December 2011 Archives

The news that Wausau Paper Corp. will be laying off 450 workers was sad and unfortunately familiar to those of us living under Gov. Scott Walker's rule. What's interesting is that Wausau Paper's President & CEO is also the chair of the corporate special interest lobbying group Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce -- a group that has been pushing a survey showing optimism among it's "job-creating" members.

News of layoffs is familiar of course, because despite all the corporate giveways Gov. Walker could dream up, Wisconsin's economy is among the worst in the nation. And yet, every pro-corporate front group and spokespuppet is touting the survey from WMC that suggests Gov. Walker's corporate takeover of our state is working: 

Ask a chamber of commerce executive in Wisconsin how the business climate is today, and you're likely to hear "Wisconsin is open for business."

With the highest participation in five years, nearly 90 Wisconsin chamber of commerce executives participated in the annual economic outlook survey compiled by the state chamber of commerce, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce.

WMC has even taking to defend Gov. Walker against recall, writing:

Governor Walker has a strong pro-jobs record.

We cannot sit idly by and allow pro-business elected officials to be recalled because of their courage.

The group has a huge list of Gov. Walker's "Victories" for business, including his infamous tax breaks for corporations and the rich, among others.

And yet, despite all the supposed optimism from the suits at WMC, its very own chair, Thomas Howatt, will be laying off 450 workers at the Wausau Paper Corp. next year.

Lori Compas addressed [Sen. Scott] Fitzgerald on Monday during the senator's open office hours in Horicon, according to Wisconsin-based Blogging Blue. She questioned the senator on an email that asked his constituents to "help me fight the fraud that is happening right now on recall petitions in my district."

Compas asked for an apology, claiming the statement in Fitzgerald's email led to "offensive language" and "rude gestures" directed toward her and other recall volunteers.

[Huffington Post]

As Jeff Fitzgerald tries to vault to the top of the "most hypocritical legislator" list for the week, he's making a heckuva case. Consider his call to end the non-partisan Government Accountability Board and his statement to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (R-Horicon) said he saw advantages to going back to the old elections and ethics boards if some changes were made. "I like that system, and I think that system worked fairly well," said Fitzgerald.

Apparently, Fitzgerald has forgot the internets exists and that one's past statements may still be available.

Here's the release Fitzgerald sent out when he voted for the creation of GAB in January 2007.

Rep. Fitzgerald: Supports Passage of Ethics Bill

1/30/2007 

Contact Representative Jeff Fitzgerald (608) 266-2540 

Madison - Representative Jeff Fitzgerald (R-Horicon), issued the following statement regarding passage of the ethics package: 

"For many years the oversight of the elections, ethics and lobbying laws was in a system designed to be bi-partisan. Obviously, this did not work. Today, we created a new board with the goal of being non-partisan. By utilizing retired judges, we will now have a system where legal rulings are offered by those with experience in the law, not partisan appointees. 

This ethics package will establish clear guidelines with strong financial backing for investigations and prosecutions, if necessary. In addition, there are expanded prosecutorial options for these types of offenses. Once constituted, this new ethics system will lead the way to restoring confidence to the people of Wisconsin."

Total hypocrisy: Thy name be Jeff Fitzgerald

The "business owner" featured in the latest Scott Walker television ad saw his business grow 1,300 percent during the administration of Gov. Jim Doyle, according to a self-professed claim in the Business Times from 2008. The business owner is actually a vice chair at the Milwaukee Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, which donated $400,000 in 2010 to the Republican Governors Association to elect Walker.

"Given this business owner boasted his business revenues grew by 1,300 percent under the pro-growth policies of Gov. Jim Doyle, it seems curious he would support Scott Walker's radical policies which have left us far behind all our neighboring states in job growth," said Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now Executive Director. "It must just be the Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce continuing to be a partisan shill for anti-middle class Republicans like Walker."

One Wisconsin Now confirmed the business owner in the latest Walker ad is a $4,500 donor to Walker's 2010 campaign - after being a former $1,000 contributor to Mark Green, who forced Walker out of the Republican gubernatorial primary in 2006.

"If Scott Walker wants to show that his way is working, he needs to show a small business owner who actually created jobs in Wisconsin as result of his nearly $2 billion in new corporate tax breaks," said Ross. "But then again, those appear to be few and far between when it comes to Scott Walker failing the people of Wisconsin."

In Walker's latest ad, the business owner talks about how his business has offices in other states. Walker changed the state's combined reporting law so that businesses in Wisconsin could write off losses in other states prior to 2009 at an annual cost of $40 million to taxpayers.

One Wisconsin Now is specifically not publicizing the name of the business owner featured in Walker's ad, but will provide confirmation to the media upon request.

Madison police said 54-year-old Earl Gluth of Stoughton was photographing a 41-year-old Madison woman collecting signatures on a sidewalk outside a grocery store Thursday. The Wisconsin State Journal reported (http://bit.ly/s6LayK) that Gluth allegedly said her photo was going "on the website" and snapped photos of license plates, saying he was going to look up petitioners' addresses.

The woman claimed that when she grabbed her phone to photograph Gluth, he knocked the phone and petition clipboard to the pavement. She said she then followed Gluth into the store, where he yelled about her following him and being "anti-Walker." He was cited for disorderly conduct.

[Wisconsin Journal Sentinel]

Wisconsin may be the best Big Ten state on the football field, but when it comes to job creation in the midwest, Gov. Scott Walker has made Wisconsin a big loser.

To put things in perspective, Iowa added 13,300 jobs over the past year, Minnesota added 19,600 positions and Illinois added 61,900 jobs. Michigan has added 47,600 positions...

Wisconsin has a jobs deficit of 205,200 -- the difference between the number of jobs now and the number it needs to regain its pre-recession employment, according to the Center on Wisconsin Strategy.

[Capital Times]

On Tuesday, the community and labor group Wisconsin Jobs Now was cleared of wrongdoing during this summer's recall elections against Senate Republicans. What's truly troubling is that the baseless allegations ever became news in the first place.

Here's what went down.

On August 1, a week before the recall election against Republican Senator Alberta Darling, the right-wing group Media Trackers issued an "exclusive" report claiming Wisconsin Jobs Now was caught engaging in allegedly illegal behavior by an anonymous source.

WisPolitics reported this on Tuesday:

[District Attorney Bruce Landgraf] noted in his letter that the investigation was initiated because Brian Sikma, the person who issued a Media Trackers press release based on the allegations, refused to cooperate. 

So immediately after issuing the press release leveling serious allegations against an ideological opponent, Media Trackers failed to cooperate with the DA in charge of investigating the activity.

Then this:

Later, Bill Osmulski, a representative of the MacIver Institute, provided Landgraf's office with the name of the witness to the Wisconsin Jobs Now activities, Collin Roth.

It's unclear from the DA's official report if it was actually Osmulski (from another right-wing front group, the MacIver Institute) who revealed the source's identity, but it's important to note that Roth is in fact a Media Trackers operative.

Then came the bombshell:

Q: All right. Did anyone tell you that in order to get a ticket for food you had to sign up to vote?

[Roth] A: No, not explicity.

...

Q: Do you have any other information that you could offer that would shed some light on this...?

A: ...I can't say if that was a necessary or that was explicit that one had to sign in and get in the van to take the food or the ticket

In other words, Media Trackers's anonymous source knew the pro-union Wisconsin Jobs Now group did not engage in illegal activity. But that didn't stop Media Trackers from "reporting" otherwise.

So this begs the question: if Media Trackers wasn't going to cooperate with investigators (perhaps because they knew the facts weren't on their side), why did they ever bother issuing a press release making such serious allegations. Simple. They only needed to smear Wisconsin Jobs Now for the short period before the recall election. They didn't need to win a court case, they just needed to win a media war. And win they did.

The press release, recycled immediately by the MacIver Insititute with added opinion from conservative lawyer Rick Esenberg, obviously caught the attention of conservative talk show hosts like WTMJ's Charlie Sykes, but the then-uninvestigated allegations even made the front page of Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's local section with the headline "Voter 'block parties' probed; It's illegal to combine free food, transit to polls." The same day an Associated Press headline read, "GOP files complaint against Democrat Pasch".

The investigation into serious allegations took months, but the headlines lasted days, right up to Sen. Darling's victory on August 9.

The political relationship between the two front groups, Media Trackers and MacIver Institute, pro-corporate spokespuppet Rick Esenberg, and conservative mouthpiece Charlie Sykes is perhaps not incidental. Their common denominator is the Bradley Foundation.

In November, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported "With more than $600 million in assets, the Bradley Foundation provides a cornerstone for the conservative movement in Wisconsin and across America." And not only does Bradley fund MacIver and Media Trackers, Sykes and Esenberg are both Bradey beneficiaries. 

A similar story of widely circulated allegations and misinformation originating form Media Trackers unfolded recently when the group accused Sen. Lena Taylor and her mother of bribing underage, African American, citizens with cigarettes in exchange for signing a Scott Walker recall petition. Contrary to Media Trackers's claims, the individuals were old enough to sign papers, and weren't being bribed. (The only truth in their claims is that they were African American and signing recall papers.) Nevertheless, Media Trackers took their story to Sykes's radio show, and the story was in the state's largest media outlets within 24 hours.

These Bradley Foundation-funded smear campaigns will continue to infect our public discourse only as long as the media continues to take cues from Sykes and the garbage churned out by the likes of Media Trackers and the MacIver Institute.

Announcing the best job numbers of his tenure with a splash last summer, Gov. Scott Walker left out the fact that his office had been told in an internal report that the monthly numbers were "very questionable" and "suspect."

The snapshot of jobs in the state is normally announced each month simply through a news release, but in July Walker traveled to Milwaukee to announce that the month before the state had gained a net total of 9,500 jobs, a big chunk of the net total of 18,000 new jobs nationwide for that month. It was announced at the time as the biggest monthly increase in jobs since September 2003.

The unusual announcement was made in the run-up to pivotal Senate recall elections last summer that were seen as a referendum on Walker's policies.

[Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

Comsumer products company Spectrum Brands, which just landed an $4 million forgivable loan from the state to keep its corporate headquarters in Madison, is actually domiciled in Delaware.
...
Despite its financial struggles, Spectrum still managed to pay out some $20 million in bonuses and stock awards last year, including $10.6 million to former CEO Kent Hussey, who retired last year.

[Capital Times]