There's Still Time To Help The Monarchs

I recently advised the gentle reader that once again the Monarch Trail was in peril, this time from the state's Department of Transportation.

Gretchen Schuldt has now advised us that the DOT is still taking feedback, now until August 10. More information can be found at her site, CASH.

Monarch Trail Again Being Threatened

After the valiant efforts of people like the Friends of the Monarch Trail, especially Barb Agnew, several County Supervisors, notably John Weishan, and the gentle readers of this humble blogsite, the Monarch Trail was given a fighting, if slim, chance to survive.

Now the Trail is being threatened by a new enemy, WISDOT. Gretchen Schuldt gives us the story:

So WisDOT wants to destroy part of the butterfly trail. What is the impact of that? Will the butterflies settle for only part of a berm and wind break? Will the added noise and pollution from the closer, bigger freeway scare them off or kill them? Will the cumulative impact of the potential freeway project and the proposed construction of the UWM engineering school harm the habitat?

WisDOT doesn't even consider those things. After all, as the agency notes, the butterflies "have no special regulatory protection."

They are just in the way.

It is time again to pick up our phones, our pens, and our keyboards and again take to the defense of the Monarch Trail.

From an email I received this morning from Barb, including an email from Gretchen:

The public hearing for the EIS is today and tomorrow at State Fair Park. Details are here: http://citizensalliedforsanehighways.blogspot.com/2009/06/zoo-interchange-public-hearings-this.html

Comments on the EIS are due by July 13.

They should be sent to

Jim Liptack, project manager

Wisconsin Department of Transportation, Southeast Region

141 Barstow St.

Waukesha, WI 53187

dotdtsdsezoo@dost.state.wi.us

The EIS is at http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/projects/sefreeways/docs/deis-home.pdf

Just be careful if you go to the State Fair Grounds. James Rowen is reporting that he is hearing rumors that WISDOT is being rather Stalinistic.

Just Like The Academy Awards

It was announced today that the Milwaukee County Parks System is one of the finalists for an award with a rather lengthy name: "2009 National Gold Medal for Excellence in the Park and Recreation Management Program."

The echo chamber, including, but not limited to, Charlie Sykes, Preview McIlheran, Kevin Fischer, Patrick Dorwin, Owen Robinson, and Cindy Kilkenny (who had to go and make it personal), all chipped in declaring that this put to rest the stories that the parks were a shambles. Walker couldn't resist saying so himself either.

Appropriately enough, Parks Director described it as the "parks equivalent of an Academy Awards." I say that she described it accurately, since there seems to be some kind of story line going on. But this is a very poorly written story, full of holes in the plot.

The first point is really a minor one, but the easiest to point out. Walker and Black both say this is in high praise of the park workers. That is swell. But if the park workers are so darn good (which, of course, they are), why does Walker keep trying to lay them off each year?

But now the story gets a little more complex.

Some eighteen months ago, Gretchen Schuldt and Brew City Brawler, here, here and here, gave us picture proof that the parks were not in very good shape. Last summer, Gretchen showed us that the parks not only hadn't improved, and that Walker had proposed to slash maintenance funding by some 72%, which belies the claim by whoever filled out the application for the award.

Something just wasn't adding up, and it was about to get weirder.

In the article on JSOnline, they quote County Board Supervisor as stating that there was still a $276 million dollar backlog in repairs due. With all due respect, I would suggest that the good Supervisor check his numbers again.

Just last July, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a story telling us how Milwaukee County was lagging behind the rest of the nation in parks spending, and boy, did it show. Just a week later, the paper ran another story telling us that 32 park bathrooms received a D grade and 11 of them failed outright. It was so bad that to fix the 11 failing bathrooms, it would cost the County $862,000. However, the 2009 budget didn't include nearly enough money to cover either of these totals. This, of course, doesn't mention that Walker now wants to cut the budget by another 6% for the rest of the year.

There is no way that all of these repairs were done in nine months with insufficient funds.

But we're not done yet. This mystery is about to turn into a murder mystery. Besides the obvious disconnect from reality in thinking that the park fairies came and fixed everything, something was not adding up. There seemed to be three different story lines.

We have the JSOnline article (which I expect to appear in tomorrow morning's paper) and we have the press release from Walker. These two don't seem to fit together too well, but not enough to raise any eyebrows. But there is a third story.

Thanks to Owen Robinson's unique blogging style, in which he links to the story and then copies and pastes a paragraph or three, we see this:

Judges have named the Milwaukee County Parks Department a finalist in a competition for the best managed park program in the nation.

The county parks system is one of the top four contenders for the 2009 National Gold Medal for Excellence in the Park and Recreation Management Program. Leaders from the American Academy for Park and Recreation Administration and the National Recreation and Park Association choose the top candidates each year based on a review of their master plans and a 12-minute video featuring the department’s programs.

Now that just doesn't fit either of the other two. Well, Lady Luck was smiling on me while I was getting all the different sites up. While combing through MJS's archives, I noticed that this story was originally done this morning, by a different reporter altogether:


I then went back and reread Owen's post, and things became clearer. This award isn't about having the best parks. It is about the "best managed" parks which was being decided by a 12-minute video and a "master plan."

In other words, they can take some footage of the beach from last summer, the Domes, a couple of golf courses and put it in a video. Then they can come up with the whatever wish list they want to have and submit that with the video. It doesn't meant that the plan has to be actually implemented or even be that it be even close to being realistic.

And those are the kinds of things that Walker is very, very good at.

It still doesn't explain why the paper decided to kill the first story. Maybe they are planning on a sequel.

But I wish Mr. Walker all the best in this contest. If he wins, there is a good chance he could parlay that into another victory in 2010. No, not the gubernatorial election. I still don't think he will even make it to the primary election. The victory I was referring to happens in Burlington.

Is Walker A Compulsive Liar?

Last week, when the Milwaukee County Board overwhelmingly overrode Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker's veto of the Board's resolution to aggressively seek stimulus dollars, Walker brushed it off as being inconsequential:

Meanwhile, Walker said his defeat on the issue would have little practical effect. He challenged supervisors to come up with a single example where his caution on the federal aid resulted in the county losing out.

"In the end, I think you will see very little impact," Walker said. He'll have county staff review all potential opportunities and apply for funds according to the County Board policy, Walker said.

I don't know how Walker does his math, but it is obviously not in the manner that most people would consider to be rational. In a press conference, and subsequent press release, County Supervisor Theodore Lipscomb pointed out that Walker did in fact miss quite a bit. To the tune of more than $6 million dollars. Some of the places this money will be going to include improving runway safety areas at the airport, energy efficiency and conservation in all of the 600 some buildings the County owns, new sheriff squad cars, more community prosecutors, and improvements in the parks.

Lipscomb sums it up with this:

“These projects, benefiting Milwaukee County, somehow failed to make it on to the County Executive’s list. This highlights why the County Board has taken such an active interest in the pursuit of economic stimulus funds. We are worried that Milwaukee County will miss some valuable opportunities if we don’t remain vigilant, active, and vocal on this issue."

There is also this handy little chart to highlight the benefits that Lipscomb was talking about.

I find it truly outrageous that not only did Walker lie about the amount of benefits that he was willing to short change the taxpayers on, but that he did it knowing damn well that, due to his short-sighted, incompetent administration of the County, it was now, only barely a quarter into the fiscal year, already facing a $14 million dollar budget shortfall.

And despite giving his cronies excessive raises without anyone being notified and still planning on his taxpayer-funded campaign cruise around the state in June, he is asking for each department to cut spending by 3% in order to cover his butt during his run for the governor's office. Of course, I shouldn't have to mention that it was this kind of management from Walker's administration that led to the state having to come in and take over the Income Maintenance Program.

And don't even get me going on this piece of tripe he managed to get printed in last weekend's newspaper. That would be worthy of a post in itself. Something like what Dan Cody already did.

But it is not only the general population that Walker is lying to. He is also lying to his base support group.

Walker has long made a grandstand showing of his stance against stimulus dollars, or later, what he defined as "irresponsible" stimulus dollars. But at today's meeting of the County Board's Stimulus Task Force, Walker's people handed out a list of of what could best be described as his stimulus wish list.

With the help of my friend, Gretchen Schuldt, author of Milwaukee Rising and CASH, I am able to provide you with a copy of Walker's Stimulus Application Summary (pdf) (which I am sure was quickly updated by Walker's staff after Supervisor Lipscomb's press conference earlier that day). I will admit that I was pleasantly surprised by some of the things Walker wishes for. I never would have expected Walker to apply for that many green projects from boosting energy efficiency and conservation to alternative fueled vehicles or for things like the youth mentoring program.

I'm just not too sure on how Walker's willingness to go after that sort of stimulus money, or that large amount of stimulus money, is going to play with his extreme right-wing support base. I also can't find one of the listed items that meets his three criteria regarding stimulus dollars. How convenient for him that he doesn't have to follow his own rules.

I only wish that the County Board had worked up the gumption and the backbone to pin Walker's ears back long ago. It might have helped to avoid a lot of the mess that Walker has gotten us into already.

Walker Does More Damage To Milwaukee County

The effects of Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker's incompetence and negligence is starting to compound, and Milwaukee County citizens and taxpayers are taking the brunt of it.

Over the last several years, the Milwaukee County Board had issued proposal after proposal to put a referendum increasing the sales tax in Milwaukee County. The purpose of the proposal was to make head way for restoring things like the transit system and the parks, while lowering property taxes for Milwaukee County citizens.

Each time the Board offered a proposal, Walker would veto it, and the Board would fail to override it.

This all changed last year, with the help of the Quality of Life Alliance, and liberal bloggers, like yours truly, the people of Milwaukee County were finally allowed to have their voices heard on the matter, and the referendum passed. Walker, instead of listening to the people, chose only to insult them instead.

To this day, due to Walker's putting his own political aspirations ahead of the common good, as done nothing to help the will of the people become reality, and the issue sits unattended to. One would think that a good leader would, in these terrible economic times, want to do what he or she could to bring relief to the people. This is even more true, considering that Walker's only plank in his platform is his anti-tax position. But grandstanding has always been more important than good governance, in Walker's myopic vision.

And before my conservative detractors would argue against the sales tax being useful, I would strongly suggest that they cast their eyes northward to Washington County, which passed a sales tax back in 1999. They are really reaping the benefits of it, too:

Washington County collected a record $9.55 million in 2008 from its half-cent sales tax, county Finance Director Susan Haag said Monday.

County sales tax revenue increased $428,469, or nearly 4.7%, from 2007, records show. Sales tax collections have increased each year since the tax was established in 1999.

In 2008, about 70% of sales tax revenue was used to finance building renovations, major equipment purchases and new construction projects. The county allocated the remaining 30% to its 2008 operating budget for debt payments and other expenses. The sales tax dollars eliminated the need to spend property tax dollars for those purposes.

For 2009, an estimated 50% of sales tax dollars will be used for debt payments and other operating costs. Consequently, the county for the first time in at least a quarter-century was able to cut its annual property tax levy this year.

Obviously, the sales tax didn't make Washington County a "tax island", and it is benefiting its citizens immensely, with all of the improvements to their county's infrastructure. And they were able to cut their property taxes as well! This, of course, made one of Walker's biggest fans, Owen Robinson, very happy. I just find it unfortunate that Owen, like Walker, didn't think Milwaukee County taxpayers should be allowed the same consideration.

Walker denying Milwaukee County taxpayers relief, while restoring vital services like transit, is bad enough, but it doesn't stop just there.

We already know that Walker doesn't want any stimulus dollars, even after he asked for stimulus dollars. Then he wanted the stimulus dollars again, but only if he could live in the land of make-believe. Well, guess what. He's against taking any stimulus dollars again.

Fortunately, County Board Lee Holloway showed the leadership that Walker lacks, and took it upon himself to fill out his own list of needs that the stimulus money could be put towards.

I learned today, from two independent sources, that the County Board, seeing that Walker was going to be a complete fool, went ahead and formed a committee to help streamline the process of getting and using the stimulus money that will be coming to Milwaukee County, no thanks to Walker.

Unfortunately, this committee has already hit a roadblock by Walker when he ordered his department heads to not cooperate with this committee in any shape, way or form. This is insanity. It doesn't matter whether Walker thinks the stimulus dollars are a good idea or not. The bill has already been signed. It's a done deal.

For Walker to refuse to take advantage of the money, even though we are going to get taxed to pay for it, is no longer political posturing. Again, it is utter insanity. It is like chipping in for an elaborate feast, and then, even though you're literally starving to death, you refuse to eat any of the food.

I also found out today that Walker has ordered Sue Black and the Parks Department to slash the budget by cutting out a full 50% of the seasonal help. This means that the parks will look even crappier this year. Not only that, but it will effect the safety of the public as that it would also affect the number of lifeguards and the number of the park rangers that he touted last couple of years as a means to keep park-goers safe. It will also affect other areas like the zoo. If you wonder why you can't get your kid an ice-cream or a hot dog, because the concessions stands are closed, now you know why.

I am simply dreading to see Walker's 2010 budget proposal. That is when people are really going to start feeling the pain.

Adding to the mess that he is making, his is risky proposal for obligating the county to a $400 million dollar in pension bonds. The ever-astute Gretchen Schuldt is on top of that story with her post this morning, being the only source to tell people ahead of time that there was even going to be a informational session on the matter. She also spoke with County Board Supervisor John Weishan, who explains why the pension bond scheme is a shaky plan at best.

But as Weishan pointed out in Gretchen's post, Walker doesn't care about resolving the pension crisis. He is only worried about giving the false impression that he is resolving it long enough for him to make another already-doomed run at the governor's mansion. This was his method of operation leading up to his failed 2006 campaign, and he is trying it again, even though it will be even harder for him to hide his failures this time around.

Which all leads us to the ongoing question (say it with me): Can we recall him now? Please?

The Outrage Continues...

The reaction from Walker's campaign speech, er, I mean State of the County address, continues to pour in.

First out of the box is Jacob Pickard, who notes that Walker's motives seem to be less than altruitstic:

I hope Milwaukeeans finally realized the mistake they made in re-electing Scott Walker. His utter mismanagement of Milwaukee County, it's disgraceful.

He is no Tommy Thompson, Thompson was at least pragmatic, and he tried to build consensus among the State.

Walker cares only for himself and his ambition to become governor, he only cares about his rightwing base. Scott Walker is an opportunist, and has used Milwaukee as his platform for 30 second ads in the campaign. "No Taxes, No Taxes"

Just imagine the Damage he could do as governor.

My good friend, Gretchen Schuldt, hopes Walker is kidding:

Tax cuts also don’t fix the county roads that are falling apart, or the huge deferred maintenance backlog that has only grown worse since Walker took the helm.

It’s a shame that when the country, county and their citizens are bleeding, Walker is out there pandering to his ever-narrower base instead of working for the broadest common good.

Another good chum, Ken Mobile, recently rejoined to the blogosphere and is already in mid-election season form.

Supervisor Jursik, who is far from being one of my favorite County Board Supervisors, does make a strong valid point, when she calls a spade a spade, and wants her shovel back:

“County Executive Scott Walker, may I please have my shovel back? Your February 16th press conference noted that “we” (the County) are doing the heavy lifting while “you” posed in front of 20 clean shovels criticizing Governor Jim Doyle. The 20 shovels represented 19 Supervisors and 1 County Executive. “You” touted a balanced budget and proclaimed that “you” have kept County budgets to a reasonable 2% increase over the years.

“I will need my shovel for some heavy lifting: The County now has over $300 million in deferred park maintenance and millions more in deferred road maintenance costs accumulated during your tenure. The County Board recognizes that our transit system is in a major crisis, and we have consistently overridden your vetoes of dedicated funding. In fact, “we” at the County Board had to override about 2/3 of your vetoes for this year’s budget. Compare this to Republican Governor Tommy Thompson’s zero overrides.

“Due in part to your recent public comments on the issue, I truly fear that Milwaukee County will not get a fair share of stimulus money. I will need this shovel to repair our crumbling County roads and buildings. I have begged you to fix College Avenue in my district, a project that has been on the capital repair budget for the terms of three prior 8th District Supervisors. It is now in jeopardy again as the new postal facility has been delayed. The Mayor of one of my district cities described this road as a “third-world road” because of its condition.

“The County budget has shown reasonable increases only because of the actions of the County Board of Supervisors, so I’m not really sure if your shovel has gotten any use. I wish that our news media would do more than cover groundbreaking ceremonies like the one at Bucyrus, which is a great company in my district. I know it is not as sexy to show footage of crumbling roads and park pavilions, but it is this reality that brings me to my plea: May I please have my shovel back, I’m going to need it badly as we work on the 2010 County budget!”

Meanwhile, Walker remains clueless and a laughing stock for the rest of the state.

Gee, Do You Think There May Be A Correlation?

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is hurting.

They reported a 10% drop in revenue in November. Their circulation numbers keep dropping.

This is despite the fact that they've cut staff three times in the past year or two, the latest including the latest cut of 39 more people.

And with less reporters and less staff, the paper keeps shrinking in size and in coverage. To make things even worse for them, when their editorial board does cover something, they're getting it wrong - a lot.

But despite having the paper circling the proverbial drain, they still manage to give one of their departing top executives a sweetheart deal worth almost a half a million dollars.

I'm sure it will be only a matter of time before they go begging for a federal bailout. But I think Gretchen Shuldt put it best:

Wow. The paper shrinks, the stock falls, layoffs happen, employees and retirees suffer and big payouts happen at the top. Go figure.

My Condolences To Gretchen

Gretchen Schuldt, author of Milwaukee Rising and Citizens Allied for Sane Highways, and one of the most respectable bloggers from either side of the Cheddarsphere, has recently lost her best friend and husband, David Doege.

It is my most sincere wishes for David to rest in peace, and my hopes and prayers go out to Gretchen that she may find any condolences and lessening of the pain in the memories she has of David.

MJS Goes For Change, McCain Style

Today, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel announced that they are making even more changes at the paper. This is in continuation of changes made earlier this year when they cut many of their better reporters, columnists and other staff members. Unfortunately for us, it is not the postive kind of change that Barack Obama promises. It's more of the same as before, but only worse, kind of change that McCain keeps trying to tout.

As Gretchen Schuldt points out, they are cutting corners and cheapening the paper even further, and trying to spin it into some sort of pap that even the most ravenous beast would snub:

JS readers likely are well aware of the huge turmoil in the newspaper industry. It’s OK to tell us the truth — cutting suburban editions saves money and the paper really, really needs to do that to survive. It’s also OK to tell us that it will indeed affect what we read. Trying to cram more suburban news into a single local edition obviously will affect coverage and content — the change will not, as Koetting contends, be “for many of you…almost imperceptible.”

That’s the kind of thing that should only be in the funny pages.

I still get the hard copy of the paper. I enjoy reading the news, reading the funnies and doing the puzzle games as I eat my breakfast and have my morning pot of coffee. Today, even with all the expanded coverage of last night's Packer game, I still finished the paper 20 minutes faster than normal.

The MJS has gut the paper even further, lumping all the local news into one section. That is OK to an extent, but that means some smaller stories that might be pertinent to any given community might not be covered, as that it may not be as important to the editors than another story from another community. And even on slow news days, I don't really want to read about Aunt Martha from West Bend and her prize winning apple preserve recipe.

Not only are they cutting their news coverage, they are cutting their special sections. The Food section will be blended into the Cue. The Health section got cut and replaced by a monthly insert, that tells people nothing and is mostly advertisements. They'll be cutting back on the editorial section at least two days a week, and have dropped Doonesbury and Mallard Fillmore. (OK, I'll admit I'm glad the dumb duck is gone.)

They have also cut back on the Cue section, dropping three comic strips: Non Sequitur, The Flying McCoys and For Better or For Worse. The last one is due to the artist retiring and is understandable. What is not understandable is they drop two of the funnier cartoons, but keep the The Family Circus.

Not only is the quantity of the paper being diminished, but their conservative spin continues to be more and more obvious. Take their political coverage for example. While the McCain/Palin visit to already conservative Cedarburg was front page and took up a large share of the paper, Biden's visit in Green Bay gets buried inside, by the death notices. I really don't understand how anyone with an IQ higher than a fetid mouse turd can believe that the media is liberal.

And if all that wasn't enough to curdle the milk in your cereal bowl, they are also threatening their online site.

I've said it before, and it is even more true now. This paper isn't even worth the paper it's printed on. As I mentioned earlier, I still get their hard copy every morning. I know for a fact that I will not be renewing my subscription when it expires. I will have to check my records, and if the renewal date is to far off, I will cancel it now, and get a refund. There's no sense in throwing good money after bad.

Now, please excuse me, but I have to go if I can find a reliable, unbiased source for local news.

Can I Have A Witness?

Things aren't looking to good for Scott Walker and Milwaukee County's chances to recoup any money regarding the pension scandal.

Scott Walker has dedicated county staff and money to a lawsuit against the Mercer Human Resource Consulting Inc. to try to get some money back from the pension scandal. (I should specify that this is the first pension scandal, with the large backdrops, etc. The second pension scandal, involving buybacks of time, is still on the shelf to the best of my knowledge.) The premise is that Mercer failed to adequately notify the County that the pension enhancements were going to cost a lot of money.

Even though the hearing isn't scheduled until January, there have been lots of action going on, and none of it looks good for the County.

Gretchen Schuldt, at Milwaukee Rising, has been doing a wonderful job of keeping us informed of issues surrounding the case. She has pointed out that Stuart Piltch, who was supposed to be a key witness for the County, has made some apparently untrue claims that he was secretly trained by the CIA, even though he was not supposed to tell anyone about this supposed training.

Now that it came out that the CIA has denied having anything to do with Piltch, he has suddenly succumbed to "health concerns" and has removed himself from the list of witnesses for the County.

To make things even worse, Ms. Schuldt reports that Mercer has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The rationale for the motion is based on a number of key depositions that contradict previous statements made by the witnesses. Those who are having their testimony challenged include County Board Supervisors Borkowski and DeBruin, as well as members of the Pension Study Committee.

This weekend, the County has yet another new problem. The untimely death of Gary J. Dobbert, who had been accused of being the master mind behind the whole pension debacle.

Now, I am no lawyer, nor do I play one on TV or in the blogs, but it would seem to me that if there is any discrepancies in any of the testimony that Dobbert gave during various depositions and interviews, this would open the door for Mercer's lawyers to jump all over it, and discredit the whole case.

Obviously, no one is to blame for the unfortunate passing of Dobbert. But one must wonder who thought that it would be a good idea to hire a person to be your star witness without vetting the person first.

And for my 2.3 readers, who are already aware that I am by no means a fan of Scott Walker, I am not blaming him for this. At least not directly.

He gave the order for the lawsuit to be approved, but I doubt that he is trying to micromanage the case. After all, as Mike Mathias and Dan Cody point out, he's been a real busy fellow.

The So-Called Liberal Media Becomes Even More So-Called

I have long held that the right wing's meme of the so-called liberal media is a bunch of malarkey. That position has only been strengthened in the light of recent stories.

Michael Horne, of MilwaukeeWorld, reported that there were a large number of staff persons at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel were being either let go through via buyouts, if not outright canned. Among these names were Stuart Carlson, their wonderful political cartoonist. Also named were Mary Zahn, Tim Cuprisin, Joanne Weintraub, Stanley Miller and many others. Cindy Kilkenny also added some names to the potential list, but added that mercifully Cuprisin wasn't going anywhere. Yet, anyway.

This is all piled on top of a number of staff persons that were released last year as well. MSJ is not unique in these measures. The downsizing of papers and TV news reporters and other staff have been going on for the last several years, nationwide.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of reporters, columnists and staff persons being released would be what could be considered the more liberal members. Meanwhile, the conservatives, like Patrick McIlheran and Jim Stingl, go relatively unscathed.

Michael Mathias, in an act of true citizen journalism, went to George Stanley, the decidedly conservative Managing Editor at the paper, to get some answers. Mike came away with this quote from Stanley:

We’re going to remain committed to providing the kind of news and information—including investigative and explanatory journalism—that our readers can’t get anywhere else (or that we can deliver of higher quality than any of our competitors). We think that’s where the future is. So there will be fewer wire service stories in the paper, not more of them. Likewise, we will maintain our commitment to covering political news out of Madison and Washington, D.C. We will focus our cuts as much as possible on areas where folks can get similar information of equal quality from other sources.

That is not saying much. Given how the media completely dropped the ball and failed to raise one question when Bush and his administration was feeding us lie after lie about why we should invade Iraq, maintaining that sort of standard is not something I thing would be worthy of striving for. And that was just one example. I could go on an on about how MSJ have given a lot of conservative politicians a nod and a wink as they go on to reprint the press releases from these people and report it as being news, without ever once questioning them.

Another example of how far from liberal the paper truly is comes from this past Saturday's paper. They ran a story about U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, and how he appreciates his colleague John McCain, but is endorsing Barack Obama for president. The headline of the article, which appeared on page 1, above the fold, read:

Feingold remains a McCain admirer

It was only after one looked below the fold, if one bothered, that they would see the subtitle which read:

He favors Obama’s views but likes GOP candidate

And if one was to read farther, it wasn't until after three paragraphs of what seems like Feingold gushing over McCain that the article even alludes to the fact that Feingold feels that Obama would make a better president.

And I am not alone with my concerns.

Gretchen Schuldt, of Milwaukee Rising, expresses her disappointment at MSJ's ignorant decision.

And both the erudite Brawler and the scholarly Illy-T have noticed that the Crossroads section, the Sunday oped section, has definitely taken a turn for the worst and have given up all hope of being credible anymore. (Of course, they did that when they hired McIlheran.)

With the loss of any resemblance of a balanced approach, and with an increasing propensity to just reissue press releases without doing any vetting for truth or accuracy, the so-called liberal media really cannot be considered either liberal or a source of news.

And then they wonder why their circulation continues to drop.

Why Would Greg Gracz Leave Now?

Last week, Gretchen Schuldt at Milwaukee Rising reported that Greg Gracz, Milwaukee County's labor negotiator, is the top candidate to become the director of human resources at MATC.

Today, All Politics, the JSOnline political blog confirms that Gracz has applied for the job. They also tell us that the job would mean a $4,000 per year pay cut.

This begs the question: Why would he go for another job that would pay less?

He has only been on the job for a year and a half. He was hired right after the current labor contracts had been signed. These contracts expire at the end of this year and negotiations are to start in the fall.

Does he expect to have a difficult time with these negotiations? Is he having a hard time negotiating on the behalf of the County, when he had spent so much time being the head of the firefighters' union? Or is there something we don't know, but maybe we should?

Disparity In The Parks

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting that Milwaukee County ranks low among cities nationwide when it comes to parks and parkland. Actually, what is low is the amount of spending on the parks, which should come as no surprise seeing how Walker has been trying to kill of the County for the last seven years, so that he can be the continuous candidate for governor.

Are you ready for a surprise?

I'm not going to go into the whole spending issue. It be a hard sell at best, and that is not what really caught my eye. What did catch my eye is what Milwaukee County is spending the majority of its precious few dollars on. It's not poor people in the city, that's for sure.

MJS was kind enough to include a little graphic along with the article. Notice that Milwaukee ranks 6th out of 26 comparably sized cities when it comes to golfing. That's fine for the suburbanites that are more prone to golf, and who also happen to be Walker's base of voters.

The same graphic shows that community centers, which are more prevalently used by the elderly, the disabled and the poor, are ranked 68th out of 75 national cities. The people that are more prone to use these centers are also not the ones that would be prone to vote for Walker.

There are only nine community centers in Milwaukee County. Five of those are senior centers, two are for the disabled, and two are for the general community. To add insult to injury, Walker wants to close the two general community centers which, not so coincidentally, are located in the near north side and the near south side. He has not stated anything about closing any of the 15 golf courses.

Of course this is not the first time that Walker has shown this kind of disparity between the rich and the poor, between the suburbs and the city itself. That was shown by the nifty camera work of Gretchen Schuldt, who quite capably shows us the stark differences between the city-based Washington Park, and the suburban-based McCarty Park.

He has also shown in the way he has handled the transit system, letting that die a slow, painful death, which of course hurts the poor who cannot afford a car. But he has no problems spending millions of dollars to rip down the courthouse annex so that the freeways can be clear of horrible things like artwork.

The list does go on and on, including the mentally ill, the incarcerated, and the growing number of people that need assistance during these miserable economic times.

Fortunately, the County Board appears poised to taken action against any more of Walker's follies. At least they're looking out for ALL of the citizens in Milwaukee County.