ALL CHILDREN MATTER -- REDEFINED

The obituary page is starting to be the most interesting page in the Journal Sentinel. This is where the editors send good-for-Doyle stories that have to be run somehow, but not like the pro-Green stuff they run on Page One.

For instance, yesterday, Page 5-B featured a story about former Secretary of State Madeline Albright appearing in Milwaukee on behalf of Jim Doyle. The story featured, for no good reason, foreign policy analysis of her comments by know-nothing GOP functionary Rick Wiley. No such point-counterpoint was allowed when Dick Cheney appeared, with Metro Page One coverage, to raise money for Mark Green, who would not appear at the same time as Cheney, lest he be photographed with the Prince of Darkness, on September 26.

Under the Albright story, there was an "Ad Watch" piece about a Green Bay TV station pulling the latest anti-Doyle ad, produced and financed by the shadowy, out-of-state, Amway/Wal-Mart-financed 527 group All Children Matter(ACM). ACM was identified in that article as "a group that supports the voucher program." In defending the defamatory bomb the out-of-staters lobbed into the state, the J-S identified school choice industry flack George Mitchell as "a prominent Milwaukee choice advocate and spokesman for the group."

After I pointed out the true nature of the group spending thousands of dollars trying poison the race in Wisconsin yesterday afternoon (see post below), the identification of both the group and Mitchell changed in today’s follow-up – also on the obit page – that the Green Bay station had caved to ACM pressure and will now run the ad. Now ACM is identified as "the Michigan-based group All Children Matter, which advocates for school vouchers" and Mitchell is identified as a "Wisconsin spokesman for All Children Matter". Although the new description barely scratches the surface of ACM’s dark genesis and poison activities in various state and local elections, at least it no longer looks like the ad was the product of the usual group of choice industry advocates in Milwaukee.

Missing in this article, again, is any skeptical identification of ACM as a "supposedly independent group ," a label attached to the Greater Wisconsin Committee for an anti-Green ad in a J-S "Ad Watch" article on September 27th. But any review of ACM’s activities shows that their targets for big-spending are the same targets chosen by the GOP. ACM has very little to do with children and everything to do with affecting state and local elections in favor of Republicans.