School Board Member Wants To Ban Muppets Book

File this under "Why even local elections are important."

In Marshfield, Wisconsin, the school board decided last summer to slightly change the curriculum to include kindergarten teachers to read a Muppets-themed book called "For Every Child A Better World." Per the Amazon description of the book, it is about this:

The familiar character of Kermit the Frog teaches young readers about the plight of young children who lack the basic human necessities and the efforts of the United Nations to provide such essentials as housing, water, food, and medical aid.

The goal of reading this book was to help make the little tykes better citizens, something that this world does desperately need.

But one of the school board members, Mary Carney, had a complete breakdown about this book and threatened to not send her kids to her school district. Carney's beef was that she felt that the new curriculum downplayed "American exceptionalism":

Central to Carney's criticism is concern for how students learn about the United States in relation to the world. Claiming the update "downplays American exceptionalism" by focusing too much on global affairs, she recited passages in the curriculum that say its aim is to develop students into citizens who can "use their knowledge about their community, nation and world" and to "become effective members of global communities."

"I believe that effective members of Marshfield, Wisconsin, American communities would have a greater benefit to us all," Carney said. "Yes, we live in an interconnected world — I've traveled the world, and I was an exchange student in high school, and it was a wonderful experience — but must we sacrifice our identity and values?"

Asked to provide specific evidence of her claims, Carney said in an interview that the revised curriculum lacks focus on United States history, including the founding fathers and American presidents.

"The focus is away from ... American exceptionalism and being proud to be an American, and the focus is instead on being kind of a citizen of the world, and we can no longer just be isolated, or ethnocentric," Carney said. "I think it's a philosophical shift."

Even though the school board ignored her craziness, she is a persistent goof and is now trying to get the book banned altogether. Her new angle is that the book is just too darn graphic:

Marshfield School Board member Mary Carney in July objected to the district’s use of the book “For Every Child a Better World” by Jim Henson in kindergarten classes, The book, she contends, contains images of suffering children living in poverty and violence, including one illustration that shows a child living in a box in the rain. Some people have said they were traumatized after reading the book, according to Carney, who cited online reviews as evidence.

“I just have concerns that it’s too graphic, even though these are Muppets characters,” Carney said. “Unfortunately in this world there is a lot of war and strife and poverty; I understand that. I just don’t know how appropriate that is to be teaching that to 5-year-olds.”

The real kicker is that rural Wisconsin has been hit hard by Scott Walker's plantation economics. Some of those kids are living in extreme poverty. The book will be nothing new to them.

Oh, and if the gentle reader had guessed that Carney is a Teapublican, you are correct. In fact, she was the leader of the Central Wisconsin Tea Party.

Now go and keep telling yourself that it's just a school board race and doesn't really matter. Just don't complain when this kind of insanity hits your community.

Tea Party Patriot Loves Him His Obamacare

Check out this video, via Crooks and Liars:



The money quote:

"But you know, the Republican Party, they haven't done nothing for me, man. Nothing," he remarked. "So, I'm leaning toward voting for Hillary unless something major comes up. I don't trust the Republicans anymore because they're wanting to repeal the Obamacare. And I don't want them to do that, man, because then I'll have to go to work again. My life's already planned out."

While I am glad that this man found the benefit to the Affordable Care Act, I am sad that it took his own personal health problems to see the light.

I have little doubt that if the man didn't have health issues, he'd be out there with the other Tea Party people complaining that it's just a hand out to lazy minorities or something like that.

The truly sad part is that the man - and those like him - don't see the irony in their situation.

The Piecemeal Implementation of Plantation Economics in Wisconsin

We are all aware of Scott Walker's attack on teachers and other public sector workers in 2011 in the form of Act 10. We also are well aware that Act 10 was nothing more than an introduction to plantation economics, sometimes referred to inaccurately and inappropriately as "Right to Work."

The predictable and predicted negative impact to the state happened with the passage of Act 10. Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs. Many more saw a reduction in their take home pay.  Businesses struggled to stay open and many didn't survive.  The state's economy sank so low that Wisconsin was last in the Midwest and in the bottom tier nationwide in most economic indicators.

Last year, when Walker and his Republican cohorts gained an even stronger stranglehold on the state government, many of the Teahadist legislators wanted to quickly finish off the unions and the economy with full implementation of their plantation economics.

Walker, already kicking off his presidential campaign, said that he did not want the legislature to pursue this, calling it "a distraction."

Sadly, the only distraction was Walker calling their economic agenda a distraction.

In the past few days, Walker and his allies have introduced the very same plantation economics agenda.  However, instead of introducing it one fell swoop, they are planning on implementing it in piecemeal fashion.  Walker's hope is that this new version of divide and conquer will leave different groups of people focused on the attacks to their own areas of interest and not seeing the big picture.

Walker himself has announced the higher education version of Act 10, as he seeks to cripple the University of Wisconsin system.

A few days ago, State Representative Rob Hutton introduced the part of their plantation economics designed to go after the building trades unions:

Today, State Representative Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield) unveiled Repeal Prevailing Wage legislation to eliminate the state’s prevailing wage law, allowing for broader participation in the governmental bidding process at wage levels that more accurately reflect market conditions. Prevailing wage is an artificial rate set by government that contractors are required to pay their workers, often times at inflated wage rates. These elevated costs are then passed along in the form of higher taxes to Wisconsin citizens.

“With tight municipal budgets, the elimination of prevailing wage will provide local governments with a critical tool to reduce costs associated with capital budgets,” stated Rep. Hutton.

“It is my hope that the Legislature takes a serious look at this issue, especially at a time when we are trying to make the best use of taxpayer dollars. Any discussion about additional investments in Wisconsin’s infrastructure must include prevailing wage reform. As good stewards of our state budget, we owe this to Wisconsin taxpayers,” said Rep. Hutton.

This will drastically cut the wages earned by the people that erect our buildings, build our bridges and help maintain our infrastructure. Not only will this do even more serious harm to the state economy by cutting workers' wages, but it opens the door for out-of-state companies to come in and take those jobs away from Wisconsin workers.

Not done there, two more of the most rabid and most racist of the Teahadists, State Senator Alberta Darling and State Representative Dale Kooyenga, have introduced the most offensive and most racist piece of plantation economic legislation that this state has ever seen. The bill would include the following:

The economic development proposals would:

■ Eliminate the corporate income tax for companies locating in needy urban zones. The tax cut would apply only if the business is from an industry not already represented in Wisconsin by existing companies, such as auto manufacturing.

■ Establish zones in which labor unions and private employers would not be able to reach agreements that require workers to pay union dues. Some Republicans are already pushing to make this so-called "right-to-work" approach the law statewide.

Opponents of the proposal question whether the state would have the authority under federal law to implement right-to-work in some parts of Wisconsin but not others.

■Eliminate in those zones the so-called "minimum markup" law, which prevents retailers from selling their products at a loss. The markup requirement would still apply to fuel sales.

■ Allow the formation of for-profit limited liability companies that could operate more like nonprofits. The companies would not be tax-exempt, but they would not be obliged to pursue only profits for their shareholders, leaving them more legal flexibility to work on behalf of their communities.

Other education proposals from Darling and Kooyenga include:

■ Streamlining the process for allowing high-performing charter schools to open additional schools.

Allowing high-performing charter schools run by MPS or non-MPS entities to automatically add new schools without official approval, if their students' average reading and math test score results beat the district average for two years in a row.

■ Convert the approximately $40 million MPS receives each year for school integration efforts within the system to a block grant with no state mandates.

This is pure plantation economics where they are giving every advantage to corporations and the wealthy while exploiting the workers.

Keep in mind that states with a plantation economy have average wages less than $5000 less than union states, they have higher levels of poverty, poorer education systems and higher numbers of work-related deaths and injuries.  This is what Walker and the other Teapublicans want to do to all of us.

Make no mistakes about it, the so-called "Right  to Work" agenda is coming to Wisconsin even as you read this.  Are you ready to fight it?

Faux Plagiarism Charges Results In Faux Outrage, Real Hypocrisy

With all the sensationalism one would expect from tabloids, there have been allegations made that the Mary Burke's job plan included plagiarized sections from the economic plans of other Democratic candidates from around the country.

Immediately following this breaking news was more breaking news that the consultant hired by Team Burke, Eric Schnurer, was the author of said passages that were supposedly plagiarized.  In other words, the accusations became that Schnurer robbed his own intellectual property.

Interestingly, the American Political Science Association seea this so-called self-plagiarism as no big deal:

The American Political Science Association (APSA) published a code of ethics that describes plagiarism as "...deliberate appropriation of the works of others represented as one's own." It does not make any reference to self-plagiarism. It does say that when a thesis or dissertation is published "in whole or in part", the author is "not ordinarily under an ethical obligation to acknowledge its origins."

The worst that Burke could be accused of is hiring a lazy consultant who didn't rephrase his own work for her campaign.  Questions regarding some of Burke's hires have been raised before.

Regardless, the Burke campaign chose to end their relationship with Schnurer.

The reaction from Scott Walker and his Teapublican allies have been mind-boggling in their falseness and hypocrisy.

State Senators Luther Olsen, Alberta Darling and Leah Vukmir have called for Burke to drop out of the gubernatorial race because of these faux accusations.

That certainly takes some gall, considering that a bulk of the legislation that they "drafted" and passed came directly from ALEC, verbatim.  That fact is why Vukmir fought tooth and nail to stop a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit from proceeding.

And if the source of many of the bills they "wrote" wasn't originally written by ALEC, it was written by big money special interests, like Gogebic Taconite or Chris Abele.

As mind-boggling as the hypocrisy of these state senators is, the hypocrisy that comes out of Scott Walker's mouth is utterly breathtaking in its audacity (emphasis mine):

During a campaign stop in West Bend, Walker indicated Burke had not gone far enough in dealing with the controversy over the copied passages.

[...]

Asked if Burke should pull out of the race, Walker said, "She should ultimately fess up to what actually happened with that plan."

"People expect a leader that's going to take responsibility for their actions," he added. "Most people look at this and question, either you didn't know what was in the plan, or you did and you hoped that people wouldn't find out that it came from somewhere else."

Really?! I mean, really?!

Would someone please remind me when Walker dealt with the controversy of Walkergate? When he "fessed up" to what actually happened in the county executive's office? Or the governor's office?

I'm sure glad that none of us were holding our breaths for him to come clean on that.  After all, the million plus dollars he spent on legal fees was just for compliance reasons, right?

I need to also point out that this is coming from the same man that claimed that he didn't know what was going on a mere 20 feet from his own desk while Milwaukee County executive, even though his name is all over the emails, both as a recipient and a sender.

People might call me a radical for this, but I think the fact that Walker and his allies stole our democracy and our rights are much more serious concerns than some schmuck too lazy to paraphrase his own work.

Of Teapublicans And Republicrats

David Cantanese penned a very interesting article which tells us what we really already knew...that the country is shifting to the right:

Card-carrying Democrats and their messengers are still loathe to use the L-word (liberal) and even the most ardent members of the left struggle to make the case the party – as a whole – is moving in their direction.

Sure, there are liberal cultural transformations – like the growing acceptance of gay marriage – that are coursing through the veins of the country. But, if anything, that dramatic change has been spurred by public opinion and at the local level, not a concerted effort by the top of the party of Andrew Jackson. The new liberal litmus test is much more economic-centered, including support for more generous entitlement benefits, higher taxes on the wealthiest and punitive laws that punish nefarious financial institutions.

And despite claims otherwise, Democratic candidates this cycle aren’t centering their re-election bids around their support for the health care law – President Barack Obama’s singular biggest and most liberal domestic achievement. Try to find a television ad in which a Democratic Senate candidate in a competitive race trumpets his or her explicit support for Obamacare.

Perhaps the most glaring evidence that the Democratic Party isn’t truly becoming more instinctively liberal is this simple but glaring fact: It’s difficult to find a party stalwart who will say it is.

“I think it’s a complicated question,” says Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. “I don’t think it’s particularly left or moving left.”

Even with all the current advantages the Democratic Party wields on issues, demographics and cultural relevance, “conservative” remains a more politically palatable term than “liberal.”

“You can be conservative in a lot of ways. It could just be being cautious, careful, saving money. There’s a lot of ways it’s a positively balanced word. Liberal has a very political meaning that I think in the current landscape is seen as a more extreme label than conservative,” says Michael Dimock, a vice president at Pew Research who has studied political ideology. “That’s why you see all these groups in Washington using 'progressive' instead of 'liberal.' They see progressive as less of a stark term.”

While it’s true that more Americans are identifying as liberals, the heart of the Democratic Party remains in the middle. In a January Pew Research survey, just over a third of Democrats described themselves as liberal, compared with 63 percent identifying as moderate or conservative.

Cantanese also explains why this erosion to the right is happening and it's a reason we also already knew:

Roger Hickey, co-founder for the liberal group Campaign for America’s Future, contends that while the base is lurching leftward, party leadership is less comfortable with the path.

“The structure of the Democratic Party [is] trying to figure this out​,” he says. “There are the timid Democrats who don’t want to threaten their possibility of getting money from Wall Street. There’s a lot of them, including Hillary Clinton.”

The innate pressure of keeping up with Republicans on the money front is a constant concern, Democrats will admit.

​Bonior, who rose to be the No. 2 Democrat in the House,​ says even those best-intentioned lawmakers who come to Washington heralding liberal values are prone to become overwhelmed by the impact money has on the system. "Progressivity gets lost in a system that is corrupt and broken," he says, citing the gradual but consistent loosening of campaign finance laws. "It’s very difficult. You have to be a very strong leader to overcome that." ​

Therefore, as one left-of-center Democratic consultant puts it, “everything from prosecuting Wall Street to a more robust estate tax ain’t happening.” ​

“It’s the green,” he says.

To put it in other words, instead of trying to win by reaching out to the people, they Democrats are reaching out to the Big Money special interests.. That is why we end up with people like Chris Abele, Lena Taylor and Mary Burke. People that could be called progressive only when compared to the extremists running the Teapublican Party.

And that is also why the Democrats are having such a hard time winning elections. If people have to vote for the Republican, they might as well vote for the one that is honest about it. One expects that a Teapublican is going to be a ill-informed nut job. It is even more disappointing when that nut job is someone that is supposed to be a good guy.

And even if a Republicrat still wins, we still lose. One does not have to go any farther than Abele to see that. It's wrong when the mentally ill are abandoned, when union workers are attacked or when austerity costs us the things we've been fighting for - whether it is a Republican or a Democrat doing it.

The only way to stop this slide to the right is for the good people to stand up. Contrary to what the "professionals" cited in the article say, I don't see the majority of Americans, much less Democrats, to be moving to the right willingly.  It's just that not enough people are saying, "Enough!"

A change won't occur as long as we keep accepting the people being forced upon us. Nothing will change as long as we try to rationalize our bad choices by saying things like "Anyone but what's-their-face."  Nothing will change as long as we rationalize it as the less of two evils.  The lesser of two evils is still evil.

Nothing will change as long as we continue to accept what is happening.

Then They Came For The Retirees

The Stevens Point Journal has an article warning of the impending crisis coming as more baby boomers begin to retire.  The article, based on a report by the austerity driven Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, states that the number of retirees will nearly double in the next 25 years while the workforce numbers will remain stagnant.

Jake at his Funhouse has a good breakdown of the numbers at his site.  He also accurately points out that a large part of the problem stems directly  from the maleficent laws and policies implemented by Scott Walker and the Teapublicans in the legislature.  People are moving to be in or near places like Minnesota, where things are flourishing due to not having to deal with the oppressive laws of Wisconsin, whether they are economical or social in nature.

Sadly, instead of recognizing the problem and taking actions to reverse the damage they have done, the Teapublicans are preparing to double down on the problems by attacking the retirees:

Government will be particularly hard-hit by an aging population, as growing numbers fall off the tax rolls but are in need of increasing services.

An older population relies on retirement income that is often not taxable, such as Social Security. Sales taxes will also fall since older residents purchase more services than goods. Services are generally not taxable, while goods are.

“Either we’re going to have to adjust how we spend as a state and how much we support people in retirement, or we’re going to have to find a way to grow to a point that we can still continue to give the services we’ve grown to expect,” Nygren said.

While an aging population will be a boon to a few industries — notably health care and elder care — the taxpayers alliance report and state economists say the negative effects will be widespread and long lasting areas beyond government as well.

Average personal income, which rose 22 percent through the 1990s, will stagnate with the working-age population, likely growing only 5 percent from 2020 to 2029.

Declining birth rates will drop school enrollment, making schools less efficient and education more costly. This will be particularly true in rural areas such as northern Wisconsin, where there are already 60 school districts with less than five students per square mile.

People will continue to flee the state when they can't find family-supporting jobs, the education system deteriorates through starvation and privatization, and the general quality of life grows lesser by the day.

Watch for the Republicans to blame the consequences of their actions on an aging population and use it for justification to make things even worse.

Real Life Voter Fraud Found Right Here In Wisconsin

Holy smokes!

Ed Trevelen of the Wisconsin State Journal is reporting that there is real life voter fraud right here in Wisconsin!

But don't expect Charlie Sykes, MacIver Institute or Media Trackers to report on this.  As one might have guessed, the perpetrator is a Teapublican operative/legislative aide:

Marcie R. Malszycki, 33, an aide to state Rep. Warren Petryk, R-Eleva, was charged with two counts of election fraud for allegedly voting in Onalaska in 2008 and 2010, when her home address was in Madison, where she owns a home.

The charge is a felony that carries up to 3½ years of combined prison and extended supervision.

According to a criminal complaint, Malszycki was living temporarily in Onalaska in late 2008 and 2010 while on unpaid leaves from her legislative job, working on political campaigns.

This story reminded me of another case of voter fraud in 2008 in which a couple voted twice - once by absentee ballot and once in person. The reason they gave for their fraud is very telling:

Owing to the steady chatter on talk radio about voter fraud that day, he said, they assumed the worst.

"We were convinced we had been disenfranchised," he said. "There was supposed to be a check-off" for their absentee ballots.

But didn't he know they had mailed their absentee ballots about a week earlier?

"At that moment I was convinced I had not been counted, that my vote was gone."

And so when the poll worker handed them each regular ballots, they cast them.

The lesson here, kids, is that if you follow the Teapublicans or squawk radio, you're going to end up having a lot of problems.

Sandy Hook and The Shame of Wisconsin

This past Saturday marked the one year anniversary of the tragedy that fell on Newtown, Connecticut, when a crazed gun nut went into Sandy Hook Elementary School and took the lives of 20 innocent children and six brave educators who gave their lives trying to save the children.

As the nation stopped to remember and to mourn this senseless loss of innocent and heroic lives, there was also some righteous anger directed to our elected leaders in Washington, D.C., who have done precious little to pass sensible gun control laws.

But no where is the shame of inaction greater than in Wisconsin.

Over the past three years, the Teapublican legislature and governor, and certain sellout Democrats, rammed through irresponsible gun laws which has led to a spike in gun violence and can be attributed directly to at least one death.

But the Teapublicans had gone way beyond the pale last month when they refused to support a resolution honoring the 26 victims of the Sandy Hook shootings, even though seven of them had cosponsored the bill:

Assembly Republicans refused to consider a resolution honoring the 26 victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting during its last regular session of the year — despite the fact that several of them were listed as co-sponsors.

Democrats tried to force a vote on the resolution, which was not scheduled to be taken up. The measure wasn't allowed to come forward, on a 53-39 vote.

There is no justification for not taking up what should be a no-brainer vote.

For the Teapublicans to refuse to allow a vote on this clearly demonstrates the emptiness of their hearts and souls and brings shame to all of us.

As unfathomable as the Teapublicans' actions are, it is equally incomprehensible that anyone would want one of these fools to represent them.  Next year, in 2014, we will have a chance to rectify this.  I would expect every single Teapublican to have a Democratic challenger and that this is brought up on a regular basis.  Force them to explain why they disrespected these children and these heroes.  Then vote their arses out of office as fast as you can.

The Only Time Walker Appreciates Women

By now, the gentle reader knows how poorly Scott Walker and his Teapublican buddies view women.

In two and a half years, they have launched multiple attacks on women, setting the state back 50+ years.

They have repealed the equal pay act, saying women aren't worth as men. They have also made it harder for women to even be treated as an equal at the job site.

They have repeatedly limited a woman's ability to get the medical attention she needs, much less allow her to make her own health care decisions.

They have made it harder for women to vote. They have made it harder to remain safe.  They have made it harder for women to find safety, especially if they are in an abusive relationship.

The list goes on and on about the myriad of ways that Walker and the Teapublicans have maltreated women in our state.

But now we find that there is one way that they have learned to appreciate the heck out of women - to cover up their illegal campaign donations.

Michael Buelow of the Big Money Blog points out numerous examples where people have donated more money than legally allowed.  To compensate for this, the perpetrators would change their donation, cutting it in two.  They would keep one part of the donation in their own name.   The other part would go in their wives' names, presumably with their permission.

Buelow finishes with this comparison, which shows the egregiousness of it all:

As strange – and unfair – as this may sound to casual readers who don’t follow campaign finance, Walker and other legislative and statewide officeholders and candidates have done this numerous times over the years.

Unfortunately, it’s usually allowed because the former state Elections Board and now the GAB decided that many of these donations can be split or readjusted after the fact because the state’s marital property law.

Kind of like telling the cop who stops you for speeding that you want half the fine and the points assigned to your spouse’s driving record because you both own the car.

Yeah, I bet that would work.

And here I thought the Teapublicans thought women were only good for extramarital affairs.

Don't Give Up On Politics

Robert Reich talks about how the extreme right wing has shut down the federal government in order to sow cynicism and apathy among the population in order to make them give caring and allowing the right to reap whatever havoc they want. They key part:

It’s a vicious cycle. As average Americans give up on government, they pay less attention to what government does or fails to do — thereby making it easier for the moneyed interests to get whatever they want: tax cuts for themselves and their businesses; regulatory changes that help them but harm employees, consumers, and small investors; special subsidies and other forms of corporate welfare. And these skewed benefits only serve to confirm the public’s cynicism.

The same cynicism also makes it easier to convince the public that even when the government does act for the benefit of the vast majority, it’s not really doing so. So a law like the Affordable Care Act, which, for all its shortcomings, is still a step in the right direction relative to the costly mess of the nation’s healthcare system, is transformed into a nightmarish “government takeover.”

So here’s what I told my friend who said he’s giving up on politics: Don’t. If you give in to bullies, their bullying only escalates. If you give in to cynicism about our democracy, our democracy steadily erodes.

If you believe the fix is in and the game is rigged, and that a handful of billionaires and their Tea Party puppets are destroying our government, do something about it. Rather than give up, get more involved. Become more active. Make a ruckus. It’s our government, and the most important thing you can do for yourself, your family, your community, and the future, is to make it work for all of us.

I would point out that this goes not only for the federal government, but also state and local governments as well.

I would also emphasize that it's not just the Teapublicans, but the corporate Democrats that cater to the well-moneyed and the plutocrats that need to get pushed out as well.

Who is afraid of Emerge Wisconsin?

From the inbox comes this press release by Wendy Strout, Executive Director of Emerge Wisconsin:

Emerge Wisconsin recently learned they were the subject of an open records request by the Republican Party of Wisconsin. The request appeared to be targeting the Emerge Wisconsin Alumnae. There are currently eight Emerge women who are serving in the state legislature: Representatives Penny Bernard Schaber‘07, Jill Billings‘11, Dianne Hesselbein‘09, La Tonya Johnson‘12, Melissa Sargent‘12, Mandy Wright‘12, JoCasta Zamarripa’10, and Senator Nikiya Harris‘11.

“It is interesting that the GOP are targeting Emerge Wisconsin, an organization focused on training Democratic women to run for office,” states Wendy Strout, Emerge Wisconsin Executive Director. “Since they have a history of attacking women’s rights, it was only a matter of time before they started attacking women’s ability to run for office. 

Emerge Wisconsin recently graduated their seventh class of Democratic women ready to run for elected office. The goal of Emerge is to increase the number of Democratic women in office. They do this by inspiring women to run and honing their skills to win. Emerge is also traveling the state providing a “Taste” of their trainings in counties like Brown, Door, and St. Croix. 

Since 2007, Emerge has been the premier training program for Democratic women in Wisconsin. Emerge recruits and trains women from across the state to run for office on a local, state, and national level and provides them with the tools and network support needed to succeed in the world of politics. Emerge graduates have gone on to win races ranging from Village Trustee to State Senate. Nationally, Emerge has expanded to thirteen states to train the next generation of female Democratic leaders across the country. Emerge is located in Arizona, California, Colorado, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Virginia and Wisconsin

This attack by WISGOP was undoubtedly spurred by this article touting the success of Emerge Wisconsin in getting women elected:

“In many ways running a campaign is like starting a small business,” Wright said. “Emerge really helped me organize the campaign. You have to be pretty motived, and Emerge really helped me with that. The networking is also helpful. There were 30 of us in class and 10 that ran for Assembly or Senate, so we kept in touch. It was really, really helpful to hear, ‘I ran into this problem and this is how I problem-solved it’.”

“We have women all across the state in all levels of office,” said Wendy Strout, executive director of Emerge Wisconsin.

The Emerge program began in California and now is one of 13 states with Emerge programs. Emerge Wisconsin has been in operation since 2007. Since then 56 percent of the graduates have run for public office and 59 percent have run successful campaigns.

“Women across the country are not happy with what’s going on. They are looking for a way to make a change. So you’re going to see women across the country getting more active,” Strout said. “Our goal is to continue increasing the number of Democratic women at all levels of government. We are nowhere near 50 percent of elected officials, yet women are 50 percent of the population, or 51 percent of the population in some places.”

The reporter, as any good reporter would do, contacted WISGOP to get a statement from them. As one might expect, it showed just how out of touch they are with women and women's issues:

Of course, Republicans also want to provide more opportunities for female candidates. Jesse Dougherty, press secretary
 of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, said Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefish is leading the charge to bring more Republican women into public office.

“We are holding training sessions across the state and women are a major aspect of that training,” Dougherty said. “Women will have a strong voice in our party.”

Obviously, what woman wouldn't want to be involved with a party who wants to keep their pay substantially lower than men's and wants to have a doctor sexually assault them with a ultrasound wand? The only things that the Republicans haven't done - yet - is pass a law that women must remain pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen.

But as they say, haters are going to hate. And there is not a more hateful group than the Teapublicans and one of the things they hate most are strong women who will stand up for themselves.


For the purpose of full disclosure, I do work for Emerge Wisconsin and am damn proud of it. However, this post is not to be in any construed as anything but coming from me.

The War On The Unemployed

From Paul Krugman, who discussed the nationwide phenomenon of the War on the Unemployed and demonstrates just how malevolent and stupid Fitzwalkerstan's Teapublicans really are:

In general, modern conservatives believe that our national character is being sapped by social programs that, in the memorable words of Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, “turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.” More specifically, they believe that unemployment insurance encourages jobless workers to stay unemployed, rather than taking available jobs.

Is there anything to this belief? The average unemployment benefit in North Carolina is $299 a week, pretax; some hammock. So anyone who imagines that unemployed workers are deliberately choosing to live a life of leisure has no idea what the experience of unemployment, and especially long-term unemployment, is really like. Still, there is some evidence that unemployment benefits make workers a bit more choosy in their job search. When the economy is booming, this extra choosiness may raise the “non-accelerating-inflation” unemployment rate — the unemployment rate at which inflation starts to rise, inducing the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates and choke off economic expansion.

All of this is, however, irrelevant to our current situation, in which inflation is not a concern and the Fed’s problem is that it can’t get interest rates low enough. While cutting unemployment benefits will make the unemployed even more desperate, it will do nothing to create more jobs — which means that even if some of those currently unemployed do manage to find work, they will do so only by taking jobs away from those currently employed.

But wait — what about supply and demand? Won’t making the unemployed desperate put downward pressure on wages? And won’t lower labor costs encourage job growth? No — that’s a fallacy of composition. Cutting one worker’s wage may help save his or her job by making that worker cheaper than competing workers; but cutting everyone’s wages just reduces everyone’s income — and it worsens the burden of debt, which is one of the main forces holding the economy back.

Oh, and let’s not forget that cutting benefits to the unemployed, many of whom are living hand-to-mouth, will lead to lower overall spending — again, worsening the economic situation, and destroying more jobs.

The move to slash unemployment benefits, then, is counterproductive as well as cruel; it will swell the ranks of the unemployed even as it makes their lives ever more miserable.

In other words, because of the Teapublicans in our state ramming through their two-pronged assault on the unemployed, not only will Scott Walker's agenda continue to not work, it will become even more dysfunctional. Unemployment will continue to rise, more families will come into suffering, more homes will be lost.

But on the bright side, Walker got his sound bite for his presidential campaign.

Kicked Off Badger Care

The folks at gothealthcarewi.com found some outrageous information last week that Scott Walker released while all eyes were trained on the state legislature passing that God-awful budget.

The found - and shared - the numbers of people kicked off or denied Badger Care for no reason other than Teapublican greed, otherwise know as austerity.

And as horrifying as those numbers are, there's more.  There's always more:

Another part that the Walker Administration tried to sneak passed is the fact that the number of people kicked off of BadgerCare that was revealed last week is 10,000 more people than they originally declared it would be! Do they think we wouldn't notice? Or does the Walker administration believe it can play fast and loose with the facts when it pertains to people's lives? Altogether, this decision to reject federal funds for BadgerCare and force people off has consequences across the state. The only solace is that this decision can be overturned at any time, we can reach out and accept these federal dollars for BadgerCare and we must keep fighting to do so.

They also point out that this does not include the people that are going to lose their coverage due to WalkerCare and the refusal of federal funding.

I would also point out that the numbers might be even worse than reported here.

Remember that the nepotism-plagued DHS office in Milwaukee County has been caught repeatedly wrongfully denying people food stamps.  Do you think for one second that they weren't doing the same for Badger Care?  And do you think that Milwaukee County is the only one in the state where this was happening?

I wonder which will come first - enough people hitting rock bottom that we'll be finally able to start reclaiming our state or we hit the saturation point and the state cannot be corrupted any more.

As Long As It's Their Idea

Interesting:

While the public overwhelmingly supports background checks for gun buyers and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, Americans largely retreat into their partisan camps when asked whether President Obama or Congressional Republicans will make the right decisions on those and other domestic issues facing the nation, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

That disconnect could explain why Democrats and Mr. Obama are still struggling to translate public support into tangible political backing for their initiatives. Americans did not give Mr. Obama high marks for his handling of those issues — even though more than two-thirds of Americans over all, including a majority of Republicans, disapprove of the way Republicans in Congress are handling their job.

In other words, even though the vast majority of Americans favor background checks and a realistic way of addressing immigration, the Republicans would rather slit their own political throats than appear to be working in a bipartisan manner.

That is obviously the influence of the intolerant Teahadists who are still unable to accept the fact that an African American won the presidency, not to mention doing so twice. The Teahadists are showing that they would only accept these measures if it was proposed by a Teapublican, ignoring the fact that no Teapublican would even consider either of these if they were in power, no matter how loudly or clearly the public made their voices heard.

There is another part of the report that reignites a spark of hope that things might still get better some day (emphasis mine):

Though churning support for his agenda remains a problem for the president, according to the poll, Congress is struggling with overcoming its own unfavorable image. Three-quarters of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job, the poll found, and nearly 9 in 10 said most members of Congress were more concerned with serving special interest groups than helping the people they represent.

“It’s like the gladiator sports, where the emperor keeps the people entertained, even though we’re starving,” said Roberta Hughes, 61, of Elizabeth City, N.C. “But real people are losing out in real ways when they enact the drama.”

People are starting to wake up and recognize the truth of how things really are. The question is whether that knowledge will be enough to overcome their apathy in the next election.

Tea Party Cowards

Here's an interesting story about the school board race in Burlington. The Teapublicans are running two candidates who appear to be running from their own shadows:

I've just gotten word that the Standard Press is NOT going to have a candidate forum because the WeVote PAC school board candidates have refused to participate. To me, this repeated refusal by the Tea Party candidates, Julie Koldeway and Norma Miller, to face the local press, to face their opponents and most importantly to face the public, the voters, and to answer questions SPEAKS VOLUMES!

I say repeated, because Julie Koldeway had already refused to participate in a public forum sponsored by the Standard Press that was to be held before the primary election. That forum unfortunately was cancelled due to a severe winter storm.

Apparently these two have a long history of not liking any situation where they can't have a strict control over the messaging.

That, folks, shows that they have nothing of substance to offer and would only be puppets for their corporate masters.

Teapublicans Explained

If that's not Fitzwalkerstan, actually, all of Corporate America, I don't know what is.