One of Abele's vetoes involved a revision to a deal to sell a water tower to the City of Wauwatosa. The Board amended Abele's sweetheart deal with them because he was giving up a lot of revenue from the cell towers. Not to mention that by the time the reconstruction of the zoo interchange is done, that land will be worth many times its current value. There is little doubt that Abele wanted to offer this huge giveaway to the City of Wauwatosa as they are about to make key decisions on the destruction, er, construction at the county grounds which would greatly benefit some of Abele's fellow plutocrats at the Greater Milwaukee Committee.
What Abele doesn't want the taxpayers to know is that if the county owned the water tower and worked needed to be done, the county would only charge the cost of the work. Under Abele's plan, when things have to be done, the price skyrockets due to the added profit margins.
Abele also vetoed funding for the Board to retain the services of a law firm to look at the legality and constitutionality of Act 14. He is upset that the law firm the Board had chosen has a history of suing the county on behalf of the union. Abele's ghost writer thinks it's because they have a blue fist on their website.
This is only more self-serving hypocrisy from Abele. The real reason he doesn't want to allow the Board to hire the law firm is because he knows that Act 14 is flawed. Furthermore, Abele really has nothing to say about it since the whole bill that led to Act 14 was written by Foley and Lardner which is to Abele as Michael Best and Friedrich are to Scott Walker.
Abele also vetoed the wage and benefit requirements that the Board had put on a hotel that is proposed to be built on the county grounds (over just about everyone's objections). Abele called it a job killer and possibly illegal, based on his corp counsel's legal opinion. Yes, that's the same corporation counsel head that got fired for giving faulty advise as well as encouraging illegal behavior.
The proposed hotel has more than doubled in value from last year to this year and is currently valued at $14.5 million, and that is before they've even settled on where to build it. Obviously, the could afford the relative pittance to allow the workers a chance to feed their families and take care of them when they are sick. It should also be noted that the salary is only a small fraction over the level of poverty.
Of course, this is not the first time that Abele has come out against workers. Abele felt that the striking workers at Palermo's Pizza should be happy with the jobs they had, even though they had been at minimum wage for years and working in conditions so poor that OSHA had to come down heavy on the company.
Perhaps the most telling of Abele's vetoes is the one against the firing of the above-mentioned head of corporation counsel, Kimberly Walker. The paper notes that Abele heaped praise on Walker as he vetoed this resolution. Unfortunately, the article does not express what exactly he praised her for. Perhaps it was for not fulfilling her responsibility as being answerable to both Emperor Abele and the County Board. Maybe it was for the bad advice she gave out. Possibly it was for her admission that she was working for Abele and that any advice she gave the Board would be a conflict of interest.
Most likely, it was for the fact that she solicited Emperor Abele to violate open records request laws by using her as a human secret router, as evidenced by her own email.
We all should fall to our knees and thank our lucky stars for Dear Leader Abele. In just one day, he has taken swift action to:
- Make sure taxpayers pay their fair share and to protect the plutocrat land developers,
- Ensure that justice is not pursued and that democracy doesn't regain a foothold in Milwaukee County,
- Keep working stiffs from getting to uppity and clearing the path for the oligarchs that would exploit said workers, and
- Keeping corruption and incompetence in its place - the county executive's office.
The County Board is to meet on Wednesday at 1 pm at the Milwaukee Area Technical College, Room M210. The meeting had to be moved due to an electrical fire at the courthouse caused by deferred maintenance, which is just another stunning example of the efficiency we can expect under the reign of Emperor Abele.
Now watch that mean old Board go and ruin it all. They're always standing with those taxpayers, workers and are always upholding those silly, old, obsolete ethics.
Author's Note: No purple unicorns were harmed in the production of this article.
Author's Note: No purple unicorns were harmed in the production of this article.
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