Below is a letter I sent on March 4, I invite to share your sentiments with him as well; and/or to join us Mon. March 8 from 5-6pm outside of downtown Milwaukee's Pfister Hotel. A.H.

Dear Scott Walker:

I am writing to you to ask that you publicly dissassociate yourself and your campaign from former Gov. Jeb Bush's open record of supporting terrorists.

Please see some of the research below. While in law school, at the Columbus School of Law as part of Catholic University, I had the opportunity to meet one of the victims of such terrorism, who was then teaching at American University, the former Foreign Mininster of Chile, Orlando Letelier. The following year, in 1976, a car bomb assassinated him and a U.S. policy analyst Ronnie Moffit, right in our nation's capital. As you will see from the attached, based primarily on U.S. intelligence sources, which can be researched generally but in most detail at the National Security Archives, housed at George Washington Univerity, Orlando Bosch boasted of his role in this assassination, shortly before blowing up a civilian airliner coming from South America to Cuba. That was the first terrorist bombing of a civilan airliner in the Western Hemisphere, and it killed all 73 people on board.

I have met some of their relatives. They cannot understand how the masterminds of this outrageous act of terrorism can be walking freely in Miami today. But Jeb Bush can, because he is considered the person most responsible for providing them with safe haven in Florida, particularly Orlando Bosch. Some of those survivors live in Cuba, relatives of the pilot, the crew, the fencing team which was returning to Cuba having won five gold medals. Some live in the U.S., relatives of a young outstanding student from Guyana, who was flying to Cuba to receive free medical education. They have never gotten over the loss of their son and brother. Others live in South America, whose sons or daughters were also planning to become doctors to serve humanity.

I suspect you may never have heard of these facts. But, respectfully, once you have invited Jeb Bush to come to Milwaukee, and praised him as a model for you, you can no longer remain safely ignorant. I beg you to review this sad history, and declare openly that such support for terrorists can no longer be justified.

I thank you for your kind consideration.

Art Heitzer, Attorney at Law, Milwaukee   Read More »

Meet the Corporation

I had always heard of these faceless corporations so I thought it wouldn’t be very much fun to meet one. But now that the Supreme Court has officially made them persons (sorta like they did with George Bush) I thought maybe I’d do what I’d wanted to for a long time – punch one in the face. So off I went to my local hated corporation.
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Two simple truths about voting in the U.S.: one, there is no evidence of wide-scale voter fraud; two, voter ID would disenfranchise eligible voters. But that’s not going to stop a Wauwatosa alderwoman from organizing a petition drive to require voter IDs in order to vote.   Read More »

Oh, The Poor Mainstream Media

Well, well, well. The so-called Fourth Estate has their undies in a bundle because the Obama administration has finally called out one of their brethren, for being lying, denigrating, vicious, twisters of the truth. Now this entity, which frequently feeds stories to the so-called mainstream media or bashes them until they will cover such a story, hates anyone to the left of John Birch and Adolph Eichmann. Their parade of hate has been consistent and yes consistently laden with derision for the elected President of the United States, Barack Obama. For those of you who don’t watch FOX, they and their sources, have accused him of Socialism, Communism, Facism and the fall of Western civilization (not to mention the wars, depression and savaging of the Constitution of the United States, all of which can be laid accurately at the feet of their favorite President and war criminal, George W. Bush). And to accurately portray FOX, this happens throughout the day, NOT just in commentary as John Nichols’ commentary in the CT implies.

That FOX hates anyone “liberal” enough to challenge invading nations illegally; spying on its citizens without warrants, torturing prisoners and challenging the hubris and greed of Wall Street is commonly known to everyone with a brain bigger than a bean. That FOX typically invites thoroughly discredited commentators like Dick Morris to lay the foundation for a complete decline of a nation under Obama, virtually minutes after he was elected, is not a surprise. That FOX will give a war criminal like Dick Cheney and his incompetent and “loudmouth without portfolio” daughter, Liz, free rein to dismiss the now Commander in Chief and his decisions in the same manner they demanded absolute fealty under Bush II, is pure FOX. If this were the end of the story, one might agree with the pundits from the left, including our esteemed John Nichols, that trying to fight FOX is wrong because impliedly it is a news organization.

Well, as Steve Martin might have said “EXCUSE ME”! Perhaps John Nichols and David Corn and the moderators of liberal behavior are too busy to really watch FOX so-called news. FOX is not being called to task solely because of the lunacy of Hannity or O’Reilly or Beck or the myriad of liars and distorters they have on their station. They are being called out for deliberately trying to create questionable or false stories or distort the angle on all stories that they can touch during their so called “news” presentations. And were the damage limited to those who demand only the perspective that satisfies their miniscule minds, as Nichols and others point out, one needn’t pursue it.

However, his gutless and now profit driven Fourth Estate is not what it used to be. Far too many of these distorted stories (ACORN is a perfect example) find their way to or are jammed down the throat of the Mainstream Media. The press, and close on their heels the Congress, run willy nilly trying to ensure they can’t be accused of being liberal, picking up nonsense as if it were gold.. CNN finds time to take FOX stories at their face value while fact-checking Saturday Night Live!! From Coulter, to Morris, to Sen. Kyle from Arizona outrageous lies or run of the mill stories, planted by FOX “news”, are given credence and “breaking news” status on regular news channels and left hanging when the reporter (I use that term very lightly) finds “well, that’s all we have time for”.

Ah, but the truly salient fact around this circus, is the way the media, including the lefties like Nichols, circle the wagons anytime someone calls them out on their perfidy. Attack one, you attack all! The “Freedom of the Press” must go unchallenged! A President who points out even the most outrageous liars of the media will be branded a whiner! I have news for you. You are no longer deserving of the title the “Fourth Estate”. You are so corporatized as to have abandoned virtually all the principles that gave you that vaunted status. Your quest is now the bottom line, not a Jeffersonian ideal. You cut staffs to bare-bones and limit your investigative reporting to who’s screwing who and balloon stories. You don’t search for factual truth but rather seek two contrasting opinions, no matter how crazy one of them might be. You seek loud-mouthed controversy over insight. And you do it in a world that depends upon you even more now to get it right than ever before. No, if the media wants to see the true whiners, the fearful, the abdicators of a vaunted role, they need to take a very long and hard look in the mirror. That is, if they can get their heads out of the sand long enough to do so.

Read Milwaukee County's life-long-health-benefits-on-the-public-dime Executive Scott Walker's statement on the Milwaukee County Board's Personnel Committee decision to support domestic partner benefits for employees.

“I will veto the Domestic Partner Benefits plan approved by the County Board’s Personnel Committee today. Now is not the time to be adding any new benefits for public employees, let alone this specific benefit," he wrote Friday.

Repeat: "...let alone this specific benefit."   Read More »

A must-read release from CBTU:

The Coalition of Black Trade Unions (CBTU) are outraged by County Executive Scott Walker's budget he has submitted to the County Board .  He is proposing the elimination of hundreds of family-supporting county jobs.  The vast majority of those jobs are in the lowest wage classifications -- Housekeeping and Custodial positions at the Behavioral Health Division and the Court House and other county facilities, and Security positions at the Court House.  The workers targeted are overwhelming people of color.

These positions are paid $12.00 to $15.00 per hour.  Walker is proposing to privatize these jobs, so the incumbents will have to train their replacements or accept employment with the private vendor at a fraction of their current wages, with no health insurance, pensions, or other fringe benefits.

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With Attorney General JB Van Hollen announcing last week he is refusing to perform the duties for which he was elected, four critical considerations must be made in judging his decision:

1. This is the opposite of what Van Hollen asserted during the campaign. When Van Hollen was defending the marriage amendment, he said it wouldn’t apply to domestic partnerships. In a press release from the 2006 campaign, Van Hollen wrote: “The Legislature or the governing body of a political subdivision or local governmental unit is not precluded from authorizing or requiring that a right or benefit traditionally associated with marriage be extended to two or more unmarried individuals; for example, family health insurance benefits, certain probate rights, or the ability to file joint tax returns.” He added, “But it’s also clear that if elected [my opponent] intends to interpret the laws as she sees fit instead of executing the role of attorney general.” Doesn’t Van Hollen’s legal flip flop compromise his and the Department of Justice’s credibility?

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If there was any debate about the rising influence of corporate interests like Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce before the State’s highest court, the last two weeks have ended the discussion. It now appears the Wisconsin Supreme Court is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wisconsin’s corporate crooks.

Those of you following One WI Now’s reporting on the judicial ethics already know that “Justices” Michael Gableman and Annette Ziegler came to the court under a cloud of suspicion. Ziegler got an unprecedented reprimand from the High Court after she ruled in dozens of cases in which she and/or her husband had a financial stake; Gableman remains under investigation. And of course we all remember ads run by WMC supporting these two serial-ethics violators. Just a bit of background...

Last week I reported corporate lapdogs Gableman and Ziegler ruled that owners of a Wisconsin manufacturing company had the right to take millions of dollars in compensation as they drove the company into the ground and failed to pay up on its union contracts. WMC made it clear it early on that it supported the rights of the owners to screw the workers out of the pay they earned with their hard work. And when it mattered most for the CEOs/crooks WMC represents, the justices WMC spent millions electing came through in the clutch. Score: Corporate Special Interest – 1; Wisconsin Working Families – 0.

I guess when rains it pours.

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Currently, the way the census works is that prison inmates are counted as residents of the district in which the prison resides, not from where they lived prior to being in prison. This obviously, creates a weird dynamic in which these thousands of inmates skew the size of political districts, giving extra power to the constituents in those districts. The proposed solution, however, to just not count inmates in the census at all, is misguided and clear disenfranchisement. You might want to pretend that the 20,000+ in Wisconsin prisons don't exist, but the whole point of the census is to count everyone -- this includes our prisoners.

And then there's the whole racial component to this -- when African Americans make up roughly 6% of the total population in Wisconsin, yet nearly 50% of the total prison population -- to not count them would significantly change the very demographics of our state, and inaccurately portray our diversity and racial make-up. Rather than sweep these individuals under the carpet and pretend they don't exist, let's give them the representation they are constitutionally granted in the districts from which they are from.

OWN's solution: count the inmates from the communities in which they lived before going to prison.This will ensure representation for the inmates without skewing the drawing of political districts.

And let's not forget: Ex-offenders must be given the franchise, immediately upon release from prison when they've returned to the community.

Stories about conservative public figures disseminating racist "jokes" have grown in the past six months. And thanks to a story in the MJS we can now add the conservative MacIver Institute’s resident blogger Fred Dooley to the list.   Read More »

What if your partner was in the hospital and you legally couldn't visit him or her? Or if you got seriously ill, and your partner couldn't take time off from work to help care for you?

Thousands of our family members, friends and neighbors in committed and caring same-sex relationships don't have basic legal protections like hospital visitation or family leave. You can help change that.

Show your support for domestic partner protections:
http://www.OneWisconsinNow.org/domesticpartner   Read More »

On Saturday I penned this op-ed which never ran in my local paper about GI Resistance, my planned trip to St. Louis for Matthis Chiroux’s discharge hearing and why war resisters of an illegal war should be supported instead of punished. (For more on Matthis and his refusal of an Inactive Ready Reserve call-up see his website)   Read More »

On Saturday I penned this op-ed which never ran in my local paper about GI Resistance, my planned trip to St. Louis for Matthis Chiroux’s discharge hearing and why war resisters of an illegal war should be supported instead of punished. (For more on Matthis and his refusal of an Inactive Ready Reserve call-up see his website)   Read More »

On Saturday I penned this op-ed which never ran in my local paper about GI Resistance, my planned trip to St. Louis for Matthis Chiroux’s discharge hearing and why war resisters of an illegal war should be supported instead of punished. (For more on Matthis and his refusal of an Inactive Ready Reserve call-up see his website)   Read More »

On Saturday I penned this op-ed which never ran in my local paper about GI Resistance, my planned trip to St. Louis for Matthis Chiroux’s discharge hearing and why war resisters of an illegal war should be supported instead of punished. (For more on Matthis and his refusal of an Inactive Ready Reserve call-up see his website)   Read More »

This year, our elected officials will spend billions of our tax dollars on uniforms and other clothing for public employees like police officers and firefighters. Unfortunately, most of this gear is made in sweatshops by workers forced to work long hours for poverty wages in inhumane and abusive conditions.

Sweatshops not only exploit low-wage workers; they also speed up the race to the bottom that has cost Wisconsin so many jobs, as companies search the globe for the most lax labor standards and cheapest labor costs. With the global economy reeling, now more than ever our tax dollars should-and can-support higher standards that level the playing field for U.S. workers and support worker organizing around the world.

That's why the SweatFree Wisconsin Campaign is calling on Governor Jim Doyle and local elected officials to act now to end tax dollar support for sweatshops. Governor Doyle can do this by signing an Executive Order that establishes an ethical purchasing policy for our state and by joining the Sweatfree Purchasing Consortium. Local leaders can pass ordinances doing the same. An ethical purchasing policy and membership in the Sweatfree Purchasing Consortium would begin to direct our tax dollars towards companies that meet a set of labor standards based on the rights of freedom of association, collective bargaining, a non-poverty wage, reasonable work hours, and a workplace free of verbal or physical harassment - and to provide incentives to companies that want to do business with our state.

This month, we'll have an opportunity to hear directly from workers who toil in sweatshops to make uniforms and other products for our cities and states, and from those affected by this race to the bottom right here in Wisconsin. SweatFree Communities and the Wisconsin Fair Trade Coalition have organized the Economic Stimulus Worker Tour, which will visit several locations across Wisconsin next week.

At the event, we'll hear from Elizabeth Gutierrez Reyes, who worked 15 years in the Honduran garment industry before becoming an organizer and educator for garment workers through FESITRADEH, a Honduran labor federation. Elizabeth, who is also a nurse, has extensive knowledge of Dickies de Honduras, a factory in Choloma, Honduras that makes uniforms for the popular Dickies brand. Dickies supplies many U.S. cities and states with work pants, including the State of Wisconsin and the City of Milwaukee, but behind the label is a history of repression of human rights and labor rights.

Joining Elizabeth will be Maritza Vazquez from Puerto Rico, who works for Propper International, a major producer of military and law enforcement apparel. Maritza and fellow employees are organizing to improve conditions in their factories. Workers have filed a lawsuit against Propper for damages of $225,000 related to unpaid work, alleging that the company did not grant legally required paid sick days and vacation days. Workers in the lawsuit also claim that Propper reduces employees' agreed-upon hourly wages when workers' production falls short of quota.

Sachin Chheda, Director of the Wisconsin Fair Trade Coalition, will join the workers to connect the dots between global worker exploitation and manufacturing job loss right here in Wisconsin.

Locations include:
Tuesday, March 24, 12 noon - 1:00 pm
Marquette University, Milwaukee
Alumni Memorial Union Room 407, 1442 W. Wisconsin Avenue

Tuesday, March 24, 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Union Fireside Lounge, 2200 E. Kenwood Blvd., Milwaukee, Wisc.

Wednesday, March 25, 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Madison Labor Temple
1602 S. Park St, Room 109, Madison, Wisc.

Thursday, March 26, 7:00 - 8:30 pm
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Carl Wimberly Hall, Room 102, La Crosse, Wisc.

Friday, March 27, 6:00 - 7:30 pm
University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
Room TBA, Stevens Points, Wisc.

Saturday, March 28, 11:30 am - 12:30 pm
Economic Meltdown Conference, Milwaukee: Real Solutions for Working People, 9:00 am - 3:00 pm, lunchtime plenary
Plumbers Local 75, 11175 W. Parkland Ave., Milwaukee

Check out the Economic Stimulus Speaker Tour events page to RSVP!

You may have seen this story last week in the Wisconsin State Journal about a four-way jabfest between One Wisconsin Now, Mark Pocan, Nass, and the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance (Leah Vukmir took a swing too, but her press release was so ridiculous nobody really took it serious).   Read More »

I've been trying to determine the causes of this mess in our country because, listening to the wise men and women on CNBC and CNN and the other mainstream outlets, I've really gotten confused. See, I thought that our problems were the result of serious greed, lack of adequate regulation, unrestricted lobbying of our government representatives (I use that term lightly), corporate irresponsibility and downright criminal behavior, a war that spends billions every week, with no end in sight while the terrorists who attacked our country run free in a country we abandoned (again) and a lock-step political party that prevented any change to those problems. I thought the trillion dollars in debt had something to do with this!! I thought the impending depression was traceable to the behavior above!

Apparently, I missed the boat by a mile. According to a conservative friend of mine, this mess we're in, is attributable to liberal lawyers and their liberal biased interpretations and manipulation of the Constitution. Now see, this train of analysis had eluded me so I thought I'd go research it. Since I know a bunch of these scoundrels, I decided to call them up and confront them. No pussyfootin' around when my country is in dire straits. .


-"Hello".
-"Hi, Bill, this is Tom. We worked together on those cases where the cops beat those confessions out of those kids? Well, I was just told that you are responsible for this mess that we're in in this country. What are you gonna do about it?"
-Huh?!?
-Listen, I've heard you've been manipulating the Constitution! I'm guessing it resulted in derivatives that were worthless. What have you got to say for yourself?"
-"Tom, have you been smoking something funny? And what the hell is a derivative? It's like, Latin, isn't it?
-"Never mind." Click.

-"Hello"
-"Hi, Fred, this is Tom. Remember we worked together on those cases that forced those corporations to reimburse those kids for their scrambled brains from the toxic substances?"
-"Oh Yeah - Hi Tom."
-"Well, while we've been out of touch, apparently you've been working to bring this country down into the mess it's in. Have you been working secretly for the banks?"
-"Uh, no. What are you talking about?"
-"Very clever,but you're stonewalling! I have it on good information from a friend that liberal lawyers have gotten us in this mess. And you're one of the really liberal ones. Did you find some liberal interpretation of the Constitution that allowed for lenders to loan mortgage money to people who couldn't pay and then package it in ways that could be sold to the rest of the world as something of value? And how about those billions of dollars of bonuses - did you screw around with the Commerce Clause too?"
-"Tom - I'm gonna hang up now. I know a really good therapist…".click.

-"Hello"
-"Hi Jim. This is Tom. We worked on a …umm…you know, a case to help….".
-"Sure, I remember, Tom. The long-term isolation of those mental pat…"
-"SSssshhhh! Someone may be recording this so speak generally, OK?"
-"Recording it?"
-"Yeah - listen- I've been pursuing some inside information about how liberal lawyers have put this country on the brink of collapse and I was wondering what you know about that?"
-"Huh?"
-"Well you remember when we worked on that research for the professor who was trying to ascertain the legality of declaring war on and invading a foreign country because some lunatic fringe element thought they might harm us in 3003?"
-"Uh hunh."
-"Well apparently that research was so liberal it's been used to bring the nation to the brink of collapse, destroy the economy, free all the prisoners, and totally undercut our ability to willy-nilly invade those commies in Canada. I've been questioning liberal lawyers to see if I can get to the bottom of this."
-"I see. Tom have you gone off your medication?"
-"Hmmmm - you too….."
-"Well, I've got to run. I have a client coming in."
-"Does this client need a liberal interpretation of the constitution by any chance? I suppose this doesn't have anything to do with fixing the health system through some nutty interpretation …" click.

There you go. The cover-up is obviously well under way. But I'm on it. I know it must be true because it was in my e-mail. Stay tuned.

The Patriot

Remember last year when Sheldon Wasserman got called out by Alberta Darling for reneging on Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform "No New Taxes" pledge and everyone was like “Duh, Sheldon, you shouldn’t have signed that stupid P.O.S. pledge in the first place!”?

Thankfully some people, like Gov. Doyle, aren’t insane enough to put their signature next to anything masterminded by Mr. Norquist. Especially when that “thing” is designating Feb. 6 Ronald Reagan Day.

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