Anniversaries #5 and #4 - What A Difference A Year Makes!

It was five years ago on this date that Jay Bullock unleashed me on the Cheddarsphere.

One year later, also on this date, I unleashed Cog Dis on the Cheddarsphere.

The story is here, if you are interested. In one short year, I went from a writer on one of the greatest blogs in Cheddarland to heading up a crew of writers to being a lone blogger.

The last year has also brought on many changes. Cog Dis went from the long lasting green and gold format to the one you see now. I also was fortunate enough to bring on other authors to help with the fight for Wisconsin and our country and for our very rights.

I also was reminded of what great friends I have in #wiunion, who came together in my time of need to give me the greatest weapon known, the People's Computer, the machine that kills fascists. I cannot even begin to express how much that gift meant to me.

But you didn't stop there. You, gentle readers, also voted Cog Dis to be the Best of the Web.

Most of all, I am full of gratitude for your readership and, even more importantly, your friendship. These are by far, the most valuable gifts you have given to me.

Andfor everything, I thank you with all my heart.

So have some cake and ice-cream, put on your party hats, and take a balloon or two.

But then get ready.

We still have a lot of work to do before our state is set to rights and our country is protected by the those that threaten it.

And I'll - correction - we'll be there every step of the way.

And to be honest, I'm kind of excited to see what the future will bring. I do know that hatever it is, good or ill, we'll handle it together.

Sad Ending To New Beginnings

It hurt to see this story:

But Santos and four other staff members at the group home recently lost their jobs when the group home at S. 27th and W. Grant streets closed after 20 years.

"TLP was part of my life for so long that I felt it would be there forever," said Santos, sitting in an office at the emergency shelter. "It's hard to think that it's not there now. It's sad."

Andre Olton, the executive director of the Walker's Point center, said it's been a difficult five to six months phasing out the eight-bed group home, especially since he helped start it 20 years ago. But changing times, changing needs, reduced funding and possible future financial cuts meant taking a closer look at all the programs, he said.

"The key thing is that we want to continue to focus on priority services for youth, such as emergency shelter, transitional housing and prevention groups," he said. "We had to face the future in a realistic fashion, focusing resources where needed."

The 24-hour-a-day group home cost $360,000 annually, and the number of teens wanting to live there has been declining, he said.

I had worked in that group home for two years before going to work for Milwaukee County. It was a great program that had helped a lot of kids.

We would take in kids in who would have otherwise fallen through the cracks of the social services network. For a number of reasons, the kids found it untenable to stay at their homes.

At the group home, they were given room and board in exchange for which they were expected to go to school, get a part-time job and save the majority of their check so they would have money to get an apartment and some furniture when they moved out. We also taught them daily living skills such as budgeting, meal planning, grocery shopping, meal preparation as well as how to balance a checkbook or apply for a job.

I remember some of the kids that came through our doors during my stint there. I often wonder where they are and how they are doing.

This isn't the first time that the group home had to close. In 1994, when Newt Gingrich and the Republicans came in like a tsunami on the Contract On America* gimmick, the first they did was cut funding for programs for this. Then, after the last of the kids were moved out and just three weeks before the doors were shut for good, the federal government slipped in more funding at the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute.

But by this time, almost all the staff had found new jobs and most didn't come back.

Anyway, it's sad to see this fine program ending. However, it does provide some comfort to see that they have a new program which provides many of the same necessary services.

The biggest shame is that programs like this have to scramble to fine enough funding to keep operating from year to year, while people like Walker throw good money after bad to their cronies and campaign donors.

Just one more sign that too many people have their priorities totally out of whack.

*No, that was not a typo.

GAB Investigating Recall Fraud

Illegal campaigners of a feather,
 flock together

By golly, the Republicans were right after all. There apparently was some election fraud going on during the recalls. Just not the ones they meant.

WTAQ has the story:

Fradette says he left and started the Committee to Recall Dave Hansen after things got strange with VanderLeest.

“We founded a second one because David VanderLeest was hording all the signatures, wouldn’t let anyone look at them or to verify them if they were real or not or keep count of what we had and it got really strange, so we broke off,” Fradette said in a phone conversation.

Fradette formed a group with David Steffen, who ran against Hansen in 2004 and lost.

Fradette says the GAB is investigating signature collectors that came from out of state, fraudulent signatures, forgeries, and try to ascertain who paid for them.

Fradette says questions also arose about VanderLeest’s involvement.

Fradette mentioned that his second group received help from the Republican Party of Wisconsin as well as the Republican National Committee and says they may have been involved in hiring the out of state petition circulators.

When initially asked about the investigation VanderLeest claimed that the investigation was focused on signatures gathered by the other group.

“It doesn’t appear that any of my signatures collected by my grassroots volunteers are the ones in question”, VanderLeest said.

VanderLeest then stated he didn’t know why this was coming up after more than a year later and labeled this as a “fishing exhibition” and then abruptly hung up the phone after just over a minute.

VanderLeest, if the Gentle Reader will remember, was the default candidate to run against Hansen when the GOP's favored candidate, John Nygren, couldn't even raise the 400 signatures to get on the ballot.

VanderLeest also as a bit of a criminal past that, until now, didn't include committing this kind of fraud.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: When the Republicans started showing their selective outrage, look at what they are complaining about and how that fits into what they have done or are doing. That's more often than not where you are going to find the real issue.

H/T Democurmudgeon

The Walker Budget Keeps On Working! Part CXXI

Walker's policy keep on rolling, as do the lay off notices:

Fifty employees of Covance in Madison are losing their jobs.

The Princeton, N.J., company gave workers the news on Thursday. Some of the job cuts took effect immediately, and others will occur in the "next several weeks," spokeswoman Melissa Thompson said.

She said some employees affected may be able to apply for openings elsewhere in Covance's Madison facilities. "There could be, for some employees, opportunities internally," Thompson said.

Apparently a company that makes more that two billion dollars each year can't even make it in Fitzwalkerstan. This is beyond sad.

What Ryan's Austerity Budget Would Mean To Wisconsin

The folks at the Institute for Wisconsin's Future took a look at Paul Ryan's austerity budget proposal and how it would impact Wisconsin. To be blunt, it's pretty butt ugly:

If Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan’s approach to budgeting became U.S. law, Wisconsin would lose about $3.3 billion in federal spending in the next two years, with a resulting loss of about 26,000 full‐time jobs. Ryan chairs the House Budget Committee and is frequently mentioned as a possible vice‐presidential candidate with Mitt Romney.

Medical assistance programs would suffer most under the Ryan budget, with $1.7 billion cut in 2013 and 2014 compared with current law. That’s enough to keep more than 400,000 adults off Wisconsin’s BadgerCare program.

Income security programs—including food stamps, child nutrition and housing assistance—would lose more than half‐a‐billion dollars in 2013‐14. Over 70,000 households would lose food benefits next year.

Student financial aid, highway construction, community development and farm income stabilization programs would also be hard hit. More than 40,000 college students wouldn’t be able to get Pell grants in 2014, and cuts in conservation and resource management would almost equal the entire budget of the state Department of Natural
Resources.

You can find their full report here.

Analyzing The Analysis Of The Recall

A friend asked me to take a look at this piece by Tom Sommers, a Wisconsinite who did his take on the recall election.

For the most part, it is well written and fairly accurate.  A couple of key excerpts:

On strategy, Walker’s campaign was a fairly typical deployment of the Powell Doctrine (itself taken from Harry G. Summer’s musings on strategy following the US’s Vietnam debacle) to use overwhelming force against an opponent. Walker’s campaign carpet-bombed media with non-stop television and radio commercials for a half-year. Meanwhile, they positioned what seems to be an army of professional bloggers to control comment forums in the local press. In effect, they crowded out the public and often aggressively spread outright falsehoods on these sites, thus moving the Internet from a place of democratic dissent to use as a tool for reactionary power. This itself represents a major turn in the management of public opinion.

[...]

Reagan successfully campaigned, and rode to victory on this model in 1980. Scott Walker has privately declared he takes his inspiration from Reagan. Walker asserted in his now notorious Koch call that Reagan’s strike against the PATCO union workers early in his presidency was his defining moment in office and history. Walker emphasized that this was vital not only to reign in labor, but also to demonstrate to the Soviets that Reagan was no pushover. In Walker’s view curbing labor and displaying his resolve (others say intransigence) are the keys to understanding his agenda and his unwillingness to back off. If Walker survives the John Doe investigation he might be under, he will simply roll over the compromise inclined Democrats and advance his program at any cost. And, he has the financial means to do it.

Yet, Walker, while committed and smart, is hardly deep. His understanding of economics, history, and politics are thin. While he takes at face value the narrative of tax cuts as the key to Reagan’s success, he fails to recognize that Reagan gave up on the cost cutting enterprise as hopeless within two years of assuming office. Indeed, Reagan’s early austerity policies further depressed the economy. Thus, Reagan “corrected” and launched a massive military Keynesian debt-fueled binge that pulled the economy from its torpor. Meanwhile, given the US success in 1970s of getting oil priced in dollars, Reagan was able to press the pedal to the floor on both government spending and the dollar printing presses alike. As Dick Cheney infamously noted, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” For Scott Walker, however, “the Gipper” was an austerity icon.

Walker is in for a rude shock when he discovers his austerity policies will only exacerbate recessionary conditions. With no Central Bank at his disposal to create dollars, he will be forced to either admit his error (not his strong suit) or launch even further divisive attacks to, in the fashion of the 1930’s USSR, that define and then hit out at “wreckers” responsible for undermining his policy. Further, in the fashion of Mao, he will launch an attack against educators as “elites” parasitically feeding off the people. Meanwhile, just as Reagan’s Director of the Office of Budget and Management, David Stockman, noted early on that it was “feeding time at the trough” for Reagan’s backers at the public trough. That too will continue under Walker’s billionaire, special interest funded Governorship. Walker’s hardcore followers, however, are zealots. They are aggressive in the extreme and will turn hard on all enemies when their ideology is exposed as a failure for not producing broad-based prosperity. Whatever motivates Walker, it is clear his hardcore supporters represent a kind of aggressive freikorps that one would find in the backrooms with Joseph McCarthy or Richard Nixon. What makes Walker dangerous is that at minimum he is comfortable in both attracting and using these elements, while he himself appears to many as a decent and reasonable person who much of the public would not imagine Walker associating with.

Unfortunately, after such a good start and well written article, he ends it way off base. He describes Walker as a better communicator than Reagan and that he was able to strike a chord with many middle class and rural Wisconsinites, giving them the message they wanted to hear.

This strikes me as being an example of Stockholm Syndrome.

Walker is in no way a great orator. His handlers give him a few soundbite lines, and he has been known to flub those. Get him off script and he totally self-destructs. The man really is that unintelligent. Just look at what happens when he tries to even write his own stuff.

As for striking a chord with the middle class and rural voters, that's not true either. Granted, he was saying what he thinks they wanted to hear, but that only cut it with some of the low info voters, the ones that listen to talk radio or watch Fox News. And they were going to vote for Walker regardless.

In my travels, there was a lot of support for Walker's opponent, Tom Barrett. The problem wasn't so much that Walker connected with the people as it was that Barrett failed to. But then again, I've already said that I didn't think that Barrett was the right candidate for this race. Sadly, he proved every one of my concerns to be right on the button.

Then there was also some degree of recall burn out, which Barrett failed to overcome. But that also goes back to his failure to do proper messaging.

In summary, while Sommers does a good job of analyzing the recall for the most part, he completely overestimates Walker's oratory skills and ability to connect. What he credits Walker for is actually a combination of Barrett's failure to do what he needed to do and the money that was spent to portray Walker as the great communicator and to pour hundreds of millions of dollars worth of whitewash to cover up the truth of the matter.

Debating With Republicans

I saw this on Facebook:

And it ever so much reminded me of the comment thread of this post, with Cindy Kilkenny so aptly playing the role of the Republican pigeon.

Walker's Spendthrift Ways Hits Full Spectrum

I've already wrote about how Scott Walker's misguided spending priorities have hurt the state.

Instead of spending $4 million to educate children, he gave that money, despite claims of being broke, to Spectrum Brands in order to maintain jobs in Wisconsin. Not to create jobs, mind you, but just maintain them.

That $4 million instead went to Spectrum Brand's top executive David Lumley as part of his $13.7 million compensation package.  That'll really help the economy, won't it?

Well, maybe not all of that money went to the CEO.

Some might have gone to the legal defense fund of Philip Falcone, majority stock holder in Spectrum Brands, who was just charged with security fraud for manipulating the price of the stock.

As long as the money is being put to good use and not some waste, like teaching our children or providing health care to our poor, Walker is still happy.

Scott Walker: Healthcare Reform Desperado

Even with the original mass explosion of Republican heads that followed Thursday's SCOTUS ruling allowing the Affordable Care Act to proceed, the hilarity continues.

Scott Walker, the Desperado of Healthcare Reform, says that he won't follow the law and start phasing it in before the mid-November deadline.

That shouldn't really surprise anyone though.

First of all, this grandstanding will allow him to continue to seek out the national attention he craves, such as his appearance on "Face the Nation" on Sunday morning, while he inexplicably thinks he could someday be President of the United States.  (He must be thinking that Kochs et alia will buy it for him if he is a good boy and destroys Wisconsin.)


Secondly, Walker has shown on more than one occasion that he has no qualms about breaking the law, with Walkergate being the crown jewel of an example.  (Yes, yes, the indictments are coming. Please remain patient.)

Thirdly, the Republicans don't want people to see the effects of the Affordable Care Act.  If the people were to see that they are actually still get quality health care and save money to boot, well, that wouldn't bode well for Romney or any of the other Republican candidates running on all levels.

Even Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said that Walker needed to obey the law, although he did backpedal like the coward he is when the radio squawkers barked at him.

My guess - Walker will let the feds do the heavy lifting and do the work he's supposed to do.  Then he'll have something to mewl about until it starts working, and then he'll take credit for it.  Yes, he's done it before, such as with the Milwaukee County Board who had to force him to take the stimulus funding and then tried to take credit for the work it created and the good things done with it.

PS: For a bonus, here is a piece of unbelievable irony:

“The court was wrong,” said state Sen. Leah Vukmir, R-Wauwatosa. “We are left with virtually no limit on federal power. I believe this is a victory for the authoritarian state.”

Barnes Calles Out Fields On Retirement Fund

From the inbox:

Barnes calls on opponent to support current Wisconsin retirement system

MILWAUKEE—In response to Governor Walker’s remarks this week that he is open to making changes to the State of Wisconsin’s retirement system, Mandela Barnes, candidate for State Representative of Wisconsin’s 11th Assembly District, is calling on his opponent, Representative Jason Fields, to support the current retirement system in the State of Wisconsin, and to vow to not support any reforms that would privatize the system.

“A national survey conducted by the Pew Institute found that Wisconsin has the most sound public retirement system in the nation, which should be a large indicator that the system does not need to be privatized or changed at all. It’s working just fine,” Barnes said.

“I am calling on my opponent to stand against any attempt by Governor Walker to privatize the system or make sweeping changes to a system that is clearly the best in the country. There are a half of a million people in the state who need their elected officials to not play politics and gamble with their futures by privatizing the system. I hope we have learned something from our national financial collapse, and all of the people who lost everything.”

Barnes also stated that he is concerned with where Representative Fields will stand on the potential reform of the state’s retirement system, given the fact that Fields has stood with the governor on many other issues.

“I think it’s more than fair to ask this Representative to commit to standing with public workers by protecting their retirement system."

I think Fields is finally figuring out that he's sided with the wrong side when he kowtowed to the Republicans.

Quotable

Dominique Paul Noth, Labor Press Editor, has a commentary in the latest issue of the Labor Press in which he rehashes the recall election and eerie similarities between Scott Walker and Richard Nixon.*

He saves the best for last:

Americans are terrible at remembering the lessons of history or the motto that used to appear on the masthead of a Milwaukee newspaper: "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."

Unfortunately, today's Journal Sentinel backed Walker. And the published motto of its editorial page boss David Haynes is, "Keep the marketplace of ideas stacked."

I think he actually wrote "stocked," but you know how newspapers these days are full of typos.

Why, I do believe that is one of the best calling outs of Haynes ever. Or since this one

*No, Cindy Kilkenny, there is no link. You'll just have to get your own copy of the Labor Press.

Their Contempt Is Contemptible

So, the Republicans in the US House of Representatives have stamped their feet, held their breath and threw a little collective temper tantrum. The end result is that they found Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. I got news for them. Many people hold contempt for Congress.

Anyway, Holder won't be prosecuted, as is proper, since the whole hullabaloo is nothing more than a political stunt by the Republicans to try to smear President Obama during an election year and to cover their own NRA-funded asses.

Fortune has done quite the in-depth investigation into "Fast and Furious." Their findings show what a farce the Republican's contempt finding really is:

"Republican senators are whipping up the country into a psychotic frenzy with these reports that are patently false," says Linda Wallace, a special agent with the Internal Revenue Service's criminal investigation unit who was assigned to the Fast and Furious team (and recently retired from the IRS). A self-described gun-rights supporter, Wallace has not been criticized by Issa's committee.

The ATF's accusers seem untroubled by evidence that the policy they have pilloried didn't actually exist. "It gets back to something basic for me," says Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). "Terry was murdered, and guns from this operation were found at his murder site." A spokesman for Issa denies that politics has played a role in the congressman's actions and says "multiple individuals across the Justice Department's component agencies share responsibility for the failure that occurred in Operation Fast and Furious." Issa's spokesman asserts that even if ATF agents followed prosecutors' directives, "the practice is nonetheless gun walking." Attorneys for Dodson declined to comment on the record.

For its part, the ATF would not answer specific questions, citing ongoing investigations. But a spokesperson for the agency provided a written statement noting that the "ATF did not exercise proper oversight, planning or judgment in executing this case. We at ATF have accepted responsibility and have taken appropriate and decisive action to insure that these errors in oversight and judgment never occur again." The statement asserted that the "ATF has clarified its firearms transfer policy to focus on interdiction or early intervention to prevent the criminal acquisition, trafficking and misuse of firearms," and it cited changes in coordination and oversight at the ATF.

Irony abounds when it comes to the Fast and Furious scandal. But the ultimate irony is this: Republicans who support the National Rifle Association and its attempts to weaken gun laws are lambasting ATF agents for not seizing enough weapons—ones that, in this case, prosecutors deemed to be legal.

Do read the whole article for a fascinating, and horrifying, way that this as taken a life of its own, fabricated out of whole cloth.

Also worth the read is the overview of the Fortune article by Mother Jones.

When reading this, keep in mind that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) who is leading this mass tantrum, is also the the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

That means he is the one that could and should be calling Scott Walker back to Washington, D.C. to answer for his perjury before a Congressional committee, even as members of the same committee would like to see happen.

Amazingly, Issa denies there's any politics involved with his selective contempt.

Right.

It just so happens that he is going after the Democratic President Obama through his staff, based on nothing but a cover up by a rogue agent, but is not touching the Republican Walker even though he has videotaped evidence, but it's not political.
But if he's after Holder, and Obama, but not Walker, and it's not political, the only thing left is that he is doing it because of racial reasons.

Either way, the behavior of Congressional Republicans is what is truly contemptible.

Raw Data + Cooked Books = Same Old Slop

So now that the recall election is over, the real official job numbers for 2011 (as opposed to the Walker official numbers) are out.  The numbers aren't as bad as originally believed to be, but they aren't great news either:

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Thursday confirmed Gov. Scott Walker's assertion that Wisconsin did add jobs last year, though the federal agency scaled the total back a few thousand.

According to BLS, Wisconsin ended 2011 with 2,689,565 jobs, a 19,551 increase over the previous year. Those figures represent a 3,749 decrease from the quarterly census of employees and wages submitted by the state in May.

Those numbers are usually kept secret until the federal government signs off on them. The governor, however, broke with established protocol and released the figures early — less than two weeks before his recall election — in a move critics panned as overly political.

However, the new jobs numbers show Wisconsin lagged the rest of the country in job creation in 2011.

The roughly 20,000 jobs the state added last year ranked it about 40th in the country when compared with all 50 states.

And before anyone starts jumping up and down in excitement, saying that Walker created jobs, you'd better check your facts real close.

The reality is that Walker did not create any jobs, he just didn't lose as many as what was feared, as shown by this graph:

Yup, the blue line is the jobs that were created due to Governor Jim Doyle's budget and policies. The job losses didn't kick in until Walker's policies started putting their chokehold on the state's economy.  Also notice how they really plummeted as his budget kicked in.

Walker has has much to do with job creation as he does with the integrity of an Eagle Scout.

Absolutely nothing.

Walker Does What He Says Doesn't Work To Solve A Problem He Denies Exists

Wait! What?!

Gov. Scott Walker today requested two federal agricultural disaster declarations for Wisconsin to help farmers that sustained losses this spring and summer as a result of extreme weather conditions that impacted fruit trees and the maple syrup collection.

"Agriculture is the backbone of Wisconsin's economy and many farmers are hurting as a result of unseasonable weather over the last year," Walker said. "The hot conditions in March followed by a cold, wet April damaged many crops including Door County cherries and northern Wisconsin's maple syrup harvest."

Walker requested the Secretary Disaster Declarations from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The first request is for the entire state for the anticipated fruit tree losses. The extreme weather this spring impacted Wisconsin's fruit trees including apples and cherries. Unseasonably warm temperatures in March caused many trees and vines to flower early, but frost conditions in April killed many fruit buds. Agriculture officials estimate statewide losses could potentially be as high as 80 percent.

In addition, state agriculture officials report that the maple syrup losses were greater than 30 percent this spring as a result of the early warm weather in March followed by a cold April. The counties listed in the request for maple syrup losses are Barron, Door, Florence, Forest, Kewaunee, Langlade, Lincoln, Marathon, Marinette, Pierce, Polk, St Croix, Shawano and Vilas.
Walker made the requests based on information provided by the State Emergency Board. The requests, if successful, could help Wisconsin farmers qualify for federal assistance.

Scott Walker, who says that government isn't the solution, and tried to refuse stimulus funds as Milwaukee County Executive, is now asking the federal government for help. He's asking for help from he feds because of the effects of global climate change, which he denies even exists.

And the corporate media and squawk radio listeners keep eating this slop up without even once recognizing the hypocrisy of it all.

The Walker Budget Keeps On Working! Part CXX

Scott Walker's budget is still creating losing jobs faster than you can believe. This one gives further insight into why (emphasis mine):

Wausaukee Composites will close its Gillett facility, putting 45 employees out of work, according to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development.

The Gillett facility, 431 E. Main St., is expected to close Aug. 31, the Wausaukee-based company said in a June 25 letter to the state. Some employees might work for a short time after that date, the company said.

Sintex Industries Ltd. of Kalol, India, bought majority ownership of the company in 2007. Wausaukee Composites makes highly engineered composite plastic and fiberglass components, especially for the wind power, trucking and medical imaging industries. It also has manufacturing plants in Wausaukee, Cuba City and Owosso, Mich.

Gee, Walker kills the wind power industries and we lose jobs.

Every decision he has made so far has nothing to do with creating jobs, but appeasing his campaign contributors and his masters, no matter what it costs the state.