Disaster Averted!

Just think we could be ready to have Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan sworn in soon and our country would be in great peril.   Luckily they took a well deserved beating on election day and we will never have to worry about either of them in power ever again!

As a perfect case in point why Mitt/Gilligan were the absolute worst people to ever run a country, especially to run a country trying to recover from a recession.    I offer up exhibit #1!

When Mitt was at Bain "Vulture" Capitol, he made a trip to China where he fell in love with the way they do business!

 When I was back in my private equity days, we went to China to buy a factory there. It employed about 20,000 people. And they were almost all young women between the ages of about 18 and 22 or 23. They were saving for potentially becoming married.
And they work in these huge factories, they made various uh, small appliances. And uh, as we were walking through this facility, seeing them work, the number of hours they worked per day, the pittance they earned, living in dormitories with uh, with little bathrooms at the end of maybe 10, 10 room, rooms. And the rooms they have 12 girls per room.
Three bunk beds on top of each other. You've seen, you've seen them? (Oh...yeah, yeah!) And, and, and around this factory was a fence, a huge fence with barbed wire and guard towers. And, and, we said gosh! I can't believe that you, you know, keep these girls in! They said, no, no, no. This is to keep other people from coming in.

This is the republican way that 56 million Americans voted for....but as we know, reality gets in the way of republican talking points!  

The factory that Romney fell in lust with, was probably trying to keep family members of the forced workers from trying to save their children.  Reality Bites Again!

Oregon resident Julie Keith was shocked when she opened her $29.99 Kmart Halloween graveyard decoration kit to find a letter, folded into eights, hidden between two Styrofoam tombstones.
Coming all the way from unit 8, department 2 of the Masanjia Labor Camp in Shenyang, China, the letter written mostly in English read,

"Sir: If you occasionally buy this product, please kindly resend this letter to the World Human Right Organization. Thousands people here who are under the persicution of the Chinese Communist Party Government will thank and remember you forever."

The letter went on to describe 15 hour work days, no days off, and pay at 10 yuan per month ($1.61 US Dollar) if any. It also described the 1-3 year average forced labor terms without trial, and the large amount of Falun Gong practitioners in forced labor, a banned spiritual group.

Read the letter here!

I wonder if there are any republicans in office who would offer up their young daughters to work for 15 hour days/7 days a week for $1.61 A MONTH.....what is Tagg's job anyway?  Maybe Tagg could run over there for a month and job shadow!   Is that really a vision that they see in America.  Do 46 million people want this to be our way of life?  It is kind of hard to cut the salary of someone making $1.61/Month.

At least they are not unionized because unions are out of date....

This is also the kind of working conditions that our own Senator Ron Johnson called "creative destruction" for his love of shipping jobs to China.

Brilliant minds on the right......

Priorities

The latest from Tammy Baldwin:



I like this ad. It draws a clear distinction between her and the money-grubbing Thompson. It will also resonate with a lot of parents out there who are looking at what a Republican future looks like and ain't liking it.

Romney and Ryan - Nightmare for the Farming Community

This summer was one of the worst harvests for corn and other crops Wisconsin has seen in years. I think I was able to obtain maybe, 2-3 corn cobs that were just barely edible. We suffered days on end in the 90's, high humidity, unbearable conditions. That affects our farms, farmers and the way food grows. And not only does it affect food that grows, it affects livestock too. In bad conditions, cows don't produce quality dairy, chickens and pigs don't have good meat, eggs are bad. It's a mess.

Wisconsin is aptly named America's Dairyland. We're home to cheese and dairy galore! Hell, we have roadside cheese curd stands! That's one of the things that makes us who we are. It's something we are proud of. It's a rich tradition and trade handed down generation to generation. Dairy and farming adds billions to our state economy each year. It's who we are. Our farming community is a family with everyone in the state. They make products we rely on. We treat them with the utmost respect they deserve.

So, I got curious to just what Mitt has to say about America's farmers considering his running mate is from here.

I clicked on over to his campaign website (a dark, disturbing nightmare of lies and treachery that I never want to visit again) to research his positions on America's farmers. I didn't really find much other than a few blah blah paragraphs on how he supports our family farmers (those 47% government leeches!) and the names of all his Farmer and Rancher supporters. I found the fact that the list is rather long, very unsettling. I know that a lot of farmers to tend to fall on the conservative side of the scale, but what I don't understand is how they use farm subsidies, but they support a man whose VP pick wants to do away with them.

Mitt Romney's VP, Paul Ryan (Jerk-WI) wants to cut $5.3 trillion from the deficit over a number of years. This is a particular blow to farming. A lot of farmer's rely on subsidies, mostly on corn, to thrive financially. During the drought this past summer, Paul Ryan was one of congress's biggest obstructionist on giving farmers aid to help ease the loss they took. He's from Wisconsin. You would think he'd know better.  He's willing to hurt the one industry we can't do without, just to hurt President Obama.

One of the biggest things to take a hit in his budget plan, is crop insurance. In a time when the weather is changing and the climate is getting angrier each year, farmers cannot afford to be left in the dark and unsure about their financial future. Our economy and our food supply depends on making sure that farmer's can grow the crops we need, and if the weather doesn't permit them to, then they have the money they need to survive to grow crops the next year. People don't often really wonder where our food comes from. We go to the grocery store and it's just there. However, it had to come from somewhere.

Let's put out some facts and figures. According to the plan, he would start cutting $5 billion dollars per year in direct subsidies. I suppose one could make this easy on Mr. Ryan and explain that cleaning up the environment and the air, investing in clean energy, and help halt the expanding growth of climate change could help keep those subsidies from expanding but hey, he chooses to ignore the truth. Ryan says that his reforms will "...save taxpayers roughly $30 billion over the next decade." So what is he going to do with all that saved money? Well, put it back into the pockets of the wealthy, of course. 

And here, here's another Ryan gem - "...reform the open-ended nature of the government's support for crop insurance so that agricultural producers assume the same kind of responsibility for managing risk that other businesses do." I don't even know what to say to that, it's so ridiculous. Ryan is essentially telling farmers, "If they weather doesn't cooperate, it's your problem. Don't come asking for help, you government mooching, 47%er!" 

And don't mistake me. I'm not referring to giant agribusiness and factory farming in this whatsoever. As an animal lover, I'm the first one to tell you the errors of factory farms, the pollution they cause, and the cruelty they put on animals. Agribusiness and factory farming are billion dollars a year operations. They should never receive any federal subsidy. Who I am referring to are your neighbors. The farmers who bring in food to the local farmer's markets. The farmers who supply towns with local produce and dairy. The ones who make our local economies thrive. The backbone of our state economy.

I am sending this as a plea to America's farming community. I hope they take another look at the Romney/Ryan ticket. They aren't looking out for their best interests. They aren't looking out for the best interests in the food supply. They aren't looking out for America's best interests period. Vote for the ticket who will support farmers! Obama/Biden 2012 

Tanya Lohr: Standing Up For Our Families And Communities

Tanya Lohr

On Saturday evening, I had the distinct pleasure and honor of speaking with Tanya Lohr, the Democratic candidate for the 20th Senate District currently being held by Glenn Grothman.

I told her that I didn't have to ask her why she is running. I said that almost anyone could give scores of reasons why he is not a good choice to represent the people of Wisconsin, between the damaging laws he helped enact to the many, many hurtful and hateful things that he has uttered over the years.

She agreed, saying that many of Grothman's comments are offensive across the board.

She told me that she was running because she could see that the communities are changing. They are tired of the mean-spirited attitudes and hyper partisanship that has gripped our state for too long.

Tanya said that has he has been doing the doors, and she has already done a lot of them, she keeps hearing the same thing from the people she speaks with. They want to heal the wounds that has been caused by the divisiveness in the state. They ask her if she is willing to to work with people on both sides of the table, Democrats and Republicans. Tanya told me that this is one of the things she would bring with her to Madison and it is something that her opponent has shown no interest in.

Tanya told me that even though her district is seen as a traditionally strongly reliable Republican area, she is getting a much better response from people than one might expect. While there have been admittedly people that simply shut the door on her when they learned she was running as a Democrat, there has been no explosive tirades, no verbal abuse or other poor showings.

She told me that the most common reaction she has gotten from people, regardless of their party affiliation, has been rather positive. Part of this is probably due to another comment she told me she's been hearing a lot: That no one has ever asked them for their input, not only on what needs to be changed, but how they would like to see the change take place.

That correlates with a lot of things that I have heard regarding Grothman being rather aloof towards even his supporters. I have heard from reliable sources that when Grothman attends events, he will often come late, stay to himself and then leave early.

Tanya told me that she saw the receptiveness of people to her is a sign that the people are ready to move forward.

Since both Tanya and her husband are teachers, naturally education is something about which Tanya is very knowledgeable and passionate. She said that the problems we are starting to see in school districts is a sign that the current approach isn't working. She said that it shows that we need to immediately fix the shared funding again. She also said that she would like to see the caps on school districts removed. She pointed out that referendums are expensive and time consuming and keeps people from moving forward. She feels that if people want to invest in their school districts, they should be able to without anyone from Madison telling them that they can't.

Tanya pointed out that in days of old, people could get by with just the basics: reading, writing and 'rithmetic. She pointed out that in in todays' global marketplace, just teaching the basics are no longer enough. Tanya stated that if our children aren't ready to enter the global marketplace sufficiently education, then we are dooming them to failure, which can lead to higher costs down the road.

Another unintended consequence of the gigantic slashes to the state's school systems is that the more rural communities, like those in the 20th district, are closing satellite schools and centralizing the schools. She pointed out that this means kids will be on buses longer, school districts will be more susceptible to the changes in gas prices and, most importantly, will lose their sense of community.

Tanya said that the number one issue she has heard about from speaking with the people is jobs. She emphasized that jobs are not a partisan issue, but requires both sides to sit down and actually focus on creating jobs in a bipartisanship manner. She said that not only are jobs needed, but that these jobs have to be family supporting ones.

This naturally led to discussion of Act 10. Tanya pointed out that the act cuts the take home pay of public sector workers which leads to cuts in their spending, which in turn hurts small businesses in their community.

Tanya with her family

Tanya offered two examples of this. She said that because of the cuts in her and her husband's take home pay, they no longer send their children to music lessons. This will hurt the music teacher, who in turn must cut down on her spending, and so on. Likewise, Tanya pointed out that she bought a pair of scissors and give her family haircuts instead of going to their usual place. This cuts the money that the barber is making and reduces his spending in return.

She went on to point out that these cuts in spending not only hurt the local small businesses, but can lead to other, and often, higher costs down the road, including people losing their jobs and receiving unemployment compensation and going on Badger Care.

Besides jobs, education and a higher level of congeniality among our politicians, the other big topic is taxes. Tonya pointed out that she has "no interest in raising taxes." Instead, she said that the state needs to collect the taxes that are owed. If people paid their taxes, a lot of the fiscal problems the state is facing would be resolved.

She also stated that she would seek to close the tax loopholes that are rife in the state's tax code. She state that "when billionaires pay nothing, but working people are paying up to 25% in taxes, something is wrong."

Tanya is very proud of the fact that her campaign currently has 22 volunteers and coordinators and no paid staff. She said that this is because she wants the focus to be on the people in the community.

Tanya will be a much needed breath of fresh air to the miasma caused by the hyper-partisanship which pervades our state now. She will represent all of the people in her district and will listen to them and act accordingly, which will make a pleasant change from her incumbent who has show a callous disregard for his constituents at best and has been rude and offensive to them way too often. She will also focus on the needs of the state as opposed to the wishes and whims of out of state special interests.

For these reasons, we are proud to give our endorsement to Tanya.

To learn more about Tanya and her positions on issues, please visit her website. You can also follow her on her Facebook page, which she updates regularly. And if you can, please help Tanya stand up for our families and communities by volunteering or making a donation today.

Last Laugh

I have no comment other than this was found on PostSecret:

Divide and Conquer Destroy

Bernard Hlavac is a 75 year old former Republican who used to be an executive at Sentry Insurance in Stevens Point.  Today, he bought ad space in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Gannett newspapers.  He also should be having it in Monday's edition of Wisconsin State Journal.

I emailed Mr. Hlavac and asked permission to run his ad.  Mrs. Hlavac responded not only with permission, but also with a copy from their computer so I wouldn't have to transcribe it or make a copy of the ad.  Here it is in its entirety, edited only for purposes of readability on the Blogger format (the bold highlighted area is, the italicized area is my emphasis):

I am writing this article to lend my support in defeating Scott Walker in this recall election and to strongly endorse Tom Barrett. I am writing on behalf of my daughter, a school psychologist in the Madison area, and all teachers and staff who have been so maligned and savaged by Walker and the Republican Party whose aim is to destroy unions in Wisconsin and throughout the country.  This is against every principle of worker rights held by the Catholic Church of which I have been a life- long member.

In 1993, as a freshman assemblyman, Walker co-sponsored right to work legislation-----an anathema to unions since it allows workers to receive the benefits of a union without paying any dues. No union or any other organization could survive under such rules.

The bill went nowhere.

So what happened between Walker and the teacher’s union? What did Walker do and why the recall? Shortly after he took office in January 2011, Walker continued to work against the unions under Act 10, a bill passed by the Republican legislature limiting the bargaining of unions to only salary with the maximum increase limited to the rate of inflation. Unions were not allowed to bargain on benefits such as pensions and health insurance. He also imposed benefit charges of 6% of salary for pensions and 12% for health insurance on all state and union employees. These were the major tools Walker spoke of to help school systems cope with the major cuts he was making to education. Previously the teacher pension was a non-contributory plan, but teacher contributions for health insurance varied by school districts. All of these provisions were imposed by Walker. There was nothing these unions could do. The union accepted all the benefit charges, but it did not accept the bargaining restriction and the “right to work” provision included in Act 10. So, the democrats getting nowhere with Walker and he being unwilling to meet or negotiate, crossed the border to Illinois as a form of protest. They were vilified by the Republicans as being in dereliction of their legislative duties. The Democrats felt that Walker’s actions were a gross example of raw power. As the final “boot on the neck” stomping out of the unions. Walker would not allow the state to withhold union dues. Litigation continues on several fronts of Act 10 including the dues withholding issue.

When Governor Walker released his estimated budget in February 2011 he proclaimed that the state faced a $3.6 billion deficit(gap) for the 2011-2013 budget period. What does this mean? The $3.6 billion gap is the difference between estimated revenues and spending requests for the 2011-2013 budget period. It is the starting point for all governors and legislatures in developing a final budget. This is the same calculation used to estimate the $5.4 billion gap two years earlier by Governor Doyle for the 2009-2011 budget period. Quoting from The non-partisan Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance (WTA) special report of September 2011 dealing with the 2011-2013 budget:

“IN SOME WAYS, THESE DEFICIT FIGURES INFLATE THE SIZE OF THE FISCAL PROBLEM BECAUSE AGENCIES RARELY RECEIVE ALL FUNDING REQUESTED. HOWEVER, INCLUDING AGENCY REQUESTS IN CALCULATING A BUDGET DEFICIT CAN BE POLITICALLY BENEFICIAL BECAUSE GOVERNORS AND LAWMAKERS CAN CLAIM REDUCTIONS TO REQUESTED AMOUNTS AS SPENDING CUTS, EVEN WHEN EXPENDITURES ARE RISING FROM PAST LEVELS. ALSO INFLATING THE PROBLEM MAKES THE SOLUTION -----A “BALANCED BUDGET”-----SEEM MORE IMPRESSIVE TO THE UNINFORMED’’.

Governor Walker hyped the $3.6 billion deficit to the point that he convinced his party faithful that the state was in fiscal crisis and was “broke”. What he failed to explain, however, was that the peak in the fiscal crisis in Wisconsin and the entire country occurred two years earlier . What happened then? Starting in February 2008, the U.S. had 25 consecutive months of job losses. In the last 12 months of President Bush’s term, we lost 4.5 million jobs; in the first six months of President Obama’s term we lost an additional 3.4 million jobs. In the next seven months .9 million jobs were lost. The grand total of lost jobs in this 25 month period was 8.8 million. This total more than wiped out all the jobs gained in the first seven years of Bush’s term.This is the Republican record on job creation. The U.S. unemployment rate peaked at 10.0% in October 2009—nine months after Obama took office. The current unemployment rate is 8.1% . This reflects 4.5 million jobs added by the Obama administration in the last 25 months.

The real estate and credit crisis which caused these massive job losses was years in the making. And yes, there was gross negligence and incompetence at every level from borrowers and lenders to bond rating agencies to Wall Street and everyone in between. All were eager to capitalize on transactions “too good to be true.” Effective regulation to stave off this disaster was nowhere to be found. Even at this date it is estimated that over 10 million people owe more on their mortgages than the current value of their homes. According to Warren Buffet, “Housing over the last 4 years has been in a depression not a recession”. The meltdown of the economy was the worst since the “Great Depression”. The bailouts of several financial institutions deemed “too big to fail” all occurred or were initiated under President Bush. This was the “free market economy” with little or no regulation which Republicans espouse.

What Governor Doyle faced in January 2009 was indeed a fiscal crisis. Jobs were being lost at a staggering rate and tax revenues were falling precipitously. In June 2009 Governor Doyle issued a new forecast of revenues for the 2009-2011 period reducing the previous estimate by $ l.l billion. This increased the deficit or gap up to $6.5 billion. Even at this date there would still be eight more months of job losses facing the state and the country. Doyle raised a variety of taxes and fees including income tax, tobacco tax, etc. These taxes and fees were in the $2-3 billion range. By contrast Walker’s estimate of revenue made in 2011 was adjusted upward by $.6 billion in June reducing the remaining deficit or gap to $3.0 billion. Walker vilified the Democrats for raising taxes and, of course, made it a key campaign issue. He did, however, take full credit for the $.6 billion increase in revenues that these taxes generated. The remaining gap of $3.0 billion Gov. Walker closed by cutting this amount from agency requests. Almost two-thirds, $1.91 billion ( 64%) was cut from education requests. The actual amount cut from last year’s actual educational spending as reported by the WTA was $l.06 billion. Along with this cut Walker imposed contributions of 6% of salary for pensions and 12% for health care for all teachers and government employees as stated previously. The impact of these impositions was several hundred million dollars. A rough estimate of the pension contribution alone was $350 million. The additional cost for the 175,000 full and part time employees affected was the same as a tax increase. These employee contributions benefited school districts across the state and helped offset the drop in state school aid. However, the net effect of these actions by Walker caused severe problems for many school districts and the UW system. One consequence of Walker’s actions was a reduction of over 1,200 teachers in the state.

While the quality of our education system-- private, public, technical and the UW system should be one of our state’s greatest selling points, Walker has turned his back to educators. Morale among all segments of education is at an all time low.

Consumer spending represents 70% of our economy and decreased consumer spending is a major factor in the poor growth of our economy. The lower and middle class segments of our population have made little, if any, real gains in income over the last 30 years. It is because this segment has little purchasing power that consumer demand has softened. It is not the teacher in Wisconsin whose yearly average salary is $42,000 who is hurting the economy. Nor is it my daughter who earns $ 45,527 with a Masters degree and seventeen years experience. It is because the miracle of a “trickle down” economy championed by Ronald Reagan has failed. Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, resigned a few years after serving, stating that he had no confidence in its merits and he has been proven right.

Walker has bared his “divide and conquer” plan many times. When asked by a Beloit billionaire supporter if there was any chance that Wisconsin would ever be a completely red state Walker responded that he would be working on the budget adjustment bill and dealing with collective bargaining in a “ divide and conquer” plan. And, in a phone conversation with whom he believed to be billionaire David Koch ( it was actually an impersonator) , he described his introduction of the union breaking collective bargaining measure as”….we dropped the bomb.”

Governor Walker is not above an almost criminal use of numbers as he accused the teachers and their unions of destroying the Capitol building and through his Secretary of the Dept. of Administration stated unequivocally that the repair and clean-up of the Capitol to be $7.5 million. Recently, with very little publicity, the final repair and clean-up expenses were reported to be less than $200 thousand. This was obviously intended to provoke controversy and to divide the general public from their teachers and their unions.

Cities like Milwaukee, Pittsburg, Cleveland and Detroit, whose economies relied heavily on manufacturing are faced with daunting challenges. These cities have experienced significant job losses with all the associated problems. Tom Barrett has shown considerable skill in working with the people of Milwaukee in dealing with these issues. He is both respected and well liked. In addition to his impressive legislative record, he has been elected mayor of Milwaukee three times. He is uniquely qualified to govern our state.

The current Republican Party has run off its historical tracks. This is not the party of Knowles, Dreyfus, Thompson and McCallum who sought the common good and gained the respect of all citizens.

We are working to defeat Scott Walker----- defeat him with a candidate who can restore moral order to Wisconsin. Tom Barrett has the skills to once again unite our state. “Divide and Conquer” is not in his vocabulary and “drop the bomb” is not part of his action plan.

Barrett reaches out and negotiates. Walker retreats and closes doors.

Barrett supports unions. Walker destroys them.

Barrett works for the common good. Walker is beholden to the rich and powerful.

Barrett views education as a priority. Walker’s relationship with educators is adversarial.

Barrett is a man of integrity.

This recall election is of monumental importance to both the State of Wisconsin and to our country. I urge all citizens to vote. We have a choice. My choice is Tom Barrett----a man of principle---not power.

Lights Of Wisconsin: Vote Tom Barrett

Hot off the press, so to speak:



Bragging rights: I got to hang with the crew for a little while last Wednesday night while they were in West Allis. I even made a small cameo in the video they made of that night.

It was also when I got to meet oldmoderate of Uppity Wisconsin fame.