The Walker Budget Is Already Working! Part XVI

The full impact of the Walker budget has yet to be felt, but the harbingers are not looking good:

Wisconsin's unemployment rate rose slightly in August, with the state losing a net 800 private sector jobs last month.

The state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate increased to 7.9 percent in August, up from 7.8 percent in July, according to figures released Thursday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The unemployment rate in January -- when Gov. Scott Walker took office with a vow to create 250,000 new jobs during his first term -- was 7.4 percent.

[...]

But job growth has slowed since, leaving Walker behind the pace needed to reach his target of 250,000 private sector jobs.

Wisconsin has added 29,600 private sector jobs this year. At the current pace, Wisconsin will add 133,200 private sector jobs by the end of Walker's four-year term.

That number by the way, is almost half the number of new jobs that experts were predicting if Walker did absolutely nothing.

In other words, Walker's budget IS worse than nothing.

How Can You Tell When Scott Walker's Lying?

His weasel lips are moving.

When asked about the FBI raiding Cindy Archer's home, Scott Walker denied knowing anything about anything regarding any of it.

I could agree that Walker is an ignorant moron, but that's about it.

First of all, Walker has a history of doing something dirty and lying about it.  For just one example, when it came out that there was a study done about the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex in relation to a woman who died while in care there, Walker refused to allow it to be released.  But then when he caught heat for it, he backpedaled and blamed the county's attorneys and the Chairman of the County Board.  

The truth was that it was the decision of Walker and the high-cost private attorney Walker hired to defend him (although not necessarily the county against the pending lawsuit).  

Regarding Cindy Archer, Walker expects the people to believe that he was not in communication with his top aid at Milwaukee County and assistant secretary at the state level at all for the past three or four years.  Walker has known Archer for decades, from when he was a state legislator.  It was this cronyism that led him to hire her in the first place.  There is no way that they haven't been talking.

Remember this as well when more stuff comes out about Tim Russell (and trust me, a helluva lot more is coming out about him).  Walker and Russell have been very close and very special friends for more than two decades.  They've been known to spend a lot of time together and have taken trips together.  Russell has worked each and every one of Walker's campaigns, whether or not he was working for Milwaukee County at the time.  Walker has given Russell jobs with the county between (and during) his campaigns.  And not just any job, but high paying administrative jobs, even though Russell continuously proved himself to not know what he was doing.

It would be laughable for Walker to even consider telling people that he didn't know of all the skulduggery Russell was doing.  After all, Russell was the one caught on film doing campaign work during Walker's bike ride last year.  Did Walker not notice this?  Is he that oblivious? Then he's not fit to tie his own shoes, much less govern a state.

The only that comes close to being as sickening the way Walker shamelessly lies is the way the media laps it up without challenging him.

Majority Report Cites Cog Dis!

Sam Seder of Majority Report was discussing the FBI raid on Cindy Archer's home, citing none other but this humble little blogspot site:



A most heartfelt thank you to @gnarlytrombone for pointing this out to me and making my day!

An Introduction To Walkergate

With the big news of the week, the FBI serving a search warrant of Cynthia Archer's house, there has been an increase in speculation regarding the ongoing John Doe investigation, which is quickly becoming known as Walkergate.  The investigation has to do with possible illegal campaigning and other misdeeds by Scott Walker's campaign and the actions of his staffers who served under him as county executive and now governor.

But it has come to my attention that there is a lot of misinformation and confusion, from both sides of the political aisle, regarding what is happening, what things could mean and even what is relevant.  Some of fellow lefties, in their zeal, are getting lost on irrelevant details and tangents.  Meanwhile, there are those on the right that are trying to minimize the ramifications and/or distract the people's attentions from what is happening.

To clarify things, I will present a history of events, and introduction to the players and the inclusion of some things that seem to have gotten lost in the coverage of the story.

It started in May 2010 when Dan Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that then Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker's coordinator of constituents services, Darlene Wink, was caught leaving comments on JSOnline during work hours and using county computers. Wink was posting under the handle of "RPMCVP" which stood for  her other position - Republican Party of Milwaukee Co-Vice-President.  Within hours of Dan Bice filing an open records request, Wink quit her job.  However, even I, one of Walker's most ardent critics, found the whole Wink affair to be rather innocuous.  Later it was learned that Wink had lawyered up pretty quickly.

Others were more suspicious.

Milwaukee County Supervisor John Weishan filed an open records request of his own to find out if any of Walker's other aides were also doing something similar.  Several months and thousands of dollars later, Walker gave Weishan an unsatisfactory few sheets of paper indicating that Walker and few other aides had gone to various sites like WisPolitics.com.  Apparently, this information, besides costing more than it should have, was not accurate.

Because of Weishan's tenacity, some of Walker's allies, the misnamed group Citizens for Responsible Government, filed a criminal complaint in retaliation against yours truly, using, shall we say, very irresponsible "documentation" to support their allegations.

Also in May of last year, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin followed Walker on his annual bike ride to promote his candidacy Milwaukee County.  This bike ride has long been a source of contention, with many, including myself, who kept pointing out that it was a thinly veiled publicly-funded campaign exploit.  Sure enough, they got lots of evidence, including footage, of long-time aide, campaign worker and close friend, Tim Russell, doing non-county work, even though he was traveling as a county employee. In August 2010, the Sheriff's Office did a search of Russell's office, confiscating his computer, his Blackberry and boxes of papers.

Interestingly, at the same time interest in Wink and Russell were growing, there was a website called "ScottforGov.com," which was a strongly pro-Walker blog and was staffed with people who had obvious political connections.  There had been speculation that the writers were members of Walker's county staff, his campaign staff (or both, since Walker has a long history of blurring that line).

Around the time of Wink's outing, they stopped publishing new posts.  A week later, they killed their twitter account.  Before 2010 came to a close, they had removed all comments and then took the entire site down.

At the beginning of 2011, it was learned that everyone that could possibly be involved were lawyering up but good.  Walker's campaign hired Steve Biskupic and his favorite law firm, for a mere $60,000, to make sure all their i's were dotted and all their t's were crossed.  Other big names, including Frank Gimbel  and Paul Bucher, were being floated around.  (Gimbel was believed by some to be hired by Tom Nardelli.)

And speaking of Nardelli, long considered a possible subject of Walkergate, he had recently and abruptly left public service on a very flimsy excuse.

Hot on the heels of that news, Cynthia Archer announced that she was taking a personal leave from her job, to which she had no intentions of returning.

Which leads us back to how we got into this - the raid on Archer's home.  Now Archer has said that she's done nothing wrong and doesn't need legal representation. Deserving of skepticism and cynicism, it should be pointed out that Archer also said she had nothing to do with Walkergate just days before they did the search of her house, confiscating a lot of things, including computer hard drives.

There are some on the right, including radio squawker Jeff Wagner, who are trying to minimize the ramifications of the Archer incident by questioning if it is an appropriate use of resources for just some political comments left on the paper's website.

This is misleading in the sense that this is so much more than just Wink's misdeeds.  It's already led to one conviction, that of William Gardner, who was found to having made illegal donations to Walker's campaign.  It also involves the possible illegal campaigning by Russell and the rest of Walker's cronies.  There has also been rumors of many more people who might be persons of interest in this investigation, but I won't name them until I have more confirmation of their involvement.

I would also not be surprised if the fact that Walker and his gang left the county executive suite with most of the files and computers missing is tied into the investigation as well.

And on a final note, I must point out that while Walker has been backpedaling like crazy and denying any knowledge of anything (well, OK, that's plausible at least), one of his repeated phrases is that the investigators have not asked him any questions.  That is to be expected.  They are building the case up to him, if it indeed reaches that far.  But if it does, he is probably sitting in the governor's mansion, sweating bullets and drinking Maalox by the case, hoping none of his cronies turns stool pigeon.

One Good Thing About Governor Walker....

...is that a man can take a day or two off to go up north, cut the grass, winterize the castle and just relax and know that when he comes back, nothing unseemly will have happe...HOLY CRAP!!!

Walker's Budget: To See The Future, First Learn The Past

If voters are expecting to Scott Walker to be the savior of Wisconsin and to boost our economy and create all of those jobs he promised, they will be in for a sore disappointment.

If voters expected this from Walker, they should've have looked at his past track record, the one he had in Milwaukee County:

The Milwaukee area's economy grew at a sluggish pace last year, trailing the national average of 2.5 percent, according to figures released Tuesday.

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the gross metropolitan product (GMP) of the Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis metro area was $84.57 billion in 2010. That was up just 1.4 percent from the inflation-adjusted figure for 2009.

GMP is the total output of goods and services in a given area during a given year -- a small-scale version of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP). Milwaukee's growth rate ranked 229th out of the 366 metropolitan areas across the country.

You know, there is a reason why Milwaukee County went against Walker 62-38 in the gubernatorial election. We knew what he would do to the state.

Scott Walker Disrespects Veterans, Tax Payers Alike

Two years ago, the state Veterans Affair Board unanimously voted to fire then Secretary John Scocos.  Among the violations listed was his poor communication skills, misspending money without board approval (he bought a $850,000 fire truck for the King Veterans Center which couldn't even handle a fire in all of the center's buildings), and arbitrarily raising rates for the veterans without notifying the board.

Scocos immediately cried foul and said his job was protected because he came back a few months before.  The problem with his argument is that he had his job back as soon as he returned.  The problem is that as soon he resumed his position, Scocos continued to act inappropriately despite warnings from the board.

So he got fired.

Two years later, along comes the corrupt Scott Walker who first had the Fitzgerald boys take the board's autonomy away and gave control of it to Walker.  Walker then reappointed Scocos, who was already a state employee, to the secretary position, despite the fact that Scocos still had a $500,000 lawsuit against the state and the Board and despite the fact that Scocos already proved himself incapable of effectively filling that slot.

Predictably, this is having ramifications and the Veterans Affair Board is losing good members who were diligent in their service to their fellow veterans and to the tax payers.

A week after the appointment, the board's vice-chairman, Peter Moran, resigned from his position out of protest of the Scocos appointment.

Today, we learn another member of the board, Anthony Hardie, who was a long-time executive assistant to Scocos, has resigned in protest to Scocos' appointment.

Hardie's reasons, in his own words, are very telling:

Given my deep belief in the need for open, transparent, accountable, and responsive government perhaps demonstrated by these few examples, it should therefore come as no surprise that I find highly concerning the recent behind the scenes actions of Mr. Scocos and his surrogates in cajoling, then harassing, then threatening state leaders of the nation’s largest disabled veterans service organization, all related to his intense ambition to be restored to the WDVA Secretary position -- at least some of which appears to have included the use of government employees, time, travel, and resources. A tip-off of these troubling non-public issues was touched on in a recent press account. Furthermore, the use of precious public resources in the personal pursuit of perceived opponents, opposition, and so-called “troublemakers,” should also be of public concern to those of us who still believe in basic American principles -- and that in a democracy, the process of getting to an outcome matters just as much as the outcome itself. The coercion and threats didn’t end after his nomination, but have continued through as late as a few days ago.

I do not currently have the strength to fight against all of this, nor do I wish to pull my beloved Disabled American Veterans (DAV) organization into Mr. Scocos’ very sad personal vendetta. All of us have better things to do with our lives, which I know all too well having serious health issues.

Well, at least we now know that Walker did not reappoint Scocos because of his leadership skills, his morals or diligence to duty, because he has none.

Instead, Walker appointed him because he found his soul brother in Scocos, sharing the traits of corruption, bullying and ineptitude.

The veterans and the tax payers deserve so much better than either of these buffoons.

It's Not What You Know, It's Who You're Cronies With

Who's up for another game of Musical Cronies?

It appears that Scott Walker has been playing his favorite game again.

Cindy Archer, who was the head of then County Executive Walker's Department of Administration and then followed him to Madison, is the most recent game piece for Walker.

Last month, the day after another crony, Tom Nardelli, announced his sudden retirement, it was learned that Archer was also leaving her position.  She claimed it was to take a personal leave to attend to family matters.

It was speculated that the two sudden departures were tied in to the still ongoing John Doe investigation.

However, unlike Nardelli, Archer coyly hinted that she hoped to return to the Walker administration in some other capacity.

She had to be coy about it because it turned out that Walker had already done his shuffling and gave her a new position the day before she left the old one.  And the kicker is that Walker gave her a 61% raise over what the last person in that job had held:

Before she abruptly quit on Aug. 19, she was making $124,000 as deputy secretary in the state Department of Administration, the agency that oversees state contracts, the state budget, the state workforce and other key government functions. At the time, state officials said only that Archer had taken a personal leave of absence, giving no details on reasons for the leave, how soon she'd come back or what her duties would be.

Archer, in her resignation letter emailed to Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch, said simply that she was done with her job that same day.

Now, documents provided by the state show she actually was already hired a day earlier on Aug. 18 to a $99,449-a-year job in the Department of Children and Families, as the department's legislative liaison, according to a letter released Friday from Eloise Anderson, who heads the department. Her appointment to the new job was effective Aug. 20. Anderson's letter says Archer would be "performing duties as prescribed by this office."

Whether she's drawing it yet or not, Archer's new salary is about 61% more than the last person to hold the position. Kimberly L. Collins, who held the same liaison job until May, was paid $61,859 in 2010, according to state figures.

And here I thought the state was broke. Apparently not so broke that Walker is able to keep his cronies and special interest friends in comfy and overly well compensated positions in his administration.

The Walker Budget Is Already Working: Part XVI

As a rule of thumb, it generally takes three to six months for an economic policy to have a noticeable affect on the economy.

That means the effects of Scott Walker's union busting bill, which didn't go into effect until July, will be seen during the last quarter of this year.  Same goes for Walker's budget.

So how does Walker's promised land of 250,000 jobs look from here, just a few weeks away from the fruition of Walker's agenda?

Not too bloody good:

Hiring is likely to slow sharply in the Milwaukee area in the final three months of the year, according to Manpower Inc.'s latest quarterly report.

The global staffing company's survey shows that employers in the four-county region have scaled back their hiring plans. However, the same data also show that two-thirds of employers in the region plan to retain employees they currently have - an improvement over the previous quarter.

So how are our fearless leaders responding to this bit of bad news? Surely, they're admitting they were wrong and are taking immediate corrective actions, right?

No, not really.

Scott Walker is backpedalling as fast as he can from his promise of 250,000 jobs. Even worse, if that's even possible, the elitist Republican senators, who hold a reduced majority, decided to extend their August break through the month of September.  The lesser Fitzgerald, who thinks he should be our next US Senator, can't operate without his big brother's guidance, and is also going to slack off for another month.

They probably want to practice their croquet skills.

Maybe their next idea is that we all just ask Santa to bring us jobs for Christmas.

As If There Wasn't Enough Noise Pollution Already

This state is full of noise pollution, especially if you live in one of the bigger cities.

There's trucks, cars with bad mufflers, motorcycles, construction equipment, horns beeping, low flying planes, people with their radios blasting and a myriad of other things that assault our ears on a near constant basis.

One of the most offensive perpetrators is squawk radio.  In almost every corner of this state, you can find some radio station (usually on the am dial) that has its day filled with one blathering idiot following another bloviating liar.

In Milwaukee alone, we have Charlie Sykes, Jeff Wagner, John Mecure, James T. Harris (until the Journal Broadcast company made him do a lateral transfer to one of their stations in Arizona), Jay Weber, Vicki McKenna and Mark Belling filling the days with their tiresome and fact-free rantings and ravings.  So much so you can just visualize the spittle dripping off their microphones as they tell you the evils of creating jobs, taking care of the vulnerable and having everyone carry their fair share of the burden of being part of a society.

And that doesn't even cover the syndicated squawkers like Dennis Miller, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.

(Is it any wonder I so look forward to going up north where I can shut these immoral and asocial blowhards out?)

Now we find out that the powers that be don't think there's quite enough insult to our intelligence, enough assault on our eardrums.

Nope. Now they had to go and give Scott Walker is weekly ramblings.  Instead of fireside chats, we get Pants-on-fire squawks. Oh, huzzah.  Be still my heart. (/off-sarcasm)

And just with squawk radio, there is not even the appearance of honoring the federal laws regarding the public airwaves.  They are giving the Republican governor a free shot of air time without a rebuttal:

Were Democrats invited to produce a regular alternative message? "The WBA has a history of working with Wisconsin's governor throughout the years (regardless of party) -- as we are a non-partisan organization," wrote Michelle Vetterkind, the association's president and CEO, in an email response to my inquiry. 

Did former Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle have such a program? "Not a weekly radio address, no," she wrote. "However, this is something we'd love to continue" with governors of either party. 

She said legislative Democrats can do their own. "If the Democrats wish to offer a response, we are more than willing to post a link to it as well," she said. "It would be posted at the same time." 

Democrats appear likely to take them up on the offer. Melanie Conklin, an aide to Rep. Peter Barca of Kenosha, leader of Assembly Democrats, says she is in contact with an aide to Sen. Mark Miller of Monona, leader of Senate Democrats, on a next step.

Um, no, a link is unacceptable. The law requires equal air time and a link is not the same as free time over a powerful radio station's airwaves. If it were, Whallah! would have vanquished Milwaukee squawk radio long ago.

The Democrats should not and cannot settle for anything less than equal time as Walker.

Fortunately, even as it looks like Walker and the corporate media of the state are about to take another round of treading on our rights, we are about to gain valuable knowledge and skills on how to counter this.

Sue Wilson will be bringing her "Broadcast Blues" tour to the state this week, premiering in Madison this Saturday, first at Fighting Bob Fest and then again in Madison Saturday night at the First Unitarian Society Landmark Auditorium.  The rest of her tour can be found on this handy poster. (H/T Uppity Wisconsin)

For more information and to learn how you can join the fight to reclaim our airwaves, please check out their new website - Media Action Center.

Cross posted at Whallah!

Today is 9/12

That means that the Republicans who spent the day yesterday expressing their pride in the United States and promising their everlasting loyalty and willingness to defend the country will now go back to their attempts to systematically destroy it.

And The Booby Prize Goes To...

An eighth grade girl has filed a federal lawsuit against her school.  The issue at hand is that the principal has banned bracelets that read "I [heart] boobies (keep a breast),"  and is meant to raise awareness of breast cancer. The girl and her mother contend that it's a violation of her free speech rights.  The principal is threatening anyone wearing one of these bracelets could get detention, suspension or other punishment.

Some right wingers have already responded to this.

Kevin Binversie feels that it is a frivolous lawsuit and goes on to mock the girl, her parents and the courts.

Owen Robinson echoes the sentiment and adds that it should fail.

Dad29, a known misogynist, adds his two cents worth in a comment at Owen's site when he quips this:

Some people who comment here still don’t understand why the TEA party exists—-nor why the law is an ass. Nor do they understand why we don’t want kids playing in gutters.

Now for some facts.

Breast cancer is still a serious disease that affects too many women, and yes, it can strike teenage girls.

Secondly, per my Royal Barrister and others, the law and precedents appear to be in the favor of the girl.

Odds are that almost every thirteen year old child has already heard the word "boobies," and worse, and knows what these words mean.

So, given all the facts, the question, dear reader, is this: Who's the biggest boob?

• The principal who made a stink of a harmless bracelet.promoting breast cancer awareness,
• Binversie for mocking not only the lawsuit but the family as well.,
• Robinson for saying the girl shouldn't have free speech,
• Dad29 for his utterly inane comment comparing breast cancer awareness to playing in a gutter (not to mention his misunderstanding of the TEA Party)
• All of the above for trying to tell women that they're bodies and health are secondary to their concept of decency. (What's so decent about trying to keep children in the dark about health concerns and how to detect a problem early is something I won't pretend to understand.)

Bad Reporting Of The Day Meets Hypocrisy Of The Day

Jason Stein of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote an article which stated that the group We Are Wisconsin, which is a coalition of unions and other groups formed to fight back against the misdeeds of Scott Walker and his Republican allies in the state legislature. The gist of the story was that We Are Wisconsin was receiving money from the national unions.

 Stein's apparent objective was to make it look like We Are Wisconsin was merely a funnel for the national unions and outside agitators and thus were really bad people.  Or something like that.

 What Stein failed to report is where the national unions got their money from. Individual union members, like myself, pay our dues.

It used to be automatically deducted from our checks, unless the worker chose not to be part of the union (yes, Virginia, there was always a choice) until the Republicans tried to cripple the unions by first robbing workers of hundreds of dollars a month to pay for something we were already paying for. Now we have a number of options on how to pay our dues, if we can still afford to.  (For the record, I am still a union member in good standing.)

 Our dues would then go to not just the Local, but to the District Council and to the national level.  And now the national unions are returning that money to help us in our struggles to regain our rights.

 It's no more scandalous than the tax system.The individual tax payers sends money to the local governments, the state and the federal government.  In turn, the larger governments send the money back to the smaller ones. The feds send money to the states and sometimes to the local governments.  The state governments - except those run by a balding, corrupt nincompoop like Walker - send money to the local governments.

 Not exactly the horror that the right wingers and the paper, but I repeat myself, would like people to think it is But this brings us to the hypocrisy of the story, which Stein stuck near the bottom of the story, apparently hoping no one would read that far:

Deb Jordahl, a spokeswoman for Wisconsin Club for Growth, criticized the "We are" groups as fronts. 

"They aren't Wisconsin. They aren't Ohio. They aren't Illinois. They're Washington, D.C. They're national special-interest groups," Jordahl said. 

But the union leaders noted that groups including Wisconsin Club for Growth, which is aligned with the national Club for Growth, have their own sources of out-of-state money, which is often not disclosed 

For instance, the Wisconsin Club for Growth spent a rough estimate of $8 million to $9 million to support Republican candidates and criticize Democrats, according to the Democracy Campaign. McCabe said the two contributions to the group turning up so far are from out of state - $250,000 from Trevor Rees-Jones, the wealthy founder of the Texas firm Chief Oil &a Gas, and $150,000 from the international asset management and securities firm Citadel. 

Jordahl said the Democracy Campaign estimates "have no basis in fact," but she wouldn't say how much Club for Growth spent or where it got the money.

I got news for you. There is no Wisconsin Club for Growth, unless you're referring to growing the Koch Brother's bank accounts or their control of our government.

 It wouldn't take much of an investigative reporter to do a Google search and find that Club for Greed has ties to the Cato Institute and to the Koch Brothers.

It makes me wonder if Stein bothered to do the work, or if he was told not to, or if he did it, but the editors cut that information out. No matter which way it went, it was a very disappointing piece of poor reporting and a failure to present a balanced story.

 No wonder the paper's circulation numbers continue to drop.

On This Solemn Anniversary

Unless you're a hermit living in a cave for the last ten years, you know that this is the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attack on the United States of America.

Please commemorate the day in the fashion you see best.

As for me, I prefer to follow the words of Mother Jones (the historical figure, not the website):

Mourn the dead and fight like hell for the living.

Radio Appearance Delayed One Day

There's some bad news and some good news:

The bad news is that due to technical difficulties, the Sara Schultz Show will not be aired today, so you won't have to hear my nasally voice.

The good news is that she, and subsequently, I, will be on tomorrow at the same time.

And, it should go without saying, I blame Scott Walker for the technical difficulties. He's afraid of what I have to say and is trying to keep you from hearing the truth.