True School Choice!

By Jeff Simpson

Scott Walker blows his dog whistle, by declaring this week "school choice" week and guess what......

The dogs come running! and thy are all trying to bark as loudly as they can to be the one dog noticed in a pack of rabid astroturf! 

There was this, this and this to start and of course when the Governor needs to say something, Astroturf in Action rolls out the money and the red carpet to him!  

It is time to stop the massive grab for our children's education funds!  

For our factually challenged friends, we already have school choice,  For those who want to just steal our childrens education money for your own bank account - yes I mean you Scooter Jensen: Go climb under the floorboards where you belong!!

For the rest of you who truly care about (Y)our children's education, let us make sure that they are fully funded.   We can make sure that ALL of our kids,  get a solid education by funding our public schools.  We can make it so when we speak of "school choice" that means that our kids can choose between different languages, or a business department or Physics or advanced Biology.  Let us have enough staff to help the teachers and the students who need it.  Let the schools be fully staffed in nurses, counselors, social workers, etc ... to make sure and be able to help the kids who so desperately need it! let's stop with the stadardized tests and pay our teachers when they advance their careers academically.

That is TRUE school Choice, not the snake oil Scooter and Scotty are trying to sell us.

Wisconsin's Next Big Battle

H/T David Sirota for showing us what the fate of "School reform" in the last election, when the mainstream media ignored this story.  Not only did "education reform" fail in Colorado and Idaho(details in Sirota's column), but also in Indiana: 

In Indiana, the results were even more explicit. There, as the Indianapolis Star reports, Superintendent for Public Instruction Tony Bennett became “the darling of the reform movement” by “enthusiastically implement(ing) such major reforms as the nation’s most expansive private school voucher program; greater accountability measures for schools that led to the unprecedented state takeover of six schools last year; an expansion of charter schools; and an evaluation system for teachers that bases their raises, at least in part, on student test scores.” For waging such a scorched-earth campaign against teachers and public education, Bennett was rewarded with a whopping $1.3 million in campaign contributions, much of which came from out of state. According to Stateline, Bennett was underwritten by “some of the biggest supporters of education reform in the country, including Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton, billionaire financier Eli Broad and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg,” and NPR reports that he also received big donations from private corporations that stood to profit off his school takeover policies.

Ultimately, he was able to grossly outspend his underfinanced opponent, local educator Glenda Ritz, by more than $1 million. Yet, in the conservative union-averse state of Indiana, he was nonetheless booted out of office in what the Star called “the Election Night shocker.” That was thanks not to some brilliantly vague personality campaign by Ritz, but to a substantive, laser-focused assault on Bennett’s corporate-driven privatization agenda. As the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reported, she “attack(ed) Bennett for his school and district accountability system, voucher program and use of student testing data for teacher evaluations”; “criticiz(ed) Bennett’s policies as funneling taxpayer dollars to private companies”; and slammed Bennett’s corporate donors — all while she “advocated returning local control to districts, ending the current administration’s focus on standardized testing and spending more on early childhood education”; and pushed to “provide more support for low-performing schools instead of threatening them with sanctions.”

 This is going to be the next big fight in WI.  Unfortunately due to their unethical redistricting, we are powerless to stop it.  The only chance we have is if we have a republican who will fight his party and champion public education.  The prospects look bleek!     It was beaten back in very republican anti union states like Idaho and Indiana and yet the private education profiteers will be lining up in WI to loot our coffers and  fill their pockets. 

The next two years will decide who wins.  If convicted felon Scooter Jensen has a good two years that means education in Wisconsin has greatly suffered.  

Do we make our children a priority or this guy? 

MacIver's Follies

The far right wing website has occasionally written stories that were worth reading, despite the fact that they give Jimmy Wigderson a platform and have relations with multiple convicted felon Scott "Scooter" Jensen! 

The problem with being a far right wing shadow organization, is thatyou do not have much talent to work with.  When you are stuck trying to defend the likes of Robin Vos and Scott Fitzgerald, well it becomes a monumental task! 

So it is understandable when they just give up on the task and become a parody website!  They still have a way to go before they reach Onion levels, but this is a good start! 

In a news cycle, where we found out that despite three court orders, Republican stooges Michael Best & Friedrich STILL withheld over 34 documents that they were ordered to release regarding the shameful secret redistricting they did last year.   Then of course we are still in the thick of Walker Gate and even had top aide Kevin Kavanaugh convicted last week.  Let us also not forget American Idiot Jason Thompson with his perpetual racist statements!

With all of these events happening what is a far right well funded "news organization" to do?   Well break a news story of course.  The problem is there was nothing happening in the democratic party at the time that came close to the level of disgust on the right, so they had to make one up.  The problem is there is no one there with an imagination or writing ability (they should have consulted with Christian Schneider that guy writes the best fables).

So the best they could come up with was this!

Representative Sandy Pasch and Senator Chris Larson met with the Milwaukee teachers union in private and they had coffee while they met!   I guess no one told Pasch & Larson that secret meetings to discuss the future of WI are ONLY to be held out of state and most attendees should also be from out of state!   

So Brett Healy, nice try!  This was a nice start at becoming a parody website.   It was definitely funny but your material needs to be better!    I look forward to your future attempts at hilarity! 

Jim Wigderson: Mall Cop

Wigderson is at it again.  This time, surprisingly, he is not making stuff up! This time its even worse.

Wiggy made an attempt, as many on the right do, to post about the incompetence of Kathy Nickolaus.  Supposedly, this shows that they are independent writers, by continually throwing Nickolaus under the bus.   However, ever since she was part of the Scooter Jensen filth campaign at the Caucus scandal of a few years ago, her incompetence and lack of ethics were clear.   They were also acceptable for years because she had an R after her name and lived in Walkersha.  Luckily, for the rest of the state, her incompetence has been fully documented.

The story on Nickolaus was not the problem(he actually used facts for a change), it was James' punchline at the end.   According to his own words!

Jeff Christensen had cookies, and the WTMJ guys had a flask (the courthouse x-ray technician showed me the video). That’s enough right there for a pretty good victory party.

Which of course leaves us some questions that I hope the Waukesha DA and/or the County Executive get answered.

1.  Why is the x-ray technician showing Wigderson the security video?  Is James cleared to see that?

2.  Why in a county that thinks the "stand your ground " law is too lenient would they worry about guns in the courthouse?

3.   Are the people in Walkersha more or less safe, with the X-ray tech taking such little interest in his job?


4.  Is that Wiggy's best attempt at being witty and funny?

5.   Why, when wiggy finnaly gets a source would he out him the next day?  I am sure people who have  a secret to tell will think twice about telling Jim.