and the people we know as the Pilgrims. I also look back to the year 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln, just a few months after the bloody crucible of Gettysburg, issued a Proclamation which would install this day as a National Holiday.


From the journals of Nathaniel Morton, keeper of the records of Plymouth Colony in 1620 we read:


"Being now passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before them in expectations, they had now no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain or refresh them, no houses, or much less towns to repair unto to seek help; and for the season it was winter, and they that know of the winters of the country know them to be sharp and violent, subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, and much more to search unknown coasts".


And in 1863, reflecting on two and a half years of horrific Civil War and bloodshed unimaginable, Abraham Lincoln, the most tortured of all our Presidents, penned this closing stanza to his Thanksgiving Proclamation:

"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel this necessity of reclaiming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens".

It was the Pilgrims whose spirit and conventions established the tradition that would become what we now recognize as Thanksgiving. Two hundred and forty three years later, it was Lincoln who would institutionalize this Holiday, and weave it into the fabric of our national consciousness.

As we reflect on that which merits our thanks and gratitude, let's not forget to count the heritage these people have bequethed to us.

Apologies to Bob Dylan fans for this shameless play on the title of his 1964 song. But I thought it was appropriate to this column, and certainly topical to what is happening on the current American music scene.

So before I address the question of a Calhoun Road interchange, how about that Bob Dylan?! At the age of 65 he has put together a tight little ensemble and led them through ten songs that currently comprise the number one selling CD in America - Modern Times. And he's backing it up with live performances around the country, including a stop in Madison two weeks ago. I have listened to the CD, and while I find the industry critics' gratuitous fawning to be a bit over wrought; it is very good, and three cuts are excellent. The rock-a-billy "Thunder on the Mountain" and a world-weary but proud "Workingman Blues" are very good. But the disc's signature cut is "Someday Baby", a wistful, punchy reflection about being in love with someone you can't stand. And if you don't find yourself tapping your feet or humming along a little bit to this one, you might want to consult a dietician about increasing your fiber intake. The fact that the CD is number one says a lot about Dylan, his place in our national consciousness, and the sad state of offerings from more current artists. But that is the subject of another column.

Today we are inundated with hyphenated words that contain the word "change". Time-change, regime-change, sex-change, climate-change, career-change, agent-of-change, all serve as examples. One such "change" word that has a lot of relevance to this community is the word "Inter" change.

First let me state that my family does not live in the area affected by the widening of south Calhoun Road, or a potential interchange. My views on this are formed as those of a Brookfield resident, but not by the specific location of our home.

Secondly, let's do justice to the discussion by recognizing that there is no current specific proposal for the construction of an interchange. That said, I do not believe one can fairly separate the question of a potential interchange from the entire discussion about the widening of Calhoun.

The name of this column is Brookfield Basics, and as I consider this question of an interchange, I try and do so on a very basic level. The distance from the intersection of Bluemound and Moorland Roads to the intersection of Bluemound and Barker Roads is three miles. Inclusive within that distance are the two existing interchanges at Moorland and Barker. So the addition of a third interchange at Calhoun would obviously give us three, making it "an interchange per mile" along this particular corridor of I-94.

Supporters of a potential interchange at Calhoun believe that our community's needs have grown to the point of needing three such interchanges. They point to a lot of legitimate data on traffic patterns, vehicle counts, concerns of local employers, and more, to support their position. This is credible information put forth by credible people, and no serious consideration of this matter can be held without its inclusion.

But for me the answer is "NO - a third Brookfield interchange does not make sense". All of the data and all of the opinions of experts whom I respect and whose work is competent, just can't get me past this "basic" supposition.

I acknowledge that I have no data which demonstrates the rightness of my conclusions or the inescapable logic of my decision. I just don't think it is a needed public works in our community. And that's BEFORE I evaluate the prospect of an interchange AS IT RELATES TO the other significant capital spending considerations that are on our community's collective plate. I know that in my personal economy, the interchange does not come close to the level of importance of some of these other matters.

I believe this matter can and should be considered within the framework of other initiatives that are known and identified: high school facilities, fire stations, and the sharing of critical services between the Town and the City, just to name a few of the more obvious ones. I am not suggesting what your position on these other initiatives should be. I AM suggesting that we need to consider the potential of an interchange in light of these other significant capital projects.

And as for the notion that "we may as well do it because the Feds and the State will pay for most of it", you now have a better understanding of why our Federal Government is bankrupt, our State Government is bankrupt, and indeed, why government at so many levels is bankrupt.

This Saturday we commemorate Veterans Day. The names I always think of on this day are Bud, Andy, Gene, and Cournel, my father, father-in-law, and two unlces respectively. All of them served in World War Two, and thankfully they all came back to Kohler, Wisconsin and Frankenmuth, Michigan. Three of them are gone now, heroes to our country and certainly to me.

I will never reflect on Veterans Day without thinking of these four men, or without the image of the opening scenes of the movie Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg's stunning, panoramic sweep of the American cemetery at Normandy, and the enormous, overarching flags lofting in the caress of the Channel-fed breezes, silently express a level of human emotion for which even Shakespeare might have been inadequate.

What we today mark as Veterans Day was originally called Armistice Day, so named for the cease-fire of Novemebr 11, 1918, which ended World War One. In 1954, wanting to more clearly recognize the millions of Veterans from World War Two and Korea, Dwight Eisenhjower and Congress changed its name to Veterans Day.

World War One was the first "modern" war. It witnessed the advent of the machine-gun, long range artillery, submarines, air power, and at its very end, the introduction of the tank, a weapon that would revolutionize warfare. In the early days of the Twentieth Century, America was still largely agrarian and utterly absent from the world stage. Led into the war by President Woodrow Wilson, it was in effect our geo-political "coming out party".

The carnage of this war was unprecedented. In Paris and London, trains of wounded were unloaded at night to keep the horrific scenes and casualty lists from the pubic. Sigfreid Sassoon, a highly decorated British officer, wrote of his war experience in his achingly beautiful Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. In it he describes a generation of young men, who "shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side, slowly trudged away from life's broad wealds of light". France was pulverized; England was exhausted and bankrupt. Germany was both, and what was even worse to the Teutonic psyche, she was defeated. And as silence fell over the apocolyptic ruin, an Austrian Corporal named Adolf Hitler lay wounded in a military hospital, psychosis already creeping into his fevered mind.

Quiet fell in the immortal words of Winston Churchill, "near the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month". But while solaced by the end of the bloodshed, he was also deeply troubled. A global statesman of towering intellect, the stretch of his vision was measured in decades. His journal entry from that night reflects a heart made heavy by what he foretold:

"As Big Ben tolled I noted it was near the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. I looked out my window and saw the drizzle of empires falling through the air, and knew that victory had been purchased at a price as to be indistinguishable from defeat. Scarcely anything which I had been taught to believe had lasted. And everything I had thought to be impossible had happened".

He went on from there, and on that night as millions legitimately rejoiced, he foresaw the great political and cultural vacuum that would be created by the war's aftermath.

World War One ended in 1918, and into Churchill's feared vacuum would step that Austrian Corporal. Just twenty-one short years after the first Armistice Day, Hitler would plunge civilization into World War Two. And Churchill would be there to meet him. Standing alone, and armed only with his indomitable will and soaring prose, he would rally the free world to resist and ultimately defeat the Fuhrer of Germany.

And for standing up to Hitler and his ilk, I say a heartfelt "thank-you" to Bud and Andy and Gene and Cournel. I say that same thank you to all who have served. And I say that same thank you to all who serve today.

To paraphrase Isaiah: As for me and my house, we will never forget you.

When people about eight or more years younger than I am (a regrettably large demographic) hear the name Steve Martin, any number of images may come to mind. They may think of the bumbling inspector Clouseau in the recent remake of The Pink Panther, the overly competitive and aging father in Cheaper by the Dozen, or any number of other images.

But I think people of my approximate age will always associate him with the outrageously ground-breaking comedian of the late 1970's. Whether he was striding across campus stages in his signature three-piece white suit, or gyrating and strutting as the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutt on the stages of Saturday Night Live, he rocketed from anyonymity to the pinnacle of pop-culture stardom in a matter of months. So good was his act that he was one of the few hosts that could stand up to the comedic blasts of Belushi, Akroyd, Radner and Murray, as that ensemble, fueled by the incomparable SNL writers, went about redefining what late 20th Centry America thought was funny. One of the mainstays of Martin's repertoire at that time was his infamous "Let's Get Small" sketch, which referred to an activity that was - ah - less than healthy.

Well last August the notion of "getting small" took on a whole new meaning for me, as three good friends and I spent a week back-packing and camping our way through the southern half of Glacier National Park in northern Montana.

We were fortunate to be there during the time of no moon, which meant that Montana's "Big Sky" nights treated us to an astronomical smorgasbord. Skies so black I thought God had spilled a giant bottle of ink over the night-time canopy, and then flung five-carat diamonds in the shape of stars to shimmer and dance on the surface of that ink. During daylight hours we saw abundant wildlife, massive glaciers whose melt watered the opaline-colored lakes, towering waterfalls, rocks and stones of every conceivable color, forests so dense they blocked the mid-day sun from the moss covered ground, deep emerald pools and laughing, tumbling streams. And of course, the spectcular, seemingly impregnable mountains themselves.

I will never forget the most rapid weather change I have ever experienced as we ascended the trail to Gunsight Pass. Within the span of twenty minutes, we went from sweating profusely in near 90 degree temperatures, to cold, damp, clammy conditions, as the narrow opening of the pass greeted us with fog, blustery winds, and temps. plunging to the mid-30's. The combined effect of this change sent us quickly into our packs for our gloves, sweathsirts, and Gortex jackets.

This weather soon passed, and we changed back into our normal gear. But as we continued on with the descent from the pass, I began thinking about Lewis and Clark, whose steps we were not far from retracing. I thought about that band of men and one woman (the Shoshone Indian guide Sacagawea), and their epic, almost mythological trek. I thought about how WE had a map and a trail to follow, with all the conveniences of our modern clothing, equipment, and freeze-dried food to sustain us. And above all, the knowledge that if something adverse did befall us, we were not more than one day's hike from safety and shelter. All THEY had was their wits, their rifles, and their indomitable resolve; what Thomas Jefferson rightly identified as Lewis' "undaunted courage".

I was humbled and encouraged at the same time. Humbled because I had been thinking our little group was doing something pretty neat, when by comparison, it was nothing. Yet I was also encouraged by the fact that our pioneering predecessors faced obstacles and challenges far greater than we do here in comfortable little Brookfield, and by their example, we can be emboldened and encouraged.

As we spent time in the shadow of the mountains, I also felt we were in the shadow of those great men and women. Standing there in the literal shadow of the mountains, and the historical shadow of our ancestors who crossed them, I felt small. I felt very small.

And that's a good thing. Because I don't know about you, but as I go about daily life, with all of its attendant business, responsibilities, writing, travel, meetings, and pressures, I can get to sometimes feeling "bigger" than I really am. When that happens, I try and think back to Gunsight Pass, and the humbling time I had there.

And every once in a while, let's try and take a minute at the end of a day, as we sink into our warm beds and go to sleep with Brookfield's finest watching over us, to think of Meriwether Lewis and his band, and other such heroic people whose heritage we are blessed to claim.

And lastly, let's consciously seek out activities and experiences that have the capacity to make us "small". Unlike the experience described by Steve Martin, these would be incredibly healthy.