Boss Abele, Like Walker, Is No Friend Of The Parks

When Scott Walker was still Milwaukee County Executive, an audit of the parks system showed that they were suffering from $300 million worth neglect, needed repairs and deferred maintenance.

Then came along Chris Abele, the boy prince, who duped people into thinking he was progressive and would work to repair the damages done by Walker's neglect.  In reality, he was an acolyte to austerity and only made things worse, causing the crown jewel of the parks system to fall into disarray:

The bloom is fading at the historic Boerner Botanical Gardens in Whitnall Park, where reduced care in recent years has resulted in a "tired" and "weak" appearance within the 40 acres of gardens.

That's the conclusion of an audit report requested by the Milwaukee County Board after concerns were raised about leadership and communication at the oldest publicly owned formal gardens in the Great Lakes region.

Acclaimed and treasured for its collections of flowering plants, herbs and shrubs and a hybrid rose trial garden, the gardens have suffered over time, the audit says.

A growing burden of inadequate maintenance must be reversed for the gardens to achieve their core mission: to serve as a "living museum" of plants and an outdoor classroom for visitors; and to inform the public of native and exotic plants suitable for landscape use in the Milwaukee area, the audit concludes.

Limited staff perform "triage gardening" to go after the most visible or critical problems while pruning and weed control in the remainder of the gardens is put off year after year, according to the report of Milwaukee County audit director Jerome Heer.

Among the results: nuisance invasive plants overrun some areas of the gardens; an untamed shrub covers a bench and prevent its use; and unpruned rose bushes overrun a decorative wall.

Some signs intended to help visitors identify and learn about flowers, herbs and shrubs at Milwaukee County's "living museum" are damaged or missing.

The real kicker is that Abele has been boasting of having a surplus of tens of millions of dollars over the last few years, meaning that this neglect is willful and could have easily been avoided.

The other concern is that if the money isn't going to services - which it obviously isn't - and it's not going to the workers, what is Abele doing with all that money?

Perhaps he's giving it away to his wealthy cronies like he's doing with other county assets?

The UW System Cuts Disaster

By Jeff Simpson

 Even though we have had five years of complete Republican rule, and the Governor and his co-horts campaigned on us having a surplus, the sad reality is that we have a bigger budget deficit than when Scot Walker took office.  That led to a ridiculous austerity budget and one of the places where they proposed the biggest cuts was to the University of Wisconsin system.

While it is too late to do anything about the Republican dishonesty, it is not to late to stop these devastating cuts to the UW System.

Thanks to WisconsinBudgetProject, we know how bad they can be.




Scott Walker is definitely "focused like a laser beam" on jobs.....unfortunately his focus seems to be on eliminating jobs.   

Scott Walker's Sneak Attack On Senior Citizens

In 2002, Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle created Senior Care, a state run program that provides medication coverage for seniors. The program is very popular due to its user-friendly structure and much lower costs. Seniors enrolled in the program pay a $30 annual enrollment fee and a small copay for the medication - $5 for generics and $15 for brand name drugs. Better yet, Senior Care does not have the gap in coverage that most Medicare Part D plans do.

In 2011, Scott Walker tried to eliminate the program. This caused such an uproar among seniors that even Walker's Republican allies in the state legislature shot down Walker's plan to kill the program.

Last week, when Walker presented his budget, he made no mention of Senior Care, but lo and behold, he did include a massive cut to the program and wants to force seniors unto the more expensive programs offered by private insurance companies:

Democrats Wednesday blasted Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to push eligible recipients of the state's popular SeniorCare prescription drug plan into alternate federal coverage.

It wasn't immediately clear Wednesday how many of the 85,000 SeniorCare members across Wisconsin would have to start getting their prescriptions filled through the potentially more expensive federal Medicare Part D benefit.

[...]

The state would save $15 million from the change over the next two years, but the full impact of the cut would be nearly $100 million, since to provide its services SeniorCare also draws on drug company discounts and rebates — givebacks that they provide in the Medicare program — as well as fees and co-payments from patients.

While Walker is trying to spin it as no loss for Wisconsin seniors - he claims that it's just making the feds pay for it - the damage would be all too real for the elderly:

"They talk about going from steak to hamburger, but at this age most of us are already at hamburger and we're looking at going without," said 73-year-old Judith Joslin-Crary.

For Joslin-Crary and her husband Richard Crary, 86, of Beloit, losing funding from SeniorCare could mean making significant cuts or dialing back on doses of their prescriptions to manage.

One month's coverage through a private insurance company often costs more than the annual feel for Senior Care.

At least this shows that Walker isn't an ageist. He's willing to screw over anyone, no matter what stage of life they are in.

A Sad Day In Milwaukee County

Today was a very sad day for Milwaukee but most people are not aware of it.

Thanks to Boss Abele and his agenda of austerity, several Milwaukee County employees who serve our community's most vulnerable citizens, were laid off. Milwaukee County no longer has Community Support Programming for the mentally ill because Abele privatized it.

But the layoffs aren't the worst part. Some of the private agency workers don't have a degree in the human service field. And many of the clients haven't even heard from, much less met with, their new private sector workers. They will be now without medication, support or supervision for who knows how long.

And we are paying more for this decrease in services.

County Executive Chris Abele and Meg Kissinger might call this a success and much needed reform. I call it an abomination and a disservice to our vulnerable citizens and to the taxpayers.

Remembering Alexander Orlowski

Seven years ago on this date, Alexander Orlowski lost his life while incarcerated at the Milwaukee County House of Correction.

His death was the result of a drug overdose which was allowed to happen due to a severe staffing shortage, leaving corrections officers burnt out and not as effective as they could be.

A year after his passing, I had the privilege and honor of meeting his parents, Gary and Patti Orlowski, who shared the story of his troubled life and his troubling death.

Last year, the Orlowskis filed a lawsuit against the county, not for the money per se, since no amount of money will bring their son back, but to make sure that another family's son won't die because of the austerity measures that Scott Walker and Chris Abele promote every day.

I continue to wish the Orlowski family peace and strength as they carry on without their son and fighting for everyone else's sons and daughters.

The Boss Abele Temper Tantrum Alert System Has Been Activated

Two years ago, when the Milwaukee County Board overrode some of Boss Abele's budget vetoes - especially those that attacked county workers - Abele through an epic temper tantrum.  He decided to show them by buying off a couple of Teapublican state legislators and did a massive and unprecedented power grab.

When the unions stood up to Abele's plantation economics, he tried to bust the unions - twice.

When State Representative-elect and current Supervisor David Bowen led the move to bring a living wage to Milwaukee County, Abele threw another tantrum and tried to remove all local living wage laws throughout the state.

When Abele started moves to abandon the mentally ill, the County Board demanded that it be done in a safe and responsible manner.  Abele pouted, stamped his feet and went back to his paid off state legislators to have the County Board be stripped off any and all control over the mental health program except to rubber stamp his budget for the profiteers.

Given his past behaviors, Abele must be gearing up for an F-5 temper tantrum after the county board overrode all but two of his nearly 30 vetoes on Wednesday.

Before anyone goes ballistic that the County Board didn't support Abele cutting taxes by two whole dollars, look at the actions taken by the board and see that they were completely appropriate and the right thing to do.  In Wednesday's actions, the County Board:

• Restored $300,000 to homeless shelters. (Keep in mind that this is only November and we have already had two nights with wind chills below zero. Abele's veto was so egregious that even his own personal supervisor, Deanna Alexander, voted against him on this.)
• Restored $300,000 for indigent burials.
• Restored $10 million to do repairs and maintenance to county parks.
• Restored free bus rides for the elderly and disabled.
• Restored several positions in the Sheriff's Office to increase public safety.
• Restored six clerical positions at the House of Correction instead of paying overtime to corrections officers to do that work instead of guarding inmates.
• Stopped the privatization of food services at the zoo.
• Stopped privatization of security guards and transferred them to the Sheriff's Department.  (Remember how well that idea worked out for Scott Walker when he tried it.)
• Stopped the $2,000 pay cuts to county workers and restored a flexible spending account program, which will hopefully slow down the high rate of turnover the county is experiencing.

No "entitlements."  No lavish luxuries.  Just good, old common sense - and necessary - moves to start repairing some of the damage done by Walker and his protege, Abele.

I commend and thank Chairwoman Marina Dimitrijevic and the other county supervisors for standing up for Milwaukee County and its people and turning back Boss Abele's plantation economics.

Abele's 2015 Budget: A Week Late And Millions Of Dollars Short

The lost has been found! Boss Abele finally got done hiding from the public and made a rare appearance at the Milwaukee County Courthouse.  The occasion was that he was finally presenting his 2015 county budget.  It took about two minutes to make one realize he did not spend that week making sure that the budget was up to snuff.  It took about three minutes to make on wish that Abele and his budget was still missing.

As hard as it is to believe, Abele actually makes Scott Walker look competent and a good leader.

Oh, if you listen to Boss Abele, and can make out what words he's trying to bleat out, you'd think that this budget was the greatest thing since slice bread.  He claims to do everything short of curing cancer with this budget, giving big increases to the Sheriff's Office, to the mental health care system, the parks and everyone else (except for the workers, of course!).

The reality is that Abele's budget is as sketchy as a police artist's drawing.

While I'll be discussing the budget in detail in later articles, let's look at some of the "highlights" of Abele's smoke and mirror budget.

Abele boasts of putting millions of dollars into some projects in the park system.  He fails to point out that these projects are all in fairly affluent areas and nothing in the inner city.  He also fails to mention that he will be raising fees and closing four wading pools.  (In Abele's plantation economics mind, those little kids shouldn't be wasting time and taxpayer money getting relief from hot summer days when they should be working in a sweatshop somewhere.)

Abele brags about putting nearly $4 million into the Sheriff's Office.  Only he's not really doing that.  And again, Abele seems to forget that he is again trying to spin off the jobs of deputy sheriff's to the already overburdened municipal police.

Abele is proud of putting more than $4 million towards the War Memorial Center and Milwaukee Art Museum, but forgets that he is contractually obligated to do that.  He also forgot to mention that he threatened not to pay it.

Abele also crows about putting another $1.5 million for his political appointees on the Mental Health Board.  What he doesn't tell us is that he has no money to take care of the people at the mental health complex who they can't find placements for.  Nor does he have the money for the inevitable charges of unsafe discharge planning.  (He should ask his good friend Scott Walker about how it feels to get confronted by Medicare.)

Abele is also on a privatization kick that makes Walker look like a slacker.  Abele has privatized or wants to privatize the mental health system, the WATTS Review Unit (they do court reports on whether people with mental health issues need to be hospitalized), security officers, IMSD (tech support), the food service at the zoo and various airport services.

Abele also wants to sell off county parks and other assets to his fellow plutocrats for a fraction of their worth.  For example, he wants to sell O'Donnell Park for $14 million.  When all the costs and debt service is paid off, the county will be lucky to net $5 million.  The parking structure alone is worth well over $32 million.

But while he has found money to sell off assets for a song, buy new voting machines for all the municipalities, hand out lucrative contracts to his fellow wealthy elite, he just can't seem to find any money for the workers. Not only are the workers not getting a raise for the seventh straight year, they are taking yet another pay cut.  This time, the hit will be for $2,000, on top of the thousands he is already bilking workers for.  This will mean that many workers could be paying as much as a third of their pay for benefits they were already paying for by taking a salary much lower than the private sector.  Again, that is his plantation economy mindset in action.

The funny thing is that he is saying he can't afford to leave the worker's pay alone, much less give them a raise, because of a supposed deficit of $32 million.  This is from the same guy who was bragging about a $24 million surplus a few months ago, $5 million of which came straight off the backs of the workers he supposedly cares so much about.

The county is already seeing an unprecedented level of turnover in staff.  If Abele gets his way, it will only get worse.  That in turn will mean more money being used for training and less services for people who depend on services from the county.

It should prove to be rather interesting to see how the county board responds to this maleficent budget.  They no longer have much to worry about politcally speaking, since Abele already bought and paid for Act 14, which severely damaged the ability of the board to do its job while consolidating power in Abele's hands.  Also, Abele doesn't have much political clout anymore, as evidence by his going 0 for 4 in the August primaries.

Abele's recommended 2015 budget can be found here.  The county board's budget hearing schedule can be found here.

Austerity And The Mental Health System Equals Expensive

Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele is so set on closing the Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Complex - even though there's not enough community beds to support the people that need help - that he had his bought and paid for state representative Joe Sanfelippo push through a law to make sure that these vulnerable citizens were thrown to the corporate wolves.

Likewise, Scott Walker is implementing austerity measures and has already started putting limits on one of the state's mental health hospitals, forcing Dane County law enforcement officers to transport people two and  a half hours away.

Walker and Abele try to spin their austerity as being cost-saving measures that will allow more freedom and independence to these vulnerable citizens.  Abele also likes to pretend that these are best practices for those involved.

I would strongly suggest that these two reprobates pay attention to the State of Washington, where austerity and the mental health system is costing taxpayers $30 million and counting:

Gov. Jay Inslee has approved spending as much as $30 million to start meeting a state Supreme Court order to add more psychiatric evaluation and treatment beds around the state, officials said Friday.

In addition, state Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a motion Friday asking the high court to delay the effect of its decision by 120 days so the state can implement a plan to ensure alternative care is available.

On Aug. 7, the Supreme Court ruled that the practice known as "psychiatric boarding," or holding mentally ill patients in emergency rooms, was unlawful. The state estimates the ruling applies to about 200 people.

[...]

The justices ruled that mentally ill patients who are involuntarily committed cannot be "warehoused" in emergency rooms or acute care centers as a way to avoid overcrowding certified mental health facilities. Patients have a right to adequate care and individualized treatment, and state law required that they be detained in certified evaluation and treatment facilities, the court said.

The state's involuntary-treatment law passed in 1973 allows people to be committed to a mental hospital or institution against their will for a limited period of time. The purpose is to evaluate and treat people with a mental disorder who may be gravely disabled or pose a danger to themselves.

The state has been using "single-bed certifications" as a way to temporarily hold involuntarily committed people in hospitals that aren't certified to evaluate or treat their mental illness.

[...]

The department's mental health program will have to seek a supplemental appropriation in the 2015 budget to avoid other mental-health reductions in this fiscal year, the agency said.

It should be noted that the $30 million is just to act as a stopgap to fix what they broke. It does not include the cost of any crimes that were committed, the police and court costs or the cost of any litigation that might develop from this violation of civil rights.

And to think that Walker and Abele like to paint themselves as fiscal conservatives.  The sad part is that the will probably get away with their malfeasance.

Walker has already proven that "no one cares about crazy people."

The Revictimization Of Milwaukee County Children And What You Can Do About It

Long time readers might recall that I used to work for the Milwaukee County Child Welfare System (the foster care system) in the late 1990's.  It was one of the most difficult and most rewarding jobs I've ever had.  Sadly, in 1998, then Governor Tommy Thompson and his fellow Republicans took over Milwaukee County's system, insisting that they weren't really under-funding the system (even though independent studies found that they were) and could do it better by privatizing it.

The county was able to stay in the system, winning many of the contracts the state was giving out.  By 2001, the state had completely cut the county out of any aspect of caring for its own foster children.

Since that time, the state's Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare has been plagued with problems stemming from extremely high staff turnover to continued abuse of foster children to children being killed.  The problems were traced back to the affects of austerity, including a severe staffing shortage and insufficient training.

Ironically, the state has been pumping tens of millions of dollars into the system since the takeover.  But when that money goes to constantly training new workers - not to mention lining the pockets of the administrators even more deeply - there is little to give to the workers and even less to pay for the much needed services.

The state has only made things worse by deciding that intake workers - the people on the front line who do the investigations into possible abuse and/or neglect - didn't even need to have the necessary education or experience to work in the field.

That is how little they think of our children.

Now they think of them even less, judging from this letter from State Representatives LaTonya Johnson and Chris Taylor to Eloise Anderson, Secretary of the Department of Children and Families:

Johnson/Taylor Letter to DCF RE BMCW

It's outrageous that nearly 3,000 children who might be in peril have to wait months to have a worker get to them.  The "stick it to them" approach that the Teapublicans and Republicrats have had toward Milwaukee are well known, but to revictimize innocent children is simply unacceptable.

Because of the legislative attention this untenable situation has received, it will be brought up at the Partnership Council, this coming Friday, July 25.  The meeting is from 12 - 2 pm at 635 N. 26th Street in Milwaukee.  If you are able, please attend and demand answers as to why Madison is allowing our children to linger in possible peril for months at a time.

The Plutocrat's Poisoned Pilsner

On Tuesday, Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele's office sent out this email:

To the lay person in the private sector, this might seem like a nice thing.  The boss showing appreciation for his workers by giving them a chance to enjoy the new traveling beer garden at a discount rate.

But think about it for a moment.  Abele has cut every worker's pay* by more than 10% and up to more than 20% in the three years he's been in office.  Now he wants his employees to spend whatever free cash they have - if any - to support his rolling bar.

The email sparked a considerable amount of cynicism, ranging from questioning whether Abele would have people there to photograph workers with their county IDs drinking beer to make it look like they were drinking on the job (remember, this is the guy who tried to frame a former supervisor) to whether they would start implementing "random" urine testing starting with third shift workers.

This stunt does raise a larger and more serious concern.

Milwaukee County Ordinances include a code of ethics (Chapter 9) which explicitly states that county officials and county workers cannot accept or give anything of value.  Abele is fully aware of this from two years ago when he tried to implement a "merit system," which was nothing more than a way to reward his cronies.  As I wrote at the time:

Not only does Abele’s “merit system” have the smack of being cronyism, but it is also illegal. It violates a number of county ordinances, from the civil service codes to aspects of the labor contract which Abele had just signed into law. It also flies in the face of Milwaukee County’s Code of Ethics, which explicitly forbids any county official or employee from giving or receiving anything of worth.

What makes this especially egregious is that the fact that Abele tried to start a cynical campaign to have this law struck down, using the untimely and tragic death of Sheriff Deputy Sergio Aleman, whose widow is also a county employee as an excuse. Abele’s office was telling people that they would be in violation of the ethics code if they contributed to Deputy Aleman’s memorial fund unless the law was tweaked to allow this sort of thing.

This is why public sector workers don't get things like Christmas bonuses or other perks that the private sector enjoys.  It is to prevent cronyism and nepotism which is running rampant since Act 10.  Without a rigid set of rules and a ratified contract, the doors are wide open to the corruption we are seeing in both Walker's and Abele's administrations.

To be honest, my first reaction was to warn people away from this event.  People like Abele and his supporters will fabricate things to attack their opponents (just ask Marina Dimitrijevic, David Bowen and Johnny Thomas).  There is no sense in giving them anything they could use.

But after some thought, I would suggest that people go to this event.

The workers at the behavioral health complex, at least the ones that aren't being forced into mandatory overtime, should go down there and talk to Abele about the mistake he is making. The retirees, who Abele has been avoiding, should go down there to talk to him about how he is robbing them blind and threatening their very homes with his greed.  All county workers should go down there to talk to Abele about how he is trying to illegally take away things that are proprietary and thus protected.

City of Milwaukee workers should most definitely go down there and talk to Mayor Tom Barrett about how the city wants to follow Abele's cloven footsteps and significantly cut in their paychecks to pay for his whims.

By all means, I encourage all public sector workers to go down to Red Arrow Park and share their views on these austerity measures.

Just make sure you pay full price for your beverages.

*That does not include the staff in his office, to whom he's given raises at a scale similar to what Scott Walker gave to his political appointees, like Cindy Archer.

The Marathon County Corrections Crisis Revisited

Julie Christensen

In the spring of 2013, I wrote a series of articles regarding an incident which happened in the Marathon County Jail.  An inmate with a mental illness and not receiving medication punched and severely injured Correction Officer Julie Christensen.  Due to her injuries, Christensen was in a coma for a long time and in ICU for months.

Fortunately, Christensen has recovered and is back on the job.

This past week, the assailant, Frederick Morris, entered a guilty plea for attacking Christensen and another corrections officer. He is scheduled to get sentenced in September and is facing very stiff penalties for his crimes, as he should.

However, another person who has a lot of responsibility for this incident has thus far escaped any consequences.

Investigation into the assault showed that there was a lot of problems going on in the jail, all stemming from the austerity measures of Marathon County Administrator Brad Karger.  These austerity-generated problems included severe overcrowding, a serious staffing shortage, an inoperative intercom system, lack of training and failure to supply Tasers to the officers.

These problems led to other problems as well.  For example, due to the staffing shortage, inmates that were allowed out for work release were not being searched when they returned, leading to an influx of contraband, such as cigarettes, drugs and weapons.

Unbelievably, even though this was reported, Karger has done little to fix the problems he helped create.  An article regarding Morris' plea also reported this:

The issue of overcrowding remained one year later.

Brad Karger

Yet Karger hasn't even received as much as a slap on the wrist for allowing these conditions to develop  and continue thought to even today.

This might not remain so for long.  As noted above, Karger is the county administrator for Marathon County.  That means he is under a contract for his job, a contract that will eventually come up for renewal.

The question that I hope that Marathon County supervisors are already pondering is whether the problems Karger is causing makes it worth renewing that contract.

I would say that it most certainly does not.  They need to hire someone who will look out for the citizens and the taxpayers of Marathon County.

Abele Begins His 2015 County Budget Doom And Gloom Tour

Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele has started his annual Doom and Gloom Tour in preparation for the 2015 budget.  Abele started his campaign by putting up a lot of nifty graphics and infographics on the county's webpage for the ironically named Office of Performance, Strategy and Budget.  Abele is also sending out his budgeteers to give presentations at various county sites, such as the one I attended on Monday.  If the gentle reader has the 2010 or newer version of Microsoft Office, they can see the power point presentation for themselves.

The objective of these presentations are apparently to try to convince people - especially workers - why austerity is good for us and warn us where he plans to wield his Budgetary Axe of Austerity.  From the emphasis that his team was putting on certain areas, the places he is planning on attacking are county assets, public safety, county retirees and county workers.

Public Assets

Josh Fudge, Abele's top budgeteer, explained that the county owns over 1,000 buildings.  Because it has so many buildings, the county is not able to keep up with the needed repairs and maintenance. The argument is that the county needs to sell it's old, dilapidated buildings and centralize county services.

However, it turns out that most of the 1,000 buildings are things like park pavilions, park bathrooms, sheds and other similar structures that allow workers to be more efficient.

There are some buildings that the county might be better off getting rid of, such as the City Campus, but any liquidation of these assets should be tempered with prudence.  Last year, when Abele's neglect caused a $17 million fire in the courthouse, the importance of having other buildings to utilize was made very clear.  If the majority of county services were centralized in the courthouse complex when the fire happened, the entire county would have been shut down for weeks.

This also raises the question on whether Abele wants to do this to save money or to free up county land for his land developer friends can make a fortune off of county assets, like they are doing at the old county grounds or at the lakefront.

Public Safety

Abele and his budgeteers are also putting a lot of emphasis on the cost of public safety.  The Sheriff's Office and the House of Correction are two of the biggest drains on the tax levy.  Abele has made it no secret that he would love to abdicate the county's responsibility for public safety - especially in the parks - and dump it off on the local municipality police departments.

With crime on the upswing again, it just doesn't make sense to have less law enforcement officers when the current numbers are clearly not able to keep up with the amount of crime that is occurring.  It would also shift the tax burden on the municipalities, especially the City of Milwaukee.  There is no justification that City of Milwaukee taxpayers should have to shoulder higher costs for the people from the suburbs who come to enjoy places like Bradford Beach and McKinley Marina or the many other parks near the lake.

Is it really worth saving a buck or two on one's property taxes when you're putting a higher burden on them through other taxes, not to mention the risk to public and personal safety?

County Retirees

Abele is so worked up about county retirees getting benefits that they had earned over the course of decades, he even made up his own title for it - "Legacy Fringe."  In their power point presentation, they go through great lengths to show that the retirees just cost too much.  They even go to point out that the cost of Milwaukee County retirees are much higher than those in Pima, Arizona!

Never mind that the retirees had worked for decades taking salaries lower than they would have made at comparable jobs in the private sector as a trade off for these benefits.  Never mind that acolytes of austerity like Scott Walker or Abele have willfully failed to plan ahead for these costs.

It's obvious to Abele that the good faith bargaining done by the retirees means nothing compared to the money that could be diverted to plutocrats like himself or his pals at the Greater Milwaukee Committee.

I would expect Abele to try to ignore the promises that the county had made to the retirees - or the law - and attack the retirees to make the pay for the things that they paid for in their decades of service.  And that's on top of the retirees he wants to punish for his own incompetence and failure.

County Workers

As he has done every year he has been in office, Abele is planning to go after the current county worker already making county workers pay more for their benefits than any other governmental body int he country and more than most private sector companies.  Nor do they want to talk about how Abele's cuts to workers' pay contributed $5 million to his $24 million surplus, showing that the cuts weren't even necessary.
again in this budget.  Not only is he trying to put in some daft performance based agenda which no one - not even his own people - can make sense of, but he is also complaining that the benefits current workers are receiving cost too much.  They didn't want to discuss the fact that Abele is

The gentle reader should keep in mind, that just like we're seeing on a statewide basis with Act 10, cutting money out of circulation helps no one.  No one except the already rich plutocrats like Abele and the other members of the millionaire's club known as the Greater Milwaukee Committee.

Summary

It should be noted that Abele's projected deficits are much greater than those of the comptroller's or the county board's.  It appears that this gloom and doom are some more Fudged numbers and should be treated skeptically.

It is also reminiscent of when Walker was county executive and did his own gloom and doom routine, claiming that there was a $15 million deficit, when in reality, there was either no deficit or one so small as to be negligible.

It's kind of funny how Abele can't find ways to afford to keep public safety intact, hold true to contracts and promises or respect the workers, but he has no problem finding the money to pay his cronies lavish amounts of money, move freeway ramps and help out his rich friends get even richer.

Is it any surprise why so many people refer to Abele as Walker Lite?

Privatization: The Race to the Bottom

MSNBC has a must read report about the devastating effects of privatization.  In their report, they site a number of examples of how privatization screws workers over and harms the economy, including one of Milwaukee County's housekeepers who was illegally laid off by Scott Walker.

The key part is this:

“The false promises of privatization are triggering a race to the bottom,” Donald Cohen, executive director of In the Public Interest, said in the conference call.

Much of the “efficiency” realized by privatization lies in reducing former middle-class workers to poverty wages. Jared Bernstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington nonprofit, argued in the conference call that even from an efficiency point of view, privatizing low-end government jobs was self-defeating. “You get what you pay for,” Bernstein said. Lower wages for public services, he said, translate into “higher turnover and a decline in the quality of work.” It also means an uptick in welfare expenses. In California, contract school cafeteria workers collect $1,743 annually in public assistance because their private employers underpay them. In effect, the state is putting its own employees on the dole.

Tell me again about how Scott Walker and Chris Abele are "fiscal conservatives."

They are just greedy oligarchs and plutocrats that are the cause of the problem, not the solution.

State Tax Revenues Lagging? Gee, I Wonder Why!

News broke at the end of last week that Wisconsin's tax revenue is projected to come in much lower than expected.  Both the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Mary Burke's campaign were quick to tie it to Scott Walker's $500 million tax cut scheme (showing that his internal polling is just as bad if not worse than the publicly announced polls):

Gov. Scott Walker and GOP lawmakers passed a more than $500 million tax cut bill in March and the effects of those tax changes are already starting to hold down how much income tax is being withheld from workers' paychecks.

Joe Zepecki, spokesman for Walker's Democratic opponent, Mary Burke, said that the latest numbers showed that Walker should have left the state with more of a financial cushion. He said the figures were being released before Memorial Day to avoid drawing attention to them.

"Mary Burke was right, Walker's election year spending spree based on rosy assumptions was irresponsible," Zepecki said.

Without doubt, Walker's campaign tax stunt has a lot to do with the projected deficit, but ironically, it is Walker who brushes up to the truth in his defense:

Walker said he's watching the numbers but not concerned. He said the tax cuts could help to stimulate the economy.

"Individual taxpayers as consumers will use more of that to make purchases to help fuel the economy," he said.

I saw my tax cut at the beginning of the month. It accounted for a whopping six dollars a week.

That is a pale comparison to the hundreds of dollars taken out of each check.

As I have explained repeatedly before, when Walker passed his Act 10 bomb, he took billions of dollars out of the economy. This had the predictable ripple effect as public sector workers cut way back to adjust for the draconian cuts to their pay. This in turn forced private businesses to suffer and lay off thousands of workers. And those that were lucky enough to keep their jobs or find one of the few handful of jobs that were created saw their pay cut from where it used to be.

And the downward spiral continues.

And try as they might, Walker and company cannot tax what we do not have.

Sadly, with Walker and Burke being the apparent two major candidates and both of them embracing austerity, claiming that public sector workers needed to pay more for their benefits, for which they were already paying more than the private sector, I don't see things getting better anytime soon.

I also see whoever gets elected to use this self-inflicted deficit as an excuse to cut even more services and cut workers' pay even deeper.

Because it's been working so well so far.

Shame On The Wauwatosa School Board!

Tonight the Wauwatosa School District board, the wealthiest school district in the Milwaukee area, voted to layoff almost half of its custodians and outsource their work.  

Approximately 35 family supporting jobs will be eliminated and replaced by poverty wage jobs provided by the contracted employer. The board made this decision based on an alleged “structural deficit”, despite the fact that the district has run budget surpluses for the past seven years averaging over $2.3 million dollars per year and have millions and millions of dollars squirreled away in the bank. 

Perhaps they are looking to give themselves and the superintendent big fat bonuses and raises to reward themselves on their "tough decision making?"

The two school board meetings at which the outsourcing proposal was discussed were packed to overflow and dozens of community comments were unanimous in their opposition to the outsourcing proposal. Nevertheless, the school board voted 5-2 in favor of the proposal to outsource the custodians’ work. 

Voting in favor of outsourcing were Mary Jo Randall, Sharon Muehlfeld,  Anne Fee, Kristy Casey, Michael Meier.

Please feel free to contact these people and ask them to reconsider their foolish and ill-considered decision.  You can find their contact information here.

Also please contact Wauwatosa School Superintendent Phil Ertl at 414-773-1000 Ext. 1010 or email him at ertlph@wauwatosa.k12.wi.us.

And if they choose not to listen to the people again, I hope the good people of Wauwatosa will remember this come election time.

These Are "Best Practices" In Mental Health Care?!

Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele will say something is in "best practice" when he is trying to rationalize one of his boneheaded schemes, such as opening up the mental health system to profiteers.  Abele called it in line with "best practices," even though every clinician and mental health professional was warning what a bad idea it really was.

Abele, as he usually does, bought his way with henchman like Joe Sanfelippo, and now Milwaukee's mental health complex will close in a few years. Milwaukee has had a shortage of mental health beds for a long time and Abele's solution is to make even less beds available now.

What could possibly go wrong?

Maybe stuff like this:

For two weeks, a 13-year-old boy diagnosed with serious mental health issues sat in an emergency room bed at United General Hospital. After countless daily phone calls to facilities across the state, the hospital wasn't sure what else to do other than keep the boy there and hope a placement opened.

An involuntary treatment hearing was held Thursday. With no one qualified to testify about the child's condition, a court commissioner ordered the boy be released without treatment.

"The mental health system has failed this young boy," said attorney Dennis Scott of Anacortes, who argued for the boy's release.

Testimony indicated the boy suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. At the hearing, the boy's mother tearfully expressed her frustration to get her son help.

Shortly after the hearing, Scott learned a bed had been found for his client.

Scott routinely represents patients during these hearings and said this case is far too common and illustrates the poor job the state has done to take care of its mentally ill citizens. This case was particularly egregious, Scott said. The child was acting out aggressively and was in a crisis state. But after being hospitalized for two weeks in United General's ER, he received no mental health treatment and the state found no placement for him.

"I get outraged because, quite frankly, that shouldn't happen," Scott said. "This is by far the worst I've seen."

Jim Shreffler, a mental health expert with regional care provider Compass Health, said there are only four facilities in the entire state that have special resources for juveniles, each with roughly 15 beds. And he said those resources have continued to shrink while demand grows.

"We are a wealthy country, we are a wealthy state, yet we somehow pretend that we can't afford to provide these services," Shreffler said.

What really concerns me is that stuff like this is already happening in Southeast Wisconsin due to Abele's austerity agenda, but the corporate media won't report it and too many people fear Abele's tendency for retaliation that they would rather let innocent people suffer rather than take a stand.

Fortunately, there is a group that is not afraid and they are silent no more.

Then They Came For The Retirees

The Stevens Point Journal has an article warning of the impending crisis coming as more baby boomers begin to retire.  The article, based on a report by the austerity driven Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, states that the number of retirees will nearly double in the next 25 years while the workforce numbers will remain stagnant.

Jake at his Funhouse has a good breakdown of the numbers at his site.  He also accurately points out that a large part of the problem stems directly  from the maleficent laws and policies implemented by Scott Walker and the Teapublicans in the legislature.  People are moving to be in or near places like Minnesota, where things are flourishing due to not having to deal with the oppressive laws of Wisconsin, whether they are economical or social in nature.

Sadly, instead of recognizing the problem and taking actions to reverse the damage they have done, the Teapublicans are preparing to double down on the problems by attacking the retirees:

Government will be particularly hard-hit by an aging population, as growing numbers fall off the tax rolls but are in need of increasing services.

An older population relies on retirement income that is often not taxable, such as Social Security. Sales taxes will also fall since older residents purchase more services than goods. Services are generally not taxable, while goods are.

“Either we’re going to have to adjust how we spend as a state and how much we support people in retirement, or we’re going to have to find a way to grow to a point that we can still continue to give the services we’ve grown to expect,” Nygren said.

While an aging population will be a boon to a few industries — notably health care and elder care — the taxpayers alliance report and state economists say the negative effects will be widespread and long lasting areas beyond government as well.

Average personal income, which rose 22 percent through the 1990s, will stagnate with the working-age population, likely growing only 5 percent from 2020 to 2029.

Declining birth rates will drop school enrollment, making schools less efficient and education more costly. This will be particularly true in rural areas such as northern Wisconsin, where there are already 60 school districts with less than five students per square mile.

People will continue to flee the state when they can't find family-supporting jobs, the education system deteriorates through starvation and privatization, and the general quality of life grows lesser by the day.

Watch for the Republicans to blame the consequences of their actions on an aging population and use it for justification to make things even worse.

The Walker Agenda Is Still Working! Part CCXVI

While the loss of 760 jobs in Oshkosh isn't Scott Walker's fault, it stems from the same austerity measures that he does endorse:

Oshkosh Corp. announced it would lay off 700 hourly positions starting in June and 60 salaried jobs by July in its defense segment.

Most of the salaried positions are temporary employees and people who are retiring. Following the cuts, Oshkosh Defense will have about 1,850 employees. The cuts reflect the reduction in defense spending by the U.S., which is returning to peacetime operations, said John Urias, executive vice president and president of Oshkosh Defense.

“We have gone to great lengths to minimize and delay the impact of the reduced spending on our Defense workforce," Urias said. "We explored and implemented a range of alternatives from not filling open positions to bringing in outside contracted work as promised in earlier discussions with the UAW, which represents our production employees, as well as continuing to pursue relevant international opportunities.”

Just remember, government doesn't create jobs, except when they do.

To make matters worse is that there isn't any jobs for these people to go to except for maybe a part-time minimum wage job at Wally World or Dunkin Donuts.

Meanwhile, the state's economy will continue to crumble and more and more people will be suffering.

The Housing Crisis That Austerity Built

The news for Milwaukee's housing situation and the skyrocketing number of foreclosures keeps getting worse and worse:

Mayor Tom Barrett's multipronged effort to address the city's foreclosure crisis also confronts an unfortunate reality.

Just as the city has had moderate success selling some homes it took over in tax foreclosure, hundreds more may end up in city hands by the end of the year.

"The one thing to remember...is that we are three years behind the housing meltdown," said Aaron Szopinski, a former city budget analyst whom Barrett promoted to take over as the city's housing director. Normally, it can take several years between the time a homeowner stops paying taxes and the time when the city takes over the property.

"So what we took in last year (in tax foreclosures) is essentially what went delinquent in January 2011," he said. "We probably have a couple more years of this. We anticipated that when we put our plan together."

Barrett put $11.7 million in the city's 2014 budget for his Strong Neighborhoods Plan. The stated goal is to sell 350 homes in the city's inventory and demolish as many as 300 blighted or unsafe homes.

As of now, the city owns approximately 1,200 homes taken through tax foreclosure, most of them on the north side. At the same time, there are approximately 1,400 properties in bank-owned foreclosures.

The city treasurer's office estimates city lawyers will file foreclosure actions on as many as 1,100 more properties by the end of the year. Not all of those homes will end up in city hands; homeowners sometimes find a way to pay outstanding tax bills so they can keep their homes.

That so-called redemption rate — homeowners who avoid tax foreclosure by making good on their tax bills — has dropped in recent years, according to City Treasurer Spencer Coggs and Deputy City Treasurer Jim Klajbor.

In 2002, the redemption rate on homes headed for tax foreclosure peaked at 76%. In 2013, only 32% of the properties headed to foreclosure avoided it.

While the percentage of homeowners avoiding foreclosure has dropped, the percentage of homes taken over by the city has increased. Last year, almost 68% of the properties headed for tax foreclosure ended up in city hands.

The reason for the sharp increase in foreclosures and abandoned houses, as one could have guessed, austerity:

But the reason homeowners end up missing or not paying their tax bills hasn't changed much since the housing crisis of 2008.

"It is the economy," Klajbor said. "If people don't have the income, they can't pay the bills. Some people have not seen a raise, even if they are employed. That's still affecting things. And even if you are employed, you could be underemployed. Many people have had their hours reduced."

In other words, Scott Walker's agenda is still working! Through Act 10 and tax hikes on the poor, in order to pay off his campaign contributors and cronies, Walker has taken billions of dollars out of the economy.

And lest we forget, Walker has taken $26 million in federal money meant to help with the foreclosure crisis to fill holes in his budget created by his corrupt corporate welfare schemes.  Walker then commandeered  another $3.5 million that was meant to help raze the dilapidated homes.

Things are even worse in Milwaukee with Chris Abele doubling down on the austerity agenda by taking even more money from county workers and cutting more aid than even Walker.

But don't worry, the plutocrats are doing just fine.  They're building a 44-story Bic lighter on the lakefront, moving freeway ramps to make it easier for the 1% and are working hard on finding a way for the people to pay for a new arena even though they can't afford to keep their own homes.

The real kicker is when I point out these misplaced priorities, I get told I'm rooting for the city to fail.  If supporting people is failure, I hope we do fail in epic fashion.

Referendum Watch: Abele Channels His Inner Walker And Gets Called Out

I know that if the gentle reader is like myself, they can't wait for Tuesday's elections to be over, because as tired as you might be reading about the austerity referendum, I'm getting tired of writing about it.

But there were a few things that happened today which were too good to pass up.

One was that Abele's front group, Forward Milwaukee County, sent out yet another email blast which sounds like it was written by Scott Walker's campaign/government staff:

Dear Milwaukee County Voter,

Those desperate to maintain full-time pay for the part-time Milwaukee County Board are pulling out all the stops to prevent approval of tomorrow's referendum.

Big labor has begun an orchestrated effort to mobilize their members through a mailing to thousands of county residents.

One current supervisor is even taking out paid advertising to retain the lucrative salary and benefits they currently receive for part-time work.

It's clear that those with a vested interest in maintaining the taxpayer-funded gravy train will be very active in these last two days – that’s why your attention and action is so very important.

IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT THOSE WHO CARE ABOUT REFORM OF MILWAUKEE COUNTY VOTE YES TOMORROW AND ENCOURAGE FRIENDS, NEIGHBORS AND CO-WORKERS TO DO THE SAME.

Thanks,
Forward Milwaukee County
For more information, see www.ForwardMilwaukeeCounty.com

I'm still laughing at the line about "Big Labor." Not only is it something straight from a Scott Walker email and shows that Abele is anything but a progressive. It's even funnier when it's just one mailer that was sent out. They're either very scared or are so full of bullshit that they are an ecological hazard.

In contrast to this conflated, hyperbolic and empty rhetoric, Jonathan Brostoff, a former county board aide and candidate for Assembly District 19, as reported by Ed Heinzelman at Blogging Blue, presents a reasoned, rational explanation why the proper vote on the power grab referendum would be no.

But the most powerful counter to Abele's flat out lies comes from Supervisor David Bowen, who issued this statement today:

“As Election Day draws near it is important to think critically about the referendum on the ballot in Milwaukee County. It is important you understand the hypocrisy of those wealthy special interests supporting it. They do not and should not speak for the people of Milwaukee County.

“It should come as no surprise to you that wealthy special interests are pushing you to vote for a referendum to reduce the pay of your elected representatives on the County Board. Individuals who make astronomically more than we do want you to believe you would be better off with a legislative body with little oversight and few resources to monitor questionable uses of your tax dollars.

“Those who have crafted and influenced the language of the referendum all fall into the category of ‘wealthy special interests.’

“Those in the Greater Milwaukee Committee pushing this referendum do not understand how hard it is for you to pay for your bus ticket. The County Executive—whose wealth is evident—takes his six-figure salary and benefits from the County tax levy every year and doesn’t understand how expensive your childcare is every month. And the primary author of the referendum, who runs a million dollar taxicab monopoly, also admitted he only worked part-time as a supervisor but still took his full-time salary and benefits from your county tax dollars. He doesn’t understand how hard it was to pay for your heat this exceptionally cold winter.

“Maybe it’s time for the authors of this referendum to give back their taxpayer funded salaries, health care and pensions since they believe public service is not about the money.”

To sum it up, the decision isn't about whether the supervisors' pay should be cut. It's about whether we want hard working people like us representing us or do we want the elitist 1% ruling over us.