Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Sanfelippo: No Friend Of The Working Family

Milwaukee County Supervisor Joe Sanfelippo, a long time supporter and hypocritical teahadist, is running for the 15th Assembly District.

Sanfelippo has been a detriment to the citizens and taxpayers of Milwaukee County and he would be only a worse disaster if he were elected to a higher office.

To give you an idea of how bad Sanfelippo is, you can first try to check out his web page.  I say try, because his site is as much of a mess as his political career has been.  To access most of it, one has to go to the cached version.  

There are a couple of highlights on his site which should show you the kind of guy that Sanfelippo is.  One is that he proudly states that he formally announced his candidacy on Charlie Sykes' squawk radio show.  Yup, that's right, he chose to announce on the show of a guy who cheats on his families, repeatedly gets caught in lies and is, appropriately so when one considers it, the unofficial official spokesman for WISGOP.

The other thing to note is his endorsements, which I caught in a screencap for posterity sake:

You'll notice that his first endorsement is from the vulgar Robin Vos, whose name Sanfelippo is incapable of spelling correctly.  Vos, who among his many vile behaviors, has compared democracy to cancer and has been listed as a person of interest in the Walkergate investigation.

Sanfelippo is also proud of the endorsement of two former Supervisors Joseph Rice, who cried the blues when he was the victim of his own downsizing advocacy, and Paul Cesarz, who got busted working a full time job as a Walgreens pharmacist instead of his elected position and left his office in such a disarray that his successor had to file an open records request on his own office to get information.

That's the quality of person Sanfelippo draws to support him.

A look at some of his decision-making makes it clear why he cannot draw anyone respectable to his side.

I recently wrote about how Scott Walker's illegal furloughs are now going to cost taxpayers $4.1 million.  More than a half of a million dollars of that is due to the County's refusal to pay it off, a move that was led by Sanfelippo.  In fact, the whole payout might have been avoided if Sanfelippo, who was the Chair of the Personnel Committee during this time, had not refused to negotiate with the unions.

A more recent example comes from Sanfelippo's reaction to his fellow supervisors who voted to delay a plan to develop the Park East area because the main developer did his own union-busting and refuses to pay people a decent wage or give them benefits.

Sanfelippo's press release about the Board standing up for working families says much about him:

“Although the property where this alleged crime against humanity (firing a union company) took place is privately owned and has nothing whatsoever to do with Milwaukee County, four committee members acquiesced to the union’s demand. 
“After the Park East Freeway was demolished, the County Board piled on so many overburdening restrictions for building on this land, it became virtually unsellable even during one of the biggest economic and development boom-times downtown Milwaukee has ever seen. That is why, for more than a decade, Milwaukee County has been desperately trying to find developers willing to take a risk and invest their own dollars in this strip of land. This particular project has been planned since 2007, but until recently was unable to secure the financing required to proceed. Now, it finally has the financial green light, and the Board is going to stall it because the janitor’s union said so. 
“This project will create hundreds of high paying construction jobs in one of the poorest cities in the country. Once completed, it will provide vital permanent jobs in area of unacceptably high unemployment while generating hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in taxes and fees to area governments. 
“I am calling on the Economic and Community Development Committee to hold a special meeting prior to the next scheduled County Board meeting to approve this project in time for Board approval on June 28. After all, it is economic and community development that we should be concerned about, not the janitor unions customer base.”
His elitism is just dripping off of him as he does his best imitation of Eric Hovde imitation Mitt Romney.  How dare the Board worry about those whiny unionized janitors!  Don't they know that there are multimillionaire land developers who are starving?!

Of course, what Sanfelippo doesn't mention in this act of arrogance is that his "vital permanent jobs" don't pay diddlysquat and offer no benefits.  Not much good to someone who is trying to keep a roof over their head or feed their family.

Then again, maybe he doesn't care about them either, except for the fact that they got deep pockets and might be willing to drop him a few thousand dollars if he does the right tricks and makes the right promises. Then maybe he could afford to hire a website designer and replace that dead tr

But the most telling thing about Sanfelippo is not that he spends most of his time away from his supervisor's office to run his taxi business.  Nor is it the fact that he has repeatedly voted as a county supervisor to give rate hikes to paratransit companies like his taxi business, raking in $1.2 million in 2010 alone.  No the most telling is the way he treats his own employees, the taxi cab drivers.

Pretty good gig for a teahadist who is whining about how much public sector workers are costing the taxpayers.  Can you say "hypocrisy?"

Sanfelippo charges them as much as $1,000 a week for the privilege of driving one of his cabs, not to mention insurance, dispatch services or a monthly $250 gas card which is only usable at his gas station, where he charges about ten cents more per gallon than any other gas station.

These examples should make it obvious that Sanfelippo's concern isn't helping lift all the boats or creating jobs for the working class.  His only concern is how much he can capitalize off the labor of others, even if they are the taxpayers.

Sanfelippo is not fit for the seat he holds now. He must not be allowed to gain a higher office.

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