Category Archives: State Government

Kudos to the JS

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Kathleen Gallagher’s outstanding story yesterday on the state’s pending $250 million corporate giveaway really brought home the almost unbelievable disregard for taxpayers, common sense and good government with which this political payback is being pursued. Gov. Scott Walker and legislators are proposing to Hand a “$250 million fund to out-of-state financial management companies that would not have to pay back the fund’s principal and would keep up to 80% of its profits.” Wow. What a great deal. For somebody.

The cherry on top of the scoop of outrage was the layout of the story’s jump. It was next to a jump of a story about 21 Milwaukee Public Schools nurses losing their jobs because Walker is proposing to cut a $1.5 million grant that helps pay for them.

A $250 million giveaway for big business vs. $1.5 million for nursing services for mostly impoverished children. Not a tough choice for the gov, apparently.

Nice package, JS.

More reasons to oppose the Zoo Interchange plan

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From comments filed with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation by the ACLU, Black Health Coalition and Midwest Environmental Advocates:

Federal law states that federal funding recipients may not, “directly or through contractual or other arrangements, utilizecriteria or methods of administration which have the effect of subjecting persons to discriminationbecause of their race, color, or national origin, or have the effect of defeating or substantially impairing accomplishment of the objectives of the program with respect to individuals of a particular race, color, or national origin.
That the state is planning to increase highway spending while cutting transit in the Milwaukee-Waukesha region is unquestionably a method of administering its transportation programs that has a significant racially discriminatory effect.
Build bigger freeways in a time of increasingly scarce oil while simultaneously decreasing funding for local roads and transit. It’s Scott Walker’s Wisconsin!

Waiting for Leah

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I dropped a note to State Sen. Leah Vukmir’s office to tell her I supported the city’s employee residency requirement and opposed her effort to do away with it for some employees.

Her aide wrote back asking for my phone number and address (to ensure I was a constitutent, I assume) and said he would have Leah get in touch.

This was a more than a few days ago now, and i’m still waiting for Leah.

Hmm, wonder if it was the word “Milwaukee” in my address that led her to blow me off. Ah, well. The Story Hill Neighborhood Association has invited her to attend the quarterly meeting on Monday night to discuss the potential impacts of the proposed state budget.

And the odds of her showing up are… ?

Mind-boggling hypocrisy by Senate Republicans

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Fresh from telling local governments what they are allowed to bargain with some local employees and what they must bargain with other employees, some Senate Republicans are complaining that the federal government is messing too much in state affairs.

It’s enough to gag a maggot, as my late, blessed mother would say.

Republican State Senators Joe Leibham (Sheboygan), Mary Lazich (West Bend), Neal Kedzie (Elkhorn) and Pam Galloway (Wausau) are sponsoring a resolution complaining that “states are demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government” even though it’s supposed to be the other way around under the US Constitution’s Tenth Amendment.

The four either do not see or do not care about the irony or hypocrisy in interfering so very heavily in local affairs while whining about federal interference in state affairs. They want the Senate to claim, on behalf of the state, “sovereignty…over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the U.S. Constitution.”

But wait! There is more!

The fearless foursome state “that this resolution shall serve as notice and demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of its constitutionally delegated powers.”

Yeah, you tell ‘em!

And give local governments and public employees their rights back, too.

You can just hear those knees quaking in Washington, can’t you?

But if I break the law, the state won’t pay for my lawyers

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Walker’s Wienies thumb their noses at a judge’s ruling delaying implementation of the budget repair bill so they can strip away worker bargaining rights and impose wage cuts right NOW.

Wow, does everybody get to do this or is it a special privilege reserved for political hacks who mistake small-margin electoral victories for divine right? 

Of course, everybody can’t foist the legal bills onto taxpayers, as Walker is doing (and to think a lot of those taxpayers are the very public employees he is so eager to harm!).

Mr. “Frugal Government” Walker is running up those bills just as fast as he can.

Gad, what a hypocrite.