February 2010 Archives

So “Wisconsin’s Free Market Think Tank” released yet another report reinforcing the pro-corporate agenda of conservatives. Big surprise.

The health insurance industry has once again reminded the American public why we ever started talking about health insurance reform in the first place. A new report shows that WellPoint – the nation’s largest health insurance corporation by membership – will increase premiums in Wisconsin by 17 percent.

If theres one thing new Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce board chair Tom Howatt and his corporate cronies at WMC enjoy more than anything, its a big ole handout from the government.

The Republican Party of Tommy! has registered its great displeasure with One Wisconsin Now’s press release from yesterday congratulating former Gov. Tommy Thompson on the incredible cashing in he’s done since leaving the corrupt Bush administration.

Tommy!, whose greatest achievement as Health and Human Services Secretary was helping the Bush Administration lie about the cost of the $8 trillion boondoggle called Medicare Part D, appears to have had his best financial year ever in 2008, according to tax records collected by One Wisconsin Now.

State Rep. Kevin Petersen, a Waupaca Republican who clearly believes in individual responsibility, has an idea to solve the problem that has stumped the nuclear industry, scientists and the government for 50 years: What to do with the deadly nuclear waste produced by reactors?

It's such a small quantity, Petersen seems to say, that maybe we could all just carry our own around.

More here: http://uppitywis.org/spoonful-nuclear-waste-helps-medicine-go-down

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker has been was as virulent against the Recovery Act funds for Wisconsin as the dopey ex-Governor of Alaska was about her state’s share.

You know who hasn’t been against the Recovery Act?

The Wisconsin Road Builders.

Once again, Scott Walker has delighted us all with more exaggerated nonsense.  According to a blog entry on Cognitive Dissidence, Scott Walker’s campaign claimed responsibility for crashing the Government Accountability Office’s system due to an exorbitant amount of money in the campaign. The GAB’s office refuted Walker’s outlandish reasoning by saying “The Campaign Finance Information System did not crash. It was up and running throughout the weekend. No filers were prevented from downloading information, and the system has remained available throughout the filing period” (Cognitive Dissidence, 2/2/2010). 

To Walker’s dismay, the truth did not take long to surface.

The Wisconsin Council on Children and Families has put together detailed information about the more than $2 billion Recovery Act funding that counties in Wisconsin received to start digging us out of the hole created by the failed economic policies of the Republican Congress and George W. Bush.

Check out the county data here.

During some downtime between creating super awesome and totally relevant Ayn Rand fanboy videos and posting them on Facebook, Paul Ryan managed to find time to offer up the latest GOP lead-balloon plan for propping up the rich and corporations while selling out the middle class. Ryans Roadmap for America was brought to the forefront of the debate during the question and answer session between the President and House Republicans. The President even praised Ryan for offering a substantive idea, and though President Obama didnt say so, Im sure he was thankful to hear something from the Republicans that didnt question his citizenship, attempt to incite racially-charged violence or contain a reference to teabagging. A breath of fresh air, if you will.

With rail on the mind as Joint Finance meets today to discuss establishing a high-speed rail line between Madison and Milwaukee, this seems to be an appropriate time to point out that Scott Walker received a $10,000 contribution from a railroad chief who happens to be a very visible advocate for using Recovery Act dollars for freight rail development to stimulate the economy.

"This is not a case where there was a fatality or serious injury," Marks said. Her department is taking seriously the concerns raised by the investigation, she said.

No apology to the victims at the mental health facility who were sexually abused, just, well gee, there's been no murders so what's the big deal? Sexual abuse doesn't register as "serious injury" to the director of Human Services? 

And not a single comment from Walker in the whole article -- per usual, must be the state's fault, or the Board's responsibility, certainly not his or his administration.

WISTAX Watch is asking the conservative Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance to explain why its latest report focusing on fee increases in cities and villages ignores county governments. The state is in the midst of a gubernatorial campaign between Milwaukee's conservative county executive, Scott Walker and Milwaukee's mayor, Tom Barrett.

It defies logic that WISTAX focuses on cities but not counties, given its history of lumping taxes together in its annual total tax reports. WISTAX goes so far as to single out the city of Milwaukee for special coverage to get headlines advancing its conservative agenda.

One Wisconsin Now has been wondering from which broom closet in the GOP bathhouse of stupidity ample GOPer seat-filler Joel Kleefisch yanked his "sex offender" license plate idea.

Turns out it's from the bowels of Soviet-era Russia and Fidel Castro's communist Cuba. (Cue shocking music)

We here at One Wisconsin Now have worked tirelessly for close to a year developing WISTAX Watch—a comprehensive expose on the pro-corporate, conservative bias of Wisconsin’s most vocal and visible tax policy think tank, the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance (WISTAX). Among the most blatant examples of its bias is the overwhelming amount of contributions to Republican and conservative candidates and committees. So just how partisan is WISTAX?

Rep. Marlin Schneider got called out by the Associated Press for a claim he made on the number of constituents who contacted him about his laughably-unconstitutional bill limiting the public’s right to the online Circuit Court Access Program.

It reminded us of a similar constituent claim made by right-wing seat-filler Sen. Mary Lazich. Back in 2009, in the midst of the debate on the state’s biennial budget, Lazich offered from the floor of the senate on June 17, “...I'm getting a few hundred communications a day on this budget, and they are not positive. They are negative...” (Go to 1:11:40)

Gotta quiz for you...Which supposedly "independent" and "unbiased" organization in Wisconsin fits the following?

Its president and leading voice is a former Republican administration official and local Republican party executive committee member.

Members of its board of directors since 1994 have donated nearly $1.3 million to Republicans and conservative political candidates.

Jim Rowen, a member of the Institute for One Wisconsin family, reports over at The Political Environment that the good work of activists is resulting in a series of public focus groups planned by the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission to get public input on "the implications of transferring Lake Michigan water to Waukesha and other communities."

Check here for critical information about the events and a complete list of the hearings, which are free and open to the public. So go with a friend. Or two.

The favorable private school voucher study paid for by the state’s leading private school voucher advocates is riddled with fundamental research flaws, implying the "study" was designed to reach a pre-conceived conclusion in favor of a particular political agenda.

That the state's leading private school voucher gang funded a study that supports the private school voucher agenda is hardly surprising.

WMC Watch News: WMC's new board chair is calling for bipartisan efforts to stimulate job growth in Wisconsin. Laughable, given the extremely partisan disposition of the organization he now heads and his own partisan campaign contributions.

Yet another story has popped about Republican Tommy Thompson maybe/maybe not throwing his hat in a race somewhere in Wisconsin. But the real question is: will the right wing call it "dithering"?

Hi - A group of us are currently starting planning for a Netroots Wisconsin event, in cooperation with Netroots Nation. This will be a regional conference along the lines of Netroots Nation, and we are currently aiming at September 2010 in Madison. We are looking for people to help with:

Planning the conferenceLooking for sponsorsany other kind of help (including moral)

If you're interested in this, please contact me at shanson@uppitywis.org, or come visit the Netroots Wisconsin web site to keep up - http://netrootswisconsin.org

 

 

 

 

Readers of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel business section will know the name John Torinus. Torinus seems to be a busy man in the business community: he is the current chair and former CEO of Serigraph, Inc.; a current board member of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce--our state’s largest pro-corporate, anti-public investment lobby group; and a past board member and chair of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance--the state’s most prominent pro-corporate, anti-public investment, tax research group.