Diane's Empty Dreams

By Jeff Simpson

Recently, the New York Times did a cheer leading piece on Diane Hendricks and how she is Reviving Beloit, WI.    

BELOIT, Wis. — When Diane Hendricks sees something she doesn’t like here, she buys it.

A bankrupt country club. A half-empty mall. Abandoned buildings. The rusting foundry down by the river.

Beloit used to be a town that made papermaking machines and diesel engines. Ms. Hendricks thinks it can be a place where start-ups create the next billion-dollar idea, and she is remaking the town to fit her vision.

The problem is Diane Hendrick's vision is blurry, extreme and very, very white.

The Times considers Diane to be a boom to Beloit because:

She took the library from its historic location downtown and resurrected it inside a failing mall at the edge of town, replacing the original with a performing arts center where dance and music students from Beloit College can study and perform each year. Then she scooped up nearly every building on a downtown block and knocked each one down, making way for a sushi restaurant, a high-quality burger joint and modern apartments with marble counter tops and exposed-brick walls. 

I agree that the downtown of Beloit, WI is looking nice, however, let us take a closer look at what is actually happening in Beloit.  

• The overall crime rate in Beloit is 24% higher than the national average.
• For every 100,000 people, there are 9.75 daily crimes that occur in Beloit.
• Poverty is almost double the statewide average.  
• Wisconsin has the 10th smallest percentage of Millennials in the country.  
• The Wisconsin brain drain is a serious problem.  
• Madison has a World Class University System, but GOP electeds take every chance they can to criticize the city, 
• The Legislature continues to attack legislatively, what makes the University strong. 

 While it is great to buy things for a few million dollars, when you are a billionaire, but FYI - that is not an economic plan. 

We have seen her economic plan for Wisconsin:

While Ms. Hendricks, has a vision of bringing start-ups to WI, the reality of her political vision is she is failing spectacularly.  Wisconsin, under Scott Walker (one of Diane's most high profile employees), has ranked dead last in business start up activity for the last three years!     On the bright side, we have no where to go but up!   

However for Ms. Hendricks, with help from the Governor, has to have an actual plan (tax cuts and cutting education is not one either).   

After discussing this topic with someone heavily invested in the Beloit Community:

There needs to be an economic development plan that let's millennials of color see a pathway to ownership through education. We need to economic development plans that are inclusive and not driven by fox valley. Millenials of color will stay in Wisconsin, if they can get a piece of the pie.

In Madison, there have been those opportunities in tech and health fields but we need to expand those opportunities beyond those two sectors to keep the best and brightest, regardless of color or history, want to stay in Wisconsin and actually help us grow from the ground up.

Bruce Murphy has a different take on this story in the NYT:

Yet Beloit, a classic Rustbelt town impacted by the decline of manufacturing, remains “deeply troubled” despite Hendricks’s efforts, the story notes, with high unemployment and boarded-up shops. “About a quarter of the population lives in poverty, twice the rate of residents in the rest of Rock County. One in every four children lives in poverty in the county.”

Which raises the question of whether Hendrick’s vision for America is one that leads to economic success for average Americans. Stevenson doesn’t report that Hendricks urged Gov. Scott Walker to go after private sector unions, or that the Right to Work law he signed has been found to lower average wages in stateswhere it has been passed. Stevenson doesn’t tell us how many employees at ABC Supply have family-supporting jobs.

Nor does Stevenson report that Hendricks didn’t pay a cent in state taxes from 2012 through 2014, or that tax cuts passed by Walker and Republicans went mostly to wealthy Wisconsinites like Hendricks, or that Hendricks has grossly underpaid her property taxes going back many years.

PS: To the author, Alexandra Stevenson, Instead of talking to Charley Sykes, maybe you should have gotten in touch with this former student who has had a problem with Ms. Hendricks serving as a Trustee for Beloit College and as a major member of the Trump team.

She was an early supporter of Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign here in Wisconsin, a state with a history of progressive politics, and that has pitted her against some current and former students at Beloit College, a liberal arts school and one of Beloit’s other big employers. (Ms. Hendricks sits on the college’s board of trustees.)    

I am available anytime!

Charlie Sykes - Still Enabling Hatred! (Updated)

By Jeff Simpson



One of the things that most amazes me, is after years and years of dog whistles, leading the debate and using his platform on the biggest stick in the state to push far right wing candidates and ideologues is the media fawning all over themselves to help Charlie Sykes rewrite his history.

Sykes is pretending he had nothing to do with the rise of the Donald and the empowerment of white nationalists in Wisconsin and in the country!  Charlie, occasionally will admit to, maybe having a hand in it, but not really being sure:

“When I would deny that there was a significant racist component in some of the politics on our side, it was because the people I hung out with were certainly not,” Sykes says. “When suddenly, this rock is turned over, there is this—‘Oh shit, did I not see that?’
 “I kind of had that reaction this morning, with that woman: Did we ignore this? There’s got to be some serious introspection, because of the things that we either didn’t see, or that we ignored, or that we enabled.”

Let's take a look at what Charlie Sykes continues to enable.   In case you did not know it, Sykes still runs the website - Right Wisconsin

About
Wisconsin's New Conservative Community -RightWisconsin.com Powered by Charlie Sykes.

For those of you who have not checked out Mr. Turn over a new leaf's website(and really why would you), if you wasted your time checking it out you would see prominently displayed a (liberal) loser of the day.  Charlie Sykes, new leaf has only been turned over so far.

Recently, they named my friend Kelly Gallaher their (liberal) loser of the day.     It seems that there is a business in her hometown that has been operating illegally for many years.  Thanks to connections in local city hall, they are able to run an unsafe business, not pay their fines or live under the rules that everyone else in the village has too.   Ms. Gallaher thinks it is time they lived by the rules everyone else has to in our society and called them out.  

That upset the crew over at Charlie Sykes powered website and made her the loser of the day.   When Mr. Sykes wonders what he has enabled let me show you.

Ms. Gallaher posted the story of her being named (liberal) loser of the day and was promptly greeted with a message from one of Sykes solid supporters calling her the C word amongst many other things.  

Here is the NSFW screen shot:

Despite the calls by her friends to block the unhinged righty, Ms. Gallaher calmly explained the facts of the issue and something that I have never seen before.  He realized that he was massively led astray by Charlie Sykes and the Right Wisconsin crew and apologized.

Is there anything more telling of Right Wisconsin than one of their loyal followers apologizing and saying the magic words - "Wish I would have done more research".  

Even the local Village President attacked her(via Right Wisconsin):



Did Sykes enable people to be racist, hateful and violent towards Democrats and people they disagree with ideologically?   The correct answer is no in the past tense, because he continues to do so despite the fake persona he portrays on TV.

Another example of how Charlie has not changed a thing in actuality - Bruce Murphy of Urban Milwaukee wrote a column recently pointing out that Sykes is largely responsible for the joke of a sheriff that runs Milwaukee County and tried to ask Sykes some questions regarding it:

I sent Sykes some questions about the website and he responded per usual, “just make it up as you usually do.”
To which I responded, “hey, I thought you’d changed your views. How about a different response for me?”
To which he responded: “Not about you.”
Okay, so Sykes won’t be recanting his view of me.

Of course he hasn't changed his view on anyone he has smeared, unless they can help his career of course.

My suggestion is to never, ever, ever watch a show that has Sykes on and when you are, turn it off and tweet the host what you just did!

Wisconsin Watchdog just cleaned house with their dead weight,. now its time everyone does the same to Charlie!

Bruce Murphy On Abele's Arena Scheme

Bruce Murphy, writing at Urban Milwaukee, gives his take on how Chris Abele bailed out Scott Walker on the bad arena deal.  After complaining about how the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Dan Bice covered the story, Murphy also points out that Abele's scheme won't work.  Then comes the good part (emphasis mine):

Speaking as a city and county taxpayer, I appreciate Barrett’s unwillingness to raise property taxes to pay for the arena. I appreciate the fact that city officials have been “defensive” negotiators — or what might better be termed “tough” negotiators — in demanding that the Bucks pay property taxes on all development beyond the arena, including the practice facility, adjoining restaurants and other development, all of which was going to be tax-exempt in Walker’s original proposal. (I’m told the plan has been amended to remove these exemptions, but I’ll believe that — gladly — when I see it.)

As for Abele’s promise to improve the arena deal to “bring more value” to it, I see no evidence that happened. All the data suggests an NBA arena has little or no economic impact on a city. Adding a provision empowering tougher debt collection won’t help the economy. And Abele’s latest idea, offering county land for $1 to the Bucks for ancillary development, adds insult to injury for taxpayers. If the land is really so hard to develop (and the city’s success developing its portion of Park East land suggests that’s untrue), then why not offer the land to all developers for that price and pick the best proposal? As far as I can tell, Abele’s “can do” approach consists of not negotiating with the Bucks or state officials over anything and simply complying with any idea they suggest.

Considering that Murphy is usually a big fan of Abele, that he would rip into him now says a lot.

Tom Ament's Legacy And Legacy Costs

Tom Ament

On Tuesday, the news broke that former Milwaukee County Executive Tom Ament passed away from lung cancer.  He was 76 years old.

Ament had done some good things during his time as county executive, most notable ushering in the Calatrava addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Ament had also done many bad things during his term.  He closed down Doyne Hospital. He gladly handed over the child welfare system to the state, a move that has cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars since.  He also pushed for the then new Miller Park, which came with a sales tax that is now projected to last more than twenty years.

But the one thing that will be mentioned in any story regarding him and his passing his his role in the infamous pension scandal.  Sadly, due to the passage of time and the political spin people want to put on it, the truth of the story is usually glossed over and even completely misrepresented.

The worst reporting of Ament's legacy is ironically by Bruce Murphy, the reporter who had originally broke the story more than a decade ago.

Murphy claims that Ament's pension scandal is "arguably the biggest political scandal in the city’s history."  Well, outside of the fact that is the county and not the city, I think that the hands down winner as the biggest scandal in Milwaukee County history would be Walkergate and how Scott Walker used county staff and equipment to run not only his campaign but the campaign for his desired lieutenant governor, Brett Davis.

Murphy also mistakenly reports that the enhanced pension deal was to attract workers.  That's not exactly true either.

In the late 1990s, the nation was experiencing an economic boom.  Things were going so well that many county workers were leaving for the private sector where the pay was so much higher.  The pension enhancements were designed to retain workers by getting them to work until at least 2004, the year that the enhancers would reach their maturity.

At the time, it was the fiscally conservative thing to do.  The pensions fund was replete due to the good economic conditions.  And it was easier to enhance the pension than it was to give pay increases, which would have put an extra burden on the tax levy.

What Ament, the actuaries and the lawyers that approved the plan did not count on was the severe economic downturns brought on by the Bush/Cheney administration and by the attacks of 9/11.

While Murphy reports that the pension deal has cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, it should also be noted that the Great Recession of 2008 cost the fund more than $350 million, all of which it recovered in a few weeks.

Ironically, if it weren't for the advice of the "experts," who just happened to be the same sort that tanked the economy, the pension fund wouldn't have been depleted at all.

Murphy even misreports what the pension deal even did:

The pension gave county veterans like Ament a 25 percent bonus in their pension plan. Prior to that retirees could collect up to 80 percent of their final average salary for life, but this gave them the opportunity to collect an unheard of 100 percent of their final average salary. On top of that, they could collect a special lump sum or “backdrop” payment, which was lucrative indeed. To date, more than 1,700 county employees have collected this benefit. Some 740 people have gotten at least a $100,000 lump sum benefit, 255 have gotten at least $250,000 and 40 received at least $500,000.

It should be noted that not all county workers were eligible for the bonus. It only applied to the workers that had been there for a long, long time. It should also be noted that the lump sum pay out, or backdrop if you will, was not "on top of" the pension. All the backdrop is is a different way to pay out the pension. Workers that took the backdrop pay out up front had a smaller monthly pension.

While I do not dispute Murphy's numbers on how many workers collected what, it needs to be pointed out that the vast majority of the large pay outs went to non-represented employees and was something that Walker and his successor, Chris Abele, could have stopped at any time.  Most county employees that retired received much smaller lumps sums plus the smaller monthly pay out.

It should also be noted that the hit to the taxpayers was increased by Walker's refusal to make full payments after the Republican-engineered economic downturns.  Furthermore, Walker insisted on doing a perilous pension obligation bond scheme - and idea supported and pushed for by Abele and the rest of the Greater Milwaukee Committee.  This locked taxpayers into making payments for decades, whether they were needed or not.

I would be remiss if I did not also point out that the actuary agency, Mercer, was successfully sued by the county.  Mercer ended up paying $45 million to the county.

I would also be remiss if I did not point out that Walker was the one that refused to sue the Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren  law firm, which approved the pension plan, because of political considerations.  Rick Graber, then head of WISGOP, worked there and Walker was trying to curry for his first run for governor.

Even though Ament might be best known for his role in the pension scandal, that in itself is just a symptom of his real legacy and the high costs that have come from it.

Ament was the first of three consecutive "fiscally conservative" county executives that have cut services, cut corners and cut themselves breaks, all to the detriment of the citizens and taxpayers of Milwaukee County.
Although Ament was the only one to do so and was honest about it.  Both Walker and Abele have used Ament's pension deal as their excuse for their austerity, even though the results are the same.

Urban Myth Redux

On November 1st, Bruce Murphy of Urban Milwaukee posted a piece lamenting the diminishing of local control by the state legislature.

I responded a few days later pointing out that Murphy excluded Act 14, one of the bigger examples of this loss of local control, one that he advocated for.  I had also commented on his blog to the same effect.

In his post, Murphy responded that the Wisconsin Counties Association (WCA) didn't respond take a view of Act 14, which is one of the reasons he did not include it in his post.

Murphy then wrote a second post, iterating the points he made in his comment:

In reaction to my column about the decline of local control, I got complaints from both Mike Plaisted and Chris Liebenthal, from the Cognitive Dissidence blog, arguing I should have included Act 14 as an example of usurping local control.

But the examples cited in my story, including measures ending residency in Milwaukee or changing how the city assesses billboards, were uniformly opposed by city officials. The proposal to downsize the county board split Milwaukee, with supervisors and some Milwaukee legislators opposing it, and the county executive, some legislators and Greater Milwaukee Committee supporting it. For that matter, huge majorities in many suburbs supported the idea in local referendums.

Because county officials were split on the issue, the Wisconsin Counties Association took no stand on Act 14, whereas it typically opposes legislative changes that interfere with county power.

But Murphy is dead wrong with that statement.

The WCA did indeed come out on AB85, the bill which eventually became Act 14. And they were against it.

I again pointed this out in the comments of Murphy's post.  He promptly responded, stating that his information came from Jon Hochkammer, the WCA’s legislative director.

Now, someone is mistaken here.  Either Hochkammer misspoke or incorrectly remembered what happened or Murphy misunderstood what Hochkammer was saying or misrepresented it.

But either way, the fact is that the WCA did come out against it, and for good cause, since it is still one of the most egregious assaults on representative government and our democracy, made even the worse for the underhanded way it was done.

Urban Irony

Bruce Murphy of Urban Milwaukee had published a post last week in which he laments the Teapublican-controlled legislature's attacks on local control.  He has a fairly thorough list of the bigger attacks including issues like the regulation of cell phone towers and billboards as well as things like residency requirements.

Murphy sums things up well with this paragraph:

But this legislature has shown, time and again, that it will roll over for special interests even if means limiting the powers of local government. As a legislative analysis published by the League of Wisconsin Municipalities put it, the budget bill passed this year “reflects a lack of understanding or recognition of the key role municipalities play in job creation and the state’s economic recovery, and at worse, represents a calculated attack on home rule.”

This is all true and I have no umbrage with what he has written.

But I do take offense by the one special interest and the one attack of local control that Murphy failed to mention, which diminishes the impact of an otherwise powerful piece.

He failed to include Chris Abele spending money hand over fist and having his county executive office staff in Madison lobbying to pass Act 14, which greatly diminished the representative democracy of Milwaukee County government and gave Abele an imbalance of power, opening the door for the gross incompetence and corruption that we are already seeing with Abele's administration.  Two of the people benefiting from Abele's largess were State Representatives Joe Sanfelippo and Dale Kooyenga.

Furthering the fact that this power grab is indeed a removal of local control, the law also forbids the county to have any other referendums outside of the red herring one Abele insisted on which decides if the Board will be further hindered by being forced into a part-time status.

Needless to say, Murphy omitted this key example of the state legislature taking away local control because he supported it in this case, to the point of misrepresenting the facts and omitting key pieces of information in his efforts to assist Abele's power grab.

Because of the Murphy's support for the power grab, it makes his complaint of the loss of local control ring hollow.

"Alternative Reporting" Offers Alternative To The Truth

As popular opinion keeps turning against the power grab being pulled off by Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele, his fellow plutocrats at the Greater Milwaukee Committee and State Representative Joe "Cab King" Sanfelippo, the supporters of this ill-advised and misbegotten stunt are getting more desperate in trying to defend it.

Sadly, I'm not referring to just the hired trolls either.

Bruce Murphy, who is now writing at the blog Urban Milwaukee, has been pushing credibility in an effort to persuade people to support this unsupportable move to usurp control of Milwaukee County and place in the hands of one man - Chris Abele.

Most recently, he has taken umbrage with an article written by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Steve Schultze, which takes a closer look at the power grab bill which was finally revealed by Sanfelippo after many false starts.

Murphy sniped that Schultze was misleading his readers by inaccurately reporting what is really in the bill, all but accusing Schultze of making it up out of whole cloth:

Schultze, for instance, claims the bill gives the executive “the authority to hire as many staff as he wishes for the county executive’s office.” Nonsense. The executive’s budget would have to be approved, as before, by the county board. “The most powerful control the board has is the power of the purse strings,” Sanfelippo notes. “What Schultze wrote is completely misleading.”

Schultze also wrote that the county exec “would gain power through authority for all contracts.” Also misleading. The exec can now approve any contract worth less than $50,000. The legislation would increase that to $100,000. For any contract worth $100,000 to $300,000, if just one board member objected, a full vote of the board would then be required to approve it. And for any contract of more than $300,000, board approval is automatically required.

Schultze writes that the board “also would lose its power to change terms of any proposed sale or lease of county property.” True, the board would not be able to renegotiate deals, but it would retain the power to set the parameters and policies for any sale or lease agreement, and the executive would have to follow those. Once a deal is negotiated within those parameters, the board would have the choice of approving the deal or not. “This forces the executive to work more closely with the board to make sure the deal gets approved,” Sanfelippo notes.

Dan Cody applauded Murphy's hit piece and offered a few kicks of his own:

For the record, I completely agree that the JS reporter in question suffers from the same problem most in his profession do: he can't burn his sources. It's true in sports reporting and political reporting and has been rearing it's head in local political reporting for years before this issue. That said, I find Steve to be a nice guy who works hard and have nothing against him.

What's become interesting to me about this whole issue is just how willing some third party groups are willing to make this their Waterloo.

The real problem here is that it is not Schultze who is doing the misleading. It is Murphy and Cody that are incorrect with their facts.

As I had pointed out in my coverage of the power grab bill, the bill was accompanied by a memorandum written by Anna Henning, a staff attorney with the Wisconsin Legislative Council. The lines that Murphy and Cody accuse Schultze of fabricating, or at least conflating, come directly from this memorandum.

To address the three issues that are in the above-cited section of Murphy's diatribe, let's look at the memo.

On the bottom of page 5 of the memo, Attorney Henning has this bullet point under "Additional Authorities of the Milwaukee County Executive":

Hire and supervise the number of employees that the County Executive reasonably believes are necessary to carry out the duties of the County Executive’s office.

So Schultze is right on the money with that one.

Right below this bullet point is footnote number 5 which reads:

The bill specifies that no contract with Milwaukee County is valid unless it is signed or countersigned by the Milwaukee County Executive.

Again, Schultze is true to the memo, Murphy's complaint is not.

As for the third issue that Murphy brings up, well, Abele is currently supposed to be following the policy set forth by the County Board, but just like his predecessor Scott Walker, Abele has simply refused to do so.

Abele refused to have his staff live in Milwaukee County, which is a requirement per county policy. Abele had proposed to give half a million taxpayer dollars away as bonuses, again in violation of county policy. Abele is trying to shut down the mental health complex on his own, which is against county policy.  The list could go on for a bit more too.

So while Murphy admits that Schultze is accurate on this account, he then makes a false statement himself regarding the county executive's need to "work with the board."

As the gentle reader can plainly see, Schultze is true to the memo, which was written by an independent lawyer, not a Teapublican politician with an ax to grind.

So, I guess, in a way, one could say that the pro-plutocratic power grab bloc is upset with Schultze's accuracy in his article.

But not because it is misleading.  Rather, they are upset because it accurately shows that this is nothing but an unjustified and unjustifiable power grab.

Is Jeff Stone In Or Out?

Bruce Murphy has a very interesting tidbit at the end of the article regarding the upcoming race for Milwaukee County Executive:

Republican assemblyman Jeff Stone, who lost the race for Milwaukee County Executive to Chris Abele last spring, did not rule out running against him again this spring in a recent JS article. But at last Thursday’s Press Club event, Stone was overheard assuring Abele he wasn’t going to run.

I can't imagine what Jeff Stone thinks he would have to gain from another run at county executive. Last year, Chris Abele trounced him 62%-38%, a pretty formidable margin.

And event though Abele has been doing his best Scott Walker impersonation, sometimes even doing Walker better than Walker does himself, Abele would have two distinct advantages over Stone.

One, between his own money and the money that the Greater Milwaukee Committee would be able and willing to drop on their boy, Abele could buy the seat over and over for the rest of his life..

Two, even though Abele has burned a lot of bridges and continues to show what could be most generously called questionable judgment and in some ways has surpassed Walker in savageness, it is Stone that will be more closely tied to Walker, which will only hurt him as we enter the recall election at about the same time as the general elections.

Quotable and Quotable Again

Bruce Murphy of Milwaukee Magazine hits things on the head twice in his column this week.

The first bullseye comes in his discussion about the state's job and jobless condition:

Some conservatives, I suspect, would reject the idea that you should measure all employment. But if slashing taxes and government jobs only results in enough private sector employment to offset the cuts in public jobs, it’s a completely ineffective way of lowering unemployment. It’s of no value to a voter to have lower taxes but no job. Nor are businesses likely to locate in a state where taxes are low but schools and universities are in decline. Surveys have long shown that well-trained workers, powerhouse universities, good transportation (from highways to rail) and other kinds of government-created infrastructure are more important to businesses than the relative tax level.

His second bullseye comes when he discusses Scott Walker's ill-advised attempt to curtail the First Amendment:

Beyond the policy question is one of politics, and I question the timing of Walker. Here is a governor who both parties predict will be subject to a recall election. This will be a duel over whose vision is more out of touch with average voters, and Walker decides to become the Grinch who stole the right to protest? This is just handing his opponents more ammunition and frankly may leave some moderates wondering whether Walker has gone off the deep end. Weren’t there any advisors to suggest the governor at least wait until after the election to pull this stunt?

When the man's on target, he's on target.

Quotable

From Bruce Murphy, who understands what's happening in Fitzwalkerstan:

Meanwhile the Walker administration has announced it will begin a system of merit pay for exceptional employees. The idea, ostensibly, is to make government work like the private sector. But private companies are driven by the profit margin and reward employees who contribute the most to that profitability.

Not so in the public sector. Government leaders are inevitably tempted to reward political loyalty. And all the changes occurring under Walker are leading in that direction. Unions have lost all ability to represent workers. There will still be civil service protection for those threatened with firing, but it’s difficult to see how civil service rules will prevent cronyism in the awarding of merit raises. And that sends a message to all workers: Be loyal or you’ll never get ahead.

Quote/Questions of the Day

From Bruce Murphy of Milwaukee Magazine:

Back on May 10 my column noted that former Republican state senator Ted Kanavas was the one pushing this idea with Gov. Scott Walker. The Sunday JS story finally noted his involvement, telling us that Walker asked Kanavas to hold meetings with business people and legislators to determine the structure for a bill to invest in venture capital.

I see. And so these Wisconsin business people and legislators suggested a program where all the money would go to CAPCO companies from out of state? I find that a little hard to believe. Perhaps Kanavas could provide the names of these business people and legislators who suggested a CAPCO plan was the way to go.

[...]

Meanwhile, it's worth asking, what exactly is Kanavas getting out of promoting this sweetheart deal for CAPCOs? There's been talk of Kanavas running for U.S. Senator, but I can't imagine a bill like this will win him many votes. Just how close is he to these CAPCO companies?

Well, at least we can't say Kanavas is the do nothing senator anymore. That would be an improvement for him now.

CRG: Citizens for Recall Gaffes

My good buddies at CRG (Citizens for Recall Gaffes) are at it again.

As the reader may recall (pardon the pun), CRG threatened to recall Milwaukee County Supervisor Marina Dimitrijevic, for having the audacity of standing up and fighting for her constituents and trying to protect Milwaukee County as a whole from more of Scott Walker's ineptitude. I had speculated at the time that it had more to do with the fact that Dimitrijevic was forming a strong run for the soon to be vacant county executive position.

Bruce Murphy of Milwaukee News Buzz did a follow up story on that recall effort. To put it succinctly, CRG is once again spinning their wheels. Orville Seymour admits that little (meaning none) progress has been made.

That is not surprising, or even all that interesting.

But Murphy's story does have two interesting tidbits in it. So interesting that I am surprised the usually astute Murphy allowed them to slide without more in depth questioning.

The first thing of note is that Chris Kleismet, the ringleader for this group of political thugs, is backing off of the recall of Dimitrijevic:

CRG leader Chris Kliesmet attempted to distance his group from the effort...

Could there be trouble in paradise among the upper echelon (are there any "officers" besides Kleismet and Seymour?) of this group? Or is Kleismet finally getting tired of having egg on his face?

What is also of note, but not as surprising, is that Kleismet is again lying. Consider the very next sentence following the above one:

Kliesmet says the CRG – which was heavily involved in the recall of county supervisors who voted for the infamous pension plan – hasn’t held a recall since 2002.

Tsk, tsk, liar, liar, pants on fire, nose is as long as a telephone wire.

Kleismet, king of recalls, can't seem to recall that his band of not-so-merry men tried to recall Governor Jim Doyle, not once, but twice. The first one was in 2005 and, of course, failed. The second flop came last year, when they tried it again.

They were also threatening to recall Supervisors Pat Jursik, Lynne De Bruin and Theo Lipscomb last year in an effort to bully them into supporting Walker's illegal budget. (I often wonder how they try to justify their desire for a "responsible government" with their support for an illegal, deficit-laden budget - then again, they are not exactly pillars of the community either.)

All I can say it I anxiously anticipate the day that they live up to their name and mount a recall effort against Goobernator-elect Walker, who has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars of tax payer money weeks before he is even sworn into office. However, I will not be holding my breath for that day to come.

Oh, That Liberal Media! Part 1587642

Bruce Murphy lays out the disparity between the way the Associated Press covered the fact that RoJo got rich with a lot of help of tax payer dollars and how the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel didn't:

This was crystal clear in reading the Associated Press story but not in the Sunday JS piece. Call the Associated Press more liberal or the JS more conservative, but as I’ve noted in the past, there is often a distinct difference in how they report these kind of politically charged issues.

But lo and behold, in this morning’s Journal Sentinel, Walker did another piece, in response to the Democratic press conference, that finally ran down all the details about the bond deal Johnson received. Why did the paper wait until five days after the Associated Press story ran? Your guess is as good as mine.

MMSD Is Not Responsible For Raw Spewage Problem

Last week, Milwaukee had a torrential downpour, where over four inches of rain fell in a very short time in many areas in and around the Milwaukee area. The result of this was that the sewage system was overwhelmed and MMSD ended up dumping over 500 million gallons of waste water into Lake Michigan.

Obviously, this is not an ideal situation. No one in their right mind wants to have raw sewage mingling with their drinking water. It also presents a potential problem for people wanting to use the beaches to go swimming, due to the risk of e. coli.

But never one to let pass a chance to make a mountain out of a molehill, Scott Walker's campaign, echoed by all the usual suspects, including the squawking heads of talk radio, jumped on the chance to use this to attack Tom Barrett and/or Democrats in general.

However, their raw spewage is heavy on rhetoric and light on facts or solutions. The fact is that, as bad as this last dump was, it is actually much better than it ever was before.

In a column by Bruce Murphy, of Milwaukee Magazine, written three years ago, he wrote:

The truth is that the Deep Tunnel works as planned and Milwaukee has one of the best sewage treatment systems in the country. Prior to the Deep Tunnel’s construction, Milwaukee spilled 19 times more sewage into the lake than is does now, some 8.5 billion gallons of sewage per year, compared to less than 450 million gallons per year today. Milwaukee went from averaging 60 or more overflows per year to less than two, just as planners had expected. (To reduce the overflow as close as possible to zero would cost another $7 billion, and would still provide no guarantee of total success, which is why community leaders rejected this approach.)

Now, as I mentioned above, 500 gallons of sewage water in the lake is not appealing, but it is a great deal better than 17 times that number, without a torrential rain like the one we just had. It is also better to have that 500 gallons in the lake than in everyone's basement.

Even if one took the complaints of Team Walker and friends at face value, they don't offer any solutions. Probably because there are no real viable ones out there.

As noted by Murphy, to eliminate all overflow, it would cost $7 billion (in 2007 dollars) and even then it might not work.

Another frequent "solution" which I've heard put out there would be to separate the rain and the sewage pipes. Again, this would be a prohibitive cost and is also not guaranteed to help.

Without offering any viable solutions, all the complaints about MMSD dumping into the lake makes them appear to be just whiny, desperate people. Of course, in reality, if Walker was in charge, the odds are that the end result would be higher taxes AND sewage in our basements. What a campaign slogan that would make!

Vote for Walker: I'll raise your taxes and leave crap in your basement!

Sorry, I digressed there for a moment.

Anyway, as I was saying, for Walker to complain about this and not offer any solutions makes him seem even more of an empty suit.

There are two more reasons why it would be smarter for Walker to leave this subject alone.

One, related to this massive rainstorm, the rivers were running so hard and fast that the Menomonee River ripped a gate off. Said gate was meant to keep the river from flowing into the Deep Tunnel. Imagine how much worse it would be if we added all of Waukesha's waste water to our rivers, as Walker would have it, if more responsible leaders hadn't intervened.

Secondly, does Walker want sewage in the lake to be compared to collapsing buildings or the problems at the mental health complex?

Team Walker would be best served to remember that, like monkeys in the zoo, you can't go flinging poo without some of it sticking to you.

Is Plale In Trouble?

Bruce Murphy thinks he might be:

Larson looks like a much stronger challenger. He has experience and name recognition as a county supervisor, he’s a young fresh face with South Side credentials (grew up in Greenfield, attended Thomas More High School), and he’s a physically fit bundle of energy who has run several marathons and is aggressively doing doors. “There’s no doubt it’s a real race,” Plale concedes.

Read the rest here.

Great Minds Think Alike

Either that, or one of us got lucky.

Last night, I wrote a piece criticizing Walker's plan to try to balance a massive deficit he would create by dumping on the state workers. Including in my critique was the fact that Walker would have to actually try to negotiate these concessions:

In reality, it hasn't worked so well for him in Milwaukee County. He has often tried to beat the unions into submission and continuously demanded that they give concessions. This hasn't worked out the way he wanted it to. The unions don't take kindly to being threatened or coerced, and would be much more willing to work with Walker at the negotiating table rather than acquiesce to his demands.

And therein lies the rub. If Walker were to sit at the table with the unions to negotiate for them to concede on paying more for their health care or pensions, the unions would want something in return, such as a pay raise or a no lay off clause, neither of which Walker would want to give them.

I went on to point out that under Walker's administrative style, he not only failed to get his demands met, but has a county falling apart on him even as he is trying to tell us nothing is wrong.

In his weekly column, Bruce Murphy also touches base on Walker's plan. Mr. Murphy touches on many of the same points that I did, plus many more. Here is what Mr. Murphy said about the same issue I cited above:

2. Walker can’t simply do this by fiat but must negotiate with the state employees unions, and that means giving up other things to gain the pension contribution. It’s not a given that this is the most cost-effective measure for the state to bargain for in negotiations.

Mr. Murphy's point #4 is spot on as well.

(I just hope Mr. Murphy doesn't take offense at my tongue in cheek comments at the top.)

And Never Shall They Meet

Bruce Murphy points out in this week's version of his "Murphy's Law" column that it has been the Democratic governors that have lowered taxes in Wisconsin and the Republican governors, like TOMMY!!! "I can't make up my mind" Thompson that have been spending like drunken sailors (no offense to drunken sailors).

He ends that part of his topic with the money quote:

So now Scott Walker is running for governor, arguing that Doyle has been a big spender. The reality is that Doyle has been considerably more frugal than Thompson, and Walker as a legislator voted for Thompson’s budgets. But reality doesn’t always have a lot to do with political campaigns.

With all due respect to Mr. Murphy, whatever Walker says doesn't always have a lot to do with reality.

Walker's Interesting Time Management Skills

Bruce Murphy, the editor of Milwaukee Magazine, had his weekly column out yesterday, which was less than complementary to Scott Walker.

Walker responded in the comments section. His comment was nothing more than a copy and paste of his editorial that appeared in the Washington Post a few weeks ago, which I had thoroughly debunked at the time. That's not the interesting part.

The interesting part is that Walker left his comments at 3:30 in the afternoon, on a Wednesday. Wasn't he supposed to be doing something, like working for the taxpayers, instead of pasting his campaign speech on an editorial column?

It makes one wonder if he was on the clock a the time, and if he used County space or County equipment when doing this.

But then again, it would be nothing new. He has often emailed Sykes during County hours, even to complain about people who note that he is emailing Sykes a lot.

I guess that this is just part of some training he got from Kevin Fischer on creative time management.

Joe Rice: Screw The Taxpayers!

I've already pointed out how County Board Supervisor Joe Rice had squandered tax payer money on sending out a flier filled with misinformation in an effort to keep them from getting property tax relief.

Now, Bruce Murphy, in his most recent column, highlights how Rice has broken campaign pledges to give back part of his salary. On top of that, he is setting himself up to partake of the pension benefits that has put the County in dire straits already. From the column:

When he first ran for office in 2004, Rice promised to donate $1,000 per month of his salary to a community cause. (Rice said he would earmark it for “parks work.”) He also promised to accept only half his salary. This meant he would have given $48,000 to charity and $101,360 in salary back to the county during his first term in office. In addition, he promised to turn down any pension or fringe benefits.

I’ve made numerous attempts to contact Rice to find out if he lived up to any of these promises, all to no avail. So I asked Harold Mester, spokesperson for the County Board, to check county records. Mester tells me Rice draws the same salary as every other supervisor.

Rice did apparently turn down health insurance, as no deductions were taken for this in 2004, but beginning in 2005 he began accepting health benefits. In 2007, he added dental care and since then has continued to get coverage for both dental and health care.

Rice did sign a waiver of the 0.5 percent pension sweetener for public officials, but has never signed a waiver for the rest of the pension, so he remains eligible for the fringe benefit as well.

I e-mailed this information to Supervisor Rice, asking if he had any corrections to make to this information, and once again was greeted with silence.

In more than 25 years of covering public officials, I don’t recall anyone who made more generous promises of a giveback to taxpayers and the community – or who failed so completely to inform the public of how he lived up to his pledges. In short, the situation seems quite newsworthy.

It is no wonder that he has lined all of his votes up with Walker. They have the same kind of cavalier attitude towards the people of Milwaukee County.

If you wish to contact Supervisor Rice, and tell him he wants to start keeping his promises, and to get his hands out of our wallets, you can find his contact information here.