Governor Chris Christie Can't Handle Difficult Tasks

  

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie recently opened up about his weight.  

In an interview with ABC News, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) discussed the issue of his weight, saying, "It's a really difficult thing to deal with."

The Republican governor said, "I've been living with it for a long time, and I'm going to try to get better." He added, "And if I can get better, that'll be great for me and for my family and for the public who likes me ... it's something that's not easy. If it were easy, I'd already have it fixed.”

Christie signaled that he's never considered gastric bypass surgery as a viable solution to address his weight, calling the procedure "too risky."

So very touching.  It is nice that he wants to work on his weight problem.   There was however no mention on if he has plans on trying to control his massive spending of taxpayer dollars on personal luxury items,

Right before the lineup cards were being exchanged on the field, a noise from above distracted the spectators as the 55-foot long helicopter buzzed over trees in left field, circled the outfield and landed in an adjacent football field. Christie disembarked from the helicopter and got into a black car with tinted windows that drove him about a 100 yards to the baseball field…

The governor had no public events on his schedule, offering no insight to where he might have been traveling from. He had a private meeting at 6:30 p.m. at Drumthwacket, the governor’s mansion, in Princeton. He is meeting with a group of Iowa donors who have publically expressed a desire to persuade him to run for president in 2012

Or if there is a surgery or treatment to stop him from being an ass:

Or if he can somehow work on telling the truth for a change!    

“Clearly there has been a pattern of the governor playing fast and loose with the details,” said Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University. “But so far, he’s been adept at getting the public to believe what he says.”

Mr. Christie, a Republican who took office in January 2010, would hardly be the first politician to indulge in hyperbole or gloss over facts. But his misstatements, exaggerations and carefully constructed claims belie the national image he has built as a blunt talker who gives straight answers to hard questions, especially about budgets and labor relations. Candor is central to Mr. Christie’s appeal, and a review of his public statements over the past year shows some of them do not hold up to scrutiny.

What would you expect I guess with someone who is so tight with Scott Walker?

 "Gov. Christie, I think you might be misunderstanding New Jersey’s slogan -- it's not ‘The Olive Garden State'."  - Jimmy Kimmel

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.

Republican Crazies!

Do we really want these people running our country?

1.  Our very own Senator Ron Johnson thinks if employers can't deny coverage to cancer patients, its the end of the world as we know it. (Ed. note - I purposely left the video out, because the stupid burns)  

KEYES: I know Richard Murdock had said even though businesses should give people, for instance, with cancer, health coverage, they shouldn’t be legally required by the federal government.

JOHNSON: They shouldn’t. Listen, our rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And when we start expanding beyond that realm, when you create a right for somebody, you create an obligation for somebody else, and then you’re taking away that person’s right. And that maybe doesn’t seem all that great, but it’s just true. Our nation was based on the foundation of freedom and limited government.

2.  Indiana Congressman and gubernatorial candidate(what makes these guys think they are eligible for promotions?) Mike Pence  believes that the SCOTUS upholding Obamacare is equal to the terrorists attacks of  9-11.  

In a closed door House GOP meeting Thursday, Indiana congressman and gubernatorial candidate Mike Pence likened the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the Democratic health care law to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to several sources present.

3.   Mitt Romney invested in medical-waste firm that disposed of aborted Fetuses!

Here's what happened with Stericycle. In November 1999, Bain Capital and Madison Dearborn Partners, a Chicago-based private equity firm, filed with the SEC a Schedule 13D, which lists owners of publicly traded companies, noting that they had jointly purchased $75 million worth of shares in Stericycle, a fast-growing player in the medical-waste industry. (That April, Stericycle had announced plans to buy the medical-waste businesses of Browning Ferris Industries and Allied Waste Industries.) The SEC filing lists assorted Bain-related entities that were part of the deal, including Bain Capital (BCI), Bain Capital Partners VI (BCP VI), Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors (a Bermuda-based Bain affiliate), and Brookside Capital Investors (a Bain offshoot). And it notes that Romney was the "sole shareholder, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of BCI, BCP VI Inc., Brookside Inc. and Sankaty Ltd."

The document also states that Romney "may be deemed to share voting and dispositive power with respect to" 2,116,588 shares of common stock in Stericycle "in his capacity as sole shareholder" of the Bain entities that invested in the company. That was about 11 percent of the outstanding shares of common stock. (The whole $75 million investment won Bain, Romney, and their partners 22.64 percent of the firm's stock—the largest bloc among the firm's owners.) The original copy of the filing was signed by Romney.

Tommy Thompson: A Week Late and $350 dollars short!

Well known manure farmer Tommy Thompson gave a speech recently where he attempted to show his credentials as a serious politician who wants to be your Senator.  Unfortunately for Tommy all he did was show why he needs to just go away,    His failed attempts at coming out of retirement make Wisconsinites yearn for Bret Favre.     Tommy while speaking of his "leadership" skills, tells us of his leadership skills after 9/18.   Yes he got the date wrong of THE defining event of our lifetime(one of which he was part of the administration in charge).  It has to be heard to be believed!  




of course whats even worse than Tommy messing up the date is his campaign failed and feeble attempt to explain this flub.

"There are two plausible explanations as to the recent 9/18 versus 9/11 reference made by Tommy Thompson at a recent event," said campaign spokesman Brian Nemoir. "First, the entire civilized world has the wrong date of this historic and tragic attack on our nation's soil; second, during a spirited campaign appearance Tommy Thompson misspoke regarding an horrific episode in our country’s history during which he played a key leadership role. The campaign is fully examining both scenarios."

He declined to answer a follow-up question on whether that meant Thompson had misspoken.

Tommy can't even be honest when he mis speaks and he thinks the people of Wisconsin will not notice or hold him accountable?  

Now we see why he has donated to democrats throughout his career, he needs all of the help he can get!  It is not really surprising though, taking a cue from Mitt Romney, Tommy Thompson is denouncing everything he ever accomplished in his political career!    

Maybe he is better off not speaking until he has had a few cold ones:



Tammy Baldwin is the only real choice for the Wisconsin US Senate seat!

Scott Michalak For The 38th Assembly District

This evening, I had the opportunity to speak with Scott Michalak, who is running against Rep. Joel "Get in mah bellay" Kleefisch.

Scott is a plain spoken man who doesn't have a glamorous history.  He doesn't have a history in politics.  He isn't what you might call a "rock star."

Who Scott is is a good husband, proud father and a hard-working man who, like so many of us, can't stand to see what is happening to our state.  And what he brings is what he wants to bring to the Capitol - common sense.

He is sickened by the continuous attack on the middle class and on workers like you and I.  And he knows what is going on because he's experienced it first hand.  Scott worked for 20 years in dairy food plants, making things like International Delight Coffee Creamer. (Did you know that International Delight was never meant to be put in coffee? It was originally made to be an additive to pancake batter.  The fact that it was good in coffee was found purely accidentally.)

Scott lost his job when, like we've been seeing all to often in our state, the companies decided that they wanted to increase their profit margins by closing plants and laying off workers.  Now he drives a truck for a living.

Scott's worked in both union shops and in non-union ones, and so he knows first hand the importance of unions in protecting workers' rights and making sure they are able to get paid a fair wage for the work they do to make the company successful.

Another reason why Scott knows what is going on and is outraged by it is because his wife is a teacher.  He compared Wisconsin's high ranking in ACT scores, graduation rates and other measures against the non-unionized states like Texas, which came in dead last in the nation in these same categories.  He knows that the Republicans' agenda will bring our schools down to these pitiful examples. As Scott pointed out, when it comes to the quality of education, you get what you pay for.  And people like Joel Kleefisch don't want to pay for a quality education for our children.

Scott is also fed up with the blatant disregard and disrespect that Joel Kleefisch has shown for his own constituents.

Scott has already been calling his opponent out on the prime example of how much disdain Kleefisch holds for the people - the way Kleefisch used his influence to protect the wealthy Richard Herr, the man who dumped many times the legal limit of effluence on fields near the drinking wells of dozens of homes.  Kleefisch did so for no other reason that the fact that Herr is a campaign contributor to both him and his wife, Lt. Governor Rebecca "Stop looking at me that way, end table" Kleefisch.  From Scott's press release on this matter:

“Out on doors I heard a theme from voters: What the heck are they thinking in Madison?” stated Michalak. “Their questions were simple, but blunt: Is my drinking water clean after Herr Environmental dumped human waste in our neighborhood? Why isn’t Herr Environmental paying to test my well? How did Herr Environmental get such a light punishment from the DNR? And why did Joel Kleefisch stand up for polluters instead of me?”  

An investigation by the Wisconsin State Journal found that Rep. Joel Kleefisch (R-Oconomowoc) quietly lobbied the DNR for leniency for a campaign contributor that dumped human waste near drinking water wells.  

“Rep. Kleefisch doesn’t need to answer my questions; he needs to answer the questions of the good people of our district,” said Michalak. “The fact that he’s putting the interests of a campaign contributor ahead of constituents is sleazy and wrong. These people deserve answers from their representative in Madison.”  

Recently, the Department of Natural Resources stated that they would not order Herr Environmental to pay for private well tests to see if their wells have been contaminated. For the human waste spreading violations in the Town of Concord, Herr Environmental has only been fined $4000; a figurative slap-on-the-wrist.  

Michalak finished with: “It’s disgusting that spreading human waste has drawn such light punishment from the DNR, which is charged with protecting our natural resources. But for Rep. Kleefisch to stand up for polluters and not have the guts to answer these questions is reprehensible.” 

Scott told me that he has spoken to many of the people that were affected by Herr's dumping of effluence which worked its way into their drinking water.  People reported getting sick and even developing serious illnesses they believe are attributable to their drinking this now tainted water.  

One of these wells were tested for the pollutants and came out way above safe limits.  It cost the owner $1,000 for the test and another $300 to get the water potable again.  The well owner will have to do it again in a few months as well.  And this money is coming out of the owner's pocket since Kleefisch didn't think that this family, or any of the others likewise affected, were as important as his campaign contributor.

Kleefisch also turned the blind eye when Herr had a second, unapproved and unlicensed storage tank put in or when he tried to charge people $6,000 for a job that another company charged only $350.

Other things that Scott mentioned is Kleefisch's hypocrisy by supporting the Voter ID bill and then turning around and voting for all of his Republican friends, betraying his own stance of one person, one vote.

You can learn more of the common sense ideas he stands for and wants to bring to Madison at his website and his Facebook page.  It is these common sense ideas which has earned him the endorsements of the Teamsters, SEIU and Clean Wisconsin.

But Scott does have one problem. He's going up against a guy that has the wealth of the Koch brothers and the Bradley Foundation behind him.  Meanwhile, everyone was donating to Tom Barrett and Lori Compas.  He doesn't begrudge them this, but he is in need of raising some money fast.

You can either donate to his Act Blue page or attend his kickoff fundraiser at the Keystone Grill in Cambridge, WI on July 11.  He is going to have State Representatives Andy Jorgensen and Brett Hulsey as guest speakers.

But whatever you can do, please help. We need people like Scott to stand up for us as opposed to people like Kleefisch who would rather stand on our necks.

Republican Goonies - Follow up!

I wrote recently about the fact that our congressmen are speaking like a bunch of tenth graders and how that fit well with one of Bill Maher's recent New Rules segments:

 "I'm not trying to slam these kids, because being an asshole is totally understandable when you're fourteen," Maher says. "But my point is to Republican adults. When 14-year old boys sound exactly like you do... maybe you should rethink the shit that's coming out of your mouth."

Politico took notice of this segment also and did a follow up on 13 year old republican author and hero of the right Jonathan Krohn.   It turns out Mr. Krohn is not the darling of the right anymore, he received an education! 

Jonathan Krohn took the political world by storm at 2009’s Conservative Political Action Conference when, at just 13 years old, he delivered an impromptu rallying cry for conservatism that became a viral hit and had some pegging him as a future star of the Republican Party.

Now 17, Krohn — who went on to write a book, “Defining Conservatism,” that was blurbed by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Bill Bennett — still watches that speech from time to time, but it mostly makes him cringe because, well, he’s not a conservative anymore.

Then the former republican golden boy gives his thoughts on the former 13 year old right wing star, but his inner reflection could also be a nice review of the right wing hate sqaukers who are only one trick ponies.  

“I think it was naive,” Krohn now says of the speech. “It’s a 13-year-old kid saying stuff that he had heard for a long time.… I live in Georgia. We’re inundated with conservative talk in Georgia.… The speech was something that a 13-year-old does. You haven’t formed all your opinions. You’re really defeating yourself if you think you have all of your ideas in your head when you were 12 or 13. It’s impossible. You haven’t done enough.”

Krohn is basically saying that when all you hear is one thing your whole life all you do is parrot it you have no idea the nuances of an issue.  So what is the cure to this?  Education of course!

“One of the first things that changed was that I stopped being a social conservative,” said Krohn. “It just didn’t seem right to me anymore. From there, it branched into other issues, everything from health care to economic issues.… I think I’ve changed a lot, and it’s not because I’ve become a liberal from being a conservative — it’s just that I thought about it more. The issues are so complex, you can’t just go with some ideological mantra for each substantive issue.”

Krohn is bucking the received wisdom that people become more conservative as they get older, a shift he attributes partly to philosophy.

“I started reflecting on a lot of what I wrote, just thinking about what I had said and what I had done and started reading a lot of other stuff, and not just political stuff,” Krohn said. “I started getting into philosophy — Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Kant and lots of other German philosophers. And then into present philosophers — Saul Kripke, David Chalmers. It was really reading philosophy that didn’t have anything to do with politics that gave me a breather and made me realize that a lot of what I said was ideological blather that really wasn’t meaningful. It wasn’t me thinking. It was just me saying things I had heard so long from people I thought were interesting and just came to believe for some reason, without really understanding it. I understood it enough to talk about it but not really enough to have a conversation about it.”

Open your mind, think critically and continue your education and all of sudden the republican philosophy and politicians just are not so interesting or exciting anymore.

Of course Scott Walker is fully aware of this!   

 

Scott Walker's Political Philosophy

Yup, sounds about right to me.

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.