Janesville - Rock County

Friday, August 30, 2013

Janesville LaborFest 2013 This Weekend!

LaborFest Grounds
Janesville, WI

LaborFest is a three day festival that funds the annual Labor Day Parade in downtown Janesville. Enjoy a mud volleyball tournament, car show, Bike show, craft fair, games and food along with great music all weekend long.
5,000 attendees expected.
*Start times estimated*

Official Webpage - LaborFest 2013

For the most up-to-date LaborFest Events Schedule, click here.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Ladies and Gentlemen of the RC5: Have You No Honor?

Below is a status check of followers from the Rock County 5.0 Twitter page.

As you probably know, the Rock County 5.0 is Gov. Scott Walker's wealthy "Divide and Conquer" area booster club and self-described "visionaries" for South-Central Wisconsin economic development. The group is co-chaired by Diane Hendricks and Mary Willmer.

The two screen shots below were taken minutes before posting.

Bought and paid for like everything else.

Walker's Staff Asks TV Station To Pull Story On Jobs Pledge

Saw this story first at the Political Environment about Gov. Scott Walker's news secretary asking a Northwoods TV station to pull an article they wrote about Walker speaking at (campaign stop?) a manufacturing plant in Merrill.

The Political Environment Excerpt:
Bad enough that Scott Walker tried to slip away from his 250,000 new jobs promise, but how about this effort by his news secretary to get a TV station to delete the story from its news feed?

According to the TV station: Walker's press secretary, Tom Evenson, called Newswatch 12 on Tuesday, and asked if we could be persuaded to take Monday's story off our website.

The story Walker wanted pulled from Newswatch 12 WJFW can be seen here.

If you thought Scott Walker's attempts to manipulate the media as exposed by the recent O'Donnell email exchanges were just minor aberrations, think again. Walker and his henchmen are apparently fully engaged in media manipulation at all times, not just during the heat or closing of an election campaign.

Another example is an excerpt from a Channel 3000 article I had posted on the blog in late 2010.

Channel 3000 Excerpt:
One forecast shows that even if Walker does nothing the state will add 190,000 jobs over the next four years. Another forecast shows there will be nearly 290,000 new jobs.

Channel 3000 pulled that article a long time ago. Try the (excerpt) link. The page is blank with several commenters asking what happened to the article. I even ran keywords in their search engine, "no results found." Surprisingly, TMJ4 and several others still have articles posted substantiating those job forecasts.

We've now got to consider how widespread this problem really is. How many media outlets are out there that, from fear of losing access or a future interview, never report on politically motivated requests from public officials. But also to thank news organizations like WJFW for having the courage to publish correspondence relevant to a story.

Also, more flashback on Walker's jobs rhetoric:

"I want my cabinet secretaries to have branded across their heads, `250,000 jobs,"' Walker said at a recent meeting of the Dairy Business Association. "I want them to know their job is on the line because my job is on the line to create 250,000 jobs in the private sector."

Scott Walker didn't just promise to create any old 250,000 jobs, he promised to create them "in the private sector."

Monday, August 26, 2013

Capitol Police Go On The Hunt Escalating Fear and Violence.

Watch as a contingent of Capitol Police officers stroll out into a chorus of singers and observers in the state capitol rotunda and find groups of citizen patriots singing "If I had a Hammer."

Unrelenting, the police shatter the peaceful assembly when they target and close in on a casual looking man holding a camera, identified as Damon Terrell. What happens next is disturbing:

Watch the same incident taken at a different angle from the balcony here.

DailyKos - Songs in the Key of Brutality: Young Black Man Tackled, Immobilized and Jailed for Singing.

CapTimes - Capitol protest arrest turns physical

Janesville Appoints Army Colonel For City Manager Post

Surprisingly, there is little information on the Web about Col. Mark Freitag, who will soon be ending his commission as deputy commander of the U.S. Army in Alaska to become Janesville's next city manager.

Expected to begin his new job in Janesville on December 1st, Freitag won the administrative appointment in a unanimous decision by the city council from a final pool of five contestants, including the dedicated and capable assistant city manager, Jay Winzenz. Winzenz has been and will continue filling in as acting city manager until Freitag takes the helm. The city managers' post was vacated when Eric Levitt was appointed to run the city administration in Simi Valley California.

Of course it's way too early to tell as much still remains to be seen what a decorated military man could do to restore public confidence in our city government, a declining morale among civilian employees, or how he will deal with the embedded divide and conquer mentality of the establishment community masquerading as the optimist club. It might be more amusing just watching what their expectations were by choosing military for the position, over choosing one of our own from fiercely proud Janesville - no offense meant to the colonel.

Welcome to Janesville, Sir.

Saturday, August 24, 2013

Walker's School Vouchers Turn Wisconsin Families Toward Government Dependency

Once a politician discovers they have created an impossible to win argument, they usually quietly back away from it from fear of being outed as a hypocrite or a liar and hope nobody noticed.

Not Governor Scott Walker.

He recently said Republicans "need to embody courage." An apparent call to boldly stand with their wrong-headed convictions long enough, even double-down on them if necessary, to provoke those who care deeply about the country into a frenzied rage just so republicans can paint themselves the victims to win support from generally sympathetic American voters. That appears to be the core of Scott Walker's "stealth" campaign inside Wisconsin. But I suggest there's more to that than meets the eye.

Such an example was another projection of Scott Walker's when he told a crowd of Alabama Republicans that it's President Obama and his allies who “measure success in government by how many people are dependent on the government.”

Probably unknown at the time to the GOP crowd a few days earlier, it was discovered Walker's signature school choice voucher program will push nearly 1,400 children, previously untethered to government, into the realm of government dependency.

JS Online Excerpt:
Among the 2,069 eligible students who applied to the top 25 schools — located in cities such as Green Bay, De Pere, Kenosha, Manitowoc, Oshkosh, Sheboygan and Wisconsin Rapids — only 503 students attended public schools last year.

The majority — 67%, or 1,393 students — were already attending a private school last year without the help of taxpayer dollars.

I have no idea how Walker reconciles that argument with his "pushing Medicaid patients out from government aid empowers them" narrative - but whatever he says will likely be taken without challenge. He also makes the claim that his priority is about education, not the bureaucracy.

“We care about (children's) education, not about the education bureaucracy,” Walker said.

Apparently then, Scott Walker doesn't care about the health of Medicaid patients enough to place them into a heightened state of government dependency - like he does about children's education.

The contradictions his school voucher rhetoric offers to his Medicaid positions are astounding enough to make my head spin around. An inquiring press at the least should ask Walker to explain how placing more people, nearly 1,400 additional children (and by extension their families), who were previously not part of the "education bureaucracy" he speaks of, into a state of government dependency - measures success in government.

That's a start.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Constituents or Koch Brothers? Rep. Paul Ryan Chose Poorly

From John Nichols at The Nation...

How’s this for irony:

When the City of Kenosha, Wisconsin, was preparing to formally petition Congress to take the necessary actions to get corporate money out of politics and to restore grassroots democracy, the congressman who represents the community was meeting secretly with the Koch brothers to plot election strategies and policy agendas.
Read more here.

It's no longer a question what Paul Ryan stands for. He's not for us.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

O'Donnell Emails Expose Walker's Callous Dishonest Routines

In this review of a few select email exchanges from the 300+ page O'Donnell release, I couldn't help (many others did as well) notice how Walker's foot soldiers routinely suggested manipulating a willing establishment media all the way down to changing terms and phrases of headlines and even complete story lines.

A fair portion of the email exchanges revolve around a blog posting by MKE County Supervisor John Weishan Jr. on the impact of $112 million in cuts over eight years by then County Executive Scott Walker had on deferred maintenance of the O'Donnell parking facility. Weishan does not accuse Walker of being directly responsible for the O'Donnell tragedy, but he does make the case that Scott Walker's budgeting priorities fosters an environment of public facility and structural decline.

Also, the massive amount of media manipulation and spin to pre-empt the truth, including right-wing talk radio attacks, and attacks on liberal bloggers from Walker and his staff are far more than I had ever imagined. These idiots give public service a really bad name.

Excerpts from Weishan blog posting titled, "Why Tragedies Happen."

In 2002, shortly after being elected County Excecutive, Scott Walker was successful in changing that county ordinance enabling him to divert millions in sales tax revenue from the capital budget to the operating budget. Over the last eight years, more than $112 million in sales tax revenue has been diverted from capital fund to the operating budget. [...]Scott Walker's diversion of capital dollars is a major reason for the distressed conditions of many Milwaukee County assets, including county trunk highways and park way roads. [...]

Page 134 - July 12th 1:59 PM Steve Jagler of BizTimes asked Scott Walker's people to respond to Wieshan's blog posting.

Page 136 - July 12th 3:12 PM from SKW (Scott Walker) to Nardelli; RJ Johnson; Fran McLaughlin:
From 2003 (actually my first budget presented in fall of 2002) we spent and budgeted more than $780 million on infrastructure maintenance and improvements. We should tell that story.

Still our debt is down nearly 30% by 2012 and our government workforce is down by 20%.

The above statement from Scott Walker shows how he continued to elevate himself politically through the tragedy. In the wake of a 15 year old boy having the life crushed out of him, Walker's thinking how his previous decisions dropped the debt and cut the county workforce by 20% which by the way, supports Weishan's claim that Walker's austere budgeting style has resulted in inadequate coverage of the county's physical assets.

Had Walker instead maintained or INCREASED the county workforce by 20% for maintenance/inspections OR restored an additional $112 million to the capital fund, none of Weishan's narrative would have been possible. They knew they were in trouble so Nardelli eventually gives Walker advice (Page 136) to disregard Weishan and not respond to the request.

Page 155 - July 12th 4:50 PM from Fran McLaughlin to Scott Walker:
Should I change annex "disrepair" to "signs of irreparable deterioration?"

Again, say and do whatever it takes to cover for the kingpin of the operation. The above statement from McLaughlin should be the current Walker's Administration's official motto.

Page 169 July 14th 11:54 AM from Fran McLaughlin:
Press release: County Supervisors question contract awarded to engineering firm. Excerpt:
Milwaukee County Supervisors Marina Dimitrijevic and John Weishan Jr. are calling for County Executive Scott Walker to explain why an engineering company that has donated to Walker's political campaign was awarded a no-bid contract to inspect county facilities. [...} the fact remains that County dollars are being funneled through Graef, which was one of the contractors involved in building the O’Donnell Parking garage in the first place.

In a response to the supervisors allegations, Fran McLaughlin, director of communications for Walker’s office, said, "...The lead firm on the inspections was NOT involved with the construction of the parking structure at O'Donnell Park. This is one of the many inaccurate statements in the release.”

Hours later same day, McLaughlin finds out otherwise ...

Page 172 - July 14th 4:48 PM from Fran McLaughlin:
I emailed Jack in regards to Aaron Rodriguez question about Graef's work at O'D:
Can you tell me what part Graef played at O'D? I was told the supervisor's release is incorrect in stating Graef took part in the construction of the parking garage. Did they provide engineering consulting after the problems in construction became known?

Jack replied:
Simply yes. They were brought in to review structural documents when the project was approximately 90% complete. Furthermore, they are the engineer of record for that facility.

In short, Graef, a donor to Scott Walker's political campaign was hired through a no-bid contract by Walker to inspect their own finished work. What is THAT? Patronage graft kickback cronyism? Is there even a single descriptive term to describe all that?

More media inquiries regarding Weishan's blog posting continue to trickle into Walker's office. Walker gave this response to his staff about Weishan.

Page 203 - July 20th 3:51 PM from Scott Walker:
I called him and beat down Weishan. We spent $730 million on capital, did all of the work identified on O'Donnell Park and took down the annex parking structure (which Weishan fought). He is a back bencher who the board doesn't listen to.