Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke: What, me worry?

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett is apparently “hosting” a “gun control summit” in Minneapolis, if the language in Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke’s latest whiny press release is accurate. Following the usual adolescent gripes in every Clarke statement, the sheriff urges Barrett,

“…focus on the risk factors of street crime and leave the Constitution alone.”

Begging the question…what is the sheriff’s job again?

If MacIver was right on the Wangaard recall…

The successful recall of former state Sen. Van Wangaard by 834 votes has the Republican party struggling to portray itself as the victim once again. Wangaard requested a recount, citing the usual registration violations and lack of voter ID laws, along with people campaigning at the polls, while even the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel noted, “[Wangaard] offered no proof of any of those allegations.” Instead of accepting their lone defeat of the election, in a district that flips as often as Mitt Romney, MacIver Institute “news service” is floating the story “Did several Racine poll workers push for recall of Wangaard?” on the basis that some of these poll workers (presumably very politically engaged citizens), signed a recall petition.

Eye on Wisconsin neatly sums up the wasteful hypocrisy of a recount, but I would like to take MacIver’s angle — YES, the 78 of 189 poll workers that signed a recall petition petition actively campaigned on behalf of John Lehman, influencing the outcome of the election.

Each of these hyper-partisan poll workers influenced 10.7 voters each to push Lehman to 834 more votes than Wangaard, without their misconduct being noted even a single time. Not even by fellow poll workers, 111 of whom did not sign any recall petition.

Perhaps the margin of victory was due to identification not being required when casting a ballot, and that happened 200 times in Racine County. In that case, the poll workers only had to convince 8.1 people to vote for Lehman. Is that far-fetched? Not when you include the figure of 250 fraudulent same-day registrations I just made up. Now each poll worker only needed to convince 4.9 voters to fill in the arrow for Lehman.

MacIver knows the “news” they “publish” is absolute garbage, but they have no problem making baseless insinuations or telling outright lies. It’s dirty, pathetic, right-wing politics at it’s most obvious, on par with Media Trackers and Wisconsin Reporter. Sadder yet is that so many fail to understand this, and it’s only going to get worse.

Ron Johnson and the obvious…

Ron Johnson on Mitt Romney;

 

“I noticed that right away from the first day I met him. Here’s a business guy.”

Nothing gets past our soon to be senior senator. Although it doesn’t take much to impress a guy as vapid as Johnson;

“I went to Boston and walked through [Romney's] campaign headquarters and saw professional competence.”

Yes, your senator is expressing his satisfaction with the mere adequacy of Romney’s campaign office. That might be due to his own legislative operation, where the staff are apparently leaving in droves.

Meanwhile, after a whole year and a half in the Senate, Johnson is moving from legislating to “messaging.” Where are those “Read The Bill” tea party idiots now? Regardless, we’re in for more 8th grade level stammering regarding “Obaaamacare” and the free market.

On another note, the stammering video is on Johnson’s official YouTube channel. If his staff wasn’t on the way out they might have advised him not to post a video in which he looks like an idiot.

The guy is an embarrassment.

Walker’s job creation problem

Scott Walker’s idiotic comment about $144,000 not being “real money” has attracted a lot of attention, but one aspect of the statement has been overlooked;

“…my wife in some ways would love it if I’d go back to the private sector and make some real money.”

There is no private sector for Scott Walker to go “back” to. He’s been governor for a year, was county executive for eight years, served in the state legislature for ten years before that and spent the early 90′s working for the Red Cross, following his dropout from Marquette University. The closest Scott Walker has come to the private sector in his adult life (besides taking their money to do their bidding) was a part-time stint with IBM while in college.

Of course untrue statements coming from Walker are the norm (see: capper and Jud Lounsbury).

While I’m doing shout-outs I better acknowledge my fellow Jim, who beat me to the punch by a couple hours. Hey, I was busying working at one of those “private sector” things our governor has so little experience with. Maybe that’s why Wisconsin was shedding jobs for six months straight?

Precedential Wisconsin Republicans

Following a tongue lashing regarding their initial impropriety, a three-judge panel told Republican legislators they could have a do-over on their heinous redistricting maps. Deferring to the legislature should have made the activist-judge-hating GOP happy, right?

Of course not. A lawyer representing the state, “cited a 1910 case decided by the Wisconsin Supreme Court that he said means that the Legislature can only enact a redistricting plan once every 10 years. Since the recent plan was enacted last summer, the Legislature can’t redo it.”

Without reading the case (I’m not a lawyer, but I am a partisan hack) I can assure the reader this state’s Republicans have no interest in precedent.

Under normal circumstances, legislative districts are drawn following local government redistricting, for good reason. Two separate legislative districts within one city ward makes balloting excessively difficult. Redistricting ’11 was a hasty process, designed to protect Republican incumbents before a potential shift in the balance of power following Senate recall elections.

Also unprecedented is the process Republicans used to formulate the maps. Hiding behind lawyer-client privilege and confidentiality agreements, Republicans specifically ignored public input to gerrymander political power for the next decade. This has never happened.

Ultimately, the outcome will likely be a court drawn map. Senate Majority Leader Fitzgerald is making some sort of passive-aggressive statement on his legislative website (careful, those eyes are piercing) with two maps of his district available, specifically noting a federal court is responsible for the current boundaries.

We all know the victor gets the spoils. Take a look at Illinois or New York congressional districts. But hiding behind lawyers and a newly found sense of “precedent” is a complete sham, not unlike the last year of state government under Walker and Co.

A problem of proficiency

I just heard on Wisconsin Public Radio (sorry, no link available yet) that Scott Walker’s campaign is seeking even more time to review signatures, which was already extended to 30 days from the original ten alloted.

Walker complains that even though he has 3,000 volunteers, they have only been able to review about one-quarter of the petitions submitted.

Simple explanation?

Walker supporters can’t read.

Imagine if this was happening after years of Walker policies gutting education. One-eighth? One-tenth perhaps?

I’m glad it won’t get that far. Governor Anyone-But-Scott, here we come.

Scott Fitzgerald discredits Wisconsin Reporter

Wisconsin Reporter, on Wednesday; Terry Moulton might have a solid challenge to the recall drive against him.

Scott Fitzgerald, asked Friday if any of the recalled senators would challenge enough signatures to block an election, “They’re not even close.”

On another note, I’ve been away a while, but not much has happened in Wisconsin politics in that time, save the retirement of a few notable lefty bloggers…

Pro-Life Wisconsin “has a black friend”

Pro-Life Wisconsin released an Alex Jones-worthy rant decrying “the continuing eugenics movement in Wisconsin” supposedly perpetrated by our friends at Planned Parenthood. The extreme right-wing PLW goes on to accuse Planned Parenthood of racism, alleging a vast abortion-marketing campaign targeting minorities.

Pro-Life Wisconsin believes their own obvious focus on race should be excused, citing their latest PR stunt, “was created by Ryan Bomberger (who is biracial).”

In another display of vapidity the press release bemoans birth control, oblivious to the connection between birth control, unplanned pregnancy and the abortions Pro-Life Wisconsin is constantly fussing over.

Groups like Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin and Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota are constantly under attack with baseless claims. Last week on Talk of the Nation a right-wing activist called in posing as a former contributor to Planned Parenthood who changed her position following a young girl she knew supposedly being counseled by an employee, essentially to get an abortion over any other option (audio at 21:00). The caller blew her cover by referring to herself as “pro abortion” a term only used by the far right, not to mention that Planned Parenthood provides comprehensive reproductive health care, not just abortions.

Other dubious “facts” were presented by listeners of the program, and guest Marjorie Dannenfelser of the anti-abortion rights Susan B. Anthony list, calling into question how far the already far-right will go to instill their flawed morality into the laws of our land. Compare that with the email from a listener who said Planned Parenthood saved her life after being gang raped, and who is on the side of humanity — the anti-choice right, or Planned Parenthood?

The man who could have governed

That is Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, standing in solidarity with protesters in Madison on Saturday, as a citizen concerned about the future of our state (photo by my sister).

In August of 2009, Barrett took a beating defending a woman and child from an attacker. Tom Barrett could be our governor. Instead the voters of Wisconsin were convinced they needed Scott Walker, based on some empty rhetoric about creating 250,000 jobs by cutting taxes for the rich people he can find the time to take phone calls from.

Where was Governor Walker on Saturday? Up north doing some fine dining with his cheerleaders, while hundreds of thousands of hard working public employees are seeing their rights trampled.

What would Scott Walker have done outside the state fair that night in August? Guess.

Wisconsin Unions

Apologies for the lack of content during what has been a very important couple of weeks. I’ve been working long hours. Making time and a half for the overtime…thanks unions.