"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.

It just never ends, does it?

Now, rich corporate CEO’s are all a-flutter over *gasp* paying workers a fair wage. In Gov. Doyle’s budget, a new provision requires companies that receive help from the state to pay their workers the prevailing wage.

J. Michael Mooney,  chairman of the MLG group, an investment and real estate developer, called the idea of a paying a decent wage to workers “economic suicide.” A quick look at MLG’s Real Estate Investment website shows they have a portfolio value of $330 million. They have a “presence” in four states: Wisconsin, Florida, Minnesota and Texas. The “Executive Board” of MLG is a bunch of rich white guys. I guess the diversity policy at MLG only applies to what label designer suit each white male board member wears. Excuse me if I don’t sympathize with this pompous Uncle Money Bags.  

“This would be a bad idea in good times,” Mooney also says. So when the economy is down, not the right time for fair pay. And when the economy is up isn’t good either. I’m still trying to figure out when would be a good time for Mr. Mooney to share some of his wealth with his workers…yeah not finding one. This guy and the corporatists at WMC will NEVER find time for fairness.

But I guess there’s a part of me that expects it from these top 2%-ers. Paying their workers a fair wage would mean less money in their pockets, and while it certainly is greedy, self-serving, and un-American,  it’s the standard of these flag-waving, chest-bumping robber barons. After all, this is the same crowd that cheered while President Bush cut taxes for the rich in a time of war! Guys like Mooney and WMC don’t want to pay their fair share to support the troops, and they don’t want to pay their fair share to the workers.  They never have, and if they had their way, they never would.
 
If you can’t pay a prevailing wage in Wisconsin to your employees then you shouldn’t be in business. There, I said it. Go. Leave. Get out already. Take WMC with you. Then finally the real people of Wisconsin might get a break from the never-ending crying and bitching and moaning from greedy businesses who don’t give a shit about workers. Workers are the ones who make you rich! We’re the ones who buy your goods. We’re the ones that labor endlessly, and whose efforts these corporatists so willingly exploit. It’s the workers who toil away for whatever scraps they can grab from the owners who hoard their wealth.

There are lots of companies out there who would gladly take help from the state AND pay their workers fairly. If Mooney doesn’t want help from the taxpayers, he can stick it. Don’t take the money then. That leaves more room for the kind of companies we want here in Wisconsin: profitable companies that care about community, the environment, and paying their workers fairly.

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.

Steve Baas, the government affairs director for the Milwaukee big business association has been a vocal mouthpiece for his special interests and against the effort in Milwaukee to require paid sick day benefits. He has fought allowing more than 120,000 hard-working Milwaukee citizens to earn modest paid sick leave benefits, even though he was not shy about collecting a whole lot more when he had a job at the state legislature. While there from 1994 to 2005, Steve Baas accumulated 150 full sick days totaling nearly 1,250 hours. Baas used one-third of those taxpayer-financed sick days as an aide to Assembly Republicans such as convicted former Speaker Scott Jensen.

If Steve Baas is so opposed to paid sick days for Milwaukee workers perhaps he should return the 51 days of sick pay that taxpayers footed for him while he was working in the state legislature. Anything short of paying back taxpayers would be the height of hypocrisy. Baas received a much more generous paid sick day benefit from taxpayers than the one that he is fighting now. Apparently he feels that the same hard working taxpayers in Milwaukee that were helping pay for his benefits don’t deserve even a small portion of them.

How comical is that the Wisconsin representative to the so-called “Palin Truth Squad” is Margaret Farrow?

The “Squad” presumably will criticize anyone who brings up Sarah Palin’s ethics scandal, truth bending, right-wing extremism and revisionist history. Or those who point out that Palin refuses to talk to reporters and won’t answer questions.

After weeks of silence, Guzmán is meeting criticism of his campaign by finally speaking to the press, and accusing one of his opponents, incumbent Democratic State Rep. Pedro Colón (Eighth Assembly District, Milwaukee), of being "anti-catholic" for his vote for the Compassionate Care for Rape Victims bill, signed into law by Gov. Doyle in March.

Today is the 88th anniversary of women winning the right to vote. Eighty-eight years after women getting the equality to vote, John McCain still does not think that women deserve equal pay. McCain, like George W. Bush, has the wrong policies for America’s women and for struggling families. Even just a brief look at his record reveals that on the issues that matter most to women, John McCain is totally out of touch.

John McCain actually fought equal pay legislation by opposing the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have made it easier for women and other workers to pursue pay discrimination claims. At a town hall meeting, a brave 14-year old girl confronted McCain about his opposition to equal pay and he responded by actually saying that the equal pay legislation wouldn’t do anything to help the rights of women.

Other issues that are very important to women are practical everyday issues that affect their families. Things like struggling to pay the rising costs of food, gas and healthcare. John McCain’s economic plan ignores the real needs of the average women and her family and instead focuses on massive tax cuts to corporations like Big Oil and Big Insurance companies.

Update: Readers can contact the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (MJS) on this matter at: Letters to the Editor http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=766191

Milwaukee, Wisconsin—Donna Ganong is a 70-year-old widow running a corner tavern on Milwaukee's near-south side.

In early July, Mrs. Ganong tried to help a crying, hungry dog in an alley, and the Milwaukee police fined her $350 for her trouble.

Located at the corner of 1400 West Orchard Street and South 14th Street, Ganong’s Corner, has seen its share of life, though the neighborhood bar is not much of a blip on the Milwaukee radar screen.

Apparently the people don't matter all that much to the Milwaukee police either.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported today that all the usual business suspects are going to pump cash into an effort to fight the paid sick day referendum. The story further reveals that if they don’t get the result that they want on the referendum, that they will spend even more money by challenging the will of the people in the courts. So what is a person supposed to take from this news? That business interests are willing to invest their money in an expensive ad campaign and possibly a protracted lawsuit but not in their own employees and the public health? Are they really going to launch such an effort to keep some of the poorest workers in the city from having a benefit that most people take for granted?

The business interests involved in the fight against paid sick days list all of the same talking points that they have always used when asked to invest more into their employees and the common good. This story is no exception, once again they claim that requiring paid sick days will put people out of business and chase others businesses from the city. How many times have we had to endure this tired old argument? It is straight out of central casting but they have simply replaced the last issue with paid sick days.

Today John McCain held a women-only town hall in Hudson and made the following comment:

"We haven't done enough. We have not done enough. And I'm committed to making sure that there's equal pay for equal work. That there is equal opportunity in every aspect of our society. And that is my record and you can count on it."

Did McCain get lost in the moment or did he intentionally misrepresent himself to Wisconsin women? Regardless of his reason for the statement, it is clearly not an accurate one. He has clearly not been a supporter of equal pay for women despite what he said today in Hudson. Consider just some of the following points from the McCain record.

Tomorrow U.S. Senator John McCain will be coming to Wisconsin and holding a women-only town hall. John McCain’s record of rubber stamping Bush policies in the U.S. Senate has been a disaster for not only women but for entire country.

John McCain actually skipped the vote on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have restored workers ability to pursue pay discrimination claims in court. When a 14-year-old girl asked him about this at a town hall meeting, he told her that protections for equal pay wouldn’t do “anything to help the rights of women.” On the same topic McCain has commented that women simply need “education and training” instead of equal pay protection.

John McCain also is a full supporter of unfair trade deals that has led to the loss of countless jobs. Obviously many of those jobs were held by women, they would probably not judge kindly McCain’s record on the economy.

Update: Daniel Bice has the audio of a Tom Reynolds phone call to state Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee, 20), “a veteran Milwaukee Democrat, (who) has a direct and personal interest in what Reynolds was doing, so she signed up - using a fake name - with Clean Sweep Wisconsin.”

This is the link is to the audio of the Reynolds phone call, and the URL is: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=770314

Transcription of the Reynolds call, in part, follows:

“… In Milwaukee here, we are working on a full slate of 12 candidates; eight on the north side, and four on the south side. And we are at eight or nine candidates right now. ... We have a candidate against Sinicki and a candidate against Staskunas. And we're still working on Zepnick and Colón….”

An anti-Catholic-Reynolds ally in Colón’s district? That likely will not play especially well there; though it’s a fair bet that Reynolds’ brand of politics and hate will not play well anywhere in the Milwaukee area. See the Milwaukee-area Democratic State Reps chart at the end of this post.
***
What does a rightwing candidate recruited by a notorious anti-Catholic, Tom Reynolds, say if his/her name is on the ballot challenging Milwaukee-area Assembly Democrats in the September primary?

As little as possible.

And he/she hides from the public, staying in the shadows, an odd posture for candidates for public office, though consistent with the past odd behavior of former state senator Reynolds who reportedly had asked of prospective staff whether they were virgins.

U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-What's Wrong With You Sick, Frothing Morons?) is finally dead. Happy birthday, U.S. of A.

Helms was a hate-slathered cretin, whose campaigns and governing showed American democracy at its worst. "White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races," thundered just one of many Helms' attacks over the decades.

Conservatives are saddened by the news. "Ol' 27 percent" George W. Bush was soiling his White House crying towel, calling Helms "kind," "decent" and "humble."

And while he had some admirers in Wisconsin, most notably Supreme Court Justice-Elect Mike Gableman's ad-writing team, Helms was a racist thug and the world mourns, simply because it took him so, so long to exit the world he befouled for over eight decades.

For my dough, I'm hoping Wonkette Editor Ken Layne has penned in "Jesse Helms: American Garbage," what will be a waterfall of appropriate tributes.

Feel free to add even better ones to the comment portion of this blog. Helms deserves it for all he did to people of color, gays, the poor and this nation's sense of decency. 

Last week it was reported that a Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) staffer condescendingly referred to the Epic Systems founder and well-respected progressive business leader as “that computer lady.” As a result the Institute for One Wisconsin launched an education effort this week questioning WMC’s attitude toward women and their history of opposing legislation that would have been helpful to both women and their families.

The online campaign includes a WMC Watch News Alert available at WMCWatch.org and a letter to the editor writing tool. Individuals can write a letter to the editor of their local papers expressing their outrage at both the dismissive WMC comments and their legislative positions that have been bad for Wisconsin women.