Diane Hendricks Hornswoggle

By Jeff Simpson 

I have covered Diane Hendricks before here at CogDis, where I pointed out that Beloit College is a superior academic institution, Someone who was The Donald's main fundraiser, did not also belong on the Board of Trustees of this great institution.   One or the other.   Unfortunately money speaks and she was allowed to continue doing both!

Now, thanks to Urban Milwaukee's Michael Horne, we find out that Ms. Hendricks not only supports racist, sexist, bigoted, treasonous candidates for political office, but that she is a scam artist herself.

According to a 2016 Forbes listing, Wisconsin’s Diane Hendricks is the nation’s wealthiest self-made woman, with a net worth of nearly $5 billion. Yet she paid no Wisconsin income tax in the years 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2014, according to a report by Cary Spivak and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
It appears the Republican supporter and Trump economic adviser also gets a break on the taxes on the 228-acre property consisting of 14 parcels where she lives in the unincorporated community of Afton in the Town of Rock, a mostly rural area between Beloit and Janesville in Rock County, Wisconsin.
Today, the 120-acre main parcel — identified by officials as the residence of Diane Hendricks has an assessed land valuation of only $75,600, or $630 per acre, while four adjacent lots of less than an acre apiece also owned by Hendricks are each assessed at $22,500. This disparity alone raises red flags.
As for improvements on the property, billionaires have been known to spend extravagantly on their properties, and this one is a dandy, with woods, ponds, plazas, pathways and party areas. However, the property assessment compiled by Accurate Appraisal, LLC., with whom the Town of Rock contracts, shows only a modest 1,663-square-foot frame residence on the property, constructed in 1993 and valued at $390,000.

Very nice, a multi billionaire likes to live modestly, in the area where her husband was able to make his billions...... But wait there is more!!!

When speaking to her friends or tooting her own horn, she is not living quite so modestly at all, as this from Forbes magazine in :

 Diane Hendricks (is)… transforming a modest rustic home in Afton, Wis. into a 10,000-square-foot dream house–one she’d planned to share with Ken.

For those of you scoring at home, 10,000 is considerably bigger than 1,663.   A quick Google earth search of the subject shows a home much bigger than 1663 sq ft.

Now we have her own words, and our own eyes to see Ms. Hendricks is cheating the local taxpayers by severely undervaluing her property to avoid paying taxes.  

That should spring the local community into action right?   Not so fast! Michael Horne again did some digging:

In researching this property for a House Confidential, column, it became clear the descriptions of the home did not match the assessment records. So I checked the neighboring addresses on the Town of Rock website to see if the home might be located at one of them. A 120-acre property might just be the beginning of the Hendricks holdings, and maybe the home itself was on an out-lot. However, this search was unsuccessful, with no property remotely matching the description of the Hendricks home.
On Tuesday, April 18th, I sent an e-mail to Deborah Bennett, the Clerk/Treasurer of the Town of Rock asking her for the parcel number for the Hendricks property. The town hall is located in Afton, about 1,000 feet due south of the Hendricks estate, so I relied on local knowledge to help me out.
“I am having a difficult time sifting through the assessment files of the Town of Rock to find a property that matches the numerous written descriptions of the home of Diane Hendricks. Could you please direct me to the parcel file for the Hendricks home, which is said to be approximately 10,000 s.f.?”
On a Saturday, April 22nd, Bennett replied: “The parcel number for Dian (sic) Hendricks home is 6-17-255.”
This was the same number I had already reviewed, but I entered it into the website and re-checked it: the sub-parcels for that parcel number were all under one acre, including a .76 acre site valued at $100 and registered to the Hendricks Family Cemetery Association, which is presumed to be the burial site of Ken Hendricks. But still no 10,000 square foot home.
I related my findings to Bennett and repeated my request, this time with a photograph of the home, just in case she was not familiar with the most famous property in her community.
I also contacted Accurate Appraisal, LLC.

OK Deborah Bennett drops the ball, maybe because she is scared of the widow or worries that someone close to her will be punished.   That's understandable in today's environment where the right wing in charge makes sure anyone who questions them pays.  

So Mr. Horne contacted the  appraisal company because a company wont throw their reputation out the door to accommodate one person would they?

Accurate does the assessments for over 100 Wisconsin communities, including the Milwaukee suburbs of Brown Deer, Cudahy, Glendale and Shorewood. I contacted the company via e-mail on April 27th, and copying it to the Town of Rock Clerk/Treasurer.
I called the firm the next day, and was told that my request had been sent to “the appropriate party.”
On May 1st, the appropriate party had still not replied to my request, and I e-mailed the firm again. I then received a return all-caps e-mail from the firm’s receptionist:
Given how close the Hendricks property is to the town hall, it’s hard to imagine the assessor would not know about Hendricks’ huge home. And in any event, under Wisconsin law, municipal assessors are obliged to discover all real and personal property that is subject to tax. Physical inspection of properties, especially those with changes of ownership or construction permits, is the preferred method to keep properties assessed as close to 100 percent of market value in properties. That does not appear to have been done.

 I guess the billionaire widow is so popular and so many local people are busy chasing her money that they are willing to ruin the reputation of their own company.  

However, despite the fact that she is cheating the State and local taxpayers by pulling a scam on them to get out of paying her property taxes(even though I would bet that she has no problem calling the police and fire, etc..when needed), I still feel the need to cut her some slack.

If Ms. Hendricks was forced to actually pay her property taxes, she might not have enough money left to pay for the Scott Walker Legal Defense Fund We all know without being able to hire TWO of the nations best criminal defense firms, Mr. Walker might be living in a different less cozy location.  


 In Case You Were Wondering, what does her modest simple abode look like:

Is Drug Testing Applicants for Public Programs a Wise Idea?

Is Drug Testing Applicants for Public Programs a Wise Idea?
by
Senator Kathleen Vinehout

“If you require drug testing for unemployment insurance claims are you going to drug test farmers for crop insurance next?” the Colfax farmer asked the candidate.

In several recent legislative forums, local candidates advocated for a proposal to drug test people making Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and unemployment insurance claims.

Is this a good idea?

Unemployment insurance is a program that originated in Wisconsin in 1932. In general, unemployment benefits are financed by taxes paid by employers into the state’s unemployment reserve fund. Both federal and state law governs unemployment insurance.

Wisconsin receives $1.4 billion in unemployment insurance benefits from employer contributions and federal money according to the Legislative Audit Bureau (LAB) ‘single’ audit of federal funds paid in 2012-13.

SNAP is a federal program. Wisconsin received $1.2 billion in SNAP funds from Uncle Sam.

In general, people making up to 200% of the federal poverty level can apply for SNAP benefits. This would be a little over $22,000 annual income for an individual who would be eligible for a $200 benefit a month.

The state is responsible for assuring the SNAP program is properly administered. Wisconsin has been rewarded with bonus payments from the feds for improved administrative performance. A 2012 LAB audit led the state to make further oversight improvements including a card trafficking investigation unit and a computer-matching system to assure prisoners don’t receive benefits.

States have proposed drug-testing recipients of public benefits since federal welfare reform in 1996 according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).  At least 11 states have some type of law requiring drug testing for certain applicants of public programs. But courts struck down some of these laws.

For example, in 2013 the District Court permanently stopped enforcement of Florida’s law. The court found the law violated the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibiting unreasonable searches.

According to the New York Times, the 2011 Florida law showed few results while it was enforced: only 2.6% of the 4,086 people tested positive for drugs (most often marijuana). The Times reported, “State records showed the requirement cost more money to carry out than it saved.” The Tampa Bay Times reported, in 2012, the program suffered a net loss of $45,780. That’s not counting thousands of hours of staff time to implement and litigation costs to defend the program.

The Florida decision was based on a 2003 Michigan Court of Appeals case. The Court said forcing every Michigan recipient of public benefits to be drug tested without reason to believe the person abused drugs was unconstitutional.

According to NCSL most states use some test of “reasonable suspicion” before requiring a drug test. Most laws apply the requirement to persons applying for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).  Wisconsin law requires TANF applicants to disclose felony convictions. Those with a felony conviction must take a drug test.

Are people who apply for public programs more likely to use drugs?  The answer appears to be ‘No’. According to the Georgetown Law Journal, drug use in the general public is 8.7% compared to the less than 3% found in Florida’s testing of public benefit recipients.ThinkProgress, a current affairs website, reported Tennessee started drug testing in 2014 and found just one user after testing 800 people.

The farmer in Colfax raises an important question about drug testing. A person making an unemployment insurance claim is not too dissimilar from a farmer making a crop insurance claim. In both cases the program is financed with a mix of federal and private money paid into a reserve fund; in both cases the person is without income.

Public programs must be carefully monitored for fraud. Programs must be easy to administer and fraud investigation must be built into administration. With little evidence that those using drugs are disproportionately applying for SNAP and filing unemployment claims, it makes little sense to spend more money on drug testing.

Instead it seems this proposal is one more example of demonizing a certain group of people for political gain. Applying for aid is difficult enough. Asking someone who can’t afford to eat to pee in a cup just adds to the humiliation.

The Corporate Media Bias On Public Assistance Fraud

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has been doing an ongoing "investigative reporting" series about public assistance fraud.  The corporate media does occasional stories or series of stories like this to promote the corporate agenda that public assistance is bad and should be cut based on these anecdotal stories.

The paper wrote about how the public assistance system works on the 'honor system,' which can be abused.  They have also written about how it's all the federal government's fault for "pushing bonuses" on states to ease the process of being enrolled and for retaining people on public assistance.

Most recently, they snarked on Scott Walker for saying action would be coming regarding the fraud but not offering any details to use as red meat for the conservative Teapublican base they pander to.

But there are some things that one will not find in all of their reporting, things that somehow eluded their in-depth look at what is going on.

The first overlooked item is that many of the people that are receiving benefits - whether it be food stamps, energy assistance or Badger Care - are the working poor.  They are the people that work at Walmart, Aurora Health Care, fast food restaurants and yes, in some cases, even for the public sector, whose pay is so low that they are eligible for benefits.  If these places paid a living wage, this would cut back on the number of people who need assistance and thus make it easier to make sure fraud doesn't happen.

Another thing that is overlooked in all of this reporting is how the individual systems are being managed.

The gentle reader will not see any mention that while Scott Walker was Milwaukee County Executive, he left the Income Maintenance Program extremely short-handed, expecting five workers to hand the work of thirty.  This was, as one might suspect, a thinly-veiled attempt to manipulate the system so that he could privatize it.

But despite his intentional sabotaging of the program, fraud investigators were able to find fraud and recoup the money.  The glowing example of this by far is a now retired county worker named Cindy Jaeger who had single-handedly recovered $5 million in just three years.

Because of County Executive Walker's maleficent and inept management, the Income Maintenance Program eventually was taken over by the state in order to avoid a costly class action lawsuit.  And now that Walker is governor, he is again in charge of the public assistance system.

And just like he did as county executive, Walker is setting up the program for failure.  While the county had a unit of people working on investigating fraud, Walker had just one person for the entire county for a long time.  When the stories started to break about the fraud that was being allowed, Walker hired a few more workers to do these investigations.  Sadly, the people that were hired were hired based on who they knew and/or to whom they were related rather than their qualifications.  (On top of that, these new hires were paid more than the one existing fraud investigator who has apparently left the job for someplace that will respect him.)

Also like the old days, Walker is still leaving the systems short handed.  In Milwaukee County, the state is still pulling workers from their assigned duties to hand the call center or do walk-ins as well as other duties while their own work is piling up, delaying assistance to the people who have a genuine and desperate need for assistance.

The paper's reporting also includes no mention about how Walker was working with the current County Emperor Chris Abele (Milwaukee's version of Mitt Romney) to kick out the food pantry and as well as oust the Hunger Task Force, who has committed the double infraction of helping people - especially those who speak a foreign language - in getting services as well as reporting infractions by the state.

In summary, while what the paper does report might be true, it is far from the whole truth.  They are only reporting what fits the corporate agenda and nothing else.  Especially not anything that what they don't want the people to know about.

Supervisor Alexander Commits Fraud In Order To Play Hookie

Milwaukee County Supervisor Deanna Alexander is a member of the Board's Transportation, Public Works and Transit Committee, which has an important meeting this Wednesday.

But she might not be there.  She's currently in Nashville for a GOPAC conference:

6th Annual State & Local Summit – September 8-11, 2013 – Nashville, TN
Conservative Ideas in Action

The Sixth Annual State and Local Summit will attract legislative leaders from across the country, including Senate Presidents, Speakers of the House, and Committee Chairs to share policy ideas and trade best practices in implementing conservative principles to create jobs, get government spending under control and make government more effective in delivering public services. Attendees will also discuss with national Republican leaders the ideas and initiatives that Congress can implement to address the challenges our country faces. Through panel discussions, policy sessions and networking events, attendees are offered a unique opportunity to advance free-market conservatism across all levels of government.

Alexander is committing fraud by being there as that she does not have a leadership role and she is not a committee chair.

And even if she had a chair position, she still wouldn't be a leader, since she has been bought and paid for by County Emperor Chris Abele.

Her misrepresentation should not come as a surprise, since she does that with alarming alacrity.

ADDENDUM: I have learned since this was posted that Alexander blew off a training today for supervisors regarding Act 14, the bill she sold her constituents and herself out for.

“fraud, misrepresentation or misconduct”

By Jeff Simpson

That is what a 3 judge panel accused the Wisconsin republicans of engaging in, when looking into missing records in the Wisconsin redistricting case.

  It is appearing that AFTER they were ordered to turn over all files to the democrats, someone logged into the taxpayer owned computers and deleted hundreds of thousands of emails! 

New federal court filings allege that legislative aides appear to have deleted “hundreds of thousands” of files at “suspicious times” from state computers used by Republicans in redistricting.

The plaintiffs in a case that challenged the redistricting law are asking the Legislature or attorneys representing the state to start paying for the forensic investigation. They say the probe has racked up nearly $100,000 in costs so far, fueled largely by the complexity of restoring deleted files.

The filings are part of a post-trial investigation ordered by the three-judge federal panel that heard the redistricting case. A final report on the investigation is due May 10.

Finding that “fraud, misrepresentation or misconduct” likely occurred, the judges ordered a post-trial investigation into the missing records. In February, the panel ordered the state to turn over three redistricting computers that had been housed at the Madison office of the Michael, Best and Friedrich law firm.

 Predictably, the party of "personal responsibility"(yes, I know.  That is funny to me also) took none.  Scott Fitzgerald who will take any chance to ramble aimlessly on telling us how bad democrats are seems to have lost his tongue when it comes to fraud on his watch.  Robin Vos has forgotten anything that happened, and refers all questions to the Wisconsin taxpayer funded attorneys representing him in this misconduct.  

There were also two legislative aides and a lobbyist who were involved in this fraud on the Wisconsin taxpayer(their families must be so proud of them):

The computers were used by legislative aides Tad Ottman and Adam Foltz and consultant Joe Handrick. Ottman and Foltz work for Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau), though Foltz worked for then-Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (R-Horicon) at the time of redistricting. Handrick worked for lobbying and law firm Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren at the time he served as a redistricting consultant for the Legislature. Handrick, a former GOP representative, now works at the state Department of Workforce Development.

 For those scoring at home, a quick timeline of the events:

According to the filing, the first deletions came Jan. 6, 2012, just after attorneys for the state were ordered by the panel to turn over additional records in the case. The second deletions, on July 25, 2012, were made days after control of the Senate shifted to the Democrats as a result of recall elections in July 2012. (Republicans have since regained the majority in the Senate.)

“On July 18, 2012, after majority control of the state Senate shifted, the new majority leader (Democratic Sen. Mark Miller) requested Michael Best’s redistricting file,” the filing states.

“The following day (July 19), Michael Best agreed that it would make its redistricting file available for review. One week later (July 25), a user logged into the account of Tad Ottman, aide to state Senator Scott Fitzgerald — who just had been replaced as majority leader — deleted hundreds of thousands of redistricting files.

“The following week, Michael Best turned over its redistricting file to the new Senate majority leader (Miller).”

The republicans have sure ruined the name brand of Michael Best over these last two years!  It also amazes me that Ottman and Foltz still have jobs being funded by the taxpayers.  Is there not a fireable offense for the republicans? 

If you think fraud, directly defying court orders and deleting emails that the public have a right to know, then call these people up and let them know! 

Scott Fitzgerald -  (608) 266-5660 @senfitzgerald

Robin Vos -  @speakervos

Toll Free:  888-534-0063

Madison Office:  608-266-3387

Home Phone:  262-514-2597

Tad Ottman - tad.ottman@legis.wisconsin.gov

Adam Foltz -  adam.foltz@legis.wisconsin.gov 

Can both be reached at (608) 266-5660 Capitol 211 South

And even Joe Handrick, who was the "consultant" who helped consult that secrecy agreements, partisan redistricting and engaging in fraud was the way to go about representing the people of WI, has been rewarded with a nice cushy taxpayer funded state job and taxpayer funded state benefits in the Department of Workforce Development!

Joe can be reached at @joeminocqua or  (608) 267-8997

The Wisconsin Republican Party has no shame!   

Tourism Ad Is Perfect Example Of Waste And Fraud

Scott Walker's DNR paid an exorbitant amount of money to have David Zucker and Robert Hays make a series of commercials that are supposed to be promoting tourism in Wisconsin.

The business community and Walker's propagandists have been hyping it beyond belief, and to be honest, undeservedly so.

Here is the latest ad:



While the ad is slightly humorous, it is far from being memorable. Furthermore, it really doesn't do anything to make it uniquely Wisconsin. Change the wording at the end and it could be for any state with lakes, such as Minnesota which as more lakes (and jobs) than Wisconsin.

But not only is it a waste of time, money and talent, it is also fraudulent.

First of all, Walker and his Republican cohorts in crime against the environment just rammed through the mining law that will allow the mining companies to pump poison into a number of the lakes in Northern Wisconsin, despite the overwhelming opposition to this ceding of our land to out of state special interests.

If this law isn't defeated in court - as it probably will be - the fish in these lakes will be inedible due to the poison.

Then there is the fact that there won't be much in the way of walleye fishing this year at least:

The tribes Friday submitted their declaration to spear 59,399 walleyes in off-reservation lakes. The declarations by band were Bad River 5,609 walleyes; Lac Courte Oreilles 5,879; Lac du Flambeau 24,283; Mole Lake 15,060; Red Cliff 2,194; and St. Croix 6,374.

After calculating the potential impact to the lakes' walleye populations, the Department of Natural Resources on Monday announced the sport bag limits would be reduced to one fish on 197 lakes, two fish on 331 lakes and three fish on seven lakes.

The tribes are well within their legal rights to do this. The reasoning for these high declarations is also pretty clear, as blue cheddar succinctly points out:

Officially, the expanded spearing has nothing to do with mining next to somebody’s sacred rice beds.

Officially the expanded spearing has nothing to do with the law to allow hunting of Wisconsin wolves with dog packs (the only bloodsport wolf hunt of that nature in the U.S.)

Officially the spearfishing has zero to do with disrespectful treatment of native tribes by a certain bullheaded Governor.

Unofficially we know it has everything to do with those things.

Listening to talk radio, you could hear them already ripping out a page from Tommy Thompson's playbook, stirring up the racism that is innate to their base. They already had callers ranting about those "Damn Injuns."

I have also heard reports from my friends in Northern Wisconsin that the usual suspects up there are really starting to grumble about the fact that their white supremacy isn't being observed.

Not once have I heard a conservative make the connection between their own actions and these consequences for their poor behaviors. And no, that doesn't surprise me one bit.

If they had really wanted to make a commercial about tourism in Northern Wisconsin, they would have to show white supremacists fighting against the native tribes over fishing rights, by a lake with corporate special interests preparing to dump toxins into the lake, making the whole fishing argument moot anyway.

That would properly represent what people would find when they come to Fitzwalkerstan.

But we know that Walker and his ilk have such a strong abhorrence of honesty and reality that we won't be seeing that commercial coming any time soon.

The Fraudulent Leading The Fraudulent

Charlie Sykes and the right wing echo chamber are trying to convince themselves that Mitt Romney will win Wisconsin on Tuesday.

Their source for their new found confidence?

Ben Domenech.

Yeah, that Ben Domenech.

Doesn't everyone get their information from frauds and plagiarists?

Do You Know Where Your Governor Is?

Yes, folks, it's time for everyone's favorite game - Do you know where your governor is?

With his state having less jobs than when his policies and budget took effect, and with a budget in "crisis" because he needs to finish paying back the road builders, do you know where Scott Walker is today?

Is he creating jobs? Is he finding a way to balance the budget without bankrupting the working class?

Hell, no!

He's out pandering to teahadists in New Hampshire!

*******MEDIA ADVISORY******

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Romney Press Office

September 28, 2012

857-288-3610

Governor Scott Walker Attends Events In New Hampshire

Boston, MA – On Saturday, Governor Scott Walker will address the New Hampshire GOP Convention at Pinkerton Academy in Derry, New Hampshire. He will then attend an “Earn It” Victory event at McIntyre Ski Lodge in Manchester, New Hampshire. The following events are open to the press.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Event: Governor Walker Addresses New Hampshire GOP Convention

Location: Pinkerton Academy

5 Pinkerton Street

Derry, New Hampshire

Program Time: 12:50 PM EDT

***

Event: Governor Walker Attends Manchester “Earn It” Victory Event

Location: McIntyre Ski Lodge

50 Chalet Court

Manchester, New Hampshire

Program Time: 2:20 PM EDT

What I can't understand is how Walker would know the first thing about earning anything. Everything he has had or done has been bought for him, first by his in-laws and then by the Bradley Foundation and the Koch Brothers. The last time Walker tried to do anything on his own was when he went to Marquette University. And we all know how that ended up.

Maybe New Hampshire has some tough fraud laws and Walker could start up a second legal defense fund, eh?

It Also Works For State Budgets, Job Reports And Campaign Commercials

He Shall Be Known By The Company He Keeps

If you look at the long, long list of Scott Walker's cronies, you can see what type of person Walker is.

On the radio, he is buddies with the libelous, adulterous Charlie Sykes and the drunken brawler Vicki McKenna. He also has found allies in the such as the greedy and amoral Koch Brothers, the Bradley Foundation, a swift boater in Texas and scofflaws like Nicholas Hurtgen and Mark Block.

And who could ever forget his best friends, like Tim Russell, Kelly Rindfleisch and Darlene Wink.

And that's just barely scratching the surface of the miscreants and reprobates Walker is wont to surround himself with.

Now, he's got a new group of "friends" that he is relying on to pull his hide out of trouble.

The people I'm referring to is the King Street Patriots, a teahadist group out of Texas, who are the people behind the "True the Vote" project. Walker is counting on this group to be able to successfully sue the GAB into taking their "findings" into account and they go about certifying the recall petitions. Apparently he couldn't find enough people in Wisconsin, despite having $12 million he could have paid them with, to be willing to stand up for him. That alone should tell you something.

But Walker's reliance on this group will bring about even bigger problems for him.

His first problem is that they're going to make him look like an even bigger fool than he already does. The "True the Vote" group is actually claiming that the recallers don't have enough signatures to trigger a recall of Walker. But the good people at PR Watch is already on top of it and found that this group started out with phony numbers and made some wild and unsubstantiated assumptions:

True the Vote states that volunteers from around the U.S. entered approximately 820,000 of the recall signatures into a database developed by True the Vote, and their analysis showed that only 534,685 recall signatures are eligible, almost 6,000 short of the required 540,000 mark. Their executive summary states they only processed 138,203 of the total 152,508 petitions submitted – meaning over 14,305 pages were never entered. True the Vote boasts in their summary that each signature line was entered an average of 2.67 times. It is not known why they entered names and signatures nearly three times each into the database but failed to input the complete data set.

The group claims that less than the necessary 540,000 signatures are eligible “based on data available.” According to their summary, out of the nearly 820,000 signatures reviewed, 55,608 were deemed “ineligible” and an additional 228,940 signatures required “further investigation,” leaving only 534,685 eligible.

Their assumption appears to be that every single one of the 228,940 signatures they flagged “for further investigation” will turn out to in fact be ineligible. They are also assuming that the over 55,608 signatures they deemed “ineligible” would not be counted under Wisconsin law. They are further assuming that every signature on the 14,305 pages they never counted is invalid.

They then go on to examine, parse and fisk some of the names that "True the Vote" is claiming to be invalid. The TtV claims don't hold any water under even the simplest of examinations and only shows how fraudulent Walker's and their claims really are.

But the fraudulent claims from these teahadists might be the least of Walker's problems. His bigger issue is that he should have taken a look at them before hitching his campaign wagon to them.

TtV and its parent group, King Street Patriots, have shown suspicious behavior surrounding a mysterious fire in Houston Texas. When a fire of unknown origin destroyed all the voting machines in a prominently minority area of Houston, this group came out with a distinctly racist video (which they've since taken down) claiming rampant voter fraud, as part of a larger scheme of voter suppression.*

As if that wasn't enough evidence of the groups' racism, they became openly hostile to a Houston-based GOTV group, sending them rants and threatening messages, including this profanity-laden, horribly-misspelled doozy:

“You liberial scumbags should be hung by the neck in public ! We are on to your voter fraud. Keep it up you MOTHER FUCKERS and you will soon be put down for a long dirt nap! Your nothing but a bunch of white guilt ridden assholes, NIGGERS and greasy mexican spics! The WAR is comming and we are going to dispose of each and every one of you while we take OUR (White) nation back.”

The Democratic Party has a list of even more garbage these bigoted sociopaths have done, including photoshopping a woman's sign from "Don't mess with our vote" to "I only got to vote once." (The phosphorescent purple in comic sans was a dead give away, although I am surprised it was spelled correctly.)

As the saying goes, "One shall be known by the company they keep." If these racist, scurrilous and fraudulent fools are the people that Walker wants to associate with and use for his support, that's fine. But let's make sure everyone in the state know that these are the values and attitudes he is embracing with both arms.

*If the Republicans' agenda and plans were so wonderful, why do they keep trying to keep people from voting?

A Falsehood Wrapped In A Lie Wrapped In Deceit

Jud Loundsbury of Uppity Wisconsin found some amazing footage of Scott Walker interviewing with the Oshkosh Northwestern's editorial board. A key part of that footage includes this exchange:

Editorial Board Member: Before, we were talking about state employees contributing to their plan, paying their share of the pension plan. Collective bargaining come into that?
Walker: Yep (nodding yes)
Editorial Board Member: How do you get that negotiated and accepted by the state employee unions?
Walker: You still have to negotiate it. I did that at the county as well.

Loundsbury also edited the hour-long video to this:



Loundsbury's find was so notable that Dan Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote about it.

Kudos and applause to Loundsbury for this big score.

Loundsbury goes on to point out what should be obvious, that while in the video, Walker stated that he was going to negotiate with the unions, but in the sad light of day, we all learned better when he dropped his "bomb" of the Budget Disrepair Bill on the state.

But I'm afraid that my esteemed colleague missed a couple, three things and made a glaring mistake, although it was one that most people probably would have made. In fact, of all the repostings and mentions of it, I hadn't seen anyone else catch it yet either.

One thing that should be emphasized to strengthen the argument that Walker indeed did not campaign on the union busting is Walker's own sworn testimony which he gave before a congressional committee last spring:



Greg Sargent at the Washington Post also hammered that point home.

One thing that Loundsbury and the rest has missed is that around the same time that Walker was meeting with the editorial board, just before the election, he was also contacting the unions, warning and threatening them to cease and desist in their legal efforts to reach a contract, which was already overdue. In hindsight, it's obvious that Walker did not want them to have a contract because that would have thwarted, or at least greatly delayed, his secret scheme to bust the unions.

But where my esteemed colleague went awry was by taking anything Walker says without sufficient skepticism and cynicism:

Walker then goes on to say that he has used furloughs as a bargaining tool at the county level and that "we'd approach a similar strategy for the state," but said that he was open to compromise, saying "we're not locked into saying it has to be exactly the same" and that if unions could provide alternative routes to saving money he would be willing to explore those ideas.

That line Walker used as the furloughs being a bargaining tool, in itself, is the dead giveaway for anyone who works or had worked for Milwaukee County.

For the last two years as Milwaukee County Executive, Walker never once sat down at the negotiating table and offered a contract. He would only make his demands known through the media, trying to gain popular opinion on his dictatorial ways, instead of negotiating anything in good faith.

Despite refusing to negotiate with the unions, he still included the concessions in his budget, thereby making it an illegal budget which would never be balanced:

This brings us to the big black hole that is found in both the Executive’s proposed budget and the Board’s amended version.

In Walker’s proposed budget, he is counting on some 16% pay cuts from union workers, as well as laying at least 200 workers. The Board’s amended version is less drastic, but still requires a considerable pay cut and the lay off of a couple dozen workers.

The expectation of concessions by the unions is completely understandable, and to be expected, especially when one looks at what has happened in other bodies of government such as the City of Milwaukee, Dane County and the State of Wisconsin and their respective unions.

However, terms of the contract between the unions and the County, as well as state and federal labor laws intervene with their plans. The County and AFSCME had reached a Tentative Agreement based on good faith bargaining. Through a series of poor choices, this Agreement was put on hold, and eventually denied by the Board as a whole.

The actions and statements made by Executive Walker, the County Board, and Supervisor Johnny Thomas basically constitute bad faith bargaining and prohibited practices, as defined by the contract and the law.

It is my understanding that AFSCME has already filed lawsuits against the Board and Supervisor Thomas, and other suits are being contemplated at this time.

It also, ironically puts the County in a bargaining disadvantage. Supervisor John Weishan, who sits on the Personnel Committee, pointed out that Walker’s own labor negotiating team admitted that Walker’s proposal has a zero chance of winning in arbitration. That means that as long as AFSCME did not propose anything unreasonable, the odds of the union winning an arbitration was all but guaranteed. To make things even more likely to fall in the union’s favor was the fact that most of all the other local governments had successfully reached negotiations with their unions offering modest raises, along with other concessions from the unions. Milwaukee County did the same thing with the nurses union, eroding the County’s position even further.

It is expected that due to this artificial budget and its faulty suppositions, that there would be anywhere from a $15 million to a $32 million deficit on January 1, 2010. It is further expected that Executive Walker will use this contrived deficit as a reason to call a fiscal emergency and lay off workers.

Walker did impose his furloughs, as many as 26 for one year for some workers (including yours truly)as a punitive measure for failing to concede to the demands he never even once put on the negotiations table.

But even the furloughs were illegal and now cash-strapped Milwaukee County has been ordered to pay back all the furlough time, which comes to millions of dollars, plus 12% interest compounded daily. For every day that the county delays in paying this bill, the taxpayers are getting pounded for some $30,000 in interest.

If someone knows the current Milwaukee County Executive, Chris Abele, tell him I've got a way for him to resolve this crisis without sticking it to the taxpayers.

In summary, even while he was telling the editorial board he was going to negotiate concessions from the workers, he was already threatening the unions in order for him to implement his plan to bust the unions. And he was completely dishonest when he made claims that he negotiated things with the unions in Milwaukee County. The truth is he was trying to extort things from the unions and using them as political pawns.

As a savvy politico once pointed out, Walker's refusal to negotiate with the unions wasn't a sign of a leader, but of a petty little man who had to resort to bullying in place of the leadership skills he lacked.

What Walker did wasn't simply bait and switch. What Walker committed was outright fraud.

You Hoo! Fraud Commission! Found One!

The local paper which is hidden behind a pay wall is reporting that Scott Walker is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to a private investigation agency to go over 800 cases in the Foodshare program.

As I pointed out when Walker tried to do some damage control for his poor track record as governor, public sector workers used to do this for thousands of cases each year.  The most notable was Milwaukee County worker Cindy Jaeger, who recovered more money than anyone in the nation, and she sure as heck made a lot less money than Walker is paying this agency.

But I have one question that the story doesn't answer.  When Jaeger recouped the lost money, it went back to the county, since she was a county employee.  So who's getting the money that the private investigation agency supposedly finds?

Walker Has Found The Fraud, And It Is Him

Scott Walker, looking for something - anything - that wouldn't turn instantly toxic to his chances of surviving the coming recall, seized upon a report from his "Commission of Waste, Fraud and Abuse."

Sadly for Walker, but completely unsurprisingly, this too is blowing up on him.

Senator Chris Larson and Representative Mark Pocan, who are members of this "commission" have a more than a few issues with Walker's move born of desperation. From their press release:

The Walker report takes credit for savings the state has nothing to do with or savings already accounted for from previous actions of state government. The misleading report did not even include a final vote for passage by its members before completion. While Governor Walker has publicly touted his report, he has yet to release the report because it does not stand up to scrutiny, according to Pocan and Larson.

“Governor Walker’s commission issued a misleading report that takes credit for decisions that have already been made or that are outside of the authority of state government,” said Rep. Pocan. “Much of the supposed savings in Governor Walker’s plan are about as real as the Loch Ness Monster.”

[...]

Therefore, the commission was expected to identify new savings of state tax dollars to keep Governor Walker’s promise. According to Pocan and Larson, Walker’s report did not meet its goal.

“Taking credit for money saved under a federal bill that isn’t even law yet has nothing to do with finding current waste, fraud and abuse in state government,” said Sen. Larson. “This commission was more of a fraud upon the public than a useful roadmap into the future. In fact, Governor Walker is already ignoring a suggestion by the commission to invest more to crack down on tax cheats.”

The commission recommended hiring more tax collectors to crack down on tax cheats, which would generate much needed revenue for the state. However, the Walker Administration recently directed the Department of Revenue to lapse more than $2 million that was supposed to assist in the collection of taxes owed to the state.

Larson and Pocan also issued their own, truth-based report which rebuts Walker's bloviations rather effectively.

It should be noted that Larson and Pocan also have the quote of the week with their closing line in the report:

It is our hope that whoever is Governor in 2012 will have a more sincere interest in safeguarding the integrity of Wisconsin government and services

But there's more to the story than what even Larson and Pocan covered. And to be honest, it's something that Larson is all too familiar with from the days he served as Milwaukee County Supervisor.

In the Milwaukee Business Journal, they have this blurb at the end of their report on this issue:

The report said $177 million could be saved with changes to various state social service programs. FoodShare, for example, should hire internal inspector generals to conduct audits and implement measures to prevent sale of QUEST cards, which are the modern equivalent of food stamps.

What's not included in Walker's release or in the news report is another area where fraud was rampant, child care.

Nor is it included anywhere that I saw that the largest areas of these cases of fraud occurring was Milwaukee County, during the time that Walker was county executive.

In fact two years ago, I brought up this very issue. The state received an email from the federal government expressing concern regarding the poor performance of the Economic Support System in Milwaukee County. The poor performance is directly tied to Walker willfully failing to fully staff the program even though he had the funding to do so. You can read my entire post here at Milwaukee County First, but I would point out this section specifically:

The interview process is has two concerns tied into it. One is that if the ESS workers are not doing sufficient interviews, people might not be receiving all of the benefits that they are eligible for. In these dire economic times, every bit of help becomes vital.

The other side of the interview coin is that without sufficient in depth interviews, it could open up the Foodshare program for fraud, such as had happened with child care services.

By the way, after Governor Jim Doyle ordered the state take the program over and fully staffed it, in order to avoid a class action lawsuit, things improved.

I iterated and expanded on this point three months ago, here on Cog Dis, when Walker claimed he was going to resolve all the fraud:

The funny thing about all this is that it is the equivalent of Walker announcing he is going to clean up some milk that he spilled.

When he was Milwaukee County Executive, he actually helped foment and grow the problem by cutting the number of staff that were assigned to do fraud investigation. His mismanagement of this entire program led to a class action lawsuit being filed against Milwaukee County and the State of Wisconsin. Governor Jim Doyle saved Walker's political hide by taking over the state and bringing the program back to full staff and within compliance of the law.

One of the county workers that did do fraud investigation, Cynthia Jaeger, who was a county worker until her retirement a three years ago, was so good at her job that she won state recognition for her work and was the only worker in the entire nation to recoup more than $1 million in a single year. Cindy saved tax payers more than $5 million in a three year span. And she did that just at county wages, including furloughs.

So how did Walker, who claims that "preventing waste, fraud and abuse of tax payer dollars" is his top priority, recognize the hard work of Ms. Jaeger and all of the money she saved the tax payers? Employee of the month? Special commendation?

Nope, he let her retire without a word and without filling her then vacant position.

So much of the fraud that Walker's commission "found" was actually caused by Walker and his "money-saving" stunts that he pulled as county executive.  And as always, it will be the taxpayers and the most vulnerable citizens that will end up paying for his maleficent negligence.

I could have saved the taxpayers tons of money and expense by writing the commission's fraud three months ago, with the perfect solution as well:

See how easy that was?

Walker Announces He'll Clean Up His Own Mess, Acolytes Sing Paeans

Scott Walker made a grandiose state on Thursday, announcing that he is creating a new position of inspector general to go after all of the fraud that is happening in the various DHS programs which are aimed at aiding the poor, the disabled and the elderly.

Walker acolyte and yes man, Owen Robinson, is besides himself in pleasure of this announcement.  He even goes as far as to state that the position should be paid on commission instead of a salary, despite it being a civil service job.  He must be so used to Walker's long history of pay to play that he actually thinks it's a way to run government.

The funny thing about all this is that it is the equivalent of Walker announcing he is going to clean up some milk that he spilled.

When he was Milwaukee County Executive, he actually helped foment and grow the problem by cutting the number of staff that were assigned to do fraud investigation.  His mismanagement of this entire program led to a class action lawsuit being filed against Milwaukee County and the State of Wisconsin.  Governor Jim Doyle saved Walker's political hide by taking over the state and bringing the program back to full staff and within compliance of the law.

One of the county workers that did do fraud investigation, Cynthia Jaeger, who was a county worker until her retirement a three years ago, was so good at her job that she won state recognition for her work and was the only worker in the entire nation to recoup more than $1 million in a single year.  Cindy saved tax payers more than $5 million in a three year span.  And she did that just at county wages, including furloughs.

So how did Walker, who claims that "preventing waste, fraud and abuse of tax payer dollars" is his top priority, recognize the hard work of Ms. Jaeger  and all of the money she saved the tax payers?  Employee of the month? Special commendation?

Nope, he let her retire without a word  and without filling her then vacant position.

Walker's only priority is to lie, cheat and steal his way into conning people into thinking he is anything more than a puppet for the big-moneyed special interests.  And he's not even doing that very well.

I wonder if the inspector general will do anything about the biggest cause of fraud and abuse of tax payer dollars...or if he's just going to wait until the people recall Walker.

Walker Phones It In With "Job Hotline"

When Scott Walker first traded in sacking Milwaukee County in favor of pillaging the State of Wisconsin, he made a grand showboating affair of setting up a "Jobs Hotline" for businesses to call in with suggestions and/or questions.  The premise was that he was going to smooth the way for business to relocate to Wisconsin or for companies already here to grow and bring in his 250,000 jobs he promised.

Many observed at the time that he was treating businesses better than the citizens of this once and future great state.

Well, it turns out that his hot line is a cold fish:

Few leads and apparently no jobs have come from a hotline for businesses looking to expand or relocate to Wisconsin that was set up as part of Gov. Scott Walker's plan last year for creating 250,000 jobs during his first term.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel obtained the hotline's log from its creation on Jan. 28 through Aug. 25 through an open records request. The newspaper reported that no jobs appeared to have been created as a result of the 113 calls logged.

That's about one phone call every other day. And even with that low amount of calls and the fact that he had a full time staff person for the phone, a whopping 39% of the calls to the "hot line" got a call back in less than 24 hours, another thing that Walker had promised.

Boy, doesn't that bring back the memories?!

It seems just like yesterday, when then County Executive had willfully chosen to ignore and neglect the people who were losing their jobs as the recession was start to reach its full impact. Back then, he would only have five to ten people working in the call center even though he had enough money to pay for 30 workers. This led to only a small percentage of calls being answered, much less any of them being returned.

Perhaps the problem with answering the phone for the jobs hotline is not that the person was overwhelmed, but the underwhelmed with the quality of calls:

But not all calls were as promising. One caller in the hotline's records for the first week let Walker's staff know that she "wants to be president of the United States," according to the call logs. Another woman called in to say she had a "turkey recipe" and wanted to start a business, according to the phone log.

Then again, given Walker's arrogance and slow learning curve, it could have been that that poor staff person was too busy to answer the phone because they were busy commenting at JSOnline or working on getting campaign donations for his defense against the recall or in regards to Walkergate.  Or maybe they were afraid to the leave the Koch phone in case the real David Koch were to call.