The Jensen Deception

BY Jeff Simpson

 In Monona Grove, like many other public school districts in Wisconsin, we have a code of conduct that students have to sign and we expect them to live up to.   In this code of conduct this line is prominent:

Honesty (Students will be trustworthy and truthful, no matter what the consequence.)

 

The Elmbrook School District hasa special policy on Academic Honesty:  

Policy 5131.2 - Academic Honesty
The District regards academic honesty as vital to the academic, social and emotional development of all students. Honest and ethical behavior is an essential component in the learning process. Academic honesty requires that all academic work is the legitimate, truthful effort and product of the student. In contrast, academic dishonesty is an attempt by students to claim and show possession of effort, knowledge and/or skills that are not their own. Academic dishonesty in any form shall not be permitted.
Which brings us to the issue of the day, public education, and the recent November elections.  
We will see an expansion of "school choice" and the head of the "school choice" movement in Wisconsin is formerly convicted felon, Scott Jensen.  Jensen was basically given a "get out of jail free' card from his good friend and fellow Republican, Attorney General elect Brad Schimel.    
After Jensen left in disgrace, he went right to be head lobbyist for American Federation for Children(AFC). AFC is funded by the Walton and DeVos family and their main goal is to privatize our public education.   

AFC's visions is defined as(emphasis mine):

 

The American Federation for Children envisions an education system where parents are empowered to choose the best educational environment for their child, where innovation and entrepreneurism revolutionizes our education system, ensuring all children, especially low-income children, are provided with the opportunity to receive the finest education possible, whether it be in a traditional public school, public charter school, virtual learning, private school, home school or blended learning.

Doesn't there seem to be a disconnect that the organization that just wants parents to be "empowered to choose the best educational environment for their child" hired as its point person someone who has a proven history of not being able to be trusted to help serve the public?  

To make matters worse, they give the ethically challenged Jensen lots of money to buy elections.  As Bill Lueders recently pointed out:

 

School choice proponents, many from out of state, funneled $64,000 directly into candidates’ coffers in 2014, through AFC and another group. (The AFC-affiliated funder, Wisconsin Federation for Children Political Fund, filed its last report Nov. 26, a month late, risking a penalty of up to $500. Its Washington, D.C.-based administrator did not respond to an emailed question about the late filing.)In addition, AFC made independent expenditures of $866,000 to boost or oppose candidates. This adds to the nearly $10 million in state electoral spending by school choice proponents between 2003 and 2012, as tallied by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
AFC’s spending in the Nov. 4 elections included $148,000 to help narrowly defeat Democrat Rep. Mandy Wright, a former teacher and school choice critic. It spent $123,000 to help Republican Todd Novak score a razor-thin win over Democrat Dick Cates. And it poured $240,000 into GOP choice proponent Howard Marklein’s successful bid for an open Senate seat.**
** To put things in perspective, while they are spending tens of millions of dollars on elections, our annual budget(approximately 3200 kids, 250 staff, six buildings is $32 Million).   Also average teacher pay in WI is approaximately $47,000/yr, while Scott Jensen makes a over $200,000/yr.   

 When you give Scott Jensen that kind of money to play with, he uses it just as you would expect!    

 

Yet, in its electioneering, AFC commonly doesn’t even mention school choice. It attacked Wright for allegedly using sick leave to attend a protest, which she insists is not true. It went after Cates for his vote on the local school board concerning the Pledge of Allegiance. And it ripped Democratic Rep. Gordon Hintz for threatening a female colleague and being cited in a massage parlor sting operation, both in 2011.

 

Now let's sum it all up, we have a disgraced former elected rep, who is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in small time races, to attack certain candidates disgracefully and dishonestly, late in the game, about every issue BUT school choice, and then AFC wins by razor thin margins.   Then Mr. Jensen declares:

 

Jensen is proud of these victories, which he says give it “a school choice majority in both houses.” He attributes this success to public support for school choice.

 

How Jensen sleeps at night is something he will have to answer, but why we continually reward this behavior in our political system is something that we have to take a long look at.  

 

Mr. Jensens behaviors, if he were a student in our district, would result in probably suspension and possible explusion(depending on the behavior plan we would work out between the principal, his teachers and parents).   

 

Is the person who would not be able to be hired into our schools, the person we want entrusted with millions of public education dollars?   

 

Do you feel safe knowing that YOUR children's future is in Scott Jensen's hands?    

 

Images from public profiles!  

Cross posted at Purple Wisconsin

The Worst of Dodgeville!

By Jeff Simpson

The Republicans have so gerrymandered the state that they do not even try and run qualified candidates anymore. They are running people who will do what they are told, so qualifications be dammed. From running Bill Feehan, whose resume includes a domestic battery charge for choking his ex girlfriend,to the ethically challenged Robin Vos, to Joel Kleefisch, who allowed a donor to write a bill which would have allowed him to escape child support. 

Now they have another All Star to add to the lineup --- Todd Novak.  Novak is running for Assembly District 51 and is the mayor of Dodgeville.   Novak also likes to drink!  

 Dodgeville police encountered Mayor Todd Novak twice this summer in alcohol-related incidents, neither of which resulted in citations. This comes after a public event a year ago where numerous sources said Novak bragged publicly about getting preferential treatment from the city's police department in regards to driving drunk.

 Police records show officers stopped Novak from driving home drunk at 2:30 a.m. on Sept. 20 after he "staggered and nearly fell" on the way to his vehicle. He called his next-door neighbor and friend, Dodgeville police Sgt. David J. Bauer, to drive him home. The two men traded numerous emails this summer about Bauer's candidacy for the position of Dodgeville police chief, with Novak writing that Bauer left out "personal aide to the mayor" on his resume.

 However, court records show Novak was arrested on May 18, 1990, in Dodgeville for operating while intoxicated after failing Breathalyzer and field sobriety tests. That charge was dropped when blood tests taken roughly an hour after the arrest showed Novak was one-thousandth of a percentage point under the legal limit.

Last October, at a Best of Dodgeville event, three sources said Novak was in a group of people when he was warned not to drive home from the event because he was intoxicated. The sources said Novak was warned about getting pulled over for driving while intoxicated with one source saying the mayor responded, "It doesn't matter because I have a Mayoral Pass. I won't get into trouble."

However, this story and Mr. Novak give us probably the best example of symbolism in terms of how they have treated our state these last four years:

 Earlier this summer, an officer intervened as Novak allegedly was urinating on a building in downtown Dodgeville. Now-retired Dodgeville Police Chief Dave Kieffer said he did not know why that incident was not written up by officers.

Let's make sure Mr. Novak keeps his partying in Dogeville only, and elect a great candidate in Dick Cates to represent the 51st! 

Ernie Wittwer for State Senate District 17

 

By Jeff Simpson


With the unfortunate retirement of the Dale Schultz,  that left a wide open seat in the 17th Senate District.   On the republican side, far right extremist (he who voted on the side of cancer and against cancer victims) Howard Marklein declared the first time Senator schultz showed any independence.  Immediately the far right donors started throwing money at him.

Then local resident and farmer and retired Department of Transportation administrator Ernie Wittwer decided to throw his hat into the ring on the Democratic side.  Ernie has a strong grassroots following and an excellent resume.  

However, as we have pointed out on this blog on numerous occasions, if you are not inside you are outside and there is no room in Madison for outsiders.  Once again, the elected democrats circled their wagons and attacked.   Two time loser and former Jim Doyle aide, Pat Bomhack. took time off to go to college and now desperately wants back in!

Bomhack wants back in so badly, that he and the fellow members of the old boys club are more than willing to lose control of the Senate to make it happen.   Bomhack was running against Dick Cates in the primary for the Assembly seat, but was doing poorly and thought he would have a better chance of beating Ernie Wittwer.

Of course after saying he wouldn't.

 “A lot of local people have been encouraging me to go for the Senate but I’m totally focused on my Assembly race right now,” he said.

 Typical of people who chose politics as a career, he was not that focused because shortly thereafter, he switched to running for Senate.

The party leaders in Madison talked him into switching, then endorsed him.


Although Ernie Wittwer, a retired Department of Transportation administrator, declared his candidacy for the seat last year, his bid was evidently not taken seriously by party leaders in Madison. They began urging Pat Bomhack, a recent UW Law School grad and aide to former Gov. Jim Doyle, to drop his bid for the 51st Assembly District, in which he was considered an underdog, and run against Wittwer for Senate. Bomhack had run for the same Assembly seat in 2012, losing in a primary.
In April, Bomhack announced he was making the switch, and a week later Larson announced his support for the young candidate. Soon afterwards, Sen. Mark Miller, D-Monona and a former minority leader, also endorsed Bomhack.

  The local party leaders and grassroots support were none too happy.

Maureen Grimm, a school board member in Mineral Point who beat Bomhack in the Assembly primary in 2012, said she is puzzled by the support Capitol leaders are extending to Bomhack, who only moved to the area three years ago.
“The vast majority of involved Democrats in the 17th favor Ernie,” she said. “Perhaps there’s a little bit of a disconnect on what this district values. A difference between urban and rural.”
In what some local activists saw as a direct snub, Larson, delivering a speech about Senate races at the state Democratic convention last month, highlighted Bomhack’s candidacy and didn’t even mention Wittwer.
“I was disappointed at the convention that Chris said that,” said Phil Fransen, chair of the Green County Democratic Party, who said he is “leaning towards” supporting Wittwer but believes he should remain neutral in his capacity as a party official.
Mike Gallagher, chair of the Democratic Party of Lafayette Party, is actively supporting Wittwer and he said he gave Larson a piece of his mind after hearing the speech.
“I told him that that was very wrong,” he recalled saying. “You can support who you want but you don’t ignore that there’s a primary in the 17th Senate District.”

 Local grassroots overwhelmingly support Mr. Wittwer, but because the DPW does not think he will tow the line 100% they would rather lose the seat, than let the local people decide by pushing a cookie cutter carpet bagging insider.  

Do you really have to ask why the dems have had such a hard time finding candidates to run for office?  

For the sake of Wisconsin, our public schools, jobs and all
 other issues, it is imperative that we send a message to the right and the left and elect Ernie Wittwer!    

I fully endorse Ernie Wittwer in the 17th Senate district of Wisconsin this morning! 

Help Ernie Win!!!!

Ernie Wittwer's website is here!

Ernie Wittwer's facebook page is here!

Ernie Wittwer's twitter account is@wittwer4senate

Ernie Wittwer's email is here!

 DONATE to Ernie Wittwer here! 

Elect Dick Cates in the 51st!

By Jeff Simpson

Dick Cates is a farmer, small business owner, agricultural science and business instructor….and citizen.   Dick Cates is a citizen that we NEED in Madison representing the 51st Assembly District.

The 51st Assembly district has been unrepresented lately, by one of the more right wing extremist representatives in Wisconsin, who actually gave up his seat to run against Moderate Statesman Dale Schultz because Schultz was not far right enough for his tastes. 

Dick Cates is the person to allow the 51st district to have a voice in Madison again. 





Send him $5 and some words of encouragement, and make sure everyone you know in the 51st district votes for Dick Cates!