Bogus WPRI-funded Research Released

Bogus WPRI-funded Research Released 

Researcher failed to disclose source of funding, included leading questions

 

 

MADISON – Today, a University of Chicago professor released the “raw data” of a suspect survey funded by the right-wing think tank Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (WPRI).  Among other things, WPRI has promoted the privatization of public education through the failed voucher school experiment, promoted right to work legislation and argued for the dismantling of competitive wages for public projects.  WPRI is a member of the State Policy Network, an active member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which uses think tanks like WPRI to push out right-wing policies in states around the country. 

 

“WPRI has been at the forefront in pushing for privatization of public education,” stated Rep. Chris Taylor (D-Madison), who attended a noon press conference by William Howell, the professor who conducted the suspect study.  “They don’t do research just to gauge public opinion, but to push specific right-wing policies that support their agenda. No wonder Professor Howell failed to disclose the source of his funding on the survey and failed to allow participants to provide individual answers outside of selected choices, which, according to some participants, seemed geared to elicit a particular response,” concluded Taylor. 

 

For two questions involving “trade-offs” between forfeiting tenure for other salary and contract terms, Professor Howell failed to allow participants to respond that they would not forfeit tenure for any amount of compensation or contract term.

 

Due to the outcry surrounding the survey, prior press accounts indicated that Howell had to shut down the survey within a few days.

 

In the past, UW-Madison withdrew its name from a previous WPRI study on school vouchers because the integrity of the polls was compromised.

 

“I suspect that these bogus survey results will now be used by my Republican colleagues to further erode tenure protections and the quality and caliber of the UW system.  We should be building up our UW system, not commissioning bogus research to tear it down,” concluded Taylor.

  

Office of Representative Chris Taylor

PO Box 8953

Madison, WI 53708

(608) 266-5342

Michael Grebe Jumps The Shark!

By Jeff Simpson  - Cross Posted from Purple WI! 


Michael Grebe has had a few different positions in his career.  One of those positions, was running the Scott Walker campaigns in 2010 and again in 2012(yes, the 2012 election campaign that is at the center of the John Doe 2 investigation).
Michael Grebe, is currently President and CEO of the Bradley Foundation.  The Bradley Foundation, and Mr. Grebe fund some of the farthest right wing organizations and "news"(term used loosely) organizations there are in Wisconsin. Some examples of the long list:
-  The MacIver Foundation;
-  The Franklin Center which runs the poorly named Wisconsin Reporter;
-  Wisconsin Policy Research Institute(WPRI) - which actually employs Charley Sykes as an editor(seriously)!
-The inexplicably named,  WILL  - Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty run by fellow "purple blogger" Rick Esenberg. 
WILL and Mr. Esenberg have been busy lately.   While it is important to note, that Mr. Esenberg is NOT an employee of the Bradley Foundation, he ONLY receives the vast majority of his funding from them.   If there is anything that we have learned recently from our friends on the right, it is that hundreds of thousands of dollars of contributions do not even phase them.   They just want Liberty!! 
Of course, it is just coincidence that the organization, that is funded by someone who spends millions of dollars working towards the privatization of public schools,  keeps suing public schools.
Milwaukee organization WILL, has already shown their disdain for local control and democratically elected school boards by suing the Kenosha School District.  While racking up legal bills for the district, the original lawsuit was at a standstill until some new school board members were elected.  It took a tie breaking vote, by the step father of the plaintiff,  to settle this lawsuit that was going nowhere and handing tens of thousands of dollars to Mr. Esenberg. 
I do find it interesting, that the person suing to "protect" the local taxpayer from the democratically elected school board negotiating with their employees,  charged the local taxpayers more money per hour than a teacher could ever dream of making.  
Back to the story, because now The Professor is at it again.   This time he has bitten off more than he can chew.  
Milwaukee organization, WILL and Mr. Esenberg have decided to find a local stooge and sue the Madison School District for negotiating with their employees, while ACT 10 was stayed.  
There is a special twist here though, Mary Burke, the person leading Scott Walker in the polls, happens to be a current member of the Madison School Board.  Even though Rick Esenberg is funded by former Walker campaign chairman, no political games at all here, Mr. Esenberg is just worried about the taxpayers of Dane County.   Well not everyone agrees with that:
WILL is not likely to prevail in court, Marquette University Law School professor Paul Secunda told the Wisconsin State Journal. “They negotiated their current contract when the fate of Act 10 was still up in the air,” said Secunda, who also accused Esenberg of “trying to make political points.”
Heck even the plaintiff gets giddy when he talks about suing Mary Burke:
“This wasn’t aimed at Mary Burke, but it’s a happy coincidence,” said Blaska.

“The Madison School Board is operating as if Act 10 were not in effect,” Blaska said. “They had the opportunity to reduce the tax load on the people – but the teachers are always first in line.”

While going up against a school board that actually stands for educating the children and not ideological warriors(and no direct relatives of Mr. Blaska's on the board), Mr. Esenberg will find that they do not roll over so easily. 

 

In the meantime, the lawyer from Milwaukee will do all he can to keep running up legal bills for the Dane County taxpayers! 

 

Mr. Grebe's and his "non" employee, have truly jumped the shark here!   It is time to let them know  to stop playing political games with our chidlren's money!  

 

One last piece of housecleaning, yes the Madison School Board did recently sit down and negotiate a new agreement with their teachers.   What are Mr. Blaska and Mr. Esenberg pretending to protect the taxpayers of Dane County from?  The teachers and the district negotiated a .25% raise.   For those of you scoring at home that is an average of approximately $125.00 for the year.  

 

Does the person you trust your children's future with, deserve a raise worth $125.00 for the year? 

 

Maybe Mr. Esenberg needs to rethink whtat he word "protect" means!  

 

It is also time to rethink voting for someone who would so disgracefully continue to attack public schools!    

 

The Real War on Christmas!

 

By Jeff Simpson

Recently fake journalist, and WPRI republican hack Christian Schneider wrote a column on the wonders of offshoring(in a defense of Mary Burke).   Apparently you have to be an adult to understand what a great thing it is:

But while the outsourcing issue is a Sheboygan-sized target on Burke's campaign, Republicans should avoid simply hammering her for the act of outsourcing itself. It is an easy tactic — and in the end, winning is all that matters, after all — but campaigns should be careful how they foment anger among voters. Especially if it means confusing the public about a nuanced issue that deserves an adult conversation.

First, a point of clarification: While Burke's detractors refer to "outsourcing," they really mean "offshoring." Companies "outsource" their operations to other businesses when it isn't cost-effective to do the work themselves. It's not as if Grimace and Mayor McCheese are at the McDonald's headquarters milking cows to produce the company's dairy creamers; they outsource that task to an actual dairy company.

"Offshoring," on the other hand, means moving jobs overseas, where products can be produced cheaper due to lower labor costs. For the workers whose jobs are moved to India, China or Mexico, offshoring — to use a technical economic term — "sucks."

 We at CogDis pointed out that Schneider is economic illiterate, which was of a surprise to no one.   What I failed to do though was point out the "real world"consequences of offshoring that no one seems to want to have an adult conversation about(hint: don't look to Schneider for adult conversations).  

 

1.  What is considered one of the most dangerous jobs in the world?  Bangladesh garment worker makes the list.    Who knew making your cheap T-shirt was so dangerous?  

In Bangladesh, there are 4 million garment workers — they’re getting starved to death too with pitiful wages, and they’re brutally overworked. And there are no health and safety standards. We saw the result of that in the Tazreen Factory fire on Nov. 24, 2012, which killed at least 117 workers. Less than a month later another factory, Smart Fashion, went up in flames.

 When we were in Bangladesh, a boy named Korshed —15 years of age — was working a night shift, all night long from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. during the monsoon season. It was July 17, 2012, when in the middle of the night at 3:00 a.m. a gigantic metal slab fell and crushed this young kid. Killed, dead on the spot. There’s no health and safety records whatsoever, the workers are just sitting ducks.

 2.  A lady in Oregon bought cheap crap Halloween decorations from China and found a letter:

"People who work here have to work 15 hours a day without Saturday, Sunday break and any holidays. Otherwise, they will suffer torturement, beat and rude remark. Nearly no payment (10 yuan/1 month)."
Ten yuan is equivalent to $1.61.
"People who work here, suffer punishment 1-3 years averagely, but without Court Sentence (unlaw punishment). Many of them are Falun Gong practitioners, who are totally innocent people only because they have different believe to CCPG. They often suffer more punishment than others."

Schneider did get that right....$1.61/month is definitely cheaper labor.  See what happens when you get rid of the unions, companies are free to prosper!  Time for ACT11 to cut teacher pay again.  

3.   A reporter tried to see where her shirt was made in India and was lucky to make it out alive! 

 As a child, Aruna dreamed of going to college. But by the time she was 15, when her government-subsidized schooling ended, she understood that she was too poor. Then, a stranger promised to change her life. He offered her a job at a textile factory that has supplied companies including, until recently, UK-based maternity wear maker Mothercare. Her pay would be about $105 a month—enough for food for her family, her further education, and most importantly, the chance to build a dowry.


When Aruna arrived at the factory, about 40 miles from her home, she found a vast facility where close to 1,000 girls, many in their teens, lived 10 or 15 to a room. From 8 a.m. till 10 p.m. every day, including weekends, she fed and monitored rusty machines that spun raw cotton into yarn. Her bosses often woke her in the middle of the night because, she recalls, there was "always some sort of work, 24 hours a day." Aruna made just a quarter of the $105 a month she was promised, about $0.84 a day.

Aruna shows me a scar on her hand, more than an inch long, where a machine cut her. She often saw girls faint from standing for too long. One had her hair ripped out when it got caught in a machine. Others were molested by their supervisors. "They said we would get less work if we slept with them," Aruna says. Sometimes girls would disappear, and everyone would speculate whether they'd died or escaped. Still, she needed the money, so she worked there for two years.

 Last April's building collapse in Bangladesh's Rana Plaza, which killed more than 1,000, briefly drew attention to the plight of garment workers. India is an even larger global player than Bangladesh: It's the third-largest textile and garment exporter in the world (after China and the European Union), with about $29 billion in 2012 sales. Between June 2012 and June 2013, the United States imported about $2.2 billion worth of cotton clothing from India, and that number is expected to grow as India ramps up its textile industry.

 4.  In Jordan a factory that produces products for WalMart, sexual abuse is a way of life:

In June, the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights released a report alleging that workers producing clothing for Walmart, Target, Macy's, Kohl's and Hanes at a factory in Jordan have been routinely beaten, underpaid and forced to work hours in excess of what the local law allows. The report added that workers have been forced to live in bed bug-infested dormitories that lack heat and hot water, despite the snow and ice that are a feature of local winters.
The report also alleged a pattern of widespread sexual abuse of female employees at the Classic Brands factory complex. The factory employs some 4,800 people, mostly guest workers from South Asia. One manager repeatedly raped female Sri Lankan workers, prompting a strike late last year, according to the report. Workers wanted the manager fired. Instead, the factory's owner sent the manager on a recruiting mission to South Asia as a means of temporarily removing him from the complex. The owner did not publicly discipline the manager or remove the man from his employment, said Charles Kernaghan, the institute's director, and the lead author of the study.

Whats a few rapes of 13 year old girls, they aren't in school anyway.    When your working a 17 hour shift, 7 days a week,  its the only way they get a break.  

5.  There there was this clown that people actually thought could be President of the United States. 

 And the one thing that gets you mad is someone saying "Happy Holidays"?    

Outsource Schneider

By Jeff Simpson



The all time paid political hack, and sometimes "writer" at Jsonline, Christian Schneider is at it again.   The author of the Kyle Wood Fiasco(of which he was nominated for the rotten tomato in writing awards) is more of a paid advertiser for all things republican, than a serious writer. 

When the republicans get in trouble with some particularly bad piece of PR(which is regularly), say a prominent figure choked a woman, then Schneider comes to the rescue with a piece of fiction for everyone on the right to quote.

It is so nice for Journal Communications to give him this forum.  

This time his masters sent him out to defend.......Mary Burke!  Mary Burke has been taking some major hots for the fact that her company, Trek Bicycles, has outsourced 99.5% of their manufacturing.    This has cost Wisconsinites, JOBS.

Why do they need Schnieder?  That's simple.  If the evils of outsourcing, and how it has helped drive our economy into the ground, ever becomes a real issue in an election, the republicans would take an unprecedented beating.   They long touted the wonders of outsourcing(cheap labor, no rules, no unions), and have done their best to legislate that outsourcing becomes practically mandatory. 

Here is Schneider drivel:

"Offshoring," on the other hand, means moving jobs overseas, where products can be produced cheaper due to lower labor costs. For the workers whose jobs are moved to India, China or Mexico, offshoring — to use a technical economic term — "sucks."

But as is the case with almost everything in politics, outsourcing and offshoring pit concentrated vs. diffuse benefits. While moving jobs overseas costs identifiable jobs in the short term, it allows companies to make products cheaper, helping them grow and create more jobs right back here in the United States.

 And I thought Paul Ryan was ignorant on economics!   

First off, the wonders of outsourcing has brought us to a $38.6 BILLION trade DEFICIT.  To help Schneider out, let's spell it out:

We have brought in $38,600,000,000 worth of goods than we ship out. 

That is $38,600,000,000 more worth of goods that foreign workers made that we have bought, compared to what foreign countries have bought from American workers.  

What does that mean to you?  Record job losses! 

What does that mean to Schneider's bosses?   Pretty much all of the income growth and record profits!

The Polaroid is starting to come into focus.   Let's shake it a little bit more:

Remember this from Schneider:

While moving jobs overseas costs identifiable jobs in the short term, it allows companies to make products cheaper

in 2009 as a result of outsourcing, the Janesville, WI GM plant closed. 

In 2009, the average price of a car was $27,958.
In 2013, the average price of a car was $31, 258(record high).
(Ps: Chris - $31,258 is higher than $27,958)

2300 people unemployed in Janesville.   2300 people whose families had worked at GM for generations, all unemployed.   Now they only have to pay an extra $4000 for car if they want to buy!

These 2300 people who no longer will be building our cars, have spouses, children, bill,s pay taxes for the local school districts, shop at the malls, eat at local restaurants, AND worked hard and built a high quality, affordable product....well at least they used to.

I have no doubt that Schneider can find some CATO based "economist", when they are not busy sticking up for Paul Ryan's austerity budget, about the wonders of outsourcing.  Unfortunately for the rest of us, the real world disagrees. 


I probably expected too much out of someone who gets their business acumen from a reality TV show, but the facts on the ground(as they always do with Chris's column) differ greatly:

 But economists are unanimous that trade, including outsourcing, is hugely beneficial to economic growth at home and abroad."

This is highly misleading for two reasons. First, economists are unanimous in agreeing that trade could have major distributional consequences. And some prominent economists, such as Paul Krugman, have argued that the recent pattern of trade for the United States has had negative distributional consequences for large segment of the U.S. workforce.

The second reason that it is misleading is that economists are unanimous in believing that in the context of below full employment economy, like the one we have seen the last five years, a larger trade deficit implies lower growth and fewer jobs. In this context outsourcing hurts the economy.

Let's hope that Schneider does not get his parenting skills from Keeping up with the Kardashians.

As economist Dean Baker points out, that this is a  bipartisan problem(hence the defending of Mary Burke), not only does outsourcing not work, we have other problems:

At the same time, his trade policy has done little or nothing to expose highly educated professionals like doctors and lawyers to the same competition. This policy has the predicted and actual effect of depressing the wages of less educated workers relative to the most highly paid workers. This policy is exacerbated by maintaining an over-valued dollar, which further depresses the wages of those workers exposed to international competition to the benefit of those who are largely protected.
President Obama has also done nothing to combat the corruption in the corporate governance structure whereby corporate board members are paid hundreds of thousands of thousands a dollars a year to look the other way as top management pillages the company. A policy that subjects less educated workers to the most vigorous possible competition, while maintaining protection for those at the top will redistribute income upward, as we have seen over the last three decades. Both candidates seem to largely support such policies.

 The reality of the situation is, until we start manufacturing in America again we will never have a full recovery, nor will we be the Superpower we once were. 

Americans, not employed by the Bradley Foundation, are starting to get this and its scares the hell out of Chris's bosses!

PS: I do have to give Chris his due though.  He did hit the nail on the head with this line:

(Next up: What "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" teaches us about the Laffer Curve.)

Since the Laffer Curve might be one of the few things (besides Congress) that has less credibility left than Honey Boo Boo

 

Now we know why Scott Walker placed this billboard in the shuttered GM plant grounds.  He felt that he was creating jobs by laying off 2300 fellow Wisconsinites. 

The Crying Game of Christian Schneider

By Jeff Simpson

It amazes me, in an era where newspapers(for various reasons) are trying desperately to stay alive and relevant, yet they keep printing crap like "The Smart Set".   In an era where people are clamoring for real news, someone at JSONLINE decided it would be a good idea to pay, a paid WPRI, Bradley employee, to write propaganda in their pages. 

Recently, Schneider used his column space, to whine about a LTE written by our friend Scot Ross.  Ross was amazed, like many of us were, that Schneider had the temerity to champion blatantly racist Voter ID laws in a column about Martin Luther King Jr.

No. To chalk up Schneider's column last week as ignorance would be the same as excusing the Bradley Foundation — which funds the conservative think tank — that underwrote racist, voter suppression billboards featuring people of color behind bars that appeared in minority communities in the days leading up to the 2010 election.
Those billboards, which my organization and NBC's theGrio.com exposed as being financed with Bradley Foundation money, were designed to intimidate legal voters from casting their ballots. And they came back in 2012.
But just as these vestiges of racism were exposed and brought down by a dedicated group of community organizations and activists, so, too, will these fraudulent attempts to disenfranchise legal voters on the basis of their skin color.
Schneider and the Republican leadership know exactly what they are doing and to whom they are doing it when they manipulate the rules on voting, and there is no excuse for it. These despicable policies, the politicians who enact them and those who excuse them aren't engaging in "ephemera"; they're practicing racism.

Well Christian Schneider, who understands the pulse of the African American community, knows what is best for them.  According to Schneider, what is best for the African American community, is to eliminate approximately 5 million minorities from voting.   When Jim Crow is your best friend maybe its time to rethink your life!   

After an unreal rant, citing Heritage Foundation statistics that cutting people off the voter rolls, is a sure way to increase participation(yea still trying to figure that one out, but this is the same Heritage Foundation that can come up with a study on a moment's notice, that says Paul Ryan understand economics), says (you can not make this stuff up)

It was about how photo ID is a minor issue compared to the real problems facing minorities in this country.

So why should African Americans worry that the white republicans do not want them to vote?  The African American community had better spend their time worrying about poverty and the high unemployment rate in their community and leave the voting to the rich white guys.

And you wonder why and how ignorance, hate and bigotry gets passed on from generation to generation.

I have to admit though, I do not read Schneider's posts anymore since they are usually so full of SH*T that it is a waste of time.  So hats off to Scot Ross for pointing out Schneider's racism.

 Here I thought he was just a homophobe, sexist and liar.

The Schneider Smackdown

Everyone knows that Bradley funded right wing WPRI and their servant Christian Schneider get way to much free press to spew their propaganda in WI. It is refreshing when someone actually prints the truth. Thank you Robert Kraig for this smackdown of the biggest hack in WI!

From JSonline(in its entirety):

In last week's Crossroads, Christian Schneider tried to defend the practically indefensible, Gov. Scott Walker's immoral and fiscally irresponsible decision to reject hundreds of millions of federal dollars to strengthen Wisconsin's popular BadgerCare program.

In the process, Schneider deploys every propaganda trick he can muster to defend Walker's controversial decision. In so doing, he provides a textbook example of the right-wing conspiracy to confuse public opinion about the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) as we approach its critical full implementation phase.

Deconstructing Schneider's melange of misleading claims and chopped logic can help clear the air as we undertake the vitally important task of reforming our nation's badly frayed health care system by guaranteeing that every American has the freedom to obtain quality affordable health coverage, no matter what.
Schneider begins his diatribe by making light of a public statement I made that if Walker succeeds in turning down enhanced federal funding to strengthen Badgercare "there is no doubt that many Wisconsinites will die as a consequence." Schneider tries to laugh off my grave conclusion by making flippant remarks about police reports, chainsaw-wielding madmen and even Mao and Stalin. These weak attempts at humor can't cover the fact that Schneider has no facts to refute the public health research establishing a higher premature death rate for people without health coverage. Access to affordable health coverage is no laughing matter; it is a matter of life and death.

As a second level of defense, Schneider makes the counterfactual claim that Walker is actually greatly expanding health coverage. This is highly misleading because it gives Walker credit he does not deserve for expanded private market health coverage created by Obamacare, which the governor bitterly opposes. In his recently signed budget, Walker forces nearly 90,000 people off BadgerCare. He did broaden eligibility for childless adults in poverty, but this would have happened anyway, and at much lower cost to Wisconsin, if Walker had taken the Affordable Care Act dollars.

The Walker administration's own budget papers, as well as the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, clearly show that the governor's budget decision to reject enhanced federal BadgerCare dollars will result in thousands (and possibly tens of thousands) fewer people with health coverage, while costing the state $149 million more. It is irrefutable that in 2014, as a direct result of Walker's irresponsible decision, fewer Wisconsinites will have health coverage and that the state will pay more for inflicting completely avoidable misery.

As thin and misleading as Schneider's initial defenses of Walker are, they are robust compared with the rest of the column, which leaps to the ridiculous assertion that some over-hyped bumps in the road in creating the new health insurance marketplaces (or exchanges) under the Affordable Care Act somehow vindicates Walker's decision to turn down federal dollars for BadgerCare.

Schneider claims Walker relies on BadgerCare, a "traditional state program," but the fact is that the hundreds of millions of dollars Walker turned down would have gone directly to that very program. That any additional money that comes as a result of the Affordable Care Act is somehow different than other federal dollars Walker is happy to accept is absurd on its face.

Schneider uses this nonsensical claim to launch into a recitation of standard right-wing talking points, which allegedly establish that Obamacare is, in his words, "imploding." His main evidence for this is the recently announced one-year delay in assessing fines on large businesses that do not provide affordable coverage for their workers. While I think this delay is a mistake, it is a ridiculous leap in logic to say that an adjustment in the timeline for implementing one provision of the health care law justifies Chicken Little-like pronouncements.

The fact is that the Affordable Care Act is one of the largest and most pragmatic reforms that America has undertaken in decades. It has many moving parts because it seeks to fix rather than replace our current health care system. There are going to be many bumps in the road.

Making the law work is a critically important task because if it is repealed, and the private health insurance system is allowed to continue to implode, the freedom of all Americans to control their own health care decisions will continue to decline. Insurance companies will continue to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, throw people off coverage when they are diagnosed with cancer and other life-threatening diseases, charge discriminatory rates to women, early retirees, small businesses, the self-employed and throw young adults off their parents' policies.

Conservatives commentators such as Schneider and politicians such as Walker are muddying the waters in every way they can because they have no real answers for average Americans who just want the freedom and opportunity to obtain affordable health care for themselves and their families, no matter what. The misleading propaganda they are using to poison the critical public discussion of health care reform also threatens our democratic capacity to reason together about vital public issues.

Robert Kraig is executive director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin.

The Media Yawns

By Jeff Simpson

Recent memory shows us that former Dem Party Spokesman Graeme Zielinski compared the size of Governor Walker's legal team(much much bigger) during the John Doe Investigation to that of Jeffrey Dahmer's legal team...suggesting that while he was never charged, Walker paid a pretty penny to make sure he was never charged. The analogy was bad, the fake outrage was worse!

The mainstream media jumped on the story in pure outrage and horror, ignoring the fact that numerous politicians have used the Jeffrey Dahmer comparison to collective yawns from the media.

In the never ending quest to prove to the republican party that they are not the "liberal media" they blatantly attacked someone on the left in a huge bit of fake outrage and even carried it on, until Mike Tate unfortunately gave into the pressure and relieved Graeme of his duties.   


The same media outrage never seems to apply though to Bradley Schneider.   Schneider is a "writer"(term used loosely for the Bradley Foundations PR piece - WPRI.   Unfortunately for the people of Wisconsin, WPRI seems to get unlimited column space in our local newspapers, and if that is not enough, Schneider even gets his own column in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.   

We know that Schneider has never let the truth get in the way of a good, PR piece for the republican party, and neither have his editors.   Schneider has blatantly lied about the numerous things from Wisconsin Democracy campaign to the smearing of Mark Pocan and never once been even remotely stopped by an editor.   As Bruce Murphy points out:

In the old days the Journal Sentinel would never have had a columnist who wasn’t a former journalist. Nor would its editors have signed off on a column like Schneider’s without fixing the misstatements of facts. The paper seems willing to pay any price to show its friendliness to conservative activists.

 Schneider is up to his dirty unethical tricks again.  This time he compares Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett toa psychotic narcissist character on Televisions "the Walking Dead". 

On the television show "The Walking Dead," the small zombie-resistant town of Woodbury is ruled by "The Governor," a tyrant who delivers orders to shoot any resident who escapes from the town walls. (Aside from being a fan of residency requirements, The Governor wears an eye patch and keeps severed zombie heads in fish tanks in his house — which means he and Barrett share only one of these three traits.)

 Apparently the Mayor of Milwaukee wanting his Milwaukee public employees to reside in the city that they serve in, is equal too shooting anyone who escapes from the city walls? 

That makes the Mayor equal to "the Governor from "the Walking Dead"!

Unfortunately there are  crickets from anyone who feels he goes to far.

Are Bad analogies and virtual lines in the sand are only enforced on one party in this state or has Schneider proven he is a big enough hack that no one takes him seriously anymore?   

I guess Christian Schneider has a free pass to do or smear whoever he wants, all in the name of the Bradley Foundation and the Wisconsin republican party!

 

Kyle Wood's Remorse

By Jeff Simpson

 "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

An event happened recently that flew under everyone's radar - Kyle Wood was sentenced to 30 days in prison.  

Kyle Wood, who claimed to have been beaten in his apartment because he is gay and did not support Mark Pocan for Congress, was sentenced to 30 days in jail Wednesday after pleading guilty to obstructing police.
Wood, 30, of Madison, took up valuable time that police and emergency medical personnel could have been using for real emergencies, Dane County Circuit Judge William Hanrahan said.
“You concocted the story and corroborated it with injuries,” Hanrahan said. “This is quite simply bizarre and outrageous.

 While it is sad that Mr. Wood was so in need of help mentally that he injured himself in such a way, it is even sadder how the right wing media and hack bloggers were all to ready to capitalize on this story that everyone knew from the beginning had holes in it bigger than Scott Walker's College transcripts!

Three of the more well known righty bloggers were the ones to band together and get Wood's fake story out there as often as possible.   Charlie Sykes from White Wisconsin and  Brian Sikkkma from mediatracKKKers could not tell the story quick enough or loud enough.  

 Although Sikma has since deleted the post and put up a different one in its place, here is a flavor of what he wrote, thanks to Google Reader and another right wing blogger who was one of the many that fed into the story, but like Sikma, deleted their post:

A series of shocking text messages purportedly from Philip Frank, the partner of Democratic State Representative and Madison-area Congressional candidate Mark Pocan, threatened a volunteer for Pocan’s Republican opponent days before the volunteer was found beaten.

Last Wednesday, Kyle Wood, a full-time volunteer with Republican Chad Lee’s Congressional campaign, was beaten inside his home in Madison by an unidentified attacker who claimed that as a gay man Wood should be supporting the gay candidate for Congress.

The text messages obtained by Media Trackers allegedly show Philip Frank, Pocan’s partner, making sexually-charged comments to Wood before threatening him and making racist statements about the spouse of Chad Lee. The messages were apparently sent two or three days before the Wednesday beating, according to Wood, who is alleging to investigators that the messages came from Frank.

After mocking Wood for supporting the Republican candidate, Frank is accused of writing, “Remember your station in life and remember not to cross the husband of a powerful man. You are on shaky footing as it is, push much farther and you won’t have a future in this town, or any other.”

The news was so big that Sikma was breathless on Monday morning as he shared his story with Charlie Sykes on Sykes' squawk radio show.

But guess what. Even though Sikma claimed that he had verified the story, and the thing had taken off nationally, it turned out to be another lie.

 OOPS....then Wisconsin's biggest paid hack, who perpetually tries to claim he is a journalist, Christian Schneider used his column space in JSOnline(since deleted with no apology) to perpetuate this same lie:

Science Fiction Writer and WPRI paid hack Christian Schneider wrote a fable the other day, one of his best pieces of work.

Beaten for being a gay republican!  Over 1300 words of pure republican bliss!

The story however had one major tell:

To date, Wood has been reluctant to talk to any media, especially on-camera.   “I’m not going to win Princess Kay of the Milky Way or anything anytime soon, I look a little rough,” he joked.

Wood was reluctant to talk to the media because he knew he was lying, however his fake story had to be told so he chose people who were NOT the media.   Schneider of course, The Daily Caller and mediatrackers for some examples to make sure and get their message out to as many people  as possible before the house of cards fell!

This was yet another great example of how the echo chamber works.  They make up a story and a couple people run with it, allowing fellow paid and unpaid hacks to repeat repeat repeat!   Wisconsin reporter, Crazy Fred Dooley , Alpha Male Randy Hollenbeck and  Boots and Sabers(owen deleted the story like it never happened- no apologies or retractions) to name a few!   

The sad thing is that Kyle Wood is remorseful and is spending 30 days in prison.   The three stooges of Sykes, Schneider and Sikma all are still pushing BS propaganda and not a single one was even slapped on the wrist.  

Sad day for Wisconsin.

Beloit College Alum Points Out Ignorance of Right Wing Pundit

Denver Post Editor and Beloit College Alum Curtis Hubbard pointed out the ignorance of a right wing pundit!

Then the fun began!

Why do they always become unhinged when you do? 

Sheldon!

Recently WPRI flunky and former purple project blargher(why did she disappear) Sunny Schubert expressed her admiration for Sheldon Adelson (for being a former democrat and all of the "good" he has done- emphasis mine):  

As an example of the evils of Citizens United, she mentioned that “billionaire Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson… can donate tens of millions of dollars” to support conservative/Republican candidates and causes.
In case you know Adelson only as a rich Republican donor, you might be interested to learn that he is the son of poor Jewish immigrants who came to the United States in the 1930s. His Lithuanian-born father was a taxi driver; his British-born mother ran a knitting shop. “Like most Jews around the country, being Democrat was part of our identity, as much a feature of our collective personality as our religion,” he wrote in a moving piece in the Wall Street Journal titled “I didn’t leave the Democrats; the Democrats left me.”
One of the factors that prompted Adelson to become Republican, he writes, is the Democrats’ waning support for Israel. “There is now a visceral anti-Israel movement among rank-and-file Democrats,” he says.
Another factor is Democrats moving away from traditional values like charity and neighborliness, he says, and toward government dependency. Adelson notes that “states that vote Republican are now far more generous to charities than those voting Democratic. In 2008, the seven least-generous states all voted for President Obama.”
While Adelson acknowledges that government does have a role to play in aiding the poor, he quotes political scientist Walter Russell Mead in describing what over-reliance on government has done to the Democratic stronghold of Illinois:
“Illinois politicians, including the present president of the United States, have wrecked one of the country’s potentially most prosperous and dynamic states, condemned millions of poor children to substandard education, failed to maintain vital infrastructure, choked business development and growth through unsustainable tax and regulatory policies—and still failed to appease the demands of the public sector unions and fee-seeking Wall Street crony capitalists who make billions off the state’s distress.”
Adelson goes on, but I won’t, because you can read it for yourself – if you’re remotely interested in what motivates conservatives. (Hint: It’s not racism, sexism or homophobia.)

In case you do not know the real Adelson, he gave $150,000,000 to help get republicans elected in the last election cycle.  No wonder the righties love him, I guess buying elections is a "traditional value". 

However there is something else he has done recently - break the law and then in the interest of "traditional neighboliness", met with members of the republican congress to change the laws he broke:

“[T]here were likely violations of the books and records and internal controls provisions” of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the company said in its annual regulatory report published on Friday. Late last year, Adelson reportedly held meetings with at least one House GOP leader to discuss “possible changes to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” arguing that he had been the target of federal investigations under the Act as retribution for his strong support for Republican candidates.
The Las Vegas Sands Corporation is suspected of improperly and in some cases illegally bribing Chinese government officials to expand its business in China. The company may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act with a $700,000 payment to a Chinese associate and worked with organized crime gangs to drive business from mainland China to their Macau casino.

In case you wonder if Adelson's lack of morals and continual breaking of the law would scare away any republicans?  Think again!

 Since the election, Adelson said that plans to double his contributions to Republican candidates and with an estimated net worth of almost $25 billion, he could theoretically spend $500,000 on every single Republican House and Senate nominee for the next 186 years.

Thank God the Democratic Party is NOT aligned with Adelson's morals!  


 

Wisconsin State Journal's: Series of Unfortunate Events

First this happened:

 Walker is the best choice for getting Wisconsin back on track financially and competing for more good-paying jobs.

Secondly,  this happened:

Wisconsin State Journal Endorses Tommy!

But this election is about the need for jobs, cooperation and fiscal sanity. Thompson wins on those priorities.

Then this happened:

 The State Journal editorial board endorses Mitt Romney in Tuesday's presidential election.

Romney showed as the Republican governor of Democratic-leaning Massachusetts that he can find agreement across the partisan divide. And his vice presidential pick — Wisconsin's U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Janesville — suggests Romney is serious about tackling America's fiscal mess.

Romney has an impressive record of success in the private and public sectors. He's a numbers guy who focuses more on results than ideology. That's why so many of his fellow Republicans during the GOP primary criticized him for not being conservative enough.

Romney has been a strong leader in business and civic life. This includes turning around many troubled companies and the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Romney better understands how and why entrepreneurs and employers decide to expand and add jobs. He's more likely to get the private-sector going strong again. . .

But Obama is the president. The buck stops with him. This is now Obama's economy, even though the GOP shares in the blame for partisan games

 Then this happened:

 Lee Enterprises Inc., based in Davenport, Iowa, reported Monday that it lost $7.7 million, or 15 cents per share, in its fiscal fourth quarter, compared with a net loss of $8.8 million, or 20 cents per share, a year ago.

.

How Right Wing Sausage is Made

Science Fiction Writer and WPRI paid hack Christian Schneider wrote a fable the other day, one of his best pieces of work. 

Beaten for being a gay republican!  Over 1300 words of pure republican bliss!

The story however had one major tell:

To date, Wood has been reluctant to talk to any media, especially on-camera.   “I’m not going to win Princess Kay of the Milky Way or anything anytime soon, I look a little rough,” he joked.

Wood was reluctant to talk to the media because he knew he was lying, however his fake story had to be told so he chose people who were NOT the media.   Schneider of course, The Daily Caller and mediatrackers for some examples to make sure and get their message out to as many people  as possible before the house of cards fell!

This was yet another great example of how the echo chamber works.  They make up a story and a couple people run with it, allowing fellow paid and unpaid hacks to repeat repeat repeat!   Wisconsin reporter, Crazy Fred Dooley , Alpha Male Randy Hollenbeck and  Boots and Sabers(owen deleted the story like it never happened- no apologies or retractions) to name a few!   

This was an excellent example of the republican noise machine.

* Make up a story.

* Get it out there to as many people as possible in the 24 hour news cycle(shame on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for giving Schneider a forum).  Extra credit here for being incredibly upset and emotional about this story!

*  When story is proven to be false, either pretend you knew it all along or pretend nothing ever happened.

* Lather, Rinse, Repeat!   

This is how right wing sausage is made, and it is as ugly as regular sausage!  The thing to know is when there is a story spreading through the right wing blogosphere and hate radio squawkers, wait a couple days for the actual truth to come out! 

PS:   In case your wondering about how Schneider addressed his ridiculous fable as being false.  He amended his 1300+ story to add this at the end.

UPDATE: on October 29, Wood recanted his allegations to the Madison Police Department.

Yes he is THAT dishonest!


Much more on this story here and here!  

Walker Won't Touch Pension System....Not Yet Anyway.

The long awaited study on the Wisconsin Retirement System has finally been released. And to no one's great surprise, it found that the current system is strong and the best that there is, even though Scott Walker and his Republican henchmen in the state legislature were hoping for different results.

So that means that Walker won't touch the pension system, right? Well, yes, if you're the kind to believe the pap that comes out of squawk radio and Faux News or if you're angling to be David Koch's cabana boy.

In order to test that hypothesis, the best place to start is with what Walker had to say about the study (emphasis mine):

The report released today confirms that both taxpayers and pensioners are getting a great deal with the WRS. Compared to other states, Wisconsin consistently rates among the best performing public pension systems in the country.

Both the State of Wisconsin and WRS must be fiscally sustainable moving forward to ensure that we can meet our outstanding benefit obligations, which I am confident we can do. The long term structural changes we made last year will help ensure that the state is able to fulfill the commitment it has made to pensioners.

I want to be very clear: I am currently not planning to make any substantial changes to the WRS. However, I will continue to work to ensure that the WRS is fiscally sustainable for both taxpayers and retirees.

Well, he certainly leaves himself a lot of wiggle room in between all those code words. But it is not conclusive in itself one way or the other as to what his true intentions are.

Ah, but we have an assist by Walker's right hand man, Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch. His statement regarding the study and the retirement system is a lot more ominous (again, emphasis mine):

DOA Secretary Mike Huebsch stated, “Wisconsin will continue to monitor the health of the current system. It is our duty to make sure Wisconsin taxpayers know their tax dollars are being invested efficiently and state employees know their retirement plans are being well managed.”

The study also evaluated the potential effects of establishing an optional Defined Contribution plan. The findings show a Defined Contribution plan would provide zero risk to taxpayers and provide the portability necessary for a highly qualified and robust 21st century workforce. The Defined Contribution plan would also place an emphasis on individual employee investment choices. However, the study notes the professional management of all pooled assets boosts the current Defined Benefit plan.

“The state will continue to look at potential options for reforming the current system because the workforce of the future may not look like our current workforce,” Secretary Huebsch continued. “Taxpayers deserve to have the best and hardest working employees and a 21st century workforce may prefer portability of benefits and freedom offered by other retirement options.”

In addition, the study reviewed an option for employees to opt-out of required contributions and receive the money purchase annuity. The study raised concerns about the impact of this option on the current Defined Benefit plan, since it would reduce overall contributions to the current system’s cash flow position, which may negatively affect contribution rates for those in the current Defined Benefit plan. This option could also raise qualification issues with the IRS for the current plan.

Given the current financial health of the current system, at this time, the study recommends against implementing either the Defined Contribution or the opt-out option for employees.

I need to point out that there is no way in Fitzwalkerstan that Walker would not have let this release be issued, much less stand pat, unless he approved of it first.

It clearly indicates that the Walker administration will not be satisfied to leave it alone for long.

Indeed, history shows that Walker has an infinity to mucking up pension systems and that he has telegraphed his intention to do the same with the state's system.

As Milwaukee County Executive, he repeatedly and willfully failed to properly fund the pension system (which is separate from the state's system). This quickly led to a debt to the pension fund which was becoming untenable.

To resolve this self-created crisis, Walker proposed a ponzi-like scheme of selling pension obligation bonds. The chosen company to do this was Bearns-Sterns of Chicago. Just because his friend and campaign donor Nick Hurtgen was Vice-President of the company had nothing to do with it.

This proposal, to Walker's chagrin, was shot down in a referendum put to the voters in Milwaukee County. Not to be deterred, Walker still did a pay for play by doing some bid rigging and giving a $300,000 contract for debt restructuring to Hurtgen's company, just about the same time Hurtgen held a fundraiser for Walker which netted $25,000.

Unsurpringly, Hurtgen was later indicted for another pay for play scheme.

But this still left the mess that Walker created in the pension by underfunding it. This was only made worse when the markets crashed at the beginning of the Bush/Cheney recession.

Ha ha! Made you think your
pension is safe with me!

Walker again tried the pension obligation bond scheme. This time he was successful even though the whole thing seemed, and still seems, to be rather sketchy on how well it would work.

Leading up to the 2010 elections, there was a lot of fear that Walker would want to dip into the pension fund. After all, there is a helluva lot of money in there that could be going to benefit and even further enrich his filthy rich campaign donors, instead of being used as the deferred compensation for the workers, who have paid for it in full.

This fear wasn't necessarily misplaced or overblown when one considered what the Bradley Foundation-funded staff at WPRI had to say about it:

Candidate Walker is not the only one taking aim at worker pensions. Earlier this year, former state DOA Secretary George Lightbourn, who now heads the corporate-funded conservative Wisconsin Public Research Institute, described the Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS) as having “overstayed its welcome” and “far out of the mainstream”. He said Wisconsin’s next governor should “make it a priority to eliminate the insularity that has defined the WRS.” WPRI’s agenda is to privatize the WRS and shift it to a defined contribution plan, transferring billions in Wisconsin investment earnings to the Wall Street banks and investment houses that destroyed our economy and the retirement security of the millions of American workers whowere shifted to defined contribution plans over the last 20 years.

Lightbourn’s group published the study showing that the average worker earning $48,000 may be eligible to receive a monthly pension of $1,712. The same study showed that, in contrast, a private sector worker who earned $70,000 would getapproximately $1,300 a month in retirement. Lightbourn noted that the economic downturn has reduced private sector pensions and that public employee pensions are somehow unfairly insulated from the recession. Like Walker, Lightbourn argues that all public sector workers ought to pay more of pension costs, and that state and local governments should use the savings to offset budget deficits.

The observations of the WPRI called attention to a crisis in the lack of retirement security for many, if not most, American workers. Attacking the WRS misses the point. ETF Secretary Stella noted that there is a retirement crisis in this country,“but it’s not a crisis of having too much income…it’s so disappointing to see the WPRI advocate for slashing benefits for the men and women who protect our communities, teach our children, and serve the public in so many different ways rather than offering solutions to make sure retirement security is achievable by all. We ought to be talking about improving retirement security for everyone in Wisconsin rather than reducing it for some.” We could not agree more. AFSCME,along with other unions, supports enhancing retirement security for all workers.

Indeed, a similar reason not to take Walker's words at face value is the simple fact that the whole idea of attacking public pension systems was one of the evils let loose by the Pandora Box known as ALEC.

And even as Walker is saying he won't touch the pension system - for now - well, even that is a lie.

Due to "an oversight" in Act 10, there is suddenly a need to contribute another $87.5 million to the fund. And that money is going to come from the workers who already took a massive pay cut.

I'm sure that all this sounds real good to the Kool Aid drinkers who listen to squawk radio, watch Fox News or work for the Kochs.

But the sad fact is that it's not only the public sector workers' money that would go to feed the monsters of Wall Street, but the taxpayers' money as well. After all, defined benefits plans like the one the state has right now is almost twice as cost effective as the defined contribution plans they want to force on us.

Then again, there has been an abundance of evidence that Walker's agenda is not one to protect the workers and the taxpayers, but how the best to get every last cent from them and give it to the ones he really cares about - the ones that bought him the governorship and who will, he hopes, by him the presidency some day.