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Few Heard At Wisconsin Budget “Hearing” In Milwaukee, But School Choice Advocate Denounces Walker’s Subsidy For Rich

At Monday’s public hearing in Milwaukee on Governor Walker’s budget, Wisconsin Republicans once again resorted to anti-participatory tactics to avoid criticism of their far-right agenda. Despite these efforts, strong criticisms were squeezed-in by longtime Milwaukee school choice advocate Howard Fuller, calling GOP efforts to lift income limits on school vouchers an “outrageous” program “that subsidizes rich people.”

Republicans Regulate Milwaukee Hearing

Milwaukee’s hearing at State Fair Park was the third of four statewide sessions on Walker’s proposed budget by the Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee, and controversy arose well before the hearing began. According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, two of Milwaukee’s congresswomen, Rep. Tamara Grigsby and Sen. Lena Taylor, were concerned that many working people would be excluded because the hearing was scheduled to end at 6pm. The two arranged to hold informal sessions until 9pm to allow people to voice their opinion, then notified Joint Finance co-chairs Rep. Robin Vos (R-Burlington) and Sen. Alberta Darling (R- River Falls) about their plans.

Sen. Darling reportedly approved the Grigsby-Taylor informal hearing and Rep. Vos “said he would think about it.” However, Taylor soon received notice from State Fair Park that Vos had reserved the facility until midnight, meaning the Dems’ hearing could not take place, and Milwaukee’s working population could not have their voices heard.

According to Taylor, “This isn’t open government. This is not democracy. This is shameful.”

Beer City Blockage the Latest in a Series

Vos and Darling were unabashed about their intention to suppress opposition, with Darling telling the Journal-Sentinel “we had to take precautions so that what happened at the Capitol wouldn’t happen at State Fair Park.”

“The hearings are going to be done when we say they’re done,” Vos said.

This is only the latest in a series of Wisconsin GOP efforts to limit scrutiny and stifle dissent. On February 11, Governor Walker sought to limit deliberation on his budget repair bill by introducing it on a Friday and ordering a vote on a Tuesday (Senate Democrats thwarted these plans by leaving the state). The Walker Administration violated the constitutionally-guaranteed right of public access to the state capitol in late February, and a judge ordered it re-opened; the administration violated that order in March and a hearing on that violation is pending. On March 11, Republicans forced the union-busting budget repair bill through the Senate with minimal notice, breaking state Open Meetings laws and possibly violating the constitution’s public access guarantees.

Hearing Limits Input from Milwaukee’s Particularly-Affected Populations of Color

This latest step towards suppression is especially egregious considering Milwaukee is not only the state’s largest city, but has the most people of color, a population that will be particularly affected by Walker’s budget and budget repair bill. The plans eliminate funding for a new program to track and remedy racial profiling (the first step towards confronting Wisconsin’s atrocious record of racial disparities in incarceration); will limit eligibility for medical assistance; kicks legal immigrants off food assistance; and eliminates funding for a program that provided civil legal services to low income residents. Walker is also expected to cut $300 million from Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), severely limiting education quality for the district teaching the greatest number of students (and students of color) in the state.

With Republican legislators keeping the Milwaukee hearing short, only speakers who signed up before 12:30pm had their voices heard. Hundreds of people were denied the ability to speak, and as the hearing ended at 6:30pm, there were shouts of “let us speak” and the now-familiar “shame” directed at those lawmakers.

Howard Fuller Heard on Education

While many Milwaukee residents were not heard on Monday, at least one prominent voice spoke strongly against Walker’s plans for Milwaukee schools.

In addition to cutting $300 million from Milwaukee’s public schools (and eliminating teacher’s unions), Walker’s budget reinforces existing inequalities by expanding the “school choice” program, which allows students to opt-out of public schools and use a taxpayer-funded voucher for private school tuition. The voucher program has been criticized not only because it directs money away from public schools, but because private schools can pick-and-choose their students, often selecting those who come from an advantaged background and leaving the rest to suffer in under-funded public schools.

Milwaukee became the country’s first publicly-funded school voucher program in 1990, and it grew under the tenure of MPS Superintendent Howard Fuller. He currently directs an institute at Marquette University that authorizes schools trying to get into Milwaukee’s choice program. Howard has collaborated with Republican lawmakers in the past, many of whom support so-called “school choice” out of belief in free market principles of competition and privatization. While many on the left fear defunding public education, some urban advocates like Fuller have supported vouchers to give promising low-income students a better chance at long-term success by providing education options that would not otherwise be available.

But Fuller, who is now regarded as the nation’s most influential African-American spokesman for “school choice,” strongly criticized Walker’s plans to remove income eligibility caps for the private school voucher program. “Please don’t make it true that you were using the poor just to eventually make this available to the rich,” Fuller said. “If [lifting income eligibility] is done, I will become an opponent of this.”

“I never got into this to give someone like me $6,500 to send their kid to Marquette High School (tuition $15,000 per year). . . This is where I get off the train, I’m not going to go anywhere in America and fight for a program that subsidizes rich people.”

By: Brenda Fischer, Center for Media and Democracy, April 12, 2011

April 13, 2011 Posted by | Class Warfare, Democracy, Economy, Education, Government, Governors, Health Care, Ideology, Immigrants, Jobs, Labor, Middle Class, Politics, Public Employees, Teachers, Uncategorized, Union Busting, Unions, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Republicans | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Wisconsin Supreme Court Election Needs Fraud Investigation

Partisans on both sides were ready to scream “fraud at polls” as the balloting wound down in Wisconsin in the recent state Supreme Court election.

Normally, the race would have been a snoozer. Incumbent Justice David Prosser, a former GOP state assembly speaker and failed congressional candidate, won 55 percent of the vote in the first round of balloting. His opponent, an ultra-liberal named Jo Anne Kloppenburg, ran a distant second. But that was before Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker proposed and won enactment of a series of reforms that change the rules for state government workers in a way that limited their collective bargaining power.

After that, the election was presented as a referendum on Walker’s reforms, one the unions opposed strongly, going so far as to occupy the state capitol building in an effort to block the legislature from doing its business.

Since the court will inevitably rule on the legality of Walker’s reforms, a victory by Kloppenburg would have been a major setback for the new governor since it would have shifted the 4-3 majority on the seven-member Supreme Court from 4-3 conservative to 4-3 liberal.

The morning after the election, the Associated Press was reporting Kloppenburg ahead by just over 200 votes, enough for her to declare victory, even though the margin was close enough to trigger an automatic recount. The GOP was concerned because the heavy presence of pro-union activists in the state from around the country may have been able to take advantage of weaknesses in the state’s election code to unfairly, perhaps even illegally, influence the election.

The GOP was ready to question the validity of the outcome when a reporting error in heavily-GOP Waukesha County was discovered that gave Prosser a lead of more than 7,000 votes.

Now it was the Democrats‘ turn to cry, “Foul!” and to raise the specter of vote fraud.

Both parties are right to be concerned. Elections in Wisconsin are a messy business, particularly because the state allows same-day registration on Election Day, and because of something known as “vouching,” in which voters who can prove who they are can attest to the identity of others seeking to vote.

Something needs to be done. It’s time for a bipartisan effort to look at the entire election. As the Wall Street Journal‘s John Fund wrote recently, “An independent investigation is called for, if for no other reason than to clear the air and to recommend procedures to ensure such errors don’t happen again. Just as many Wisconsin officials have ignored or downplayed evidence of vote fraud (see the Milwaukee Police Department’s 2008 detailed investigation) so too have sloppy election procedures been allowed to fester in some counties.”

He’s right. Too many people choose to look the other way when the issue of voter fraud is raised, especially if their party is the one that benefits. Elections are too important to not take these allegations seriously. Wisconsin has the reputation for being a “good government state.” If they want to keep it, Governor Walker should appoint an independent panel to review the election and use it as the basis for a set of electoral reforms that could be a model for the nation.

By: Peter Roff, U.S. News and World Report, April 11, 2011

April 12, 2011 Posted by | Democracy, Elections, Gov Scott Walker, Government, Governors, Politics, Public Employees, Republicans, Union Busting, Unions, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Republicans | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Wisconsin Supreme Court Election: Every Vote Must Be Counted

Many voters went to sleep in Wisconsin and thought they woke up in Florida on Friday after a “Republican activist” county clerk announced that she discovered an extra 14,315 votes in a hotly contested Supreme Court race. Not surprisingly, the votes went to the conservative candidate giving incumbent justice David Prosser a 7,500 lead over challenger Joanne Kloppenburg. Oddly, 7500 was the exact number of votes Prosser needed to avoid a statewide recount.

The Supreme Court race has garnered national attention as a proxy vote on Governor Scott Walker’s radical proposal to end collective bargaining in the state and cut a billion dollars from public schools.

Long Time Republican Apparatchik

The county clerk in question is long-time Republican apparatchik Kathy Nickolaus. Nickolaus got her start in GOP politics in 1995 when the Republican Speaker of the Assembly was – that’s right – David Prosser. She worked for Prosser’s Republican Assembly Caucus, one of four GOP and Democratic legislative groups that were shut down following a criminal investigation for illegal campaign activity on state time.

Nickolaus first came to public attention in 2001 when she was granted immunity from criminal prosecution in exchange for testimony against her bosses at the Assembly Caucus. The case resulted in unprecedented convictions of Democratic and Republican legislators on felony counts of misconduct in office and arranging for illegal campaign contributions. Both Democratic and Republican leaders were sentenced to jail time.

In the caucus, Nickolaus was the person who ran the numbers, creating databases for illegal donations, partisan mailings and the like. When she escaped criminal prosecution, she hightailed it to Waukesha where she ran for county clerk in the conservative county in 2002.

She later botched a 2006 vote and stirred controversy by placing the entire voting system on her own personal computer. Prompting the County Corporation Counsel to charge: “If she wants to keep everything secret, she probably can.”

On Thursday of this week, she called a press conference to announce the new vote totals that put Prosser over the top and blamed “human error.” She claimed that the canvass was a “open and transparent” process, yet she found the error at noon on Wednesday and sat on the information for 29 hours, not even telling top election officials at the Government Accountability Board. According to election observers, the issue of 14,315 additional votes from Brookfield was never discussed at the canvass. But, this information somehow made its way to right wing bloggers before her press conference.

Reaction Swift

Wisconsin Citizen Action has demanded that federal prosecutors step in, confiscate her computer and start an investigation. “In the current political climate in Wisconsin, only an investigation by a U.S. Attorney can be seen by all citizens of the state as independent and above politics,” said Robert Kraig.

The Kloppenburg campaign has demanded “a full explanation of how and why these 14,315 votes from an entire city were missed.” As part of the search for that explanation, the campaign plans to file open records requests for relevant documents.

Meanwhile, both Kloppenburg and Prosser have lawyered-up. Kloppenburg is being represented by Marc Elias, the attorney who handled Al Franken’s U.S. Senate recount fight in Minnesota. Prosser is being represented by Ben Ginsberg, who served as national counsel to former President George W. Bush’s campaigns in 2000 and 2004 and was central to the 2000 Florida recount.

Lessons from Bush v. Gore Florida Recount

The Florida 2000 recount is on the mind of many Wisconsin voters. The big lesson from the nightmarish “hanging-chads” recount “is that you need a total statewide recount. If you only recount select counties the perception is you are only selecting counties that favor you,” says Jay Heck, the head of Wisconsin Common Cause.

Heck issued a statement on Friday:

The incredible and almost unbelievable events of the last two days with regard to the reporting of votes in the City of Brookfield in Waukesha County in Tuesday’s election for the State Supreme Court warrant a full investigation by the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Department of Justice and the District Attorney of Waukesha County. Furthermore, the Government Accountability should authorize and supervise a statewide recount of all ballots cast in Tuesday’s elections and such a recount should be funded by the State of Wisconsin.

Why so many parties? Because this is the same constellation of offices that investigated the 2002 caucus scandal, giving voters more confidence that the manner was being handled appropriately and in a bipartisan fashion.

If Wisconsin is not to irreparably harm its reputation as a functional and relatively noncorrupt state, many Cheeseheads believe that a statewide recount is a necessity.

By: Mary Bottari, Center for Media and Democracy, April 9, 2011

April 9, 2011 Posted by | Conservatives, Democracy, Democrats, GOP, Gov Scott Walker, Politics, Republicans, Right Wing, Voters, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Republicans | , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Wisconsin Supreme Court Race Throws A Spanner In The Works Of Wisconsin Wingnuts

While Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan prepares to shut down the federal government to prove that government is bad, analysts say the radical agenda of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker suffered a major set back today as his good friend incumbent Justice David Prosser was defeated for Wisconsin Supreme Court. The AP unofficial vote count, with 100 percent of the precincts reporting, puts challenger Joanne Kloppenburg ahead by slightly more than 200. A recount is doubtless on the way.

In a state that has never unseated a conservative Supreme Court justice, people power fueled a concentrated effort to deny the Imperial Walker one branch of government. Walker’s opponents hope a Kloppenburg victory will swing the Supreme Court in a more independent direction and set the stage for the court to strike down Walker’s controversial collective bargaining law. While the fate of the law is uncertain, Kloppenburg’s three week sprint from dead-in-the-water to victor may give Walker, Ryan and other Wisconsin politicians pause as they rush to radically reshape government to benefit the privatizers and profiteers. 

Sleepy Court Race Electrifies the State

While it may seem odd to many Americans, Wisconsinites like to elect their judges. Although an elected judiciary has its problems (namely, unseemly high-dollar elections), the ballot box sometimes hands citizens a rare opportunity to un-elect judges — and that is what many Wisconsinites decided to do today.  Prosser, a former Republican Assembly Speaker, stumbled when his campaign embraced Walker’s election.

The Kloppenburg victory is stunning. Six weeks ago, sitting Judge David Prosser was a shoo-in and the challenge by Assistant Attorney General Kloppenburg was a snooze fest. But something happened on the way to the high court. A governor, who was elected to create jobs, took office and quickly moved to disenfranchise voters and kneecap unions so they could no longer be a viable force in state elections. The raw power grab sparked a spontaneous uprising, the likes of which this state has never seen, and the Supreme Court race was the next vehicle for people to have their voices heard.

Proxy Fight Over Worker Rights

The whole country took notice when firefighters, teachers and cops stood with working families across Wisconsin to say ‘no’ to Walker’s radical plans to bust unions, cut $1 billion from schools and privatize the university system.

When his “budget repair bill” was passed March 9th, many national observers thought the fight was over.  With large margins in both houses, Walker’s stranglehold on government seemed invincible.

But irate Wisconsinites fought back on multiple fronts, filing lawsuits over the way in which Senate leaders rammed the bill through with less than the requisite notice required under the state open meetings law, blocking the bill’s implementation. They filed recall petitions against eight Wisconsin senators and this week delivered the requisite signatures for two of those recalls well ahead of schedule. They turned their attention to the heretofor unnoticed race for Wisconsin Supreme Court. Within days, handmade signs for Joanne Kloppenburg popped up across the state. Many voters understood that to win any of the battles ahead over worker rights, over the recalls, over redistricting and more, a more balanced judiciary was needed.

Kloppenburg went from being a long-shot to victory in a three-week sprint marked by huge independent expenditures on both sides. The anticipated recount will keep the juices flowing and will fuel the remaining recall fights.

Shock Doctrine at Work

While some voters believe the court will act as a check and balance on the madness at the state level, they are concerned that Paul Ryan continues to run amok at the federal level — threatening a complete government shut down. At the same time that Walker was working to obliterate unions and privatize public schools, Ryan, Chair of the House Budget Committee, decided to go after Grandma with the complete privatization of Medicare. His radical budget bill, unveiled this week, slashes trillions of dollars from America’s social safety net and throws the elderly into the private insurance market with a “voucher” in their pocket.

Less interested in balancing the budget than redistributing wealth, his budget plan would funnel billions into the pockets of big insurance firms while also giving a ten percent tax break to corporations and the very richest Americans.

What is really going on here? Naomi Klein warned in her groundbreaking book “Shock Doctrine” that the right-wing excels at creating crises, real and imagined, to viciously advance their pro-corporate anti-government agenda. She credits economist Milton Friedman who observed that “only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real changes. When the crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is out basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”

UW Professor Joel Rogers wrote recently:  “As explained by Grover Norquist and Karl Rove, this project aims at national repeal of most of democratic achievements of the 20th century, a return to business domination of public life not seen since the Gilded Age and McKinley.”

The Wall Street financial crisis caused by years of deregulation and lack of government oversight cost Americans eight million jobs, tanking federal and state tax receipts and creating budget shortfalls. Ryan and Walker are moving to take advantage this real jobs crisis to cook up a fake deficit crisis to advance a radical agenda that is hostile to the very idea of government – the idea that sometimes services are best provided and things are best accomplished collectively, for the public good, and not for corporate profit.

Today, many voters believe that this agenda was checked in Wisconsin. While another recount battle looms, voters of Wisconsin are pledging that they will not allow this victory to be stolen.

By: Mary Bottari, Center For Media And Democracy, April 6, 2011

April 6, 2011 Posted by | Banks, Collective Bargaining, Corporations, Debt Crisis, Deficits, Democracy, Economy, Elections, GOP, Gov Scott Walker, Government Shut Down, Labor, Medicare, Middle Class, Politics, Public Employees, Rep Paul Ryan, Republicans, Right Wing, Union Busting, Unions, Voters, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Republicans | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

More Fallout From Gov Walker’s Overreach: Abele Defeats Stone For Milwaukee County Executive

Chris Abele – a 44-year-old philanthropist, scion of a wealthy Boston family and political neophyte – handily defeated state Rep. Jeff Stone (R-Greendale) at the polls Tuesday to become the next Milwaukee County executive.

Abele had 61% of the vote to 39% for Stone, according to unofficial results with all votes counted.

Abele said he would immediately tackle tough county problems and work cooperatively with Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and other leaders in the county.

“It is time for a new approach,” Abele said from his election party at the historic Pabst Brewery. “It is time to stop working apart and to start working together.”

He pointed to the undeveloped Park East property nearby as something on which the city and county needed to collaborate.

“I don’t see the mayor as a competitor,” Abele said. “I see him as a partner and a friend.”

Stone conceded the race about 10:05 p.m., promising to work with Abele to help fix the county’s problems. Stone called the campaign an amazing race run in “an unusual environment.”

Abele campaigned with $1 million of his own money as someone with fresh ideas to tackle the county’s nagging financial problems. Though light on specifics, Abele outlined an approach that emphasizes efficiency moves. He put much of his advertising firepower into trying to fuse Stone with Gov. Scott Walker and his controversial push to end most collective bargaining for public employees.

Stone said his loss “reflects the divide we have right now in Wisconsin.” He also said the big turnout in Milwaukee “was a reflection of some of the unrest we had in Madison” over Walker’s union measure.

Walker held the county executive slot for eight years before his election as governor last fall when he defeated Barrett.

Stone in his campaign faulted Abele as inexperienced and callous to everyday concerns, pointing to a long-delayed resolution of Abele’s 1996 drunken driving case, his avoidance of state income taxes and his dispute with the IRS over a $2.3 million federal tax bill.

The win gives Abele the final year left in Walker’s county term. Abele has said he plans to run for a full four-year term as executive in spring 2012.

Though a longtime supporter of Democratic candidates and liberal causes, Abele ran for county executive – officially a nonpartisan office – often sounding like a conservative. Like Stone, Abele vowed not to raise taxes and said he’d work hard to attract new business. Abele said he’ll push to wipe out inefficiencies and service duplications and might turn to privatizations, selling off county assets and marketing park services to the suburbs.

He also hinted at layoffs as a way to bring the county’s budget into long-term balance, promising unspecified “tough cuts.”

He said he wouldn’t be surprised “if we end up with a government that looks smaller.”

Mix into that formula Abele’s frequent assertion that he’ll serve as a cheerleader for Milwaukee, whether stalking development and jobs or demanding a fairer shake for the area when lobbying the state.

Calls for cultural change

He’s vowed to bring on a culture change in county government, where getting results is rewarded and poor performers are called on the carpet.

“The real key here is changing the way we think about stuff, changing this notion that the only solution to everything is either cutting services or raising taxes,” Abele said.

Abele has never held a government job, in contrast to Stone, who has spent the past 17 years as a state and local official. Stone derided Abele as “an amateur” whose government inexperience would hurt the county.

Abele sought to make a virtue of his clean political slate and said he would apply what he’s learned over the past 15 years in running the Argosy Foundation, a family charity, and two small businesses. Argosy and Abele personally have given heavily to arts, environmental, civic and community groups and Abele has served on many local nonprofit agency boards.

Abele’s introduction to the county’s financial concerns came as a member of the Greater Milwaukee Committee and a task force that concluded in 2006 that county government could be phased out, its services parceled out to the state, other municipalities and newly formed parks and transit districts.

As a candidate for county office, however, Abele has been more cautious. He says he’ll put his faith in detailed studies and proven practices to fix what’s wrong with the county.

Restructuring the county’s mental health programs by shifting to smaller, community-based care is something Abele has identified for change. He also wants to push for creation of a local government insurance pool as a way to trim county health care costs. He says he’ll cut back on county employees’ use of cars and cell phones and will expand energy audits of county buildings.

Stone on defensive

Stone found himself on the defensive over Walker’s collective bargaining bill since voting twice for it in February, following a three-week period in which news coverage of protests in Madison overshadowed other political news.

While often protesting critic’s claims he’d be a carbon copy of Walker, Stone said he and Walker shared a similar conservative philosophy. Stone also advocated for county policies pioneered by Walker, including ruling out tax increases, pursuing a possible long-term lease of Mitchell International Airport to a private firm and relying on business expansion to drive a county financial resurgence.

A key part of Stone’s plan to fix the county’s long-term budget shortfall was to reform employee health care with a wellness incentives and primary care available in or near county offices.

The job pays $129,114 a year. Unlike Walker, who returned up to $50,000 in salary a year during his tenure, Abele says he’ll accept the full pay.

By: Amy Hetzer and Mark Johnson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April 6, 2011

April 6, 2011 Posted by | Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Conservatives, Elections, GOP, Gov Scott Walker, Middle Class, Politics, Public Employees, Republicans, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Republicans | , , , | Leave a comment

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