Taxpayer Funded Voter Suppression - There's More!

Deanna Alexander and her benefactor, Boss Abele

Last week, we reported about Milwaukee County Supervisor Deanna Alexander, a "rising star" among Republicans who caught caught using taxpayer money to send out a newsletter falsely informing people that they needed a photo ID to vote, even though the US Supreme Court had put a stop to it for the November elections.

Alexander defended herself by saying that she sent out a correction postcard to notify her constituents that her newsletter contained the false claim.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel did a blurb about the incident, giving Alexander cover by calling it a mistake.

Instead of keeping quiet and hoping the story would go away, Alexander tore into the journalist, Georgia Pabst, in a press release from her official office. Alexander accused the reporter of of "sloppy journalism":

Friday evening, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter Georgia Pabst published an article with a misleading title and context.

Ms. Pabst called Supervisor Deanna Alexander twice on Friday to ask about a newsletter sent to constituents in October. The newsletter, accurate at publication, alerted fall general election voters that they would need to show a photo ID to vote. After the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Voter ID requirement for the November election, Supervisor Alexander used email, social media, and a second mailing—a bold post card—to update voters with the new information that electors would not need to provide an ID in order to vote.

“Ms. Pabst knew all of this, yet continued to publish an article falsely proclaiming that the notice was a mistake,” Supervisor Alexander said. “This irresponsible report has increased confusion by leading voters to believe that I either didn’t notice the error or purposely sent untrue information.”

“Ms. Pabst knew on Friday that I had provided voters with two rounds of information and that each were accurate at the time I published them; there was no mistake. Her article is
disappointing and sloppy journalism.” Supervisor Alexander concluded.

Like I said, Alexander would have been better keeping her mouth shut.

It turns out that Pabst did some more of that sloppy journalism and found that Alexander was lying through her teeth.

First off, she did not send the correction postcard. Milwaukee County Clerk Joe Czarnezki, who had received numerous complaints about Alexander's newsletter, is the person who sent out the postcard correcting her lie:

The post card mailing sent out the weekend before the November 4 election to 7,000 constituents of County Supervisor Deanne Alexander to tell them they did not need a photo ID to vote, was initiated and paid for by County clerk Joe Czarnezki.

Czarnezki said he received complaints about the information in Alexander’s newsletter that was received by many residents in Alexander’s northwest side district the weekend of October 25 saying they needed photo ID to vote. After consulting with the Government Accountability Board in Madison, the board recommended that correspondence be sent correcting the information, so the post card mailing was prepared, he said.

Postage and mailing for the post card cost about $2,000, he said. Alexander’s name was on the post card, along with Czarnezki’s . She contacted him about the matter after the post card preparation was under way, he said.

But there's more!

Pabst found out that Alexander's misleading and false newsletter wasn't mailed until October 21, almost two full weeks after the Supreme Court ruling. Alexander had more than enough time to stop the mailing of the newsletter, if not the printing of it. Yet she willfully chose to do nothing.

Something tells me that this is not the end of this story. Because when it comes to Republican corruption, there's more. There's always more.

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.

Tonette's Chili Extravaganza

Tonette Walker, wife of Scott Walker, has the same sense of entitlement has her husband. The poor dear just can't make her world-famous chili unless she has a state of the art, half a million dollar kitchen:

The Wisconsin Department of Administration is asking the State Building Commission to approve $478,700 in general fund supported borrowing for kitchen renovations at the Governor's mansion.

The request for the revamp of both the first floor kitchen and the second floor private quarters kitchenette originally came from First Lady Tonette Walker.

The First Lady and members of WERF, the non-profit Wisconsin Executive Residence Foundation, first pitched the idea of kitchen renovations to the State Capital and Executive Residence Board in September of 2011.

Minutes from that meeting show that WERF was going to request in-kind donations to replace the kitchen without any structural/permanent changes.

But in the DOA's request to the State Building Commission, the project description includes several changes to the kitchen with the installation of new equipment, such as commercial grade storage cabinets, shelving, disposal, dishwasher, oven, stove, refrigerators and freezers.

It also calls for the installation of new cabinetry and updates to existing ceiling and lighting features.

Since when does the spouse of the governor get to direct how taxpayer money is being spent? Who does she think she is, Todd Palin?

But half a million of our tax dollars being squandered so she can cook chili? Apparently, croquet games and Koch-O Brown lipstick doesn't draw in the money like they thought it would. Either that or maybe Walker diverted that money to his legal defense fund. He will be needing that real soon like.

And if you want to see what a half million dollar kitchen looks like, check it out.

If this story seems like old news, that just might be because I told you about it here first.

I'm sure that those tax watch dogs, like Wisconsin Reporter, Media Trackkkers, and CRG will be getting right on this.

H/T to a special friend of Cog Dis for the article and the picture.

Those Must Be Some Damn Good Sammiches

Remember how Scott Walker told us that the state was broke and that drastic cuts had to be made?

In response, he slashed workers' pay and pulled hundreds of millions of dollars out of circulation so that his campaign donors could keep it safe in their safes. This in turned has tanked our economy and has cost us more jobs than just about any other state in the nation.

He also cut services which has had devastating results, including deaths of vulnerable citizens.

But through amazing prowess of his budgeting skills, he has found a half million dollars to do some renovation to the governor's mansion. But only to the kitchen.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Even though Walker doesn't have enough money to allow people access to healthcare, to give laid off workers unemployment compensation, to pay his own workers, he's got $500,000 to redo his kitchen.

And you thought Robin Vos was bad.

Those must be some really special sammiches he takes to work every day. Or maybe Tonette's chili is that special that she needs a kitchen worth more than most people's houses.

So remember, when you're wondering how you're going to pay the bills, feed your family and keep your house, Scott and Tonette are also roughing it. They could have had a million dollar kitchen.

The worst part of it is that he might not even be able to enjoy his new kitchen for long. Unless he gets a kitchen job in the prison he gets assigned to after John Doe is done with him.

Adventures With Walker's New Emissions Testing Program

Earlier this week, I wrote about the problems that are already occurring with Scott Walker's new vehicle emissions testing system. Walker decided to put the foxes in charge of the hen house by having auto repair garages do the testing. Since the change happened only a few weeks ago, there are already problems, from an inordinate amount of cars failing to pass the test to the very same garages doing the tests trying to overcharge customers by upselling them repairs they don't need.

The state and the new company that Walker contracted to do the testing, Systech, pushed the change as making it even faster and more convenient. They need to be brought up on charges of false advertising.

What I did not mention in the previous posts was that one of our vehicles was due to be tested so that we could get the tags renewed. And this set off quite an adventure.

Under the old system, we would drive to the nearest testing station, which was about three or four miles away. Sometimes we'd have to wait up to 30 minutes, but often it was only 5 or 10 minutes. The car would be tested and we'd be on our way.

Under the new system, we first had to look up the new testing places. There were four places listed in our area. We knew of all of the places, but were only familiar with two of them. One was the dealership where we bought our cars and the other was a local garage where my dad had his oil changed a few times and did some work on one of our cars once. The other two was another dealership and a garage that we knew already knew had a bad reputation.

My wife, who would be taking the vehicle in for testing, wanted to go to the garage we were familiar with, Cleveland Auto Repair. We both thought that the dealer would try to upsell her services that she didn't need or want.

It turned out to be what we thought a good idea since my dad had to take his van in for an oil change and to have a 'check engine' light checked out. We could each take care of our business with one stop. Or so we thought.

My dad made an appointment for Friday morning, and my wife met him there so he could leave his car for them to work on.

By mid afternoon, the van wasn't ready yet, so my wife went back to the shop just to get our car tested. When she arrived, they told her that their machine was broken so they couldn't do any testing. They told her to come back the next day. This raised a red flag for me. Just how does one break a machine that doesn't have any stress put on it in just two weeks?

By the end of the day, my dad's van still wasn't ready and he had no word from the garage on its status. When we drove to the garage, there was a mechanic there working on his personal collector's car, but he couldn't give us any information on the van. Both my father and my wife remarked on how it didn't look like they had even moved the van all day.

Saturday morning, my wife picked up my father and they went back to the garage. His van still wasn't done. They said that they couldn't figure out the cause of a problem that didn't even exist with the van. When my dad confronted them, they copped an attitude and was very rude to my father. Needless to say he chose to take his van and go elsewhere. The odd thing is, even though they said that they had worked for hours on my dad's van, they had never even moved the seat. We know this because my dad keeps the seat far up and the mechanics were too tall to even get in the car much less drive it without moving the seat.

At the same time, they told my wife that the emissions testing device was still broken.

She then went to the dealership and got the car tested (it passed) but that took her an hour. And, as we had suspected they would, they tried to upsell her some services that she didn't ask about and didn't need.

So all told, it took my wife two days and two different places just to get a test done. And this doesn't include the aggravation from all the unnecessary chasing and hassle dealing with rude people and people trying to push unwanted and unneeded services. Not exactly what I would call convenient, much less quicker.  It's definitely a matter of Walker and company trying to blow smoke up our tailpipes.

That said, it's probably just as good that the garage didn't have their machine working (if indeed it truly wasn't), considering the crap they tried to pull on my dad.

After all this, I decided that I wanted to file a complaint about this. The one thing I noted immediately is that the website for the program, which is supposed to be a state program, actually belongs to the Systech. As you imagine, it has their logo and a whole page dedicated to self-promotion. That makes me wonder, are we, the taxpayers, paying the company to advertise themselves on our dime?

It would fit in with the theme of Corporate Fitzwalkerstan. As does the typical routine of Republicans "fixing" what ain't broke, thereby breaking it but good.

UPDATE: I found that the garage had a Facebook page, so I left my complaint there.  There response was less than professional, to say the least:

The Walker Budget Keeps Working! Part CXXXIV

Scott Walker sure as the Midas touch* when it comes to job creation.

As Lisa Mux points out, Walker recently bragged about his morally and fiscally bankrupt Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) was giving a $15 million tax credit to Plexus Corp to create 350 jobs.

So how's that working out? Just as well as you'd imagine:

Contract electronics manufacturer Plexus Corp. has laid off 116 employees in the Appleton area.

Half of the layoffs are fulltime salaried employees and half are temporary workers.

Plexus reported strong third-quarter earnings last week. But the company made the layoffs this week in response to a decrease in customer orders.

Senior vice president and chief financial officer Ginger Jones tells The Post-Crescent (http://post.cr/NLlpqn) that while the layoffs are unfortunate, they are "a small percentage" of the company's headcount in the Fox Cities.

Jones says the local overall workforce is about 2,000. The layoffs were at one of the company's two sites in the Appleton area, but Jones did not specify which.

Isn't it grand to watch Walker's laser sharp focus on job creation in action?!

*Midas touch as in everything resembles a pile of rusty mufflers, not the mythological king who turned everything into gold.

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?