The attorney who provided free legal representation to state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman as the justice faced allegations of ethics violations and who has been in the center of GOP redistricting efforts has left the Michael Best & Friedrich law firm.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week reported that Eric McLeod, a former partner for the Milwaukee-based firm, has started his own law practice.
The anti-government rightists who are running things in the House of Representatives, and have obstructionist, me-first allies in the Senate like Ron Johnson, have a perfect opportunity to display their full anti-government ideology by refusing aid to farmers losing crops to record heat.
The administration has correctly asked Congress for the help.
Watch the no-compromise-with-reality-right-wingers say "no."
Remember that Johnson thinks what he calls entitlements take away others' rights, so to be consistent - - he's already voted against the Farm Bill re-authorization - - he'd have to oppose emergency aid to farmers, too, because that funding would take someone else's right to pocket 100% of their taxable income without contributing to the general welfare, the stability of rural America, etc.
As small government Johnson said recently:
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.
How about a hearing on the state of the state's preparedness on climate/clean air/heat emergency planning and programs?
The do-nothing/say-nothing approach of the Governor and his DNR is unacceptable.
Remember this?
Four months ago he was oh-so sure, but now, who's to say?
And I repeat, anyone who thinks they know how supreme courts will rule should Google "Roberts, health care, 5-4."
Wonderful to see another judge read the constitution and see that you cannot put impairments and impediments into it and in front of voters.
To exercise their rights.
Watch the Right go crazy because the judge is from Dane County - - though initially on the bench via a Republican (Thompson).
Walker and his legislative allies were oh-so cocky on the issue, but now it's tied up into next year. So goes voter suppression as a plan for November in Wisconsin.
And because they are failing their part of the plan to suppress the vote in our swing state.
Devotees of the wolf hunt think they are sanitizing the proposed/hoped-for killing of 201 grey wolves in Wisconsin's rushed, cruel (dogs, traps, night-hunting, overly-long season) by calling it a "harvest," but their obfuscation calls attention to bloodshed.
The shameful details are here.
Says he "never supported" federal health care individual mandate.
Tommy Thompson on Wednesday, June 13th, 2012 in tweetsMaybe Tommy never should say "never."Among conservatives, a hated provision of federal health care reform is the "individual mandate," which requires Americans (with some exceptions) to buy health insurance.
That sentiment has left Republican Tommy Thompson in a difficult spot as he vies with three opponents in the August 2012 primary for U.S. Senate.
Says that as Wisconsin governor he "never raised taxes."
Republicans wrung weeks of propaganda about voting fraud from the recount they lost in the June 5th Racine Senate election won by Democrat John Lehman, and the Government Accountability Board has said in writing it is tired of unfounded attacks on the election process the Board oversees in the state.
It's a bold move by the Board, as the entire campaign for Voter ID in Wisconsin - - led by Republicans armed with less data and more ALEC-driven partisan talking points - - is a judgement that the Board has failed to protect the integrity of the election process in Wisconsin.
Pdf file of the letter, here.
The Voter ID crowd has barely said a word about multiple election snafus in Waukesha County, where Kathy Nickolaus, a secretive GOP County Clerk, has posted erroneous result and kept election data on a password-protected computer off the county system.
She is leaving office at the end of her turbulent current term in January, 2013, and also leaving taxpayers a bill of more than a quarter-million dollars in fixes to a system she 'managed.'
That's where the election system in Wisconsin has had its reputation challenged.
But don't expect that legislative Republicans will take kindly to the Board's letter. If the GOP wins back the Senate and retains the Assembly, look for the GAB's budget or authority to take a retaliatory hit.
It's been fashionable for conservative politicians and voters to bash the federal government ever since Ronald Reagan said government was the problem, not the solution, but current events show otherwise.
There was a devastating flood recently in Duluth/Superior, and Scott Walker asked for federal assistance.
As he should have, and I hope, on behalf of property owners with losses, that a declaration is made and announced.
The economy there needs that help, and it's in the general interest of all taxpayers to make that happen through a tiny increment peeled off their taxes.
No doubt federal assistance for farmers being wiped out by the drought will be sought. We all need to eat, rural communities need to survive and Wisconsin's economy can't afford a big hit to agricultural. I'm more than happy to contribute through my taxes to those programs.
And without federal assistance, wildfires would be burning out of control across the county. It's a long way to the traditional end of the fire season, and in additional to the national perspective - - we are one country - - there are forests in Wisconsin in the heart of our UpNorth tourist economy not immune to burning.
There's already been a 20,000+ acre fire in Michigan's UP this year.
Mitt Romney recently said that the lesson from Walker's Wisconsin recall win was that we didn't need more teachers, police officers and firefighters.
Frankly, we need everyone we can get, and taxes make sure public employees and the life-saving, positive services they provide are there when needed.
Mounting disclosures about Mitt Romney's role at Bain and personal financing are keeping Romney on the defensive before the October surprise predicted in the primaries.
The funny thing is that it was Romney who warned of the October surprise - - if Gingrich were the GOP nominee - - because questions were being raised about Gingrich's federal mortgage agency contracts and fees.
Right fear, wrong candidate.
You can send a written comment to US/Canadian officials at the International Joint Commission - - a body that regulates some Great Lakes matters - - studying how, or whether to remedy the decline in Lake Michigan water levels.
Your comment can touch on any issue you feel is relevant.
Here is the contact information:
| U. S. Section Secretary | Canadian Section Secretary |
| International Joint Commission 200 L Street NW, Suite 615 Washington, DC 20440 Fax: 202-632-2006 commission@washington.ijc.org |
International Joint Commission 234 Laurier Avenue West, 22nd Floor Ottawa, ON K1P 6K6 Fax: 613-993-5583 commission@ |
If Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele pulls off the Couture tower development where the irrelevant eyesore known as the Downtown Transit sits at the Lakefront and Michigan St., he will have created more jobs and tax base than did Scott Walker in eight years.
Of course, there are reasons for that.
Walker used the position as a springboard for personal advancement and political self-promotion to the Governor's office, and had no interest in public policy.
And he eliminated the County's development office - - even tried to turn current John Doe defendant Tim Russell into a manager there - - so the County wasted its power and assets. Exhibit "A" is the open space in the Park East corridor that belongs to the County, which had no plan or personnel or executive leadership to get bricks and mortar there.
(More about Walker's having parked Russell at the development office, here.)
Milwaukee County is not used to a County Executive who likes the nuts and bolts of municipal opportunity.
The evidence is mounting. Time to get that Chicago canal closed.
The Club for Growth is pouring TV ad money into the Wisconsin GOP Senate primary attacking both Tommy Thompson and Eric Hovde - - for not being as authentically conservative as Mark Neumann.
For Tommy, it's chickens coming home to roost, but for Hovde? An elevation to real-candidate status, as the polls show. I'm guessing Hovde's personal and campaign spending will flick these ads off like a lady bug on your wrist.
Setting aside the comic relief - - Tommy's dramatic 'real conservative' re-branding is undermined from the right, and Hovde, the hedge fund Tea Partier, isn't accused of being not conservative enough? - - it's downright amazing that money is being flushed away on Neumann, who is sitting at 10% in the polls and lost statewide races to both the liberal Russ Feingold and conservative Scott Walker.
Where's his electability?
Which is a reminder that many Republicans are still peeved at Neumannn for even running against Walker in the 2010 GOP gubernatorial primary, and having held a press conference where he said Walker's fiscal record was worse than Jim Doyle''s.
Neumann, a former congressman, said fellow Republican Walker has proposed budgets over the past eight years that have been higher than Democrat Gov. Jim Doyle's.Still - - every dollar spent this way is a dollar not aimed at Tammy Baldwin or Barack Obama, so please, more Club for Growth ads on Neumann's behalf.
Until now, Neumann has been reluctant to initiate attacks on Walker. He has been critical at times of Doyle, who is not running for re-election, and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, the leading Democrat in the race.
Neumann says as governor he would limit spending to 1% less than the rate of inflation. Had this been done over the last eight years, Neumann said, his budgeting would have produced $4 billion available for tax cuts.
Neumann stood outside Walker's office at the County Building on Wednesday morning, and as he has done at other media events, he was armed with charts and graphs.
I got this a half hour after it was declared. I was going to post a prediction it was on its way because my eyes beneath old-timey (no-alternative) contacts lenses have been on fire since this morning. It's a scandal that the DNR has eliminated the early warning alerts.
Isn't there a legislator out there who will raise hell with the DNR over this?
| Start Time: | 4:00PM CT Friday, July 13, 2012 |
| End Time: | 1:00AM CT Saturday, July 14, 2012 |
| Counties: | Brown and Outagamie |
| Air Quality Index (AQI) Values |
Levels of Health Concern | Colors |
| When the AQI is in this range: |
...air quality conditions are: | ...as symbolized by this color: |
| 0 to 50 | Good | Green |
| 51 to 100 | Moderate | Yellow |
| 101 to 150 | Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups |
Orange |
| 151 to 200 | Unhealthy | Red |
| 201 to 300 | Very Unhealthy | Purple |
| 301 to 500 | Hazardous | Maroon |
Milwaukee is home to many big business home offices, but did you know that with three Fortune 500 corporate headquarters we're tied with the likes of DC and LA, and beat out the following cities, according to a new list:
| Detroit, MI | 2 |
| San Antonio, TX | 2 |
| San Francisco, CA | 2 |
| Chicago, IL | 2 |
| Indianapolis, IN | 2 |
| Hartford, CT | 2 |
| Philadelphia, PA | 2 |
| St. Louis, MO | 2 |
| Memphis, TN | 2 |
| St. Paul, MN | 2 |
| Omaha, NE | 1 |
| Charlotte, NC | 1 |
| Austin, TX | 1 |
| Newark, NJ | 1 |
| Seattle, WA | 1 |
| Louisville, KY | 1 |
| Santa Ana, CA | 1 |
| Boston, MA | 1 |
| Miami, FL | 1 |
| Nashville, TN | 1 |
| Phoenix, AZ | 1 |
| Fort Worth, TX | 1 |
| Akron, OH | 1 |
| Kansas City, KS | 1 |
| Springfield, MA | 1 |
Remember all the concern a few years ago about falling Lake Michigan water levels - - in part traced to dredging of a Great Lakes river that lets a lot of water rush faster to the Atlantic Ocean?
Here's a blog posting from 2007.
Well here we are in 2012, with a warming climate that is evaporating off even more water and a big study suggests that the solution is to...do nothing.
That idea was rejected in 2010, but apparently it's back.
Dan Egan has the story:
It long has been acknowledged that historic dredging and mining in the St. Clair River, the primary outflow for Lakes Michigan and Huron, permanently lowered the connected lakes by about 16 inches.
A recently completed $15 million study funded by the U.S. and Canadian governments found that unexpected erosion since a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredging project on the river in the early 1960s dropped the lakes' long-term average by as much as an additional five inches.
But that study, co-led by an Army Corps employee, concluded that the erosion is not ongoing and is therefore not triggering further water loss.
Walker spins a tale about Affordable Health Care Act costs for The Washington Post.
"Obamacare," says Walker, selectively picking some numbers from a study, "will devastate Wisconsin."
I hope the paper gives equal space to facts and commentary from actual Wisconsin health care expert Robert Kraig:
Scott Walker Misleads Nation on Impact of Health Care Reform in Wisconsin
Milwaukee: In an op-ed in today’s Washington Post, Governor Scott Walker cherry picks data from an actuarial report by MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber to present a very misleading impression of the impact of the Affordable Care Act in Wisconsin.
The Walker Administration’s misleading representation of this report drew controversy last fall.
The misrepresentations were detailed in Citizen Action op-eds in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Capital Times last year.
Walker fails to mention many of the most important findings in the Gruber report, including the single most significant finding that the health care reform law will result in 340,000 uninsured Wisconsinites gaining coverage.
Walker attempts to create the false impression that Wisconsinites will lose coverage.
Walker does not mention the report findings that showed Wisconsinites who buy insurance on their own will receive $729 million in federal tax credits and subsidies to make health insurance more affordable and that 41% will receive significant premium reductions averaging 56%.
Walker also does not mention the report finding that 47% of Wisconsin small employers will see premium reductions averaging 16% or that most small employers who provide health coverage to their employees will continue to do so.
Crucially, Walker’s numbers on rate increases are all a result of a sorting out of the health insurance market that will take place when health insurance industry discrimination is ended.
By pulling his numbers out of context, Walker hides from view that most people will be much better off in the long term once health insurance industry discrimination is outlawed.Walker’s rate increase numbers relate to those who would pay more in the short term because health care reform forces the insurance industry to end discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, age and gender, and requires higher quality coverage.In the current health insurance market, individuals and small groups of younger and healthier people get lower rates because the insurance industry discriminates against others and because it sometimes sells substandard policies that do not meet new national consumer standards.Insurers currently can deny coverage, charge discriminatory rates or add exclusionary riders for policyholders with pre-existing conditions.Ending this discrimination will cause some individuals who are fortunate enough to get a low premium in the current system to pay higher premiums in the short term, but in return they will get a guarantee of higher quality coverage that can’t be taken away.“The most significant point covered over by the Walker's spin is that comparing the insurance people or small employers can buy on their own today to what will be available under the new law is not an apples-to-apples comparison,” said Robert Kraig, Executive Director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin.“People who are fortunate enough to be young and healthy today might get a good deal from the health insurance industry, but they can lose coverage or be priced out as they age or if they acquire medical conditions. If a small employer has affordable coverage today, one employee acquiring a serious medical condition can price the whole group out of the market.
That is why only a third of small businesses in Wisconsin can currently afford to provide health coverage to their employees.“
“Once national health care reform is fully implemented, consumers will have access to coverage in a new marketplace where the insurance industry cannot take it away or charge discriminatory rates as a person ages or his or her health status changes,” Kraig continued.
“Scott Walker’s cherry picking of the data is an attempt to cover up the fact that health care reform will return control of health care decisions to patients and their doctors, rather than insurance industry bureaucrats, and will guarantee that everyone has a place to go to get quality affordable health coverage.”
[Cross-posted at Purple Wisconsin]
Update: You can add the Romneys' 2010, $77,000 federal income deduction for show horse expenses to his list of entitlement perks, as reported by The New York Times.
Conservatives attack what they define as special interest
arrangements, or entitlements created by government - - it can be Social
Security, Medicare or Medicaid, food stamps, affirmative action, gender
and sexual orientation equity guarantees, public employee health and
pension agreements, and the like.
Part of the argument is often, 'don't confer benefits, because it's then too hard to take them away,'
But look at hard Congressional Republicans and presidential candidate Mitt Romney are fighting to preserve Bush-era tax cuts for a relatively small number of upper-income earners.
Those tax cuts created an entitlement not even contemplated by Ronald
Reagan - - a tax privilege that absolutely confers special benefits on
politically-influential donors funded by cuts in programs for, or an
increased tax burden on others with less power who do not receive the
entitlement.
Conservatives say they oppose government-created social engineering
and political correctness, and would have you believe those terms and
strategies apply only to liberals and their constituencies.
But conservatives simply have their own set of government-sponsored,
socially-engineered, politically-correct plans and goals, and tax
breaks for the wealthy are at the top of list.
The right's embrace of social-engineering on the fiscal side was acknowledged by Newt Gingrich during the GOP primaries when discussing the Paul Ryan budget plan:
