Thursday, July 18, 2013

Taxpayer Dollars Used To Support Sheriff Clarke's Pro-Gun Goons

On Wednesday, I reported about a gang of gun nuts called the U.S. Concealed Carry Association who was getting people from all around the country to call a few members of the Milwaukee County Board. The group made some false claims that the Board was going to attack people's Second Amendment rights and that they were trying to silence the voice of Sheriff David Clarke.  

The thought of anyone silencing Clarke since he goes crying to talk radio every other day because some meanie pointed out his ridiculousness.  Heck, WISN-AM has even given him his own air time to rant and rave about how people keep accusing him of ranting and raving.

The resolution in question simply would keep Clarke and all other elected Milwaukee County officials from using taxpayer dollars to put up campaign ads. If Clarke wanted to do his campaign ads, he'd have to pay for them.  If he wanted to do a serious public service announcement, he could do that, as long as he wasn't in it.

Besides getting the issue wrong, these Goons for Guns also missed the hearing date by at least two months and also had problems just figuring out which governmental body they were supposed to be haranguing.

With a tip from a regular reader, we can see why the gun nut group was so trigger happy about the possibility of Clarke losing taxpayer money for his politicking. The reason is because they are receiving taxpayer-funded subsidizing for their politicking (emphasis mine)
More recently, the West Bend Common Council offered the U.S. Concealed Carry Association a low-interest loan and five years of property tax rebates to relocate in a former art museum building downtown.

“I wish we had deals like this lined up around the corner right now,” says West Bend Mayor Kraig Sadownikow.

In exchange for the incentives, he says the concealed carry group will bring around 30 jobs to West Bend and invest $1 million in its new location.

“We’ve been looking for ways to inject some adrenaline into the downtown as many communities are. It keeps a building fully occupied, puts it back on the tax roll,” Sadownikow says.

Sadownikow says he’s aware that some residents are upset the government is subsidizing the divisive group, but contends the deal is not about politics. And the mayor defends his refusal to allow public comment on the incentive package.

“It’s a very slippery slope for local officials such as myself to get caught up in the politics of the day. This was about bringing jobs to West Bend. It was about investment in our community,” Sadownikow says.
It sure didn't take Walker's corrupt leadership to spread to the local Teapublicans, did it?

There is this corrupt Teapublican mayor who is basically giving a no bid sweetheart deal to a radical right wing group so that they can do lobbying and politicking.  The the mayor says that the giveaway of taxpayer money - nudge, nudge, wink, wink - has nothing to do with politics.  Yeah, seems legit.

Ironically, last week Charlie Sykes and the propagandists were having a massive hissy fit about a person - fully funded by private organizations - working with Mayor Tom Barrett's office to get reasonable gun control laws in place.  Now we have taxpayer supported special interests trying to help Clarke's campaign and they have nothing to say.

One would think that with next year being an election year, if Clarke wants to continue to be the county's top law enforcement officer, he might want to stop hanging around people of questionable ethics.  Then again, one might think he'd want to be a little more ethical himself.

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