Just in time for the holidays, Milwaukee’s big business lobby has filed a frivolous lawsuit against the people of Milwaukee. After all, it was almost a 70 percent majority that approved the paid sick day ordinance on November 4. Now that massive majority is being targeted by the big corporate bucks of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC). We should have known that they were planning on getting nasty for Christmas when their mouthpiece compared supporters of sick days with terrorists. Apparently that kind of demagoguery is official policy at MMAC.

MMAC is apparently trying to use every legal loophole to thwart the will of the people while simultaneously making them pay needless legal bills. For what? Just because the people of Milwaukee put a priority on public health, lower-wage workers and their sick children.

Big business interests have always played the role of Chicken Little every time society has asked them to pay their fair share. Every time they claim that businesses will flee and jobs will be lost and every time their knee jerk claims are proven false. Paid sick days are no exception as it has already been done and has been a tremendous success. It looks like MMAC is not only content in playing the role of Chicken Little.  Now they have decided to also play the of the Grinch, the Grinch that wants to steal my sick days.

Earlier this week the state Government Accountability Board (GAB) told Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler to disclose what is in her family’s blind trusts. Ziegler asked that the GAB waive the full-disclosure requirement even though it is needed to avoid conflict-of-interest, the very thing that has gotten her in so much trouble in the recent past. As GAB board member and former judge said, Ziegler has had “problems in the past understanding” rules that guard against conflicts. One particular sign that Ziegler is still tone deaf on this issue is the fact that her brother-in-law is designated as trustee.

In her letter to the GAB board (page 37) today’s Ziegler contradicts the Ziegler of last year. In it she argues as follows:

It is a near impossibility that a publicly traded company's stock value could ever be affected by a Wisconsin court decision, and even more unlikely that the value of a Judge's portfolio may be affected by such a decision. If there is concern that a Judge may rule for a company because they own stock, then the concern is associated with the notion that the Judge seeks to gain from that ruling. As a practical matter, any such gain would be next to impossible.

It seems that in addition to missing the point, Ziegler is also contradicting her own actions from last year. At that time, as a Washington County judge and candidate for the high court, she stepped down from a Wal-Mart case because she held significant stock in the company. She only did that a month after her financial interest was revealed, but she did it none-the-less. So if she stepped off the Wal-Mart case, why does she now say that such a conflict is really no big deal? Is it because she is not running for anything now? Some might call that the same “political gamesmanship” that she bemoans in her letter to GAB.

Tim Cuprisin is reporting that right wing loudmouth Mark Belling is hosting an hour of his favorite Christmas songs this afternoon. Because nothing reminds you of Ole Saint Nick more than shouting down callers, profane language, and racial epithets!

Apparently this is supposed to be Belling’s contribution in the nonexistent “war on Christmas” that has become a sacred tenant of right wing lore. He is quoted in the story explaining:

"It's mostly a rebellion against the attempts by all sorts of people to de-Christmas Christmas," he says. "When communities started calling Christmas trees 'holiday trees,' and all these advertisers started refusing to use the word Christmas in their ads, I thought it would be right thing to do to really put Christmas in their face."

I wonder in which twisted world Belling would be a poster child for the ideals of Christmas? The idea of “peace on earth” being represented by a person so wild about sending other people into war? Since when does the concept of “good will to all” exempt immigrants and their families? Belling and the ideals of Christmas, a very strange combination indeed.

There has been a lot of talk in recent months about who might challenge Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk. Increasingly those discussions have centered around former Madison School Board member Nancy Mistele. A week ago the Waunakee-based developer known for her wild rhetoric made it official by filing the necessary paperwork. Although she has not run for public office in a number of years, it appears that the low-road tactics that she was known for then, will be the same route that she plans to take now.

In nearly every news report of her intention to run for Dane County Executive, Mistele has continued to use two Dane County tragedies as the centerpiece of her entire campaign. Not only is it despicable and opportunistic but it is completely insensitive to those most effected, the victim’s families. As if crossing this line for her own political gain is not enough, she all but makes her opponent personally responsible for the victim’s deaths. If this is a sign of things to come, Dane County residents might want to duck for cover as Mistele takes the race to terrible new lows.

Jefferson County Judge Randy Koschnick wants to take a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court but does he plan to bring the same dissension to Madison that he has fostered in Jefferson? A report in the Captial Times Tuesday reveals a lot about Randy Koschnick. It is based on the comments of his fellow Jefferson County Judge John Ullsvik.

Judge Ullsvik has announced that he will not seek re-election after serving for some 17 years on the bench largely because of Koschnick’s antics and the divisive way that he has managed at the Jefferson County Courthouse. Ullsvik comments as follows:

He has been very divisive to what was otherwise a harmonious courthouse. He's given special treatment to his staff compared with the rest of the county courthouse staff. He's had court commissioners do work that the judges always did so he wouldn't have to do it.

Although Randy Koschnick has been praised by some for the changes that he has made in Jefferson County, the people that work with him every day and have to live under those changes are not singing the same happy song. Certainly the people around him know him best and he has totally lost them. What good is a statistical efficiency when you have lost total control of your courthouse in the process?

Late last week the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Milwaukee County overtime might break last year’s record. The bad press sent Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker into his usual spin mode. Naturally, his comments missed the point and were little more than a distraction from the real issue and his part in causing the problem in the first place.

Scott Walker’s PR push must have really worked because the very next day the Journal Sentinel put Walker in the headline declaring: “Walker orders overtime, spending restrictions”. Based on that headline alone, one might think that he was actually doing something significant about his latest mess. Unfortunately this is just more of what we have come to expect of Walker: doing damage control and pretending to care rather than actually solving the problem.

Even with the misleading headline, a persistent reader would finally learn in the second to last paragraph that Walker’s “action” really doesn’t do much at all. Although he may have issued an order to restrict overtime, the House of Correction and the Mental Health Complex are exempt from it. Those are precisely the two areas where a large part of the overtime is happening. Rather than take substantive action to solve another mess of his own making, Walker again reaches for a PR book rather than the “Governance for Dummies” book that he so desperately needs.

We are a full month removed from the election and all reports indicate that it ran very smoothly. Unfortunately some appear bound and determined to find something...anything to further denigrate Milwaukee voters. Wispolitics reports in their Milwaukee Notes, that Milwaukee Assistant DA Bruce Landgraf is predicting that “some additional cases” could surface once municipalities finish scanning records. Great, just what we needed, a thread of hope that allows the right wing hysteria to continue!

After hundreds of thousands of votes in Milwaukee, since that is apparently the only place where we look over voters shoulders, there were no significant signs of mischief. The report names only the following Election Day issues: a confused women that voted absentee and then again at the polls but then reported it herself. A man that is suspected of voting himself and then with his deceased wife’s absentee ballot. Ten cases of a specific type that are usually caused by clerical error or confusion over similar names. Three absentee ballots that were challenged on Election Day by an off-duty Milwaukee detective.

During the last two elections for the state Supreme Court, conservatives have tried to run as crime fighting super heroes. As part of this charade they all but turned the necessary and noble profession of being a public defender into an indictment. So it was a curious move that they would trot out a man that has spent well over half of his entire career as a public defender. Surly, given the course of his legal career, Randy Koschnick would never go down that substance free road right? If the Tuesday press release from his campaign is any indication, he is going down that road even if he has to twist himself into a pretzel doing it.

True to right wing form, he trots out his first two supporters from law enforcement. He quickly sticks with the recent model by then taking unjustified pot shots at his opponent using the same kind of bumper sticker approach to law that made us so sick the last time around. The press release goes on to say the following:

Judge Koschnick said he’s spent time listening to the law enforcement community across the state and there’s one issue in particular that keeps coming up. It’s the frustration felt by law enforcement officers after spending hundreds of personnel hours and thousands of dollars in taxpayer money to catch an alleged criminal only to have the courts set them free via a broad interpretation of the law.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting that a University of Chicago based researcher is enthusiastic about Milwaukee’s paid sick days ordinance. Inexplicably the business page reporter described it as “controversial.” A strange use of words since it was overwhelmingly passed by nearly 70 percent of Milwaukee voters. The only people that are creating a controversy are the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC) and their mouthpiece Steve Baas.

The researcher referenced in the story is Susan Lambert, a professor in the School of Social Service Administration and an authority on the relationship between employment and the well-being of those that are employed. Lambert says that she thinks that Milwaukee’s Paid Sick Days ordinance is “great overall.” She went on to point out the following:

A key barrier to sustained employment is having the opportunity to take time off when you or your child is ill," said Lambert, who's speaking Sunday in Milwaukee as part of an annual lecture for alumni and friends of the University of Chicago. "That certainly is reported by workers, especially in low-level hourly jobs, as something that prevents them from sustained employment.

WMC’s empty suit on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Michael Gableman, has responded to the complaint filed against him by the State Judicial Commission. Gableman ran what is widely acknowledged as one of the sleaziest campaigns in the history of the high court.

The specific charges in this matter surround Gableman’s Willie Horton-style TV ad against his opponent former-Justice Louis Butler. It clearly implied that Butler, while serving as a public defender, enabled a sex offender to be released and that the offender then went on to commit more egregious crimes. At best the Gableman ad was a clear effort to mislead the public and at worst it was a premeditated and contemptible lie. Either way Gableman’s actions clearly violated the Code of Judicial Conduct which is the case being made by the Judicial Commission.

Part of Gableman’s breathtaking “defense” against the Judicial Commission is that the state’s statutes on judicial candidates making misleading or confusing statements is unconstitutional. Based on that he apparently believes that he has the right to mislead the public whenever he chooses! Only in Gableman’s small world would an elected official fight tooth and nail to defend his perceived “right” to lie to the public without repercussion. What is next from Gableman? A passionate argument defending his imaginary “right” to libel? Actually, as absurd as that may sound, one could very reasonably suggest that he is trying to make that very case right now.

The Wisconsin Institute for Leadership (WIL), called for an economic stimulus plan today. How shocking that the corporate lobbyist mouthpiece completely ignored the needs of working families in it! Their policy proposals are nothing more than a big biz wish list that completely locks out the average Wisconsinite. If WIL wasn’t such a shill for these powerful interests, wouldn’t they have at least mentioned the critical role that the average family plays in our economy and account for it? Wouldn’t any legitimate economic stimulus package include help for struggling working people that are barely getting by?

Apparently WIL still hasn’t learned the lessons of the last eight years that ignoring the economic needs of the average person only sets us all up for long-term failure. WIL isn’t offering a serious proposal here, but they are giving us a prime example of what corporate lobbyists do best: look out for their own narrow interests while ignoring the needs of everyone else.

Just a couple years ago when Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker first ran for Governor, he attacked Governor Doyle for his use of the veto pen. On his campaign blog Walker wrote an item entitled “Veto Power” (8/6/05). In it he criticized Doyle for the use of what has been called a Frankenstein Veto (bringing together words from two or more sentences to create new passages). He further said that he thought this use of the veto was illegal. He even went so far as to ask state legislators to take legal action against the Governor. Given all of this bellyaching over Doyle’s vetoes in 2005, what does it say about Walker that he seems to be going even further as a county executive in 2008?

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has reported that in vetoing items in the county budget that Walker took this “creative” use to new heights. He largely bypassed the so-called Frankenstein Veto for the much more extreme “Vanna White” version. He did that by using random letters and even spaces from paragraphs to create entirely new meanings in the 2009 budget text. At one point he reworked two full pages of text by taking out letters and spaces simply to create the phrase: “restore contract funds.”

In 2005 Walker called Doyle’s use of the veto “bad policy” and “illegal”, so I have to wonder how he would describe his own Vanna White ways now. It is also strange to hear the stone cold silence on the right concerning Walker’s vetoes, when they regularly froth at the mouth at even the hint of Governor Doyle exercising his veto power.

Unfortunately Wisconsin enshrined discrimination against gay families in its constitution in 2006. But that didn’t stop hundreds of Wisconsinites all across the state from protesting California’s passage of Proposition 8. Over the weekend people in Wisconsin stood in solidarity with others all across the country demanding equality for gay and lesbian families.

While reading the accounts of some of the protests over the weekend, I also came across a very telling piece in the Boston Globe today. Massachusetts is one of the only states in the nation that allows same-sex couples to get married. Although those that oppose equality claimed that the sky would fall and that the institution of marriage would collapse, the Globe piece reports that the very opposite is true.

Even though the State of Massachusetts is often maligned by conservatives for lacking “traditional” values, it has long ranked as having one of the lowest divorce rates in the country. Some 5 years after the state sanctioned gay marriage, it still has the lowest divorce rate in the nation. Not exactly the disaster for marriage that the extreme right chants about every time the subject is broached.

The Globe piece also shows that attitudes of people living in Massachusetts have drastically changed toward gay marriage as they have been exposed to it over the past five years. In 2004 only 42 percent of the people in Massachusetts approved of gay marriage, while today a full 59 percent approve.

Proposition 8 has rightly become a rallying cry for the advocates of full equality. While the fight against such discrimination continues, the State of Massachusetts should also be held up as an example. An example of equality actually enriching the institution of marriage, not tearing it apart. An example of how tolerance can overcome even the most deep seated fear.

Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen’s partisan lawsuit against the Government Accountability Board (GAB) endangered the right to vote for scores of Wisconsinites. It also forced taxpayers to pay the bill coming and going. Thanks to J.B. we had to pay for both filing the frivolous lawsuit and for defending against it. Now we find out that it may have cost the state in a few other ways.

Over the weekend the Associated Press reported that two assistant attorneys general told Van Hollen’s top aide that they were close to reaching a favorable settlement on cases in which they were representing the GAB. They also advised him that filing Van Hollen’s suit against the GAB would derail their progress in the matter saying:

However, as I also indicated, there is virtually no likelihood of exploring, much less settling, these cases if this office files an action against GAB ... If such a filing is in the offing, you need to know this.

Not only was the partisan suit “in the offing” but Van Hollen actually filed it a very short time after being warned about the consequences that it would have on his office’s defense of the GAB in other cases.

Thankfully Van Hollen’s partisan lawsuit was thrown out of court before it was allowed to disenfranchise Wisconsin voters in an election that by all accounts ran very smoothly. Unfortunately, there still were other casualties of his partisan lawsuit: taxpayer dollars and important cases where he should have been focused on defending the State of Wisconsin not suing it.

Progressives have been warning about the disaster that is the Bush economy from the very beginning. Unfortunately conservatives pretended that "the fundamentals" of our economy were "strong." That is until big corporations, the investor class and the wealthy started to feel the pain that has been hitting working people for years now.

After nearly eight years of right wing economic policy, here are the results as compiled by the Economic Policy Institute:

Unemployment

There were 9.5 million unemployed workers in September 2008, up 25% from 7.5 million in January, and up 40% from 6.7 million in March 2007.

Job Openings

There were 2.9 unemployed workers for every job opening in August 2008, up from 1.9 in January and 1.8 one-year ago.

Median Wages

Median weekly wages for a full-time worker have fallen by 1.6% over the last year.

Foreclosures

There were 265,968 home foreclosures in September 2008 alone, 21% higher than last September. There were 765,558 foreclosures in the third quarter of this year, 71% higher than the third quarter last year.

On Monday morning the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Transit Authority (RTA) voted for a stable, sufficient and dedicated local funding source for local transit including the KRM Commuter Rail. By a vote of 6 to 1, the RTA approved a report that includes seeking a half percent increase in the sales tax in the three county region (Milwaukee, Racine, and Kenosha). Naturally, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker’s appointee to the RTA was the lone vote against progress. Even the appointee of his Republican counterpart in Racine voted in favor of the plan. After today’s supermajority vote it will now go to the Governor and the legislature. Now is the time for people to encourage their public officials to fully support this important investment in our infrastructure.

A new poll shows that there is strong support among the general population in the three-county region for raising the local sales tax to fund and expand public transit and to remove it from the property tax. This poll comes on the heels of Milwaukee County voters passing a referendum to modestly raise sales tax to remove transit, parks and others important services from the property tax. The same poll revealed that a full 82 percent say that it is important for the greater Milwaukee region to have a modern efficient transportation system. They further agreed that such a system would be essential to the economic growth of the region.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has reported that Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) has been awfully quiet both just before the November 4 election and immediately after it. Although they had named keeping the state Assembly in Republican hands as being a priority and tried to raise $1 million by Labor Day, they apparently ended up doing very little.

One can reasonably look at the election and consider it a clear repudiation of WMC and their legislative agenda. After all, they did run television ads promoting three Assembly challengers (in the 49th, 88th, and 91st districts) and all three went down to defeat. Of the 5 candidates they supported with radio ads, only one (in the 47th district) won, and that one is headed for a recount. Two of the incumbents who were defeated at the polls, Hines and Moulton, were attacked in part for their 100% adherence to the WMC agenda and they both lost. Also, in both districts 57 and 92 voters elected candidates to replace faithful WMC rubber stamps.

There are only a few answers for WMC’s complete failure in this election cycle and none of them are very flattering. Either they were not able to actually raise the amount of money that they needed, or they raised it but funneled it through other groups as to avoid culpability for producing more negative ads, or they simply spent their money and their message was soundly rejected by voters. Whatever the exact explanation, don’t look for WMC to tell us about it. Who could blame them? No one would want to discuss the last several months which have been a complete WMC train wreck.

Another presidential election has come and gone in Wisconsin, and once again by all accounts it went as smoothly as possible. Although the right wing, led by Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, whipped up as much frenzy and paranoia as they could, there has been no sign of the mischief that they predicted on Election Day.

Before the election, Van Hollen went as far as to jeopardize hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin votes by filing what was clearly both a partisan and frivolous lawsuit which was rightfully thrown out of court. As in 2004, this year Wisconsin seemed to have a very smooth Election Day with very high turnout. Actually, this year Wisconsin had the second highest turnout in the nation. This is something to be encouraged and not stifled for purely political purposes.

After having his partisan lawsuit thrown out of court, J.B. Van Hollen suggested that he might appeal the matter to a higher court. Given the smooth election that we just had in Wisconsin, J.B. should abandon his partisan suit and stop wasting taxpayer dollars over a problem that for all practical purposes does not even exist.

Ever since Wisconsin voted to enshrine discrimination against gay families in its constitution, conservatives usually respond to the subject with the  same mantra, “the people have spoken.” So it seems odd that many of those very same conservatives have conveniently forgotten that line of reasoning concerning the many progressive referendums that passed all over the state on Tuesday.

City of Milwaukee voters overwhelmingly approved a requirement that employers provide paid sick days to all workers. The paid sick day referendum was passed with a whopping 68 percent of the vote. Can someone on the right say mandate? Instead, we can expect to hear only complaints and insults from the right about voters in the state’s largest city. Many of them will likely support the protracted legal battle that is being promised by the business elites in Milwaukee. Even though such a massive majority of the people have spoken, conservatives appear content in ignoring their voices and burning tax dollars on needless lawsuits.

Health care reform has long been a top issue in our state and across the nation. In 2006, many communities across the state passed referendums calling on the state legislature to act on the issue. At that time, I contended that the call for health care reform very well could have been a major issue in flipping control in the state senate. Once again, on November 4, many people voted on similar referendums all across the state again.