Karma is a Bitch!

By Jeff Simpson

By now we all know what happened with Graeme Zielinski, he posted a couple tweets where he as trying to point out that Scott Walker spent so much money on his legal defense firm,  that it dwarfed the money spent by our most famous criminal Jeffrey Dahmer.   It was a poor comparison, the righties went crazy and Graeme was demoted!  

One of the loudest voices criticizing Graeme was Green Bay right wing radio sqwuaker Jerry Bader.   If you have not heard of Bader, dont feel bad most people have not.   He has never been able to break into "the main club" which consists of the right wing hate triumverate of Sykes/Belling/Pyzinski.   As a matter of fact the only time you probably might have heard of him is when he "factually" made up a story about former Lieutenant Governor Barbara Lawton's sexuality.   That did not work out so well for him.

So someone who has a history of saying stupid things, jumped all over Graeme's tweet and couldnt stop dancing on his "communications director grave"

This story raises an interesting point: libs are hacked off that Graeme is still drawing a paycheck. That part is really hard to figure, although I have my suspicions. I suspect a legal liability issue is keeping the DPW from terminating him, but I wouldn't go beyond that here.

I also disagree that the difference this time was the Journal Sentinel ran a story. Everybody knew about Graeme Zielinski. The difference is he offended a constituency libs are supposed to care about; the families of crime victims. Libs don't care about Scott Walker and they don't care what Zielinski said about him.

Well the little brother of hate talk radio is at it again,   This time he took time out of confessing his love for Pat Roggensack to let us know what racist and sexist thoughts were in his head!   Double Whammy!  

 "How is chess like real life?  It's better to be white and there's only one woman in the room and she get's to do whatever she wants. (belly laughs)."

Apparently republicans do not care that he offended anyone who is NOT a white male because the righties dont care about that constituency,

In jerry's defense, he is the victim here, pesonal responsibility is for the little people.

UPDATE: In an interview, he said he was being targeted for criticism because he is a conservative.
"It can't be recognized that I understand white privilege," Bader said. He added that it wouldn't be a story if liberals Bill Maher or Ed Schultz told the same joke because the media would immediately understand what they were saying.
On Monday morning, Bader spent a half-hour on his show saying he was being unfairly accused of being racist simply for mangling the joke.

Besides he isnt racist, he has a black friend( or at least he possibly once voted for a black man).

He pointed out such things as the fact that his wife is an Asian-Pacific Islander and that he once voted for Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson. He also said he exposed a Green Bay alderman who made racist remarks on the show in 2005 while using a fake name.
This isn't the first time the conservative news commentator has made headlines. In 2009, he retracted his claim that then-Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton had decided not to run for governor because of an extramarital affair. He issued an apology and served a two-week suspension.

Of course if you believe that one, I have a clean environmentally safe mine loaded with jobs ready to go in Northern WI!

Team Walker, With No Democratic Opponent, Is In A Blind Panic

Team Walker is running around in a blind panic today.

He spent the last couple of days tweeting that he had some big announcement that was going to be earth-shattering. Today, he revealed his big announcement: He is going to have an all-day beg-a-thon.

Gee, a politician that wants our money. Who ever heard such a thing?

Unfortunately for Walker, his "beg news" (pun intended) wasn't the top story of the day. The big story, was, of course, Barb Lawton announcing that she was dropping out of the governor's race.

Of course, it was this news that sent Team Walker into the blind panic. This not only blows the door wide open for Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett to step into the race, but will put all the attention on him, including his hero status. That focus will remain on Barrett, and not Walker, until such time Barrett announces whether or not he is going to run.

And if Barrett would choose to run, he will be immediately launched in the forefront of the race. The most recent polls show Barrett beating Walker or Neumann by a comfortable margin. Not only that, but Barrett has almost as much in his political war chest without one campaign stop as Walker raised in all these months of non-stop campaigning.

Some pundits are trying to use Barrett's delay in announcing a decision as a sign that he doesn't want the job. That may even be true, for all I know. But I also know that it is keeping the spotlight on Barrett, and not on any of the Republicans.

Some pundits are also trying to say that Barrett can't run because of his talk about the MPS takeover, or his budget calling for moving firefighters around, or furloughing cops. Those moves are guaranteed to tick off some people, but I doubt it would be enough for them to be willing to take a chance on Walker and his poor track record as county executive.

Team Walker is so scared that they are already trying to tie Barrett to Doyle, but that is also a guise easily seen through.

But there is one thing that I can agree with Walker on. In his campaign's press release announcing his beg-a-thon, his campaign chairman Keith Gilkes, said this:

“The people of our state are ready to take back our government and ready to believe in Wisconsin again,” said campaign manager Keith Gilkes. “Our 11.02.09 Rally to Victory fundraising effort will show the support for Scott Walker’s commonsense message of limited government, personal freedom, and economic growth.”

I think that the past eight years show pretty convincingly that Walker is all for less government, less personal freedom and less economic growth.

Walker Vs. Neumann: Who's Easier To Beat?

WisPolitics.com did a story about some polling that occurred at this past weekends Democratic convention. One of the questions asked of these conventioneers was who would be easier to beat, Scott Walker or Mark Neumann:

Party activists were also asked whether they believed Scott Walker or Mark Neumann would be more beatable as the GOP gubernatorial candidate next year. Walker, the Milwaukee County executive, received 124 votes, compared to 90 for Neumann, a home builder and former congressman from southeastern Wisconsin.

Well, at least now Walker can say he won one poll related to next year's election. It could very well be the only one.

Cory Liebmann, who wrote a piece on this story, has a number of questions and observations:

Frankly I'm not sure exactly how I would have voted on that particular question. The only two polls that I have seen so far (MacIver and Daily Kos) have both Walker and Neumann in basically the same position (behind by double digits). I think that the case for which Republican is the weakest could be made either way. Walker's failure as county executive is rich with material that makes a huge case against him all by itself. On the other hand Mark Neumann has not been in politics for over a decade and he is known for being wildly extreme (not that Walker isn't) while most of the population is trending the other way. So who is the weakest? If I had to choose, I would have to agree with the convention goers and pick Scott Walker. I could easily be swayed if someone could make a convincing argument that Neumann is actually the weaker of the two but in the end I think that there is too much current ammo to use against Walker.

I think it would come as no surprise to the gentle reader that I would be more strongly on the side of Walker being the more beatable candidate.

First, for the comparison between the two. Scott Walker has been in public office for quite a while now. First he was in the state legislature, then he has been in the county executive's position for the last seven. He has been actively, if not always publicly, campaigning for the past five years for the governor's office.

Mark Neumann, in contrast, has been out of office for the past ten years. He was a U.S. Congressman until ten years ago, when he narrowly lost to Russ Feingold. Since then he has been busy with things like home building and running Christian schools. While Neumann has indicated that he plans on running for governor, he has yet to officially announce his candidacy.

So while Walker has been puttinghis face out there, Neumann has been relatively invisible. Yet in two separate polls, they both end up in a virtual dead heat. Now, I am not a savvy political operator, but it would seem logical to me to presume that at such time that Neumann would decide to officially announce, he will get one hell of a bounce. Combine that with the fact that Neumann was fairly popular statewide (how else would he have gotten as close as he did to beating Feingold - no one can tell me Walker would have had that kind of contest), while Walker is not.

Walker's lack of popularity stems from two, three main themes.

One is he is from Milwaukee, which is often the kiss of death for any statewide race.

Two, as Cory pointed out, Walker does not have a great track record here in Milwaukee. He has not had one budget that did not blow up in his face. He has tried to close parks. He has tried to close community centers and senior centers. He has abdicated much of his responsibilities. He has failed to show positive leadership, but rather skulks around in the shadows until his misdeeds are brought to light. He has shown himself incapable of managing the Income Maintenance program (which is more vital than ever as people need more support). Most recently, there is his push to illegally tax toddlers for playing in a glorified puddle and stealing money from senior citizens. And don't get me going on all of his broken promises. That is a post, or even multiple posts, upon themselves.

Three, from all the people that I've talked to that know Walker, and have interacted with him, many people, from all spots along the political spectrum, have found him to be undeservedly arrogant and unpleasant.

It is understandable why Walker felt compelled to get such an extremely early start on his campaign, given how he was shellacked the last time he ran. But will he be able to keep his unpleasantness hidden for that long? Only time will tell.

While Neumann has a history of shooting his mouth off and scaring people away with some of his attitudes, such as his extreme anti-homosexuality stance, he hasn't hadn't any of these problems for ten years, while living out of public sight.

Neumann also has a much, much bigger personal bank account and even more importantly, as the support of most of the big money in the GOP.

In summary, Walker has a much steeper and longer hill to climb and he might very well lack the necessary qualities to get there.

Then again, something weird, like TOMMY Thompson entering the race or Neumann deciding to go after Feingold's seat instead, could easily happen.

That would just make it easier for Jim Doyle, Barbara Lawton or whoever the Democratic candidate is to win.

Outdated Numbers

My good friend, Jay Bullock, pointed out that Daily Kos reported taking a poll showing that if the gubernatorial elections were held now, both Governor Doyle or Lieutenant Governor Lawton would easily beat Scott Walker.

Polls are what they are, and polls from a highly partisan source like Kos should be taken with that even more in mind. In other words, take it as a very vague trend at best.

That said, I think that if they, or anyone else were to take a poll now, they would come up with an even wider margin of victory for either of the two Democrats. In fact, it is starting to look like even I could beat Walker in a statewide race soon.

Even before Walker's shenanigans of this past week, the people around the northern castle don't have a lot of respect for him. And that was without them knowing who I was or what I did, but just having casual conversations about politics.

This morning, my self-proclaimed neocon father said that even the people that he hangs around with were not very fond of him, preferring Mark Neumann. Father reports that their attitude towards Walker only got worse when they read the news this week that he was threatening to cut services, and that he wants to tax toddlers and rob old people who paid good money for year round passes to the swimming pools.

Per my dad, one guy said he was sick of Walker holding the County hostage while he prances around the state running for governor.

I wonder what will happen with the 2010 budget, when Walker reportedly wants to decimate services by cutting somewhere from 500-800 jobs, close up some parks, and slash the bus lines even further, but has enough money to give to his buddies and go for campaign bike rides on our dime.

What Was He Thinking?

As has been my focus for most of this week, Milwaukee County Executhug Scott Walker announced that he wanted to have a combination of an indefinite 5 hour furlough and 310 union workers laid off to help resolve his imaginary fiscal crisis.

But is his solution really a solution? The evidence would say not.

With the furlough, both the union and the County Board did some number crunching and found that Walker's claim of saving $8.9 million was greatly exaggerated, by about $6 million.

As I mentioned a while ago, the County receives the majority of their funding from the federal and state governments. By cutting workers and work hours, Walker would be losing in a lot of revenue. The ration is about 2:1, meaning that for every three dollars in cuts, the County loses two dollars in revenue.

But even that was being generous. It turns out that 80-90% of any money that was given to the County, but is not spent, goes back. For the federal money, the rate of return is 100%. To give an example of what this means is that for the highway maintenance crew being furloughed, instead of the $283,387 that Walker is claiming would be saved the actual number is closer to $58,000. So for 39 families to run the risk of running into serious financial difficulties, including losing their house, and for the public to be put at harm's way due to neglected maintenance of the freeways, the County would only save $58K. And that does not take into any consideration of fines, penalties and/or lawsuits that could occur due to Walker's neglect.

Furloughing and/or laying anyone off at the airport makes just even less sense. It wouldn't save the taxpayers one red cent, as that the funding for the airport maintenance and staff is fully funded by the airlines. Any money not spent is returned to them in full, and the County runs a risk of being sued for failure to meet their contractual obligations. And I am sure that it would not impress visiting CEOs that might have been considering moving their companies here or even just doing business here. Why would they want the problems of an airport that couldn't handle their needs, just because Walker wanted to make a political stance against the unions?

The proposed layoffs are equally stunning and incomprehensible. For example, Walker has listed 76 AFSCME workers in the Department of Health and Human Services for lay off. DHHS consists of the Behavioral Health Division (mental health folks), Economic Support Division (Income Maintenance - the ones that were just taken over by the State), Child Care Enforcement, Juvenile Probation and Parole, and Disability Services (Adult Services).

BHD already has their own set of numbers for whatever reasons, so they are not part of the 76. Economic Support and Child Care Enforcement were taken over by the State and, due to the language involved with the take over, are immune from lay offs. That leaves Adult Services (my area) and Juvenile Probation. I'm not even sure that there are 76 AFSCME workers between the two sites. Even if there were, it would effectively eliminate both sites.

In other words, these lay offs, as proposed, would postpone Family Care (in violation of the state contract), and leave 6,000 disabled adults without services. It would also let an unknown number of teens that are supposed to be on probation to run wild with no system at all to keep tabs on them. So much for public safety.

And the idiocy doesn't stop there.

Walker, despite not having the authority to do so, has put in new tax hikes in his "budget rescue plan."

One of these includes starting a new $1 fee at county wading pools. Besides this being a new tax, which he does not have the authority to create, it is ludicrous. As Supervisor John Weishan stated in an article in Thursday morning's paper (which mysteriously cannot be found on JSOnline), "Scott Walker wants to create a new tax for toddlers."

Another idea of Walker's, which none of the local media sources have reported, is that Walker wants to close the indoor pools at Noyes and Pulaski Park. Not only are these the only two public indoor swimming pools, but they are often used by senior citizens who use them for water aerobics as well as making it just part of their regular exercise regimen. Many of the people who use the pools have already bought the $135 year round pass, and now Walker's is proposing to end their access to the pools. This is committing fraud to these people. They are not getting the services he promised them and that they paid for.

Wouldn't those make great talking points for Walker as he rides around on his taxpayer funded campaign bike ride: Vote for Walker: He taxes toddlers and robs senior citizens!

With his thuggish management style, his inability to tell the truth about anything, his endangering the public safety, taxing little kids and mugging senior citizens, is it a surprise to anyone that Governor Jim Doyle is beating Walker by 12%, according to the latest poll? Or that Walker is also sizing up to lose to Lieutenant Governor Barbara Lawton by 9%?