tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-207556382024-03-07T13:26:05.302-06:00Plaisted WritesPlaisted Writes Again - A blog of political and cultural commentary and observation of national/local issues and events.Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.comBlogger384125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-82560528235612668022016-11-19T12:51:00.000-06:002016-11-19T12:51:32.942-06:00WTF Part 1: The Jurors Have SpokenIn May of this year, I had the honor of doing three jury trials in Racine and Milwaukee. It is unusual for me to have trials three weeks in a row, and in the process I got to see and interact with many prospective jurors in a short period of time, interested and committed to their communities enough to extract themselves from their busy lives to perform that essential civic duty. And I've had several other trials before and since -- I've talked with hundreds of jurors this year.<br />
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The people who do what I do -- defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges -- have a unique opportunity to engage with the kind of somewhat random people that show up for jury duty. Pollsters and focus-group consultants would kill to have access we have to these kinds of honest, concerned citizens. That's a large part of the reason representing clients in jury trials is my favorite part of my vocation -- I get to talk to real people about very real charges, facts and law, having a very real human impact. I am always amazed and impressed how seriously jurors take their responsibilities. It gives me hope and pride in the citizenship and community most don't get a chance to see.<br />
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We don't talk politics when picking a jury. But, after those three weeks in a row and with Trump on the march all year, I sometimes thought: what were they thinking? What did those people in the jury pools think about the state of politics in this historically-strange election year? And, more importantly, what were they going to do about it?<br />
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In the courtroom, they promised to be honest arbiters of facts and law, doing the best they could in a courtroom while the battle for their political hearts and minds raged outside; working toward one verdict here while the nation and the world awaited their verdict there. Outside of the courtroom, they were targets for campaigns -- demographic stereotypes, slots in a grid, check-offs on a phone list. Here, once selected, they had all of the power in that small space of alleged victims and the accused, one of twelve charged with working toward consensus to judge the State's case. In the world outside, they had just the power of one ballot on one day, one lonely anonymous vote among millions.<br />
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Some might wear their political heart on their sleeve, but, for the most part, these are not activists or talk-radio callers, as far as I could tell. They are too busy for that -- with family and whatever jobs they can put together in this limited economy. In jury selection, we do ask them about their employment, and most of them have pieced together a "career" -- or an income stream, anyway -- from the broken threads of the social contract that Corporate America abandoned in the interest of the pursuit of profit, virtually unfettered in the last 20 years.<br />
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Where their mothers and fathers may have worked at A.O. Smith, the post office or a brewery for 35 years, with no-cost health insurance, a pension and the rest, they are left to their own devices, making do in two-income households with contract IT, health care industry office support and delivery jobs -- whatever they can piece together.<br />
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Sure, there are professionals -- doctors, lawyers, professors -- young students and a few (less than you'd think) unemployed. There is more diversity ethnically than there used to be, but minority communities are still under-represented in the pool to judge the State's case against my usually poor-and-minority clients.<br />
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But, for the most part, the jury pool is struggling-but-stable white working class. Many have family members or know people in law enforcement, or their dad's a retired cop, etc. They have seen the city and their communities change through the years. They are pissed, frustrated, exhausted -- but dedicated to their families and, above all, resilient.<br />
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And, if they care enough to show up for jury duty, they care enough to vote. So what, my dear jury poolers, did you make of the choices for president that the major parties presented you with this year?<br />
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I can only imagine, still, but I have a pretty good idea.<br />
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I think they looked at Hillary Clinton -- even recognizing her sincerity, her experience, her competence, her consummate preparedness -- and roll their eyes. "Oh no," they thought. "Not this again." Hillary represented to them a bad status quo, an economy that does not move enough, the jobs with no raises and fading benefits, and, yes, an uncomfortable number (for too many of the white people) of increasingly diverse people all over their increasingly complicated world.<br />
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Never mind that very little of this has anything to do with politicians or what they do. The economy wasn't broken by the politicians patronized but laughed at behind their backs by the Masters of the Universe. The economy our parents knew was destroyed by Corporate America, bent on breaking unions, driving down wages and job security and replacing as many American workers as they can with obedient robots here and cheap and even slave labor overseas. <br />
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They were going to do that anyway, regardless of any pipsqueak politicians that might have pretended to have the power to stand in their way. But as long as politicians pretend like they have something to do with making things better, they will be blamed for the results when they don't. For all of President Obama's under-appreciated progress, the steady-as-she-goes-but-let's-do-better Clinton approach fell mostly flat in a populace, once again and apparently forever, wanting Change.<br />
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Into this Breach of Frustration came professional con-man Donald Trump, a TV celebrity, pretending that he could take the reigns of power and bend Corporate America to his will. He told Big Lies about bringing back the jobs that were gone forever, reviving the coal and fossil fuel production that are as dead (and climately dangerous) as the dinosaurs they came from, reopening plants long since flattened or converted into 21st century industry. Oh, and by the way, those Mexicans all over the place in restaurants and such, yeah, he'll do something about that. And Muslims...nothing is as scary as that which you don't understand.<br />
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If Trump wasn't such a Silver Spooned spoiled brat and Big Dumb Dick, this kind of message might have been an easy one for a lot of those jurors, even if it was a bunch of bullshit, which it is. His obvious and disgustingly-exposed leering misogyny, outright sexual assaults and dog-whistle racism, I thought, would be too much for even the most butch CCW permit-holder this side of alt-right prepper-ville.<br />
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But, in the end, Trump's disconnected non-humanity made it harder for these folks -- but not impossible. I guessing most of those jurors I was wondering about took a flyer on Trump or stayed home. I also think many of those who actually voted for Trump were doing it as a protest or just to feel better somehow, already resigned to the then-inevitability of Hillary and the Same Old Shit. And then THIS happened. How many of those would like to have their vote back?<br />
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There are many things we can and will say in the post-mortem about what Hillary and the Democrats should have or could have done to prevent the shitshow we are just getting into. But I think it is silly to say that we did not try hard enough to reach the Angry White Working Class. Deep in Hillary's position papers, I'm sure there is a 20-point plan on how to bring back jobs and opportunity throughout the devastated economy. We had Biden and Bill and all kinds of surrogates reaching out and reaching in to those areas.<br />
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The real problem with these folks is -- <i>they are not listening</i>. They long ago drifted into an alternate-reality information environment built on the omnipresent Fox News and talk-radio. They already tuned out the "lamestream media" that was -- legitimately and honestly -- screaming with its hair on fire at the very prospect of a Trump presidency since the Access Hollywood video. They would no sooner listen to anything Hillary said than they would the Latino immigrant milking their cows, even if they could understand what he was saying. <br />
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Even with all the racist pandering and con-job lies, Trump only matched Romney's totals in Wisconsin and didn't even get close to doing that nationwide. For all the societal destruction Trump caused with his desperate screeching, if Hillary could have just held the votes Obama got in 2012, she would have romped in more than the popular vote.<br />
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So why didn't she? Welcome to my next planned post. Here's a hint: that wasn't her fault either.Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-74203819873992756972016-10-18T22:41:00.002-05:002016-10-18T22:41:53.607-05:00Hillary's Real Debate OpponentHillary Clinton faces just one major hurdle before she makes history in three weeks as the first woman ever elected president. She has to get through the last "debate" on Wednesday night.<br />
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When she gets there, she will find a man on the stage who will be determined to take her down and stop her heretofore unstoppable momentum. He is one of the primary mouthpieces for a powerful political organization with unlimited resources. He is a <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/10/18/chris-wallace-s-history-sexist-remarks-poses-another-challenge-his-role-debate-moderator/213905">documented sexist</a> who spends much of his time on the TV shows of overheated Clinton-haters like Sean Hannity. He came up through the ranks of his profession by riding the coattails of his father, and destroying his reputation by selling out to the highest bidder. He is known for using "information" from right-wing sources to attack Democrats of all stripes. He comes from an alternative fact universe, where real facts (climate change, etc.) are ignored and phony facts (voter "fraud", etc.) are emphasized.<br />
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Yes. The only thing standing between Hillary Clinton and the White House is Chris Wallace.<br />
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Wallace is the falsely-objective face of Fox News, a network designed by Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes as a propaganda tool for the Republican party, thinly disguised as a "news" organization. Immediately after Fox started up in 1996 (not coincidentally, half-way through the last term of the very successful President Bill Clinton), the channel and its "reporters" were admitted into the White House correspondence corps and elsewhere in the Washington establishment, somehow without question. <br />
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And, now, 20 years later, the Fox fake-newsies have <i>really</i> arrived with the incomprehensible appointment of Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace to moderate the last presidential debate of 2016. You don't believe it? Just ask them. Wallace has been making a victory lap on Fox shows all this week, celebrating how awesome it is that a Fox "personality" has weaseled his way into a potentially historic position.<br />
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Wallace is not only a sold-his-soul hack from a partisan network -- he is personally and professionally severely conflicted in this race. That is not only because the Fox News Channel, in both its news and "opinion" shows (FNC claims an editorial separation that does not exist), have been completely on the Trump Train since the putrid little-fingered man took the Republican nomination. It is also because Roger Ailes, Wallace's former boss, unceremoniously fired by the network for Trump-like sexual harassment and lechery, is now a key Trump adviser on, of all things, debate prep.<br />
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Wallace is more than just a former employee of Ailes. He is <a href="https://newrepublic.com/minutes/136540/chris-wallace-close-roger-ailes-moderate-presidential-debate">in love</a>.<br />
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"Roger Ailes is the best boss I’ve had in almost a half a century in journalism. I admired him tremendously professionally, and loved him personally...<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">There are people in tears. I shed mine a couple of days ago..."</span></div>
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Well, boo-fucking-hoo. You can just imagine how Wallace's "love" for Ailes translated to the long-suffering women in heavy makeup and cocktail dresses in the Fox "news" room. He must be, like, a hero to them.<br />
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Let's play my favorite game: What If A Democrat Did It? Imagine, if you will, a pretend-newsreader from a Democratic propaganda outlet (there are none on the level of Fox News -- that includes MSNBC, which confounds right-wingers with legitimate journalists and actual facts...but I digress) appointed to the Sacred Chair by the Commission. Imagine also that the Democratic candidate was being closely advised by the network personality's former boss. Love and all that.<br />
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Imagine the unhinged screeching by the ubiquitous right-wing media over that kind of arrangement. They would not only howl at the moon on their various free outlets 24/7 for weeks, they would assume that Bizarro Wallace would naturally be feeding questions to Bizarro Ailes to feed to Bizarro Trump.<br />
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As Democrats, we don't play that, but maybe we should. Too many people on the straight media nod and accept that Wallace will be fair, with no evidence to back it up. You know that Wallace will pull his punches with Trump. You know he will ask Hillary about various Fox-only memes, such as the "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/i-need-a-favor-fbi-official-at-center-of-alleged-clinton-email-quid-pro-quo-speaks-out/2016/10/18/dd872948-9538-11e6-9b7c-57290af48a49_story.html?tid=sm_fb">quid pro quo</a>" that wasn't (and that she had nothing to do with in any event) and phony outrage about an idiot contractor bragging about things he wasn't doing to a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O%27Keefe#Criminal_conviction_.282010.29">convicted criminal</a>'s gotcha operation. You can bet Wallace will try to hammer her on her emails, the Russian-hacked Podesta emails -- whatever the reprehensible trolls at his network are working on for Hannity's next show. Oh and Benghazi. <i>Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi.</i><br />
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Hillary will be having none of this, of course. As the most experienced, poised, articulate, prepared person ever to run for president, she's beat better than these punks -- Wallace and Trump, ganged up against her in a last-ditch effort. Trump can whine and bleat and make his desperate noises; and Wallace can pretend to be serious while spinning his usual Fox lies, but the result will be the same. Cue Gloria Gaynor, Hillary -- <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYkACVDFmeg">I Will Survive</a>.<br />
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When the dust clears in three weeks, the legitimization of Trump will be as dead and meaningless as his business prospects. But the legitimization of Chris Wallace and Fox News will unfortunately cause a permanent stain on the history and future of television journalism.<br />
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<br />Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-27785218189631039982016-03-28T07:11:00.000-05:002016-03-28T07:11:14.422-05:00My Sister Hillary<i>"I watched the Revolution on my TV</i><br />
<i>Watching Walter Cronkite at my daddy's knee"</i><br />
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-- "(Why Does) Dan Rather (Want to Be My Friend?)" by Mike Plaisted<br />
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I grew up in the 1960s. Born in '55, I was ages 5 to 15 during the Great Decade, in which America grew up; often hard and horrible, but also in awesome, joyful transcendent ways. <br />
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I remember the nuns coming into the 3rd grade classroom to tell us about JFK's awful (yes) still-unsolved assassination and then coming home from church the following Sunday to hear one of my sisters telling about how she just saw the (yes) all-too-convenient assassination of (yes) pasty Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV. (All I could think of is <i>"damn, I missed it. Why did I have to go to church?"</i>)<br />
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I saw the images of the Vietnam war and the body counts on TV every night. I saw the Watts riots and wondered -- far from the action in podunk New Holstein -- what it was like to live in Milwaukee as the crowds of the disaffected hit the streets in 1967. I was entranced by the police riots outside the Democratic Convention in 1968, watching the long-hairs get beat upside the head by helmeted cops for the mere sin (I assumed) of being long-hairs.<br />
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I remember news networks breaking into prime-time television in April 1968 announcing the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.; and waking up that morning in June to the horrible news on the <i>Today Show</i> of Bobby Kennedy's assassination. One thing I have always thought then and since -- the Forces of Darkness got the right guys. The world would be a better and different place if JFK, MLK and RFK (and Malcolm) had been allowed to complete their righteous life missions. And they knew it.<br />
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I also watched the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and the Summer of Love as told by the news anchors of Squareville. I watched the Woodstock movie in rapture of whatever was going on there in that glossy Hollywood version of a mediocre rock concert staged in a disaster area. <br />
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Yep, I bought it. I bought the Dream.<br />
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But if TV and my father's newspapers were all there was, I wouldn't know much of anything. It was my sisters who brought the Revolution home to me.<br />
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My three older sisters were born within three years of each other -- the product of Mom and Dad's personal, post-war Baby Boom. All three graduated from a small town high school at various times in the mid-60's, innocently enough, I'm sure. They went off to college and suddenly the music of the time -- Four Tops, Temptations, Stones, Four Seasons, Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, and lots more -- filled the house. As their generation spread its wings and as they all found their own selves through the prism of new discovery, they brought it home. There were arguments around the dinner table with our Nixon Republican father -- often heated, crying, stomping off to the bedroom mad. But Dad encouraged it, I think. My sisters gave as good as they got and won more than lost, whether Dad thought so or not. I tried to pipe up once in a while, with lamely hilarious results.<br />
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Now, fifty years later, my sisters are all, in some way or other, a product of their g-g-generation, their times, their private revolutions. Now, they are all in places they would never have been without it. None of them were all that radical, even back in the day. But they took the unique notion from the '60s of reinventing what their nation should and shouldn't be, what it meant to be a human -- especially what it meant to be a woman -- and grew it gracefully, effortlessly into their own beautiful lives. All have loving, awesome life partners who grew up in the same times and share the same values. All produced terrific kids with hearts just as big, who are carrying it all forward.<br />
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Throughout their careers, they were committed to some kind of public service and moving the ideals forged in the '60s forward; as a teacher, a nurse, a physical therapist, among other things. They made their marks as sisters, wives, mothers, friends, homemakers. They don't preach or judge others. They live the Revolution quietly, in their hearts and minds<br />
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Which brings me to Hillary Clinton.<br />
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At 68, Hillary Clinton is right in the middle of where my older sisters are now, ranging from 67 to 70. She also grew up in the Midwest, also the daughter of a conservative father. She was certainly more classically political, better connected -- privileged, even. But she also had her own private revolution. In 1965, she was with the Young Republicans -- by '68, she was a supporter of Eugene McCarthy. At least none of my older sisters were ever Republicans...not that I know of, anyway. <br />
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Where my sisters stayed in-state -- Marquette and Oshkosh, later UW -- Hillary went to Wellesley, a highfalutin women's college out East. There she got connected; Yale Law, more connected; met Bill, more connections...you know the rest. My sisters found themselves in other ways -- working, exploring, building families and community. One break here or there, perhaps a little more of the hard-driving ambition that the Clintons shared, and it could be my one of my sisters out there subjecting herself to the destructive lies and sexist insinuations of Republicans who tear down because they cannot build on their own.<br />
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What my sisters and Hillary share is not only the revolution, but a life committed to making the world a better place. Most Boomers have done so in personal, small, quiet ways. And when Hillary and Bill Clinton had the chance to make a bigger difference -- because of their positions in great colleges and law schools, their ability to squeeze themselves into political organizations and campaigns, dumb luck and, importantly, each other -- they grabbed it and did it. There has not been any other couple that emerged from the generation that grew up in the '60s that took those values to a higher level.<br />
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Was it how we imagined the '60s generation would govern? Not hardly. No Department of Peace, no tie-dyed T-shirts at the inauguration -- heck, not even long hair on the President. Those were all the cartoon version of what the revolution was all about anyway. In the end, Bill and Hillary governed -- and will govern -- in a practical manner, accepting the sludge they inherit from the past and moving the nation forward ever so slightly, as much as they can, inch by inch. <br />
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That's what all the Boomers I know have done or try to do. Far from some brief flirtations with communes and street protests, they all grew up. They blended into the communities they were in or found, not in the subversive way some might have imagined, but in positive constructive ways. They didn't Fight the Power -- they became the power, for the benefit of all. <br />
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So, my sisters and Hillary aren't that different, really. They all have succeeded in affecting the very real world in very real ways. The first woman president may very well have been named Patricia, Barbara or Donna. Instead -- by the luck of the draw, twists of fate and hard work -- it will be Hillary Clinton. Yes -- just-like-my sister, Hillary.<br />
<br />Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-21003134798860634972016-03-15T00:38:00.002-05:002016-03-15T00:38:58.721-05:00Rebecca Bradley's Original SinsOne of the (many) reasons I stopped blogging for a couple of years is because I found it impossible to keep up with the 24-hour -- now, really, 8- or 4-hour -- news cycle. By the time I had gotten the time to write something, the urgency of the issue, whatever it was, was gone and we were on to the next thing. Talking about the too-polite Republican debate from <i>way</i> last Thursday ("Please, Sen. Cruz, after you"..."No, no, Donald, please, you first...") became badly dated within 24 hours, when protesters descended on a Trump rally in Chicago and the Big Tough Trump wimped out and cancelled. "Security concerns" my ass. He couldn't face the uncontrolled heat of the rejection of his politics of fear and racism.<br />
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Here in Wisconsin, Justice Rebecca Bradley's bigoted, stupid writing while she was an undergrad at Marquette was too soon overshadowed by the story of her representation of a boyfriend in a custody battle with his ex-wife. The no-doubt gratis representation was declared not an ethical violation by the presiding judge when the ex and the GAL complained about it. And maybe it wasn't, technically. Lawyers can represent people they've fooled around with, if the fooling around was before the representation. I'll remember to put this in the old memory bank for future reference.<br />
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But imagine you are the GAL interviewing the 16 year-old child and the kid starts talking about Daddy's girlfriend, "Aunt Becca", or whatever, who apparently was so involved with the kid that they <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/bradley-extra-marital-affair-role-in-child-placement-surface-b99684605z1-371700831.html">exchanged gifts at Christmas</a>. Now, should the GAL be talking to the husband's counsel, not as his lawyer, but as a member of the extended family? How that's not a conflict, I don't know. Bradley certainly seems pretty sensitive about it -- check out the link to the audio of the Journal Sentinel reporter asking her about it for the first time (on the left side of the page linked above). While her ever-present handler is trying to get her out of there, she blurts out "The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel should be ashamed of itself and you can put that on the record." Well. <i>Excuuuuse me</i>.<br />
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That was only Thursday after the student-writing story on Monday. By Friday morning, the newspaper was printing GOP spin to soften the blow; about Judge Kloppenberg saying Lincoln had slaves, that Justice Anne Walsh Bradley also skipped out early on an oral argument while she was running, and blah blah blah. In the meantime, the Shame of the Journal Sentinel, in-house Republican shill Christian Schneider has joined the usual gang of local and statewide coordinated right-wing radio talkers to take the desperate Bradley campaign's <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/i-care-more-about-what-rebecca-bradley-thinks-now-b99683039z1-371329481.html">talking points</a> out for <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/a-double-standard-on-private-lives-b99685841z1-371848571.html">a stroll</a> in a full-court press of denial, obfuscation and <a href="http://www.channel3000.com/news/politics/Reality-Check-Third-party-ad-against-Kloppenburg-questioned/38430162">outright lies</a>. <br />
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A weekend of volleyball watching (go Ken and Aaron!), a concert at the Coffeehouse (killed it) and a day of trial prep (didn't go) later and your humble reporter is now, a week later, still trying to get my thoughts out here about Rebecca Bradley and her absurd student "writing". Having done a lot of it when I was an undergrad -- lots more for much longer than she did, I think -- I know something about what and why you write at a young age, and what it means for your middle age and beyond. <br />
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I wrote for the Daily Cardinal at UW-Madison from the summer of 1979 until my graduation in 1982; then a little more on the opinion pages while I was in law school, mostly around the 1984 election cycle. Besides having a great time with some great people (we still get together and laugh with and at each other about once a year), I started on the Fine Arts pages (back then, the writer ghetto for the strongly progressive paper) and, eventually, with opinion columns (mostly media criticism), some news stories (Moonie recruiters were my beat for a month) and the staff actually gave me the keys to the place in the summer of 1981, when Jim Nelson and I put out a twice-weekly edition for a couple of months with a skeleton staff and an excellent distribution manager (Hi Mary!). <br />
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I was not J-School like most of the more serious people there, but I was enthusiastic about getting stuff in the paper. I was pretty much allowed to write anything I wanted, and the editors often didn't know quite what to make of my writing, so they just ran it without many edits. The first piece I got published was a review of Fleetwood Mac's <i>Tusk</i>. Complaining about that over-hyped, inflated mess of a double album, I tried to be funny about it, setting back my career as a humorist several decades. "How many Fleetwood Macs does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" I asked. "Only one, but it will take him or her two years and it'll cost ya a million bucks!" This caused one of the news editors (now still active in Milwaukee County politics) to stand up at the next staff meeting railing about running this shit in the paper and, by the way, who the hell wrote it? I sheepishly raised my hand, and my career at the Cardinal began.<br />
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I understand that this was back in the early '80s and young Ms. Bradley's deliberately ignorant diatribes were a decade later, but, still, this was a different world. In both eras, there was no social media -- if you were a college student with something to say, student newspapers were the only game in town. And, if you actually got something published -- something you meant to say, something you cared about enough to spend the two-to-three hours it took to write it and fight the editors, if you had to -- it was an accomplishment. You were proud of it. I saved clips of every one of the things I had published in the Cardinal (see above for just a small part), right down to the three-inch <i>TV Screams </i>columns<i>.</i> You can bet, when Rebecca Bradley got the Marquette Tribune to run her hateful screeds, she was proud too. She ran right back to her cabal of College Republicans and celebrated, I don't know, however those people celebrate.<br />
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I also knew, as did all college writers, that whatever you wrote <i>would go down on your permanent record</i>. Bradley didn't write just to write -- she wrote to advance her stature in the then-burgeoning right-wing college "movement". We knew these types of people well at the Daily Cardinal. In the early '70s, right-wing icon William F. Buckley bankrolled the Badger Herald as an "alternative" to the Cardinal's unabashedly leftist perspective. Thus did a bunch of conservative mouthpieces find their way onto the campus' news kiosks, blathering all kinds of predictable nonsense from their dark-money handlers. <br />
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To a (usually) man, those people rewrote conservative talking points with enthusiasm and vigor, and some probably moved on to careers as another kind of Republican hack, proud of what they wrote and embracing what they advocated, building on it to an always-well-paying right-wing career of lies and spin. This was fine for most seeking the comfort of the right-wing bosom from which the Herald sprung in the first place. But, when one of their own tries to get elected to something actually important, like the Wisconsin Supreme Court, well, all of a sudden, the literature of hate is treated like a symptom of a childhood disease. <i>Oh that thing about gay people deliberately killing themselves with AIDS, yeah, I was so young and drunk... </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Except that she wasn't that young and not drunk at all. She meant what she said and she said it. I've read a bunch of my old stuff in the past week and I don't have to apologize for any of it. I'd write all of it again -- perhaps with a lot less use of the phrase "of course" -- I used that a lot. What I wrote was part of what I was and still part of what I am. I think college writers are all proud of what they wrote and they still have the same world view -- they just go after their goals in different ways. I know I do.<br />
<br />
Bradley certainly has. She has never swerved off the nut-right political path, serving as president of the radical-right bunch of lawyers called the Federalist Society and all manner of other right-wing groups and causes. As late as 2006, Bradley was writing about how pharmacists shouldn't be "forced" to be "<a href="http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/critics-slam-wisconsin-supreme-court-justice-rebecca-bradley-for-birth/article_c6d985d8-ac44-5d7e-9667-c4fdef074f3e.html">a party to murder</a>" by doing their job and filling birth control prescriptions. It is written in the same kind of deliriously clueless writing from her Marquette days, without the name-calling. The student apple didn't fall far from the adult tree. <br />
<br />
"Have I offended anyone? Good..." she wrote in a <a href="http://media.jrn.com/documents/supreme_bradleywritings.pdf">particularly charming</a> reaction to the election of Bill Clinton in 1992. That's what she meant to do then. As a member of the radical right-wing on the sadly decimated Wisconsin Supreme Court, she doesn't care what you think now, either. Except for this election thing. At least until April 5th, she has to pretend that she isn't who she was in college and who she is now. <br />
<br />
But I firmly believe that college writing is a window to the soul. And looking at Rebecca Bradley's bigoted, hateful writing, the view is not pretty.<br />
<br />Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-34890799105325338762016-03-09T06:53:00.002-06:002016-03-09T07:38:59.373-06:00"Are You Loose???" Not So MuchOn the way out of the Springsteen/E Street <i>River</i> show at the Bradley Center last week, I ran into a friend who I suspect has done much more Bruce tourism than I have. I have made a couple of trips (to Detroit for Rock The Vote in '04; Indianapolis once just for the hell of it), but usually I just catch them when they come around. But I think he has followed the band much more around the country.<br />
<br />
"I'm done." he said.<br />
<br />
Coming as it did after yet another three-and-a-half hour marathon by the Hardest Working Man in Show Business and the World's Greatest Working Band, the comment took me aback. But, this concert raised more issues than it answered -- issues of content, passion, execution, the choices made. Springsteen fans think about these things; where the band is headed, what happened before, why we are here again. We care. He insists on it.<br />
<br />
Now that I have had a chance to think about it...Yeah. I think I'm done too.<br />
<br />
The problems on this tour begin and end with content. The Elephant in the Room on this tour is the whole wrong-headed idea to play <i>The River</i>, a minor release in the Springsteen catalog from 1980. As loyal fans, we smile, show up and hope for the best. This is not the best -- not nearly.<br />
<br />
But Bruce Springsteen has never been the best judge of his own music, his talent or his own legacy. The first <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greatest_Hits_(Bruce_Springsteen_album)">greatest hits</a> album he pieced together in 1995 was a collection of trite, predictable cuts that were on his mind at the time, with nothing from his best album, <i>The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle</i> or <i>Ashbury Park</i>. His solo outings have been -- at least -- a disappointment. At his <i>Tom Joad </i>show at the Riverside in 1996, Springsteen was a silence-demanding crank, yelling at people who dared to cheer "Born in the USA" (<i>hey, Bruce</i>, I thought, <i>maybe the guy's a veteran, fer crying out loud</i>). And let's not forget the worst concert ever at the Bradley Center, when Springsteen and a band of younger hired guns stunk up the place on Bill Clinton and Russ Feingold's election night 1992 with some of the same songs and none of the spirit of E Street. At least Bruce has gotten the picture since 1999 that he and the E Street Band as a unit is ten times better than anything he could do solo or with anyone else.<br />
<br />
Which brings us back to <i>The River.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_River_(Bruce_Springsteen_album)">The River</a></i> was a double-album, back in the vinyl days, and, as with all double-albums from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_(album)">The Beatles</a>' White Album on down, it has some, er, junk on it. Not as bad as "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" or "Honey Pie", mind you (ah, McCartney...), but, you know, <i>junk</i>. In fact, I don't think I've ever bothered to listen to the damn thing all the way through since I first dropped the needle on the day it was released. I now know the whole project sputters and dies in the middle of Side 3, starting with "Fade Away" and ending, five songs too late, with the weary "Wreck on the Highway". Sure, "Ramrod" is in there somewhere, but I've always thought it a plodding too-slow excuse for a rave-up.<br />
<br />
How do I know this? Because I have now lasted through two concerts where I couldn't get away from the damned thing. The songs kept coming. It -- they -- would not stop.<br />
<br />
How did this happen? Imagine you are in the room with Springsteen and/or manager Jon Landau last year and someone comes up with the bright idea to hit the road playing the <i>entire</i> River album, from beginning to end. Would anyone dare to say "but what about the dreck?" Not bloody likely -- the world is littered with could-have-been-greater superstars (Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, etc.) with fawning entourages and enabling managers who refuse their to give their bosses the benefit of the advice they deserve.<br />
<br />
Alright, so the idea is hatched and they get to rehearsals. You can see Bruce and what is left of the E Street Band working through the first nine songs and, yeah, this seems like a great idea. But then they hit the giant speed-bump called "I Want To Marry You", a song that was too cute by half cute at the time, and that there is just no reason to play again, ever. I imagine Miami Steve at that first rehearsal when they come to that song, and then it dawns on him: <i>Oh my god, we are playing the whole fucking album! </i>He has to think it -- does he say it? Is he a good enough friend to...? The album recovers with the title track and film-noir "Point Blank", a dramatic high-point in concert. But a Wisconsin night "Cadillac Ranch" and a too-obvious "I'm a Rocker" later, the whole album falls off a cliff. After the first practice, does the band look at each other and think "Well that was fun, but what are we really going to do on this tour?" Maybe. And the The Boss says "OK. Let's do that <i>again</i>!"<br />
<br />
Springsteen now calls this his "coming of age" record, but that was <i>Darkness on the Edge of Town</i>. <i>The River</i> is really his (then) mid-career crisis, his "what do I do now after all this success?" album. There is a lot of flailing around, a lot of phony (stolen) car mysticism, and nothing digs all that deep. Other than "Cadillac Ranch" and "Hungry Heart", none of this album has been featured in his usual setlists through the years. Nor should it have.<br />
<br />
When I first saw this tour in Chicago in January -- the second show of the tour -- Springsteen seemed to understand he had some 'splaining to do about why he was going to make us sit through over two hours of <i>The River</i>. His solution then was talking it to death. Many songs that night were preceded by explanations of where he was, what he was thinking, who it was about. There was a real long one before "Marry You" and it didn't make the song itself any better. There was much less chatter in Milwaukee -- only "Independence Day" got the usual "this is about my dad" treatment. The shut-up-and-play version worked much better.<br />
<br />
But, still. As the <i>River</i> part of the set wound down, the antiseptic concourses at the Bradley Center filled with knowing fans on an extended beer break. There is always something disconcerting about hanging around outside the arena while you can hear Bruce Springsteen echoing off the walls -- he's not here every day, shouldn't I be in there? Back in '78, I was thankful for relative duds like "Racing in the Streets" because it gave me a chance to catch my breath before hurrying back in there. Now, I heard "The Price You Pay" droning on and realized there are still three songs to go until the Real Show starts.<br />
<br />
But I will say one thing for enduring all of <i>The River</i> -- it sure makes whatever he plays after that very much appreciated. In fact, the rest of the set brought tears to my eyes, which usually happens at least a couple of times at the best of these shows. The hour-and-a-half post-<i>River set </i>was moving, through not revelatory; impeccable, without passion. It was about the past -- our past, his past -- not the present.<br />
<br />
It started with "Badlands", not usually a weeper for me. "I ain't no sin to be glad you're alive..." I felt the heart in "No Surrender". "Now I'm ready to grow young again..." The two cuts from <i>The Rising -- </i>the title song and "Lonesome Day" -- brought me back to that great comeback tour and the whole album, the single greatest artistic expression of 9/11 emotion produced by anyone in any medium. "It's alright/It's alright/It's alright/It's alright <i>yeah!</i>".<br />
<br />
Nils Lofgrin spun on his heels, his rock star tassels flying, during an incendiary solo during "Because the Night", a rare moment -- for this show, certainly -- of unplanned spontaneity. Or maybe they planned it. But not like that. Even Nils couldn't have planned it just like <i>that</i>.<br />
<br />
Then came "Jungleland", apparently called as an audible. The audience sang along and Bruce let us until he gradually took control of his own lyrics and voice. By the time Jake Clemons took his late uncle's great solo -- as he was all night, musically perfect, note for note, if not as emotionally invested as the Big Man (how could he be?) -- I was reduced to a slobbering, crying grown man. "Kids flash guitars just like switchblades..." In that moment, I wanted Bruce and Steve to do that guitar battle I saw back in 1978, when they both "reached for their moment and tried to take an honest stand". It seemed to last forever. They wouldn't let it go. They couldn't.<br />
<br />
These things don't happen with the E Streeters any more, except by design. The deaths of Danny Frederici and Clarence Clemons took much of the heart and soul of the band and time has taken the rest. The band is still the best in the shrinking rock band genre; talented veterans with the best technology. And (except for Steve, I imagine) they are totally Bossed, with a job to do. Any passion there is comes from the songs themselves, not necessarily by their current sparkling execution. Maybe, still, capable of spontaneous combustion, but nobody asks them to do that thing any more.<br />
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There will be no more <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOhhEMn-8D8">Super Bowl Slides</a> at these shows by Bruce, who is still in great physical shape for the long show (with no breaks) but, unlike before when he did it because he was a passionate, jazzed-up, crazy motherfucker, he does it now by measured, well-paced endurance. At 66, he is finally showing his age. <br />
<br />
I'm sure this has been going on for a while and I've just refused to notice, but this show lacked two of the most important elements that I love most about the Springsteen experience -- <i>spontaneity</i> and <i>whimsy</i>.<br />
<br />
First of all, you can forget about spontaneity in a concert in which you promise you are going to play a double-album from beginning to end. That also effects the rest of it, now rushed and constrained to an-hour-fifteen, tops -- and don't forget to leave 9 minutes at the end for a pointless rendition of the over-played-to-infinity "Shout".<br />
<br />
As for whimsy...defined as "playfully quaint or fanciful behavior or humor", by somebody...it has always been an element of not only Springsteen shows, but his earlier work. There are songs -- "E Street Shuffle", "Spirits in the Night", "So Hard to Be a Saint in the City" and, god help us, "Kitty's Back" -- that represent the best of Bruce -- passionate, playful, lots of chord and tempo changes. They worked on record and have completely <i>rocked</i> in concert when the time and the band was right. <br />
<br />
The only song of this kind that the band played here (and, apparently, <a href="http://www.backstreets.com/setlists.html">everywhere</a>) was "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)". I was shocked in Chicago how dry and rote this was played, and it didn't get any better here. All of the essential parts were there -- all that stuff going on out in the street, but "Rosie you're the one"...the sax break...the guitar duel..."don't you know daddy's comin"... But where's the joy? I know it's too much to ask to go back to the days when Clarence and Bruce exchanged that beautiful sloppy kiss at the climax, but is it too much to ask for something real, and really in the moment? <i>"Hey, man, they did Rosalita!!"</i> Yeah...I guess they did...<br />
<br />
Bruce Springsteen has given me some of the best, highest moments in my life -- and that is no exaggeration. They were the kind of moments you never get from distant rock stars; the kind of moments that usually only happen with family, lovers and friends. We were both in the right place at the right time, more than once, whether he knows it or not. I'll never forget that. I'm just not expecting it to happen again.<br />
<br />
"I'm done," he said.<br />
<br />
Yeah. I think I am too. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-4038111914060609152016-02-27T22:34:00.002-06:002016-02-27T23:59:40.083-06:00Trump the Prepper<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sometimes, you learn something.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nut Right Talk Radio, that bane of rational thought and common sense, discloses more of itself (sometimes) through who advertises on it than on the nationally-scripted content spewing from its various “hosts”. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How stupid do they think their audience it is? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Well, there is that long-running advertiser selling prefab steel buildings, always good for a laugh. And there are many other humorous examples. But my current favorite is an ad selling "<a href="http://www.wisefoodstorage.com/">Wise Food Storage</a>", an apparent supplier for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivalism">preppers</a></span> -- <span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">those who are so paranoid about the gathering multicultural hoards and Barack Obama (to them, one and the same) that they are stocking their reinforced basements with guns, more guns and dehydrated "food". </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wish I could find a link to the actual commercial that is in heavy rotation on WISN, at least -- it's hilarious. The idea is that you would be irresponsible </span><i style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</i><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to make an investment in freeze-dried fettuccine</span> a<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">lfredo and cheese ravioli. "It is well known that stores have only 3 days worth of food [Oh? Is it?]...and you don't want your family to be helpless in a food riot" -- or words to that effect, with the sounds of screaming panic in the background. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Given the pathetic gullibility of anyone who would actually pick up the phone and order, say, a one-year supply of this crap for </span><a href="http://www.wisefoodstorage.com/deluxe-package.html" style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">$1,439</a><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (and that's just for one adult -- </span><i style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">save yourselves, kids!</i><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">), it is sad to see so many ignorant people falling into the PT Barnum trap (<i>a sucker born every minute</i>), both in terms of their expected future diet (<i>yum!</i>) and their political opinions. The same stations selling "three 120 serving buckets of emergency food entrees as well as three 120 serving buckets of our breakfasts (just add water!)" at outrageous prices to stupid people like that can certainly sell right-wing bullshit from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Charlie Sykes. And they have. For over 25 years now.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Which brings us to Donald Trump.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/donald-trump-republican-party.html" style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">hair-on-fire</a><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> panic in the Republican elite about the Trump juggernaut would be funny if it wasn't so serious and dangerous. The GOP has set themselves up for this through their coordination with national and local talk radio hosts -- not to mention Fox News -- for years. Talk radio hosts are the least original "entertainers" in the history of the world, taking their marching orders for Republican operatives since the beginning, creating false realities, driving false narratives, misrepresenting what Democrats really believe and personally attacking anybody who would dare to stand in the way of their funhouse-mirror reshaping of the national and local debate.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">In its toddler years, talk radio spent all of its time smearing, lying and trying to delegitimize President Bill Clinton, who was a grand success in spite of them. In the '00s, talk radio drones worked overtime driving Karl Rove's talking points issued every day right out of the White House, playing constant defense for the disaster that was Junior Bush. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Since Barack Obama's historic and transitional election in 2008, the radio talkers have gone completely bonkers, convincing their low-information listeners, using racist code words, that Obama was everything from a dangerous subversive, deliberately trying to destroy America; to a foreign-born fraud; to someone who is going to -- <i>oh yes he is! </i>-- find a way to cancel the 2016 elections so he can have a third term. There isn't anything they wouldn't say or do to destroy the bright promise of the Obama presidency. And, like Clinton, he has succeeded in spite of them.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">So the GOP establishment has no one to blame but themselves for creating the fear-mongering, fact-free, anti-everything atmosphere that allows a bulbous fraud like Trump to stalk the political earth. Using talk radio and Fox News -- combined, the biggest political megaphone any party has ever had -- the Republicans have employed the smartest propagandists in the world to convince some of the dumbest people in the United States that they have everything to fear from anyone who isn't like them and doesn't "think" like them. As a country, we might not be getting what we deserve (unless Trump himself is elected -- then we do), but GOP is certainly getting what it deserves. It created -- and owns -- the Trump Monster.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">As for Trump himself, he follows all the talk radio rules -- without the talent or research. Playing on the fears of fearful people, he talks like the loudest mouth at the end of the bar. Anyone who doesn't see what he sees and thinks what he thinks is just stupid. Opponents are dismissed with a wave of the hand, a smirk and a childish put-down. Anyone on stage with him at a debate is like a seminar caller on talk radio -- they only exist to make him look better, no matter what they are saying. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trump traffics in the alternate-fact world of Fox News -- and since the other GOP candidates accept the same phony world-view, no one there can challenge him. He is all celebrity and no substance, getting a rise out of the way-too-easy-to-please all-white knuckleheads who whoop and holler at his every wearily predictable applause line. Even his "outrageous" no-one-else-could-get-away-with-that comments are just ratings-builders, like Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke a "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-buzz/post/rush-limbaugh-calls-georgetown-student-sandra-fluke-a-slut-for-advocating-contraception/2012/03/02/gIQAvjfSmR_blog.html">slut</a>" and local radio-thug Mark Belling calling people "<a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=186x3071">wetbacks</a>". They are still working and Trump is still rising. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">And, just like everyone on talk radio and Fox News, none of them care <i>what</i> you think. Least of all Donald Trump.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">----</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a new campaign here in Milwaukee, led by </span><a href="http://www.citizenactionwi.org/radio-active" style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wisconsin Citizen Action</a><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">, to fight the poison that is local talk radio. Talk radio is a particularly insidious entity here, with hours and hours at its disposal to spread coordinated right-wing propaganda, featuring highly-paid Republican activists with a stranglehold on the AM airwaves. With this post, <i>Plaisted Writes</i> returns from a long hiatus to help with that fight. I know these people and what they do all too well, and hope to do my part in this important effort.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-23110397965842062152014-10-31T13:18:00.000-05:002014-10-31T13:18:34.847-05:00Obama and the Heart of the CityNorth Division High School is in the Heart of the City. <br />
<br />
I parked while the sun was still out on a beautiful fall day this Tuesday in the city at 13th and Clarke, two blocks from the school. The area is almost exclusively populated by poor African-Americans in this most segregated of American cities. There were a lot of people out on the street, standing on porches and hillsides overlooking the school's athletic field. Many were middle-aged, trying to get a glimpse of the president's motorcade that was still more than an hour away. Outside some of the rundown houses, standing in the doorways, young men dressed in ghetto black and baggy pants looked on curiously at the commotion, and, when they noticed my attention, ducked back inside. <br />
<br />
As I walked up the street to the press entrance, thousands of people streamed in from every walk of life in Milwaukee. Sure, it was primarily an African-American crowd, excited to see a legitimate hero and historical figure in the flesh and in the neighborhood. But it was also working people of all colors of the rainbow. <br />
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President Barack Obama came to Milwaukee on Tuesday to campaign for Mary Burke, who is running to defeat the most radical, divisive governor in Wisconsin history. As every Washington pundit on cable TV will tell you, Democrats around the country have not exactly been lining up to clasp hands with the president. This is ridiculous advice from those goddamn consultants again, playing it "safe" when they should be using Obama, the best campaigner of his generation, regardless of what the polls say. At North Division last night, Mary Burke was bravely proud to be seen celebrating her Democrat-ness with the president. It was a stirring, joyful event.<br />
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I was there with a press pass as your wayward blogger. I first got myself invited to the media pool for an Obama appearance in Green Bay during the push for health care reform in <a href="http://plaistedwrites.blogspot.com/2009/06/in-green-bay-with-president-part-2.html">June 2009</a>. I was blogging regularly then and figured it didn't hurt to ask and they let me in. Since then, I have seen President Obama from the media area at least three other times; in Waukesha, at Master Lock in Milwaukee, at Labor Fest just this September and I think there were more... <br />
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Seeing the President of the United States -- and, in Obama's case, the most famous person in the world -- up close so often has been inspiring and fun. I have been a news and politics junkie ever since my dad put me on his shoulders to see Richard Nixon at Mitchell Field during the 1960 campaign (and still have this image of Nixon's shiny head poking out over a sea of trenchcoats). The political theater of an Obama presidential visit has always been interesting to watch from behind the scenes -- the dour trudging of the local and national media, the hours of waiting for 30 minutes of talk, the Secret Service dancing around...<br />
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The most interesting time (so interesting, I didn't bother to blog it -- apparently the White House doesn't check to see if I actually do anything with the access provided) was just last month at Labor Fest on the Summerfest grounds. It was not your standard get-a-ticket-from-the-party-and-stand-around-for-hours event -- Labor Fest is actually a real thing for a day, like one of the ethnic festivals. Obama was on the Jazz Oasis (still, always) stage, like the rock star he sort of is. The beautifully diverse working-class crowd on the benches in front were laughing, drinking beer, having a great old time on a gorgeous day. The only people who were stuck in place were the poor souls the politicians always put behind them on the stage and make them sit for an hour before the event starts to create a human backdrop. Eventually, Obama came out and kicked ass, as he always does. Cue the next band.<br />
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And Obama always does kick ass at a rally. One of the right wing's most obnoxious memes and lies is that anyone ever looked at Barack Obama as "the Messiah", born to lead us out of the undeniable darkness of the Bush years. Obama was never that and never claimed to be. He was and is simply a very talented communicator -- ten times more so and far more intellectually and personally honest than Saint Reagan. Watching him in person from close range, as I have many times now, he never sounds a sour note, always speaks his own words, from the heart, with a great sense of humor and occasional flashes of brilliance.<br />
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The president has now made two trips to Milwaukee in the past two months; both in front of poor-to-working-class crowds. By coming to Labor Fest and North Division, Obama showed a commitment to reaching out to those most affected by the successful drive by the business class and its sock-puppet, Scott Walker, to crush collective bargaining and suppress the wages of regular Americans. Even the visit before that -- at Master Lock in February 2012 -- was mainly before a working-class crowd on the edge of the inner city on 35th and North, although the white-collar employees of the company and the CEO were also welcome and celebrated. Around here, anyway, Obama is certainly is not hiding from the victims of the Walker agenda and corporate greed -- he is fully engaged, and always has been, in trying to limit the damage and create a tide -- for instance, raising the minimum wage -- which would raise all boats. He dives right in to the Heart of the City and fights for what is right.<br />
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This night's venue, North Division, is a still-proud high school half its previous size, located in a <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/north-division-site-of-presidential-visit-has-other-ties-to-obama-b99378858z1-280586892.html">now-divided, underused MPS building</a>, the victim of the right-wing attack on the public schools in Milwaukee. Although the gym where the event was staged was dressed up for the camera's eye in bunting and bright lights, the building is showing its age and its status. I have visited many suburban high schools during my awesome son's athletic career, and all those facilities are nice, clean, newer, with up-to-date equipment. Not so at North Division. On the opposite side of the gym, behind the cameras, tired-looking banners from whatever is left of the City conference hung limply above the old bleachers. In the hallway leading to the gym, a worn sign on a dirty office window reminded students about the $10 activity fee to be paid. The entire building stood testament to the lack of support for public education in Walker's Wisconsin.<br />
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The setup for the event for many of the older people who were brought in early and provided chairs was horrible. Many were behind the camera riser to the right of the stage and, at least early in the day, there was no sound projected back to them. But they patiently sat and waited through the couple of hours it takes for these kinds of things to run their course. The rest of the crowd was led into the area and stood in front of the stage, a delightfully diverse crowd, from the curious to the activist. While they waited, they listened to short but effective speeches by Rep. Gwen Moore, Mayor and former Walker opponent Tom Barrett and others.<br />
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The best preliminary speech was by a rising star in Wisconsin politics, if she can pull off a win in the race for Attorney General. Susan Happ is sharp as a tack and has a lot going for her against disgusting sellout Brad Schimel. I've only dealt with Schimel once, to extremely negative results for my victim/client, but he has a rep among other defense attorneys and prosecutors as "not bad" in Waukesha. However, he has completely jumped the shark in this race, caving in to the Dark Side and saying all kinds of shit he never would if he hadn't sold his soul to the worst of the GOP. I haven't had any cases in Jefferson County, but I have had a chance to meet Susan Happ twice in the last several weeks, including Tuesday night. She appears to have a lot on the ball, a sparkling personality and, if she can get this win, there is no reason she shouldn't get a shot at higher office down the line. And, she knows how to work a friendly crowd.<br />
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After the preliminaries, the crowd had to wait another hour for the main event. While they waited, the President's Playlist got them singing along to Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" and, delightfully, Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions "Keep On Pushing" (did I mention this was an older crowd?).<br />
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Eventually, Mary Burke came out to introduce the president and pretty much shined in the moment. It was the same speech I heard her give at a fundraiser early this month. I hope her and her campaign managers noticed that the biggest applause line for her was a call for an end to the divisiveness that the radical Republicans have brought to the state since their disastrous ascendancy. That should be the closing argument -- a return to sanity and (attempted) cooperation. Not that the Republicans are ever going to be sane or cooperate -- at least one party will be there to try. At the end of both debates, Burke closed with a reminder that Scott Walker was the divide-and-conquer governor. Remind us again, and often, in the closing days.<br />
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Finally, the president appeared, looking very skinny, in shirtsleeves, diving into the ropeline on his way to the stage, as Burke waited patiently. Unlike most of the other times I saw him, this was not an "official" visit. He was there to support Mary Burke and spent all of his time expertly contrasting her from the radical Walker. Some of my favorite lines:<br />
<ul>
<li>"I don't know why you'd run on a platform of making sure some folks don't have health insurance -- why would you do that? I mean, that's a weird thing to want -- I'm going to make sure folks don't have health insurance in this state. That doesn't make any sense."</li>
<li>"We need to strengthen the middle class for the 21st century -- that means we need leaders from the 21st century, who actually believe that women should get paid the same as men for doing the same work....Sometimes it feels like these folks, they’ve been watching 'Mad Men' too much...</li>
<li>"Cynicism didn’t put anybody on the moon. Cynicism has never ended a war. It has never cured a disease. It did not build a business. It did not feed a young mind. Cynicism is a choice. And hope is a better
choice."</li>
</ul>
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Those right wingers who pretend not to like Obama have never seen Obama. He has faced the biggest roadblocks on <i>everything</i> from an opposition party in American history, and he still got things done, whatever he could. This is a more vicious version the way the GOP treated Bill Clinton -- they simply refused to recognize the legitimacy of his presidency, even after two elections. The phrase they use on Talk Radio all the time to refer to Obama (at the direction of the GOP) is "this guy", as if he is just some guy off the street who stumbled into the White House. The brutal personal deminishment of the president through Fox News, Talk Radio and others who coordinate talking points with the GOP is in large part racist. Through it all, Obama stood strong and energized this week, in a battered inner city public school.</div>
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Walking up the street in the dark after the program, amidst the energized crowd streaming onto the sidewalk, the neighborhood transformed from the center of the ever-changing political universe to its drab, struggling normal. At the Citgo station on the corner of 12th and Center, the same young men I saw in the doorways before the event hung out and looked again warily at the crowd. They will stay in the Heart of the City, making things work as best they can. And Barack Obama and Mary Burke will do their best to give them Hope.Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-6865513988066929842014-10-12T13:02:00.000-05:002014-10-12T13:02:06.290-05:00The Mistake Of Ignoring Talk RadioIf I hear one more Democratic office holder or campaign worker or one more <i>goddamn</i> consultant or politically-connected mucky-muck say they don't listen to local wing-nut Talk Radio, I am going to scream.<br />
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For reasons I fail to understand, Democrats and liberals completely ignore the powerful poison that is right-wing Talk Radio, especially in the Metro Milwaukee market. I don't know if they think the Republican shills on WTMJ and WISN are just preaching to the converted or they just think what they are saying is too stupid to be taken seriously or they just can't be bothered with all this but...Christ! Ignoring it and pretending it doesn't have a real effect in southeastern Wisconsin is worse than clueless -- it is political malpractice.<br />
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Take the Shame of Milwaukee County, newly-reelected Sheriff David Clarke -- please! Clarke's horrible mismanagement of the sheriff's department and embarrassing nut-right pro-gun activism had made him a pariah in the community. His ridiculous lie on the ballot itself that he was in any way a Democrat had run its course. The Democratic voters of Milwaukee County were ready to send him back to whatever bought-and-sold right-wing hole he crawled out of eight long years ago. But the self- and GOP-appointed campaign directors on the two radio stations joined forces to encourage their obedient listenership in the reddish suburbs to cross over and, like Clarke, pretend they were a Democrat and steal the Democratic nomination for the least Democratic Democratic candidate in Wisconsin history. <br />
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The national embarrassment that is David Clarke would not have been reelected have without Talk Radio. And it did happen only because of Talk Radio -- they even got a post-primary "Winner" designation from the Journal Sentinel for their "work" on Clarke's campaign. If the hardening of the dark-red WOW ring of white counties surrounding Milwaukee like a noose in the past ten years and the numerous other skewed local elections weren't enough to get it through their thick skulls, you would think the sad Clarke reelection would get the attention of the Dem elite. But no. The Wisconsin Democratic Party continues to ignore talk radio and its broader effect and implications.<br />
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This leaves the Republican party free reign to command over <i>20 hours</i> of free advertising on Clear Channel and Journal Communications properties <i>every weekday</i> to spin local GOP propaganda and to outright campaign for Scott Walker and other Republicans. This is all -- strangely, since this scheme is being played on the public airwaves -- without being challenged by the Federal Communications Commission. Although corporate tool Ronald Reagan eviscerated the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine">Fairness Doctrine</a> in 1987 -- his only lasting legacy is the national scandal that is Talk Radio -- the FCC still has an <a href="http://www.museum.tv/eotv/equaltimeru.htm">Equal Time</a> rule for broadcasters holding government licenses during election cycles. The rule says that, where a candidate is given free time on a station like WISN or WTMJ, an opposing candidate has to be given the same free time <i>if they request it</i>. <br />
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To my knowledge, the Burke campaign or other Democratic candidates have never requested equal time for all the dozens of hours of time Scott Walker has spent on Milwaukee Talk Radio with embarrassingly fawning, gushing, enraptured right-wing hosts. If they did and were denied it, where are the FCC complaints and lawsuits? Every <i>goddamn</i> time Scott Walker is talking to his campaign-collaborating friends on Talk Radio, someone from the Burke campaign should, first of all, <i>BE LISTENING</i>, and then they should call in and request to have Burke on the radio for an equal amount of time. If denied, they should immediately tweet that they were denied and then file a complaint with the FCC. <br />
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This seems like elementary stuff, but the <i>goddamn</i> Democratic consultants -- the same ones who went ahead with the hero-making Walker recall against the national Dems advice and ran that on "jobs" rather than against the radical actions of Republicans in Madison and are now running the Burke campaign on "jobs" rather than on using the governor as a check on the radical Republican agenda to come -- ignore Talk Radio because...well, for whatever stupid reason they ignore Talk Radio. Talk Radio isn't just right-wingers jabbering at each other -- in the next three weeks it is going to be 20 hours of free advertising for Scott Walker, every day. <br />
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Starting tomorrow (Monday), Talk Radio will be fully loaded with talking points directly from the Walker campaign in reaction to last Friday's "debate". They will beat up Burke for not having an answer for nice things to say about Walker -- an enormously stupid trick question by an older out-state reporter who should know better and should be embarrassed for asking it. I would have loved it if Burke -- who went after Walker more than I thought she would in the rest of the debate -- would have said, no, there is nothing good about Scott Walker and his radical destruction of the very fabric of Wisconsin government and democracy and, "oh by the way, governor, how do you sleep at night?" But I understand why she couldn't because it was such a stupid question. And <i>every</i> Talk Radio host will play that clip over and over, chuckling, snickering and gloating over the uncomfortable-by-design moment.<br />
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Scott Walker will spend hours on every show in the Milwaukee market and whoever else plays the Talk Radio game in the rest of the state, trying to explain his illuminating "it's not a jobs, it's a work problem" comment, blaming the unemployed for their own unemployment in his underperforming economy and otherwise hammering home his dreary, radical, wolf-in-sheeps-clothing agenda. ("We're not done," he announced recently, which should send shivers up the spine of any reasonable Wisconsinite.) When they are not making sweet love to Walker in person, Talk Radio hosts will be talking direction from the campaign not only daily but hourly. The only time they will take off from the Walker campaign will be taking more orders from the GOP, trying to get their lackey Brad Schimmel elected Attorney General.<br />
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All this is coming, predictably, and what are the <i>goddamn</i> Democratic consultants going to do about it? Nothing, I'm guessing. If turnout is the key in this election -- and it is -- a major reason more Republicans are now planning to vote than Democrats is because there are Talk Radio GOP stooges telling them how important it is, 20 hours every day. We will never have that advantage -- and, frankly, since we are committed to fair play, we wouldn't use it as brazenly and shamelessly if we did. But the <i>goddamn</i> consultants aren't even trying. Or listening. <br />
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It is not too late. There are things the Burke campaign could do to fight the Talk Radio advantage. Mary Burke has managed to get herself in a position to defeat and reject the disastrous Walker/GOP revolution in Madison. It would be a shame if the elite moneyed interests pulling the strings of the Republicans are allowed to use their illegitimate Talk Radio advantage to put their sock-puppet governor over the finish line once more. It is not too late for the Democratic consultants to get their <i>goddamn</i> act together.<br />
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But first, you have to listen and watch what Talk Radio is doing. Next: How to Watch Talk RadioMike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-82986098408658773452014-09-28T22:59:00.001-05:002014-09-28T22:59:24.495-05:00"Plagiarism", And Other Walker LiesA <i>long</i> time ago -- about 23 years or so -- I tried my hand at drafting a policy paper for a political candidate. Well, not really a policy paper, as much as a tri-fold pamphlet for handing out at events and such. <br />
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The candidate was Joe Czarnezki, then a state senator running for County Executive against Tom Ament in 1992, who famously ended up winning and was eventually driven into retirement by a hysterical Journal Sentinel campaign against some pension revisions, which begot Scott Walker, which begot you-know-what...but I digress.<br />
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I don't know how I hooked up with Joe, who has since pleasantly evolved into the very affable and competent Milwaukee County Clerk. I see him on the first floor the Courthouse once in a while. We last chatted about the excitement surrounding the same-sex marriage weekend, when Joe and his staff stepped up with extended hours to provide licenses to many loving, deserving couples. I was at the Public Defender at the time of his campaign and I remember sitting around a table in a law office with about 8 other people, excited to be in a politician's brain trust or idea circle, or whatever they call it. Somehow I got tasked with putting together the candidate's crime pamphlet.<br />
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I don't remember how I did it, but I do think I finished the damned thing. I imagine I did the same thing I would do now if given that assignment -- look at how other campaigns have handled the issue and seeing if Joe's views were the same or different. I sure didn't try to do it from scratch. This was pre-user-friendly-internet -- Compuserve and AOL were around, but no search engines to speak of. You could do cut-and-paste in Word Perfect (and I still do -- "legacy program", my ass) but not really of other people's stuff on web pages. <br />
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So I was on my own to try to find something -- anything -- that would show me how to write this kind of innocuous politi-speak. The idea was to say something "tough on crime" (like there is somebody who isn't) that doesn't create controversy. Which is to say: nothing. And, I don't remember anything about the finished product, but I'm sure I accomplished just that -- nothing. And I probably did it by finding some other candidate's piece somewhere and using it -- copying, paraphrasing, using it, whatever.<br />
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And, in races from school board to President, that's what everybody did. And does. There is no controversy in the majority of political issues in American campaigns. Everyone says the same things in pretty much the same way, but they still feel compelled to say it anyway. There is no reason to recreate the wheel when you are talking about, oh, jobs or rural development or whatever. So, at, say, the governor level, you get some dweeb on the lower level of your consultant's agency to throw something together. No big deal.<br />
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But when you are the increasingly-desperate Scott Walker campaign (or, more likely, a campaign-coordinating "think" tank) with a bunch of kids in the opposition research boiler room with time on their hands and directions to find anything -- <i>anything!</i> -- to "define" (read: defame) or embarrass the thus-far Teflon-coated Democratic candidate, the policy papers that no voter with any sense would bother to read get poured over, researched and googled. When you can't find anything to criticize in the plans -- and these things are so innocuous and substance-free on purpose, they can't be challenged except on the grounds that "it put me to sleep" -- you look for errors of fact (always ironic for the fact-free Walkerites) or devious sources of ideas in the hopes of making some kind of noise to stir up your stupid, knuckle-dragging base. <i>"Look, Mary Burke encourages that communities 'organize' to produce and save jobs! 'Organize'! Just like Saul Alinsky!"</i><br />
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So just imagine when Dweeb 314 in the bowels of the "Club" for "Growth" -- as <a href="http://plaistedwrites.blogspot.com/2014/06/all-or-nothing-for-scott-walker.html">discussed before</a>, a Dark Money front that is neither a "club" nor are the functionaries operating under that name interested in "growth" of anything but the fatcats' fat wallets -- finds this sleep-inducing passage in the Burke jobs policy paper:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Supporting the development of public-private partnerships by working to match small farmers with business professionals to help farmers improve management, develop new markets plans and improve use of risk management tools and risk-reduction strategies."</i></blockquote>
Bold stuff, that. No one could have possibly written that kind of dreary policy language on their own. The dweeb explores his trove of useless knowledge...Yes! That failed candidate in Tennessee in 2009! He looks up the jobs paper of the beyond-forgettable Ward Cammack and...there it is! The exact same sentence! Paydirt! That cushy job in the WEDC is as good as his now.<br />
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Only one problem...who gives a shit? Candidates of like mind borrow and trade ideas and language all over the place every day. Anyone coming up with something original, even by accident, knows it might be cribbed and is usually honored when it is. Somewhere in Nashville or wherever, Mr. Cammack is not jumping around screaming for a royalty check. He's probably still sitting around waiting for someone to call to see if he cares. So the value of Dweeb 314's magical discovery is only as good as who you can get to repeat it enough that Walker flunkies can have something negative about Burke to talk about.<br />
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But Republicans have nothing if not a ready-to-help right-wing media willing to eat and regurgitate anything they are fed. The campaign's first stop was the throw-it-up-against-the-wall-maybe-something-will-stick website Buzzfeed and its "reporter" Andrew Kaczynski, a veteran Republican <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Kaczynski">oppo researcher</a>, er, dweeb. Kaczynski was more than happy to help the Walker campaign set up its smear of Mary Burke by running with the "news" that Burke had a few innocuous phrases in her jobs plan that might have been slightly familiar to a failed candidate in Tennessee and a couple other people whose consultants worked with the same writer. <br />
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You can almost hear the pretend-reporter on the phone with the Walker staffer...<i>"Really, you think it might be helpful?...but everyone in politics recycles this kind of bullshit...you just did it last week...well, alright, if you think you could use it for something..."</i> So Kaczynski dutifully runs something, no doubt based on the GOP research and probably without attribution to his source. [It's hard to tell exactly, since the first post he wrote on this was interestingly <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/wisconsin-democratic-gubernatorial-candidate-plagiarized-lar#1rzgz3k">scrubbed and replaced with this</a> after Burke let the drafting consultant go.]<br />
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All expected from the right-wing media. This whole thing would have been a drop in the poison bucket for talk-radio and other fellow travelers of the radical governor, who would make wild, ridiculous accusations of "plagiarism" for a day before moving on to the next talking point on the campaign's script.<br />
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Enter the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and reporter Dan Bice.<br />
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Bice's stuff is always interesting reading, even when he is, as in this case, too willing to be led by the nose by obvious charlatans. He has made a nice recovery from the days of <a href="http://plaistedwrites.blogspot.com/2006/10/spice-boys-help-green-spot-anti-doyle.html">The Spice Boys</a>, where he was chained to the snarky political bent of his partner, Cary Spivak, who has long since been shuffled off to other pages. Now, Bice plays it straighter, but, as the go-to guy for political dirt, he can still be spun into running the thinnest of stories from the most questionable sources. For instance, he has a bad recent habit of citing stories from Dark Money-funded fake-news sites like "<a href="http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/229759061.html">Wisconsin Reporter</a>" and "<a href="http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/144048626.html">Media Trackers</a>".<br />
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So, for whatever reason, Bice <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/275701181.html">bit</a> on the Burke-cribbed-some-language story, legitimizing the fake concern of the tut-tutting Republicans, happy to have anything other than Walker's failed, radical administration to talk about. While he blamed his first long article -- complete with quoted and highlighted passages of the above and other such innocuous passages -- on the Buzzfeed "reporting", <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/277065621.html">his second piece</a> a few days later went straight to the horse's, er, mouth, taking new "less egregious" passages straight from the Walker campaign. <br />
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While careful not to use the word "plagiarize", Bice's validation of the non-story gave rise to a flurry of overheated insincere fake "outrage" by the Usual Suspects in the Republican party, talk-radio (but I repeat myself) and, of course, the Journal Sentinel's in-house Walker shill, Christian Schneider, a life-long Republican staffer who knows first hand what a joke it is to make an issue of political language-borrowing. The elitist Schneider used <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/plagiarism-charge-could-stick-to-mary-burke-b99356900z1-276820171.html">his column</a> to call the drafting by Burke's consultants "a serious offense...demonstrat[ing] her bankruptcy of ideas and her reliance on media experts to build her plans. A Walker stooge complaining about another candidate's "bankruptcy of ideas" and "reliance on media experts"...now <i>that's</i> funny. Walker is the most inauthentic, unoriginal, consultant-dependent Dark Money sock-puppet in Wisconsin history.<br />
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But, the newspaper ran news articles about the "controversy" for five days straight (including Burke apparently failing to properly recite the dictionary definition of "plagiarism" to the reporter's <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/mary-burke-stumbles-when-asked-to-define-plagiarism-b99359088z1-277083671.html">satisfaction</a> -- she didn't do that bad; <i>you</i> try it.) The absurd running focus on the non-story by the newspaper led to all the predictable results -- a J-S editorial, Walker campaign ads, ludicrous calls for Burke to quit the race by state senators and the King Dweeb of the RNC, Reince Priebus, etc. <br />
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All of this happened not because there was any substance to it, but because Dan Bice decided to trot out what he knows is Walker campaign bullshit in the newspaper. Bice at least noticed me tweaking him on Facebook. <i>"Mike, do you really think this is not a story?"</i> he asked in a comment to one of my snark-posts. (Answer: <i>Of course it's not.</i>) In another, he has a fine glass of Journal Sentinel Whine: "I'm getting it from the right and the left. Time for a promotion." That's the last refuge of the J-S reporter or editor up against the wall. "Everyone complains, we must be doing something right." Except that the complaints on the right are mostly made up to smear the mainstream media when the facts don't go their way (which is always). We complain when the paper gets spun by liars and cheats and when they bend over backwards to be "fair" by trying to get an equal number of negative stories to both sides. But both sides are not equally responsible for poisoning the political dialog of the state and country with over-amplified lies. That would be the Republicans.<br />
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The paper has managed to go a couple of days now without mentioning the Story That Wasn't. And it must not have tested well for Walker -- even he and his talk-radio buddies seemed to have moved on, for now. Last week, it appears that the Walker campaign sent out directions to its pliant sycophants in the right-wing media to try to change the subject by again playing up the smear of straight-arrow DA John Chisholm by the obviously delusional and vindictive Michael Lutz. That smear was also prompted by a Bice story (originally "reported", natch, in a Dark Money "legal news" website) was only slightly mitigated by his <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/noquarter/source-who-accused-chisholm-of-vendetta-has-troubled-past-b99350187z1-274905441.html">after-the-fact reporting</a> of the many reasons not to believe Lutz about anything.<br />
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Chief Walker collaborator Charlie Sykes late last week actually had the lying Lutz, on his Walker infomercial program, spinning his ludicrous fantasy of a DA's office rife with blue-fisted rage. Then, the ever-helpful Christian Schneider -- <a href="http://plaistedwrites.blogspot.com/2014/06/christian-schneider-and-shame-of.html">The Shame of the Journal Sentinel</a> -- used his featured <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/the-active-ingredient-in-john-chisholms-investigation-of-scott-walker-b99357934z1-277276881.html">Sunday column</a> today to promote the same lies. Throughout his dreadfully-written piece, Schneider ignores the fact that the 7th Circuit this week confirmed that states have the right to enforce their non-coordination statutes, which Walker and his campaign clearly violated and continue to violate every day. The special prosecutor (long-since <i>not</i> John Chisholm) has the right to investigate and prosecute. Schneider uses a tortured "Fight Club" analogy, claiming that he knows that the "active ingredient" in the investigation to be a "personal vendetta" or some such nonsense. But he knows that the active ingredient in John Doe II is <i>The Truth, </i>from which he and Walker are constantly running.<br />
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We can expect much more of this facts-be-damned Burke-bashing and Walker-protecting in the coming weeks from the pliant right-wing media and the clueless Journal Sentinel. In the meantime, if anyone finds that crime piece from the Czarnezki campaign wants to borrow some or all of it, be my guest. You might want to check with Joe first.Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-43193353707823991072014-09-05T18:45:00.001-05:002014-09-05T18:45:14.807-05:00Strictly Speaking, PolitiFact's Pants are on Fire<div class="tr_bq">
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's version of PolitiFact (a franchise rented from the Tampa Bay Times) has been recklessly careening down the road for at least four years now. Full of self-appointed sanctimony, the PolitiFact editors and reporters presume to determine fact from fiction in political matters. But, instead of producing clarity and consensus on the Truth, the project has resulted in just more acrimony, finger-pointing and you-got-it-wrong confusion. </div>
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It has been a wildly inconsistent feature, randomly selecting items to evaluate, some of which need no evaluation. Who cares if Sen. Ron Johnson <a href="http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2013/aug/11/ron-johnson/average-college-degree-takes-six-years-us-sen-ron-/">claimed</a> college students "are taking six years to get a four-year degree." Did someone else claim this wasn't true? Who cares if blowhard right-wing darling Ald. Bob Donovan <a href="http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2014/aug/06/bob-donovan/bob-donovan-wants-to-go-where-no-alderman-has-gone/">said</a> an alderman has never defeated an incumbent mayor? It's not like he has any chance to do it, so who cares?<br />
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While exploring the uncontroversial on a regular basis, the PolitiFacters mostly ignore the biggest peddlers of fake controversy and political lies -- wing-nut talk radio hosts. According to the web page <a href="http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/personalities/">index</a>, it appears that, of all the local purveyors of radio propaganda that poisons the political dialog across the state, only WISN's resident racist/sexist Mark Belling has been the subject of an article, and that was about some comments about Russ Feingold's <a href="http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2010/sep/29/mark-belling/mark-belling-says-sen-russ-feingold-faked-his-tv-a/">garage</a> way back in 2010. Journal Communications own (for now) resident Republican mouthpiece Charlie Sykes escapes without the project reviewing any of the many lies he has told through the years. What is the point of have a clearinghouse for the disposition of political lies if you are not going to touch the trove of bullshit that is Milwaukee Talk Radio?<br />
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When not evaluating the <a href="http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2012/mar/02/john-axford/milwaukee-brewers-pitcher-john-axford-says-even-ba/">trivial</a> and the mundane and ignoring the obvious, PolitiFact sometimes dips its toe into what passes for the Big Issues of Our Time, with extremely mixed results. The national PolitiFact project famously and foolishly <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2011/dec/20/lie-year-democrats-claims-republicans-voted-end-me/">declared</a> Democrats' claims that Paul Ryan's stated plan to privatize health care for the elderly would "end Medicare" -- which, of course, it would -- "False" because, I suppose, whatever inferior program that resulted would still be called Medicare. They even called it (get this) the Lie of the Year in 2011. Nothing like getting something wrong and then making it that much wronger.<br />
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In Wisconsin, the PolitiFact project has served at times to legitimize and validate the excesses of the radical Republicans in Madison. During their assault on state and local government, teachers and the very soul of progressive Wisconsin governance that began in 2011, the PolitiFact reporters and editors have always been there to lend a hand to put out the fire when someone pointed out the obvious result of the GOP jihad's many excesses. For instance, when the Democratic Governors Association pointed out in 2011 that Walker and the Republicans' assault on the right to vote in the form of a photo ID requirement would "deny Democrats the right to vote", they got the ooo-so-scary "<a href="http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/sep/25/democratic-governors-association/democrats-group-says-wisconsin-gov-scott-walker-de/">Pants On Fire</a>" rating. Never mind that the law would actually prevent some Democrats from voting and that that is the very intent of such laws across the nation. "Tut-tut", says the Lords of PolitiFact. "Democrats still get to vote". Well, sure. <i>Some</i> of them.<br />
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But you don't want to be too hard on PolitiFact. The project does have some of the best reporters still remaining at the soon-to-be foreign-owned (believe me -- I lived in Cincinnati for a year) "media content provider". And they have slapped many "Pants On Fire"s and "False"s on Walker and company. But one of the problems inherent in these kinds of mainstream media things is they think they have to be so damned even-handed. So they find the off statement by some out-of-power Democrat and treat it like its just as bad as the lies of the in-power, gerrymandered GOP steamroller.<br />
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As <a href="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/lies-damned-lies-and-elections/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0">Paul Krugman</a> has said, even though one party (the Republicans) lies more and benefits from an alternate fact universe of lies on Fox News and talk radio, the straight press will not point that out. Ominously dreading the 2012 political cycle (and, boy, was he right) Krugman wrote:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"And all indications are that the press won’t know what to do — or, worse, that they will know what to do, which is act as stenographers and refuse to tell readers and listeners when candidates lie. Because to do otherwise when the parties aren’t equally at fault — and they won’t be — would be “biased”. <b>This will be true even of those news organizations specifically charged with fact-checking. Yes, they’ll call out some lies — but they’ll also claim that some perfectly reasonable statements are lies, in order to keep their precious balance.</b>"</i></blockquote>
To a large extent, the reaction to any given PolitiFact piece is driven my whose ox is being gored -- or, since PolitiFact's reputation is too weak and disrespected to matter much to anyone, whose ox has to swat mildly annoying flies. Other than campaign operatives that might (might) brag about a "True" "ruling" (no kidding -- that's what they call it) or a "False" for the opponent, nobody spends more than two seconds pondering the implications of any PolitiFact conclusion. The arbitrary sliding scale of "mostly" this or "half" that lets political worms like Scott Walker wiggle off the hook, giving way too benefit to those it is mandatory to doubt. Far from being the Last Word about anything, PolitiFact is just another ball bouncing around the political court, kicked from here to there, mostly to the curb of indifference. <br />
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But for all its banality, PolitiFact, whether they get it right or wrong, at least usually sticks to the actual wording of the statements they are evaluating. That was not the case on this past Sunday, when reporter Tom Kertscher slapped a "<a href="http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2014/aug/31/wisconsin-state-afl-cio/scott-walker-gave-10000-tax-break-millionaires-afl/">Mostly False</a>" tag on the state AFL-CIO's Entirely True statement that Walker and the other radicals in Madison had given "a $10,000 tax deduction to millionaires who send their kids to exclusive private schools" in the 2013-15 budget. <br />
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Boy, I can do this one just sitting here...yep, the GOP enacted the up-to-$10,000 tax deduction to the parents of a kid in any private school...no income limit to take the deduction...millionaires with kids in any private school who had been just fine paying the full freight since the incorporation the the Village of Fox Point now get $10,000 off their taxable income... That was easy. <b>True!</b> Hey, maybe there should be a new board game -- the home version of PolitiFact. Anyone can play.<br />
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But, hold on there, silly naive simple-statement-reading amateur. When it comes time to break down his analysis, Kertscher has a whole different statement on his mind. "So, did Walker carve out a $10,000 private-school tax break <i><b>strictly</b></i> to benefit millionaires?" [Emphasis added.]<br />
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OK, that's not what the AFL-CIO said or meant. It said millionaires got the tax break. By inserting the word "strictly" into the statement, Kertscher completely changed the meaning of the statement and, of course, what is now <i>Kertscher's statement</i> was "Mostly False". Hell, it's "Pants On Fire".<br />
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So outraged was I by this uncharacteristic journalistic malpractice (PolitiFact's sins are of story selection and interpretation, not of usually of fact-twisting) that I lurched off the couch of my nearly 2-year hiatus from this blog; deciding not only to write but to do some reporting myself. For the first time since I began posting on this thing in 2006, I actually checked with someone I was going to be writing about. I emailed Tom, who nicely responded and handed it off to editor Greg Borowski, as is their policy.<br />
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For the sake of accuracy, I'll include Borowski's entire response:<br />
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<blockquote>
<i>Hi Mike:<br />Thanks for the heads up -- a courtesy, it seems, most don't apply before they write about us.<br />You asked about our "PolitiFact article ... about the AFL-CIO statement that Walker’s tax break for private school tuition benefits millionaires." However, I don't think your characterization of the union's claim -- that the tax break merely benefits millionaires along with, presumably, others -- is accurate.<br />Here is the statement we evaluated: "Scott Walker has given a $10,000 tax deduction to millionaires who send their kids to exclusive private schools."<br />The flier goes on to question why that money was not used instead for "the children who are being educated in public schools. Working families are still waiting for an answer." So, there is no mention that the tax break goes to everyone. Instead, it is framed around the idea that working class folks are the ones missing out.<br />With no additional information (and in the context of a flier that sends the overall message that Walker is favoring the wealthy at the expense of the working class), how else is the average voter to understand the claim, but that the tax break went strictly to millionaires?<br />Beyond that, I would simply offer that we rated this statement consistent with the nearly 800 others we have rated since we began four years ago.<br /><br />Best regards,<br />Greg</i></blockquote>
So Borowski and/or Kertscher decided on their own what the AFL-CIO meant, ignoring the clear context presented by the union -- that whatever portion of this ridiculous handout is going to the millionaires takes away from working class kids in public schools. I asked in a reply email whether the reporter asked the union if that's what they meant.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Did you ask them if they meant to even imply "strictly"? Did they deny it? You give Walker flacks all kinds of chances to weasel out of their often-false implications. Not here apparently. The worst case is if you asked, they denied and you ran it this way, without telling us they denied. You wouldn't do that, would you?</i></blockquote>
Borowski did not answer and ignored the question in a reply. Cue the violins: "Going forward, I guess we should rate everything True because, well, the speaker and their supporters think it is." Yeah, sure, that's really what we are talking about, Greg. To quote you: Come on. The fact is what they said and what they meant <i>was</i> True. And your redrafting it in your own Walker-protecting image was Pant On Fire shit journalism.<br />
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You hope that the PolitiFact reporter and editor involved here were not affected by the Journal Sentinel's decades-long campaign against public schools. After over 25 years of the failed voucher "schools" experiment -- where more kids have been harmed from being warehoused crap "choice" "schools", some started by rich vultures like Mark Neumann and Bill Bennett, than in any working-as-hard-as-they-can MPS school -- the Journal Sentinel continues its campaign to undermine public schools in Wisconsin. And that campaign has always bled into the news coverage, which has largely ignored the horrors of poor parents being taken advantage of by charlatans posing as educators.<br />
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Maybe this twisting and reinvention of the facts to support even more state money to private schools is part of it. All I know is, for whatever reason, PolitiFact Jumped the Shark with its "Mostly False" rating of a statement the union never made. <br />
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We rule this -- Pants On Fire. At least.Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-17398441048453810532014-06-24T14:28:00.001-05:002014-06-24T14:28:28.014-05:00Christian Schneider and the Shame of the Journal SentinelAmericans for Prosperity -- a Dark Money front funded by the pollution-and-power-addicted Koch Brothers of Kansas and New York -- are active in Wisconsin again, not that they ever left. Hours after a <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/mupoll22-b99274537z1-260140211.html">sweat-inducing poll</a> a month ago showing that the race for Wisconsin governor is currently tied, the Walker campaign (no doubt) coordinated with AFP -- which is neither a group nor are the check-writers involved concerned in the least for anyone's "prosperity" but the Koch's -- to <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/260760231.html">drop $866,000</a> in Wisconsin media markets on slick advertising with people and/or actors pretending to be pleased by the havoc wreaked on the state by Scott Walker and the radical Republicans in Madison in the past four years.<br />
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"$866,000, six months before the election," you think. "Boy, that's a lot." But, in the post-Citizens United era of limitless Republican money and the post-<a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/federal-judge-halts-john-doe-probe-into-walker-recall-b99264341z1-258209431.html">Randa-approved</a> (for now) coordination of resources and strategy between the Dark Money entities and Walker's 24/7/365 campaign, you ain't seen nothing yet. $866K is what they call <i>chuckle money</i> in the depressing bowels and ivory towers of the right-wing hierarchy and the state capitol. If anyone complains about that kind of spending, they <i>chuckle</i>. Haha, as the kids text. If you think that kind of coordinated spending to promote the effort to fool Wisconsin into electing Walker again the least bit interesting, just wait. You ain't seen nothing yet.<br />
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Yes, the well-coordinated Dark Money of the Kochs, the Bradley Foundation and other of the self-serving rich will flow again to Wisconsin for the rest of this year because wealthy billionaires and corporate interests want to keep Scott Walker ensconced in its previously proud governor's office to serve and do their bidding. And, for the purpose of the campaign, they are willing to do his. But the obscene spending by the silver-spooned elites to promote their selfish, destructive agenda is not the worst of the poison that pervades the current political environment in state in general and the southeast Wisconsin in particular. <br />
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No, the worst element warping the state to the right is our very own Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In its news pages and especially on its opinion pages, the biggest newspaper in the state has completely abdicated its responsibility to be an honest arbiter of political discussion. Hiding behind a veneer of reasonableness by taking some weak-kneed progressive stances on issues that will never progress -- their constant harping on redistricting reform is hilarious, none more so than to GOP leaders in the Capitol, who laugh out loud every time they read another one -- the newspaper has been lurching rightward in its news coverage and -- especially -- the opinion pages for years. By promoting the disaster that is school "choice", encouraging the decimation of local control and the Milwaukee County Board and otherwise standing on the sidelines while the radical Republicans run amok in Madison, the once-proud (at least the Journal half of it) paper is now just a willing and useful tool for the hard-right Walker regime.<br />
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Following in the footsteps of its parent company -- which runs wing-nut poison through its radio stations not only here but elsewhere in the country and promoting and funding the Right Wisconsin propaganda and Sykes-vanity website -- those running the newspaper also seem to think their future is in right wing advocacy and nonsense. In the years since the Journal and Sentinel merged publication in 1995, the increasingly right-wing editorial board of the newspaper has jettisoned its few liberal voices like Joel McNally and Eugene Kane to the dustbin of forgotten columnists and not bothered to replace them with anyone with a consistently progressive perspective, much less anti-Walker or pro-Barrett (now Burke) sentiments. <br />
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Instead, in their place are white-hot right-wing Walker-coordinated extremists like Patrick McIlheran and, now, Christian Schneider. As chief clown in the right-wing parade for much of the '00s, McIlheran had free reign at the paper to make up any old nonsense he wanted. Of course, that was until the anti-government zealot left the paper to begin his career as a federal employee, working PR and putting words in the mouth of Sen. Ron Johnson, the biggest buffoon in a Wisconsin Senate seat since Bobby Kasten. From their elitist perch in Washington, RoJo and McIlheran have gone on to make beautiful music together, to the amusement of all.<br />
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It was around the time of McIlerhan's flight to federal pay, benefits and pension that the paper started running talking-pointed Republican press releases under the name of "Christian Schneider" on its opinion pages. Schneider -- who, according to his LinkedIn page has never worked in journalism and whose only political experience is as a flunky in the state Capitol as a staffer for various Republicans -- was working for a Dark Money entity, the Bradley-funded "think" tank WPRI at the time his columns first started appearing in the paper. His columns then had a disclosure at the end that Schneider worked for WPRI, which the paper laughingly referred to as "a non-partisan organization". They did the same with Mike Nichols, who now runs the same right-wing organization. Under David Haynes, the opinion pages have been just in love with WPRI, even to the extent of covering up its true nature.<br />
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And now, Schneider is an official columnist with the paper. Part time, supposedly, and not being paid by WPRI anymore. Supposedly. Getting paid by other right-wing moneybags? Probably. I mean, they all get paid -- that's why they spout this unoriginal tripe that they are too smart to believe. I have the inclination but not the time to research what else Schneider is up to. But here's something interesting that pops up on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/schneiderchristian">his LinkIn page</a>: He offered a recommendation to someone who worked at the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Alabama_Policy_Institute">Alabama Policy Institute</a> "as a fellow think tank employee" in March 2013. As you can see from the link, API appears to be a fairly typical GOP Dark Money conduit. I don't know if he is still working there or if he was officially an employee of the paper when he was. I also don't know if Journal Communications still has an outside employment policy -- that appears to have been trashed a long time ago by Charlie Sykes double-dipping at WPRI and god-knows-where-else.<br />
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From the beginning until now, Schneider has consistently toed the Republican/Walker party line of the moment, when he wasn't writing it and developing it himself. Schneider columns have always a dreary consistency -- he starts with something off topic that he thinks is amusing before diving into the talking-pointed tripe. Engaging recently on FaceBook with J-S associate editorial page editor Ernst-Ulrich Franzen, trying to smoke him out as to why Schneider was so prominently featured at the paper (and it's like pulling teeth to get <i>anybody</i> at the Journal Sentinel to talk about what the hell they are doing over there), he called him a "distinctive conservative voice". What a laugh. Schneider is about as distinctive from Charlie Sykes or any of the other Walker-coordinated voices in the free right-wing media as Rush Limbaugh is from Sean Hannity. <br />
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So, fine. Marty Kaiser and David Haynes want to have a Republican voice above the fold on the opinion page every Sunday and other times of the week, without a counter-balanced progressive voice. Whatever. Those are their pages and their journalistic ethics on the line. You would hope, as the biggest newspaper in the state, that they would want to play it a little more straight, be a more responsible corporate citizen and not turn the paper into the Wall Street Journal, at least until Australian Rupert Mudoch, David Koch or some other people buy them out and they can dive in without apologies. Their choice; our loss as an informed electorate.<br />
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But, as the 2014 election for governor gets into full swing. Schneider's "work" at the newspaper has taken an ugly turn. He has dropped all pretense of being a casual conservative observer and dived headlong into a full-time campaigner for Scott Walker. Of all the various forces, groups and voices the Walker handlers are coordinating with, Schneider is the most widely read, influential and obedient. All of his columns are of a sickening piece, but, in the last month, four stand out as straight-from-the-campaign dictation.<br />
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On May 24th, Schneider boldly declared that Mary Burke is <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/mary-burke-the-candidate-who-isnt-there-b99274854z1-260487441.html">"the Candidate who isn't there"</a>. It is a straight-up hit job on Burke, who, the Walkerites know all too well, is still relatively unknown to Wisconsin voters. The Walker cronies on talk radio have been working hard since her name first got mentioned as a possible candidate to define her negatively before she gets a chance to define herself, and Schneider is more than willing to help, with a deliberately misleading and disingenuous review of her positions and ideology. The piece runs above the fold on the front page of the Sunday opinion page -- not down the gutter on the back page where his column usually (but not lately) resides. <br />
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Exactly one week later, Schneider again is allowed a prominently-displayed hit piece on Mary Burke -- and this time, it's personal. Accusing her of taking a <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/mary-burkes-cheap-shot-b99279737z1-261288231.html">"cheap shot"</a> at voter-suppression-obsessed Republicans, Schneider just can't get over his fake outrage about anyone who would take a political shot at someone during a discussion of crime in Milwaukee. This, from a member of the same right-wing media cabal that had been taking pot shots at Mayor Barrett and Chief Flynn for weeks, taking it as an opportunity to promote the overheated rantings of David Clarke (who, by the way, NOT a Democrat). Before or since all of this double-barreled very personal attacks on Mary Burke, not one columnist or editor has come to her defense.<br />
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And then there is last week. After an <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118145/scott-walkers-toxic-racial-politics">excellent piece</a> about racist talk radio in Milwaukee and its (no doubt) coordinated effect on Walker's election and prospects in the New Republic on Monday morning June 16th, the entire right-wing media -- starting with the morning talk-radio puppets -- lept into action to defend themselves, but mostly Walker. As if on cue (because he was), Schneider and his editors rushed a column onto the web site, attacking the writer (of course) and expressing shock -- shock! -- that anyone would accuse Our Governor of being a racist! But Schneider misses the point, on purpose. Republicans have always used their useful stooges on talk radio to say the racist things -- code-worded and otherwise -- so the politicians themselves don't have to. But the Walker-as-victim meme was part of the plan so, there he went.<br />
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On Thursday, June 19th, of course, the John Doe documents were released (the Walker stooges were instructed to call it a "document dump") and all hell broke loose in WalkerWorld and Christian Schneider was more than willing to join the fight against the forces of Truth. Within hours of the release, Schneider was up with an article, trumpeting all the talking-points we heard from Walker and the other fellow travelers for the next week (still). After seeing this, I again challenged Franzen as to why the newspaper runs such obvious rapid-response Walker campaign columns by Schneider whenever he (and the campaign) wants.<br />
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I related what followed on FaceBook after I called out Franzen and his newspaper. This is my post on June 22nd. Franzen has not responded or complained that I got anything wrong:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Christian Schneider hits the hat trick for Walker in the Journal Sentinel. Thursday: five minutes (seems like) after the "criminal scheme" documents are released, JSOnline zooms Schneider's rapid-response tripe onto its web page. Ernst-Ulrich Franzen promises in a comment to me here that the (no doubt) Walker-coordinated defensive piece would not run in the newspaper itself. Friday: Most of Schneider's "featured blog" crap is quoted in bold type on the edit page of the print version. Saturday: Franzen sends a comment that, ooops, the Walker-as-Schneider press release will run as a column in the paper. Sunday: There it is, in all its smarmy glory. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
You wonder what kind of conversations and lobbying went on in the editorial board to get the piece in the paper. You wonder what kind of deal the Kings of State Street have cut with Schneider and/or Walker and/or WPRI or whatever other Dark Money entity that allows Schneider to run, every week, pro-Walker and anti-Burke screed on a whim. You wonder why the paper has not bothered to try to get someone to consistently present the other side (other than their own very occasional editorials). You wonder how far the Journal Sentinel has fallen and how far it has yet to go into the abyss of right-wing advocacy.</blockquote>
It really is sad to see the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel slide into this kind of right-wing hole, all for the sake of a power-mad governor. It is not worth the loss of credibility, prestige and community respect they have suffered in recent years. But, as I said, it's their choice. And our loss.<br />
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<br />Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-61951891110801257672014-06-21T17:59:00.001-05:002014-06-21T17:59:46.611-05:00All or Nothing for Scott WalkerScott Walker's Achilles heel may be his star-struck need to be loved and noticed by national Republican heavyweights. <br />
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During the furor caused by the radical governor's decimation of Wisconsin government in the dark winter and spring of 2011, Walker was comically recorded giving warm platonic phone sex to a brilliant prankster pretending to be democracy-killer David Koch. Walker, usually a publicly dreary on-message robot, became an effusive chatterbox with fake-Koch, even accepting an invitation to one of fake-Koch's imaginary Xanadu mansions in California after the smoke had cleared on Wisconsin democracy. <br />
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Walker apparently did the same thing in August of that year in a revealing and potentially incriminating email to the real Karl Rove. Earlier this year, when emails were released from the Kelly Rindfleisch investigation from the time Walker was pretending to be Milwaukee County Executive, Walker's contributions were short and terse. It was as if he could barely be bothered with his puny office drones and the details of the campaign that was being run out of his office in the Courthouse, much less (and I mean <i>much</i> less) his duties as county exec. <br />
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But in the email to Rove (the details of which are only hinted at in the too-brief excerpt quoted in the documents released this week), Walker is as giddy as a school-boy, bragging to the putrid Rove about how nicely everybody with dark money in the state was coordinating with his and other official campaign committees; "a team that is wildly successful in Wisconsin".<br />
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There is more, of course -- much more. Just the fact that RJ Johnson was (and still is) wearing (at least) two hats -- one with the campaign and the other as a conduit for the Koch brothers and other dark money as the main check-writer for the Club for Growth (which is a sham "organization"; neither a "club" nor are they much interested in anyone's "growth") is an outrageous F-you to anyone's previously universal understanding of the need for at least pretending that the "outside groups" (which are neither "outside" nor "groups" -- just different names and PO boxes laundering the same dark money) are not coordinating with the official campaigns.<br />
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[What would be even more interesting is the complete list of who the campaign was coordinating with in the free media. Any complete list would have to include the wingnut talk radio circuit -- run in Milwaukee by Clear Channel and Journal Communication Inc. -- which seems to exist, especially in a panicked time like this, as a 24/7 Walker defense and promotion operation. Every day, WISN and WTMJ provide hours upon hours of free advertising for Walker, always in sync with the campaign's message-or-the-day. And Walker sometimes spends much of his day gabbing on the phone with his friends Jay, Vicki, Mark, Charlie and Jeff. Also on the list would have to be the most prominently distributed Walker shill in the universe, Christian Schneider, a long-time Republican operative who, for reasons known only to the Journal Sentinel's clueless editorial board, has <i>carte blanche</i> to print Walker campaign talking points whenever he (and Walker) wants in the biggest (and most disappointing) newspaper in the state. But I digress.]<br />
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In his filing, the John Doe prosecutor laid out a very persuasive case for what the campaign coordination statute means, how it has been historically interpreted and why he has to investigate further. But Walker and his handlers obviously took off on a radical path to completely ignore Wisconsin campaign law. They didn't bother to rewrite it -- they just flaunted the law. With the radical Republicans running amok in Madison, they certainly could have changed the law; or they could have gone to court for a declaratory judgement that the state's law was unconstitutional. Instead, they just went ahead and coordinated and plotted and schemed in a manner nobody had dared to do, <i>ever</i>.<br />
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Walker's bevy of lawyers may have had some legal advice in their back pocket, in case they got caught (which they now have been). But they didn't bother to tell anyone about it. They developed their schemes in secret, hiding in broad daylight as the state was flooded with campaign-coordinated dark money. The fact that they were coordinating messages and strategy was fairly obvious -- especially in retrospect -- but if you asked them back then, of course they would have denied it. <br />
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In fact, if Walker ever exits the cocoon of Fox News and talk radio where he has lived since Thursday and talks to a legitimate news reporter again, someone should ask him about the details of what exactly he was doing back then that he is now so proud of, now that the case is "over", as Walker falsely declared to his friendly interviewers in his desperate last couple of days.. "Was your campaign coordinating with the outside groups, governor? When did it start?", etc. I'll bet he doesn't answer the question -- he'd be crazy to do so. <br />
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The reason is because Walker and his lawyers know very well that the case is far from "over". The lawyers for the dark money operators managed to convince one friendly federal judge and one state judge of their novel theory that the part of the state statutes prohibiting coordination between campaigns and outside groups, as written and as always interpreted, was unconstitutional. But it is by no means guaranteed that the conclusion that dark money groups and campaigns can coordinate with dark money all they want as long as the dark money ads don't say "vote for Walker" will stand in the Courts of Appeals or even the post-Citizens United Supreme Court. <br />
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It is not Federalist Society activist Judge Rudy Randa who is going to have the last word on this -- it will be Justice Anthony Kennedy. As an excellent New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/21/opinion/gov-scott-walkers-campaign-violations.html?_r=0">editorial</a> noted this morning: "Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy promised in 2010 that there was nothing to fear from independent spending groups that raised unlimited dollars. Because they could not coordinate with political candidates, he wrote in the Citizens United decision, they 'do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.'" Having written that, how could Kennedy now follow the right-wing of the Court off the cliff by saying that anything goes for anyone with a checkbook and a candidate in their pocket? Hopefully, the bright line of campaign coordination with dark money is one the Fifth Justice will not cross.<br />
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Scott Walker better hope he does. And the panic of Walker and everyone around him in the last few days makes clear he knows it. There is no middle ground for Walker. There are only two ways this turns out. It may be, sadly, that Walker and the forces of Dark Money will win, eliminating all hope for democracy in the United States and Walker can be Governor For Life. The only other alternative? Scott Walker is going to jail. <br />
<br />Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-55981992070547985012012-11-08T23:59:00.000-06:002012-11-08T23:59:42.093-06:00An Even More Historic VictoryBarack Obama's election in 2008 was an obviously enormous event -- the first election of a person of color as president in the nation's history. His message of Hope and Change after the 8-year nightmare of the worst president in U.S. history, Junior Bush -- whose damage to the country was starkly but only partly evident at the very end in the near-collapse of the financial system -- resonated with an exhausted public. With an over-the-hill and over-his-head opponent in John McCain -- shown to be even worse by his irresponsible selection of the ridiculous Sarah Palin as his VP and his knee-jerk reaction to the financial crisis -- the stars aligned, destiny called and Obama answered.<br />
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But, as historic as 2008 was, Obama's stunning landslide reelection on Tuesday was even more so. Never before has a sitting president -- or any candidate -- been subject to the kind of personal and political abuse channeled through more radical-right media outlets for four whole years. No candidate has been bombarded with literally unlimited spending by selfish billionaires and dirty industries, all intended to fool people into voting against their interests. Never has the mainstream media been more complicit in validating, excusing and distributing Republican lies. Not since Jim Crow laws in the South has there been such a systematic attack on the voting rights of American citizens by highly-organized Republican legislatures, designed only to suppress the votes of traditionally Democratic constituencies. <br />
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Bill Clinton managed to survive the first draft of the new-age Politics of Personal Destruction, supported every hour of every day by right-wing talk radio, then in its relative infancy. The journalistic fraud known as Fox News did not exist until after Clinton's reelection in 1996, just in time for Newt Gingrich's House to make a historical fool of themselves with the partisan impeachment fiasco. The new right-wing media found its footing playing defense during the dark Junior Bush years, with the added dynamic of pretend "independent" expenditures rearing their ugly heads, with phony front "groups" like the Swiftboaters carrying the Bush campaign's dirty water to save his ass from losing to American hero John Kerry in 2004.<br />
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But the radical right wing really had it all together and smooth, setting themselves up to (they thought) trounce Obama out on his offensively-drawn (by racist nut-right cartoonist <a href="http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/mrz102812dAPR20121028074516.jpg">Michael Ramirez</a> -- a regular in the post-Doonesbury Journal Sentinel -- and others) big ears in 2012. There was no doubt about this one. Obama's supposed European socialist "regime" would be rejected in a landslide, and the entire structure of Fox News and talk radio was designed to affect just that result, with a script drafted by Karl Rove and the Republican National Committee. Especially after the Fox-hyped FreedomWorks-funded astroturf tea party took credit for swinging the House Republican in 2010, the biggest anti-Democrat machine in history was ready to roll right over Barack Obama.<br />
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Consider the elements of the unprecedented Republican advantage:<br />
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<b>Fox News: </b>Never before has an entire television network -- laughingly declaring itself a "news" network in the first place, and "fair and balanced" to boot -- been committed to the defeat of one man and the promotion of one political party. For five years (the smearing of Obama began the day he announced his candidacy in 2007), the president was mocked, dehumanized, marginalized and criticized -- on both opinion and "news" programs (believe it or not, Fox <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2009/10/13/foxs-news-programs-echo-its-opinion-shows-smear/155660">insists</a> there's a difference). The pro-GOP/anti-Obama campaign really picked up steam after the hapless Mitt Romney made it through the hilarious Republican primary process. Fox propped up Romney and nitpicked Obama every day in every way. For all the rich pigs who tried to buy this election through supposedly "independent" SuperPACs, the swinish billionaire who had the biggest role trying to destroy Barack Obama was a foreigner: Australian Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News.<br />
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<b>Talk Radio:</b> The nation's free airwaves were filled for five years with all sorts of lies and smears of Obama, from the loudest national voices to the tinniest local pipsqueaks. In Milwaukee, former respectable corporate citizen Journal Communications Inc. turned over most of its non-sports daytime programming on WTMJ to heavily subsidized Republican mouthpieces like Charlie Sykes and Jeff Wagner, who gladly read GOP talking-points day after day after day. (The company also runs nut-right local radio talkers in at least seven other "markets" across the country). Across town, mega-station behemoth Clear Channel runs out no less than three local right-wing talkers everyday on WISN, including veteran sexist and racist Mark Belling, to promote anti-Obama GOP tripe. The balance of their day is devoted to three national Republican spokesmen, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Mark Levine. There has never been anything like the kind of poison spewed into the political environment by the 24/7 talk radio industry.<br />
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<b>SuperPACs:</b> Fox News and talk radio are essentially free messaging for the GOP. But, after the <i>Citizens United</i> decision by the right-wing of the US Supreme Court, the rich and their polluting corporations were also free to buy the commercials between the free programming. Over the past four years, the anonymous rich spent billions trying to defeat the president through all sorts of ads lying about the president's record and intentions. Again, no presidential candidate has ever had to endure this kind of onslaught, even if the Dems were able to at least get close to parity on the airwaves in the weeks leading up to the election.<br />
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<b>Voter Suppression:</b> Republican legislatures and governors in various states have been on a tear the last two years, enacting Photo ID and other <a href="http://www.lawyerscommittee.org/page?id=0042">voter suppression laws</a> that have been designed only to prevent vast numbers of poor and minority voters from being able to cast a ballot. Some of the laws, such as in Wisconsin, are held up for now by courts that have bravely upheld the Constitution's right to vote, unencumbered by unnecessary red tape. But others are in place and are having just the effect for which they were intended -- although brave souls stood in long early-voting lines and went to court in Florida to stand up for their rights over the brutally anti-democratic machinations of Gov. Rick Scott.<br />
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<b>Local Newspapers: </b>The creeping demise of the local newspaper industry continues to facilitate the deterioration of the national discourse. Some papers have ceased physical publication altogether, while most that continue to publish dead-tree editions are shadows of their former selves. Locally, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel brags about Pulitzers won on mostly irrelevant topics while having its news, editorial board and opinion pages hijacked by a right-wing Republican think tank (The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute). The paper played Romney's selection of radical right-wing congressman Paul Ryan as some kind of home-boy-does-good story, ignoring the damage his ascension would cause to the country. In the last week of the campaign, the paper that endorsed the radical Scott Walker for governor -- twice -- announced that they would not make an endorsement in the presidential race. They most likely did so because, in a series of candidates-and-the-issues columns, they mostly favored Obama's policies; but, being the right-wing shills they now are, would have surely endorsed Romney; and they could not stomach even their own hypocrisy if that happened.<br />
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And so the fates and stars aligned against Barack Obama like no other presidential candidate before. Nobody had ever faced that kind of fierce, committed, coordinated, supposedly overwhelming opposition. His victory this week is all the more incredible for that -- a truly historic event. <br />
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But, although he ran a great, well-funded campaign, the credit does not all go to Obama and his excellent team. The credit really goes to the American people, who somehow saw through all the bullshit and did the right thing. As a liberal and a progressive, it was easy for me. But for many, it wasn't. And they made the difference. President Obama made history by winning reelection against unprecedented opposition. But it is those of us who voted for him who really made history, rejecting the campaign of Fear and Division, and voting again for Real Hope and Real Change. Again.Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-64299985707976750602012-11-05T10:25:00.000-06:002012-11-05T10:25:35.141-06:00Fox "News" and The Big Lie of BenghaziEver since the day he was elected in 2008, the Republicans and their various pliant, script-reading sycophants in the right-wing media have promoted an unprecedented stream of falsehoods and phony premises to try to prevent the reelection Barack Obama that, it appears, might occur on Tuesday. <br />
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For four years, they have set up straw men, lied, smeared, belittled, dehumanized and delegitimized the president -- or at least tried to. Although they managed to chip away slightly at Obama's well-earned stature and accomplishments in the face of the Historic Mess Junior Bush irresponsibly left for him to clean up, the frustrated Grand Boobahs of the Right will find themselves in the same place they did in 1996 after trying to pull the same shit on Bill Clinton -- on the outside, looking in to a White House controlled by Democrats for another four years, who will protect the country from their Evil Designs by fighting against their agenda and for their own every step of the way.<br />
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The Republicans have an increasingly sophisticated method to get even their most putrid, offensive anti-Obama messages into the mainstream of political discourse while maintaining what they think is a plausible deniability. For instance, no self-respecting member of the GOP establishment would get within 100 yards of a drooling birther ranting in the public square or Fox News about Obama's birth certificate. And yet, you can bet the Dark Hand of Karl Rove or some other oily operative could be found, if only someone would look, slipping 10s and 20s into the dirty mitts of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orly_Taitz">Orly Taitz</a> to fund her demonstrably frivolous lawsuits. Mitt Romney doesn't have to skip around the country calling President Obama a European socialist -- he's got hoards of talk radio stooges who do it for him every day. <br />
<br />
And Mitt Romney doesn't have to spend any time trying to make the tragedy in Benghazi on 9/11/12 into some kind of political liability for the president. He's got a fake news network that is more than willing to do it for him, 24 hours a day, for two months.<br />
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In the third debate, Romeny took the advice of his advisers to, well, not debate. He rolled over and agreed with the president on numerous foreign policy issues, from Iraq to Afghanistan. Moderator Bob Schieffer set it up the Benghazi "issue" on a tee for him the first question of the debate -- and Romney passed, ignoring the question and rambling about "rejecting this kind of extremism" and other such blather. Jaws dropped across the country as the astro-turfers in the tea party did spit takes in disgust because the guy they reluctantly hired to finish off Obama refused to take the bait.<br />
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But Romney knew what he was doing. He didn't "go after" the president on Benghazi not for the right reason -- because there was nothing to "go after" him about -- but for the wrong reason: because he knew his surrogates on Fox News, talk radio and the other well-paid right-wing mouthpieces were going to do his dirty work for him. He didn't say anything because he didn't have to.<br />
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And Fox News did not disappoint. It's one thing for the Fox "opinion" show hosts like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity to dutifully read their Rovian talking points like the obedient servants they are. But, last I heard Fox was insistent that its "news" shows -- hosted by fake "journalists" like Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly and the like -- are to be taken seriously as "fair and balanced" news. Serious viewers laughed that one off years ago (Kelly, who I watch at noon almost every day, leads every show with "new questions" that have arisen about some Obama action or other, real and imagined). "Fox" is to "News" as "military" is to "music". One has nothing to do with the other.<br />
<br />
But the entire network -- especially the fake news shows -- have gone way beyond what they have done in the past to support the Republican cause. Literally every show on the network has led with some kind of feigned "outrage" about the Benghazi tragedy every day for the past two months, throwing out code words like "cover-up" and "Watergate" like they were candy from a Mardi Gras float. It has not been <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/01/fox-news-benghazi-obama_n_2059933.html?utm_hp_ref=media">a running news story</a>; it has been a <i>campaign</i>, uninterrupted even for Hurricane Sandy. When Fox talking heads were not breathlessly bleating Benghazi hysteria, they were bloviating about how the mainstream media was not following their lead, thereby engaging in an enormous pro-Obama cover-up of their own. The network's fake news programs have promoted phony memes in the past, but, in terms of feigned passion and commitment to the "story" over all platforms, this is a new level of alternate-fact-universe creation, even for Fox.<br />
<br />
This is especially the case since there is no <i>there</i> there. In recent days, real news reports have emerged, describing in detail the events of the Benghazi tragedy, including timelines provided by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/world/africa/benghazi-attack-raises-doubts-about-us-abilities-in-region.html?ref=world">the military</a>, the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-rushed-to-save-diplomats-as-libya-attack-was-underway/2012/11/01/c93a4f96-246d-11e2-ac85-e669876c6a24_story.html">CIA</a> and the <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&ved=0CC0QFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthehill.com%2Fblogs%2Fglobal-affairs%2Fterrorism%2F265089-white-house-shoots-down-rumors-it-nixed-benghazi-intervention&ei=1cCXUMv9DMmU2AW07ICAAw&usg=AFQjCNHysdWAIi4i7-0JLf8xYb7w5YLikg">White House</a>. None of it leads any credence and in fact puts the lie to the various fictitious versions of the events developed by <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/26/cia-operators-were-denied-request-for-help-during-benghazi-attack-sources-say/">Fox</a> and its always-undisclosed "sources". Saddest of all was the exploitation of (and by) the father of one of the murdered CIA agents, Tyrone Woods, who pitifully did the talk-radio/Fox News circuit in the past weeks, complaining about insincere and limp-handshake condolences offered by Obama and Secretary of State Clinton at a private meeting (nobody who knows Obama or Clinton would believe such a farcical version of their ability to express sympathy) and asking for "answers" about what happened to his son. When the Fox host would helpfully offer him a chance to take a direct hit at the president, Charlie Woods said, oh no no no, he didn't want to politicize his grief. Yet, that was just what he was doing.<br />
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And Fox News hasn't stopped. Yesterday on his Sunday show, Chris Wallace -- about as close as Fox News gets to a real journalist, which means "not close" -- started with interview with Obama campaign chief David Axelrod by grilling him on Benghazi for five minutes. It continues today -- whenever the idiots on Fox and Friends took a break from their phony Romney optimism, they would lurch into some kind of Benghazi rant or other.<br />
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The naked politicization of national tragedy has been the GOP's stock-in-trade since before 9/11/01, which Junior Bush and Cheney used to drive the Stupid War in Iraq, the Patriot Act, and all manner of insane power-grabbing by that despicable regime. The same people are driving this last desperate attempt by the Romney campaign to turn around their doomed prospects. It's way past time to resign these bastards to the dustbin of history where they belong.<br />
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<br />Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-73695959856956559202012-11-03T20:45:00.002-05:002012-11-03T20:45:50.040-05:00Biden Rocks; America WinsYou know, it's not like I haven't tried to get this thing going again. For instance, here is a piece of an abandoned post back in September:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"You say I got no feelings<br />This is a good way to deal with it."<br /> -- "Lipstick Vogue", Elvis Costello </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I had this big plan to get back in the saddle and ride this thing </i>[the blog, that is]<i> in the run-up to the November elections. I was going to the Elvis Costello show at the lakefront last Saturday </i>[Sept 15th] <i>anyway and thought I would work out some of the writing kinks from this blog's summer-long dormancy (but what a summer it was...) by doing a review of one of my all-time favorite artists in Milwaukee in a brand-new venue on a spectacular late-summer night.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhep-77UiPvgrO61r1_xSh1WfhTdeuBaTPYtXVafIq6ZLebt8w-_YH5EGS0SDefmRAHUIpv4C2Kvl5aILeih-3xjBzo6czFSDuxsKuI6V4VwVll12jQN2gP1CEAuH3gwm_P58GS/s1600/IMG_0887.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhep-77UiPvgrO61r1_xSh1WfhTdeuBaTPYtXVafIq6ZLebt8w-_YH5EGS0SDefmRAHUIpv4C2Kvl5aILeih-3xjBzo6czFSDuxsKuI6V4VwVll12jQN2gP1CEAuH3gwm_P58GS/s200/IMG_0887.JPG" width="152" /></a><i>But then, the unexpected happened. Elvis Costello and the Imposters came out and laid an egg. He mailed it in. Rushed and indifferent, it was as if he couldn't get off the stage and out of town fast enough. Indeed, an off night with Costello -- like Springsteen, with his non-E Street Band on Election Night 1992, but not as bad -- is better than anyone else at their best, but, still. This is the guy, after all, who played Milwaukee with only keyboardist extraordinaire Steve Nieve 10 or so years ago and came out for four encores, including a brilliant acepella off-the-mic version of <a href="http://youtu.be/wQccA9guwoE">"Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4" </a>that is still reverberating off the walls of the Riverside. That was an engaged, dynamic evening of some of the best songs ever written. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>This one had some of the same songs, but none of the magic. It's as if he looked out at the half-empty seats of the instant white-elephant BMO Harris Pavilion (hard to tell what non-Summerfest acts they thought they could fill </i>that<i> with on a regular basis) and decided to, I don't know, do those things that rock stars do when they've landed in the wrong place at the wrong time. It seemed like the bus was already warmed up and ready to go as the show started, running through 4 of his best known songs in the first 10 minutes...</i></blockquote>
By the time I wrote this, I was leading up to the fact that President Obama filled the venue exactly one week later. So I guess there might be some use for that place after all...<br />
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See? Aren't you sorry you missed all this great writing?<br />
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I do somewhat regret not putting my (literally) two cents in this year on important post-recall issues like, for instance, the Republican presidential primaries. Sometimes I think that particular conglomeration of losers existed only for my personal entertainment; whether it was Michelle Bachmann peculiar form of alien channeling, Rick Santorum's whiny hysterics, Newt Gingrich's snootily, elitist, why-are-you-so-stupid assuredness, etc. It was an occasionally amusing clown show, unless you considered how close one of them was to being the nominee of a major party.<br />
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Alas, we are not there, but here: 3 days before Election Day, with a rich, pampered elitist in <a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/07/07/are_mormon_underwear_magic_salpart/">magic underpants</a>, Mitt Romney, trying to fool the American people into electing him. And, just yesterday, I found myself in Beloit, helping the Obama campaign manage the press section gathered to hear Vice President Joe Biden at a middle school there. An overflow crowd was treated to a great speech by Biden, who is one of the president's best assets.<br />
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Obama is blessed (if there is such a thing) with the valuable support of at least three extraordinarily talented veterans of a political generation almost -- but not quite -- past. Each finding their niche, all have provided invaluable support for his steady governance, and, yes, his campaign. His biggest star and the best hire by far is Hillary Clinton as the Secretary of State. She has expertly helped him transition our nation away from the belligerence of the internationally-destructive Junior Bush era towards a more positive, productive foreign policy. She has dealt with crisis with a steady hand, kicked ass where she had to, and put us on an even keel with a forgiving world.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguQ8u4qtLd81JXU4bKDt27TJEPlfO2zNTXxE4aYMMJaBF55NpwiBFlSyzI8TlDTaoEA-UEtiQPwKURNAUc_pgHMkL_2B3AOyo7huQlIj3w4T17VukpMT6qzR8VMIDyuMsp9AjT/s1600/IMG_0727.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguQ8u4qtLd81JXU4bKDt27TJEPlfO2zNTXxE4aYMMJaBF55NpwiBFlSyzI8TlDTaoEA-UEtiQPwKURNAUc_pgHMkL_2B3AOyo7huQlIj3w4T17VukpMT6qzR8VMIDyuMsp9AjT/s200/IMG_0727.JPG" width="150" /></a></div>
Another veteran of the same kind of slash-and-burn politics that have been used against him every day of his presidency is, of course, Bill Clinton. The former president, already settling into his role as the best ex-president <i>ever</i> (his humanitarian efforts in Haiti and the Clinton Global Initiative, to name just a couple, while the still-embarrassing Junior Bush gives closed seminars to the rich about how to send their money offshore to the <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/265559-clinton-barnstorms-for-barack-george-w-bush-barnstorms-for-bucks-at-cayman-island-tax-dodge-soiree">Cayman Islands</a>), has become Obama's best campaign surrogate. His incredibly effective Democratic convention speech wasn't a surprise to anyone who saw him here in Milwaukee in the closing days of the ill-fated Walker recall election (see that picture over there). Speaking without notes that day, Clinton did an incredible riff on the need for politicians to work together to solve problems, rather than the kind of drop-the-bomb strong-arm tactics of the Walker Republicans. At the convention and since, Clinton has been the most effective spokesperson for the saner political world that will never occur with the current GOP. But, if they ever come to their senses, we'll be there.<br />
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But Joe Biden may, in the long run, be more integral to the success of the Obama presidency than anyone else. He has been in the room during every significant decision, from health care to Osama, adding heft and a wealth of Washington experience to the mix. In his debate with Wisconsin's favorite twerp Paul Ryan, he proved himself to be a strong and no-bullshit advocate for America in general and the Obama administration in particular. Unsafe, out of the talk-radio/Fox News cocoon, the clueless Ryan looked like he wanted to crawl back into the dark hole from whence he came. And Biden put him there.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb16AmwhJ5M59PZn7PNMmEx3ffyE54ktV7-ht_QT_d3UjSfCWu9uZSmh12dofLp_bOAH_iUBs0wleTnqgMGBt89z0yqfwEtHjgJUpdsyHVpDUiVc5j0RL_rDdl5U8ASoKQ2wWF/s1600/IMG_0924.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb16AmwhJ5M59PZn7PNMmEx3ffyE54ktV7-ht_QT_d3UjSfCWu9uZSmh12dofLp_bOAH_iUBs0wleTnqgMGBt89z0yqfwEtHjgJUpdsyHVpDUiVc5j0RL_rDdl5U8ASoKQ2wWF/s200/IMG_0924.JPG" width="147" /></a>In Beloit, Biden gave the best political speech I've ever seen in person -- as effective as Clinton, but not as subtle. Focusing on Milwaukee Mayor and recall hero Tom Barrett standing in the front row (who yelled at me for letting the blog go dormant; ergo, my fairly urgent effort to get something out today), Biden frequently started his points with "Tom, you know when governments work together..." and the like. There were lots of jokes and anecdotes about his mother saying "Joey" this and "Joey" that (OK, maybe that was a bit much). At his best, he took apart the Romney/Ryan lies about Jeeps in China and other ridiculous fantasies of the Far Right with humor, effectiveness and truth.<br />
<br />
Dare I say -- it looks good as I hit the "publish" button on Saturday night. States like Ohio and Wisconsin are going to come through and send Romney back to his career, making millions raping and pillaging the vulnerable businesses he pretends to care about. Hopefully, Obama and Biden will bring along a continued Democratic Senate and, if we are very lucky and if lightening strikes and we win the lottery, throw the House Republicans out on their sorry ears. As Bill Maher said on his show last night, "If it's Obama, America wins. If it's Romney, comedy wins." As much as I like to laugh, I'll take a victory for America any time.Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-20530682048214680182012-06-13T12:54:00.000-05:002012-06-13T12:54:40.694-05:00The Recall That Wasn't -- Part 1There isn't a whole lot funny about the way the Recall campaign turned out, but one thing is the hilarious attempt by Scott Walker to strike a bipartisan, can't-we-all-get-along pose. Mr. Drop-the Bomb, Mr. Divide-and-Conquer, Mr. Bipartisanship-Is-Not-So-Good now wants you to believe he can pull people together to work for the good of the state. The radical Republican party that once put out arrest warrants for its opponents somehow managed to get most of the multi-abused Democrats to show up at the governor's mansion on Tuesday to sip suds and chew brats. Hey, no hard feelings, right?<br />
<br />
Wrong, assholes. Walker and the Republicans remind me of the worst that prosecutors want to imagine about my domestic violence clients: Historically abusive man [GOP] goes too far one night [dropping "bombs"; ignoring open meeting laws; moving votes in the middle of the night, etc.]. This compels his usually overly-patient partner [Democrats] to call the cops and have him arrested [recalled]. Man is released within hours and lawyers-up with the best representation money can buy [Michael Best, et al]. Although ordered to have no contact, a war of words escalates, with the man's family and friends loudly taking his side [talk radio, Fox "News", secretly-funded attack ads]. The character of the abused partner is disparaged (crazy bitch!) [crazy, dirty hippie protester; union thug] and clueless friends of the perp decide it's no big deal and wish it all away [Journal Sentinel]. <br />
<br />
But the DA thinks they have a case and proceed to trial [recall petitions produce recall elections]. On the day of trial, the victim fails to show up to avenge her injury [57% turn-out]. Relieved man, knowing he dodged a bullet, buys her flowers and takes her out to a nice dinner [beer, brats and bullshit], pronouncing how he's a Changed Man and That will never happen again. Until it does, and worse [starting in January, if the Senate flips back].<br />
<br />
Let's begin our postmortem of the recall efforts by proclaiming what nobody in what passes for a mainstream media in this state will admit: the flipping of the Senate to the Democrats, however brief, through two hard-fought recall cycles last year and this, is <i>huge</i>. The Democratic majority in the Senate for the remainder of this year will prevent any more bad shit that the radical Republicans had planned if they won all the recall races last week. You just know, if that had happened, they would have called a special session, like, yesterday to jam more ALEC/Koch/Bradley-generated crap through their obedient caucuses. As it is, the petty, power-clutching Republicans won't even allow the Senate to convene to organize under the new leadership the Dems won last Tuesday. In this poisonous, tyrannical environment, nothing coming out of the national-joke Wisconsin legislature for the remainder of this year is a very good thing. As much as the increasingly right-wing Journal Sentinel likes to berate the recall process as "a waste of time and money", the Senate recalls have resulted (for now) in the end of unchecked Republican power in Madison. Taking the Senate back through the recall process was not "a waste of time"; it was a monumental, historic and very useful accomplishment.<br />
<br />
As for the Recall Walker effort, there are a lot of reasons it met with such disastrous results. Most of them, sad to say, lie right at the feet of the recall organizers and the Wisconsin Democratic Party. <br />
<br />
There is only one question that should have been asked as the one-year anniversary of Walker's sad ascendance approached -- are we <i>sure</i> we are going to win this thing? If the answer from the goddamn consultants (more about them later) was "we don't know" or anything less than a resounding YES, they had no business starting the process of circulating the petitions. I'm guessing there was quite a conflict between the Wise Men in the DNC offices and the enraged cheeseheads here. The national party showed from the beginning that they had no stomach for this fight; not because they won't fight, but because they could see this result coming, and probably advised the locals to skip it. <br />
<br />
Perhaps spurred more by passion than reason (albeit very valid emotions and many very good reasons), the Wisconsinites surged ahead anyway. It may well be that they had some polling way back then indicating high Walker negatives and a possible win. But they should have been able to see the <i>Citizens United </i>fueled, talk-radio enabled, Journal Sentinel encouraged shitstorm coming. And, if they didn't have a plan and a candidate that they knew would meet every challenge presented by a win-at-all-costs governor with no morals or scruples and access to more money than god, the state party leadership should have spiked it and focus on taking back the Senate -- which they accomplished anyway, almost as an afterthought and despite themselves. That might not have stopped an independent movement to recall the most radical, destructive governor in Wisconsin history, but some damage to the party brand might have been avoided.<br />
<br />
OK, so maybe the leadership figured they could not just leave all those people who took to the streets in Madison last year and the millions across the state that have felt the sting of the radical Republican agenda hanging. Perhaps they felt they needed to follow through on the spontaneous outcry from February 2011 to try to recall Walker, win or lose. Fine. Once in, though, the recall leaders and the party proved sadly inept. <br />
<br />
There was an inkling of much they had their heads up their ass early. I have been told by people who know these sorts of things that the party leadership went "on bended knee" to try to convince their preferred candidate to run against Walker. Yes, it was a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin. No, it wasn't Russ Feingold. Apparently, everyone's first choice to take back the governor's chair was...Herb Kohl. Now, I love me some Herb Kohl. He has represented progressive Wisconsin effectively for 24 years in Washington and is a sweetheart of a guy. But, politically, he's done. At 77, Kohl is hardly the vigorous candidate we would need to go against the Walker machine. If he wanted to do us all a favor, Kohl would have just run again for his senate seats and spare the indignity of Wisconsin being represented by both rodeo clown Ron Johnson and, possibly and ominously, Eric Hovde. <br />
<br />
The find-a-candidate miscalculations didn't stop there. I was told back in December by one of the prime movers of the recall movement that the candidate would be -- no doubt about it -- Kathleen Falk. I also like and respect what I know about Falk. In fact, her campaign set up phone calls with various political bloggers back in January or so, and I had a very interesting conversation with her. It turned out we had a lot in common as far as law schools, public-interest lawyering, etc. Her fire-in-the-belly and enthusiasm for the mission to oust Walker was palpable and she turned out to be a much better candidate than I expected. <br />
<br />
After that conversation with Falk, I held off on putting up a post titled "Tom Barrett for Governor" long before he got into the race. At the time I was writing that post in my head (where so many posts go to die), the Falk campaign had just come out with its declaration that, if she won, she would veto any budget bill that did not have the re-institution of collective bargaining rights for public employees in it. It was foolish for the unions to insist on that kind of promise and foolish for Falk to agree to it. The promise fed right into the right-wing lie that the recall effort was all about the unions (which it wasn't) and made her look like a puppet (which she wasn't). <br />
<br />
Eventually, Barrett jumped in and he and Falk actually waged a fairly positive campaign against each other while keeping the focus on the need to dump the radical Walker regime. In the primary, Barrett beat Falk soundly -- even in Dane County -- the former rivals joined forces, and it was left to Barrett face Walker and try to save the state. It was not to be, and I'm unaware of anyone claiming Falk would have done any better. If anyone is saying that, they're crazy.<br />
<br />
Barrett may have got thumped anyway and hindsight is 20/20, but there were many bad choices made by the goddamn consultants running the campaign after the primary that may have made a difference. <br />
<br />
More about that in Part 2.<br />
<br />Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-14737038606730804492012-06-04T07:54:00.000-05:002012-06-04T07:54:02.523-05:00Panic In The SuitesThere is panic in the suites of the Republican brain trust in suburban Washington DC that drives radical Republican governance throughout the nation. Tomorrow, all of their devious lies and machinations are about to be put to the test by the people of Wisconsin, one vote at a time. <br />
<br />
Although the forecast for Tuesday is for more beautiful late-spring Wisconsin weather, in the dark caverns of their twisted minds and souls, a storm of spontaneous Democracy has them battening-down the hatches and preparing for the worst. For them -- the filthy monied interests of pollution and profiteering -- the uncontrolled masses heading to the polls to consider turning their star flunky Scott Walker out of office is something they tried to stop. Failing that, since then they have tried to twist and manipulate the process by using their apparently unlimited resources to churn the issues into unrecognizable Walker-friendly mush. <br />
<br />
Using incredible amounts of money on fake "institutes" and media ads; the incredibly free, unlimited access to deliver their message-of-the-day on puppet talk radio; and the incredulous gullibility of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board to full effect, the powerful special interests that bought Scott Walker's services years ago have had their way with developing the "issues" and driving the debate throughout the recall process. And yet, their Boy Governor remains in a margin-of-error tie with Tom Barrett in the last <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/156930705.html">major poll</a> of the campaign. And the voters of Wisconsin will have the audacity tomorrow to take it all away from them.<br />
<br />
It's not like they didn't try to make it harder for the Average Joe and Josephine to do just that. One of the first things on the agenda for the radical Republicans once they took over all wings of the Capitol was to engage in that ultimate exercise in voter suppression -- requiring photo ID and other hoop-jumping at the polls. This is the standard anti-democracy tool in the Republican playbook throughout the country, vote-blocking Democratic constituencies like minorities, the poor and the elderly who might have the temerity to try to affect their conditions through the ballot box. Unfortunately for the GOP in Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Constitution protects the unfettered right to vote perhaps better than any state constitution in the country. At least until the issue gets up to the state Supreme Court -- currently controlled by a radical Republican majority -- the most vulnerable among us won't have to scramble to attain acceptable credentials to vote in the polling places they have frequented without hassles for years.<br />
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And it's not like they are not going to try some intimidating monkey business on election day. Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen is <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/156907635.html#%21page=2&pageSize=10&sort=newestfirst">sending out</a> assistant AGs and special agents of his Justice Department to Democratic strongholds on election day in a blatant attempt to intimidate voters. Along with hundreds of other "observers" from silk-stocking law firms like Michael Best and others, who knows what kind of tricks the Republicans have up their sleeves to make Election Day more complicated for certain voters than it should be. The Democrats will have their Election Protection Team in place throughout the state (alas, although I've enjoyed the privilege of serving on the Team in the last several election cycles, other duty calls in the Courthouse this week), and we should know by early Tuesday what the GOP has up its dirty sleeve. <br />
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The bottom line is we want everyone eligible to vote. They don't. We protect the vote. They try to suppress it. The participation of an informed and engaged electorate is the greatest threat to Republican rule -- especially the ruthless, uncompromising, divide-and-conquer variety practiced by Walker and his ilk in Madison.<br />
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As a trial lawyer, the most excruciating moments are when the trial is over, the closing arguments have been made and the jury goes into its protected space to deliberate. Second thoughts about strategy, evidence and arguments are inevitable and irrelevant as the jury conducts its deliberations in secret and on their own terms. Confidence about what it should do turns to fear of what it might. A client's fate out of our hands and in those of 12 honest-and-true jurors. So it is for the Republicans who, for the first time since Walker and the radical Republicans took the Capitol in 2011, will lose all control over what happens next. They justly fear the average Wisconsin citizen in the private space of a voting booth, his/her pen poised over the candidates names, connecting an arrow or filling in a circle, voting to take the state back. <br />
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In the end, it galls Walker's Republican overlords in Washington that they have to deal with the unwashed masses at all. That their power attains only in the consent of the governed drives them crazy. They never wanted this vote to happen and, despite their false confidence, they don't know how it's going to end. They don't welcome -- they fear the people's judgement. <br />
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Let's do everyone a favor and make their wildest nightmares come true. <br />
Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-64885995917667364772012-06-02T16:40:00.000-05:002012-06-02T16:40:10.026-05:00If We Knew Then What We Know NowA proposed script for a last-day, last-minute Barrett spot. All rights released to anyone who wants to use it.<br />
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------<br />
<br />
WHITE WORDS OVER BLACK SCREEN<br />
<br />
"If we knew then...<br />
<br />
"...what we know now..."<br />
<br />
-----<br />
<br />
FOOTAGE OF WALKER DURING 2010 CAMPAIGN SAYING HOW WE WANTS TO BRING THE STATE TOGETHER, BLAH BLAH BLAH<br />
<br />
FADE TO FOOTAGE OF WALKER AND HENDRICKS...<br />
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"We are going to divide and conquer."<br />
<br />
NEWS FOOTAGE ABOUT DETAILS OF "BUDGET REPAIR" BILL DECIMATING COLLECTIVE BARGAINING RIGHTS FOR PUBLIC EMPLOYEES<br />
<br />
FOOTAGE OF PEACEFUL PROTESTS IN MADISON<br />
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FOOTAGE OF WALKER ON A PHONE; Soundtrack of Walker talking to fake-Koch brother...<br />
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"Drop the bomb..."<br />
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MORE FOOTAGE OF THOUSANDS IN THE STREETS IN PEACEFUL PROTEST<br />
<br />
FOOTAGE OF "CONFERENCE COMMITTEE" "MEETING", WITH REP. BARCA OBJECTING<br />
<br />
FOOTAGE OF THE PEACEFUL OCCUPATION OF THE CAPITOL<br />
<br />
FOOTAGE OF WALKER TESTIFYING IN WASHINGTON...<br />
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"Sometimes bipartisanship is not so good."<br />
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NEWS FOOTAGE ABOUT PROSSER ATTACK ON JUSTICE BRADLEY DURING DISCUSSION OF ACT 10<br />
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NEWS FOOTAGE OF SUPREME COURT UPHOLDING ACT 10<br />
<br />
----<br />
<br />
SUDDEN BLACK SCREEN. SILENCE<br />
<br />
----<br />
<br />
NEWS FOOTAGE OF DEMS TAKING TWO SENATE SEATS IN SPRING 2011 RECALLS<br />
<br />
NEWS FOOTAGE OF SEN. SCHULTZ STOPPING BAD MINING BILL DUE TO NARROWED MARGIN IN SENATE<br />
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NEWS FOOTAGE OF PEOPLE SMILING WHILE DELIVERING BOXES OF PETITIONS FOR WALKER'S RECALL TO THE GAB<br />
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NEWS FOOTAGE OF WALKER AIDES CHARGED WITH FELONIES<br />
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DEBATE FOOTAGE OF BARRETT STATING THAT WALKER IS ONLY INTERESTED IN DIVIDING AND CONQUERING...AND HE WILL BRING THE STATE TOGETHER<br />
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FOOTAGE OF PRES. CLINTON SAYING THAT COOPERATION WORKS IN MOVING ECONOMIES FORWARD...SLAMMING WALKER FOR DIVIDE AND CONQUER...<br />
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FOOTAGE OF CLINTON SAYING HE WAS AGAINST THE RECALL IN CALIFORNIA, BUT THIS ONE IS NECESSARY<br />
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BARRETT TO CAMERA, SUMMING UP IN A PLEA TO BRING OUR STATE BACK TOGETHER.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
END<br />
<br />
<br />Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-74936904220770459882012-05-12T11:47:00.000-05:002012-05-12T11:47:55.626-05:00Walker's Blue DressFor all the robotic message discipline he displays whenever his handlers allow him to be exposed to outside air, Scott Walker is actually a fairly chatty guy. <br />
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Put him in front of news cameras at a press conference or a public event, and his bland, stilted recitation of the talking points driven into his head can put you to sleep. But, get him in a room or on the phone with the billionaires he was bought and elected to serve, and he spouts jargon like an excited young pup who can't wait to show them how well he can be a Good Boy, panting and anxious to execute the Grand Plan of his masters.<br />
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Democrats have always been at a strategic disadvantage because they tend to do their planning and thinking in open forums, from the bottom-up, with many people and interests in the room, hammering out consensus solutions to government and/or political problems. On the rare occasion they might try to maintain a little control with Wise Men in a smaller group, they leak like a sieve.<br />
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Republican office-holders in the Gingrich/Junior Bush era, on the other hand, take their direction from an Unseen Hand in a nondescript headquarters in Northern Virginia or some place like that, where Karl Rove or a reasonable putrid facsimile issues edicts on strategy and talking points to elected puppets like Walker and lock-step messengers on talk radio, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. You are never able to see the bugs and vermin under the GOP rock, as they scheme and plot to fool voters into electing stooges that are willing to enact the bad legislation that allows their corporate bankrollers to continue to pollute, rape and otherwise exploit the unregulated weaknesses of American capitalism. One of the enormous frustrations with the radical Republican jihad in Wisconsin is that, other than ALEC, you can't tell exactly where they are getting all these bad ideas and who is writing the script. You just know its not from anyone in Wisconsin.<br />
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While the Unseen Hand is never exposed, it can't always control the weak politicians who are hired to carry its water. So it is with Scott Walker, who has been caught at least twice now with his guard down and his pants around his ankles at the service of the Grand Plan. Last year, as a result of a brilliant piece of guerrilla journalism, he was caught telling the truth to someone he thought was one of his principal owners, fake philanthropist and real polluter David Koch, talking about how he was going to "drop the bomb" on the State of Wisconsin with his radical disembowelment of public employee unions. For all he knew at the time, the Koch impostor was just another of the many vested interests looking for a piece of the action -- Walker probably gave the same "feels like Reagan, thanks a million" spiel to a dozen of his wealthy benefactors calling in for the face or phone time with the governor they thought they bought with their enormous contributions to Walker's official campaign or, more significantly, to the off-the-books "groups" that are really the center of the post-<i>Citizens United</i> universe. <br />
<br />
Around the same time, Walker was tooling around Wisconsin, sucking up to more local bankrollers like Diane Hendricks. Once again, gone is the reserved, searching-for-the-notes-in-his-head dweeb who appears sparingly in public with a script and a weak smarmy smile on his face. The Real Walker is a chattering font of verve, excited to discuss his secret designs in what he thinks is the usual safe cocoon provided for him by the likes of Hendricks. <br />
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Apparently, though, neither he or Hendricks were bright enough to realize the implications of the camera sitting there, ten feet from their faces, as she greets him at the door. "Just so you know, nothing I do is going to see the light of day for over another year," film-maker and sudden hero Brad Lichtenstein says. "OK, that's fine," says the clueless Walker before he answers the overheated Hendricks' questions about making Wisconsin a "right-to-work" state by saying that the bomb he was about to drop on public employees was only a "first step", and that he expected to follow the lead of Indiana's Mitch Daniels, who eliminated public employee collective bargaining by fiat before signing a "right-to-work" bill soon thereafter. <br />
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As news of the video reached the secret bunker of the Republican Unseen Hand, you could almost hear the Hand slapping his forehead at the idiocy of Walker and Hendricks discussing such things in front of a camera they did not own. "We train and train and train these people..." he mutters into his scotch as he sends out damage-control talking points to Walker's handlers and the fellow travelers on talk radio.<br />
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There is no doubt that Walker and the Republicans were planning on following up the destruction of public employee unions with the "right-to-work" dagger to the heart of all unions. The bomb dropped on public employees had nothing to do with budget-balancing (the health care and pension contributions could have been imposed by simply taking those items out of those subject to bargaining, leaving the rest in place) and everything to do with destroying all unions and (more importantly) their political influence.<br />
<br />
But, when Walker and Hendricks engaged in their happy talk, they could not have imagined the shitstorm that the radical Republican attack on public employees caused -- not only with the employees, but will the majority of state residents. Given that, they could not now brag about how the private-employer unions are next, since they needed to use them as a wedge -- to "divide and conquer" the union movement, here and throughout the country. <br />
<br />
No matter what happens, it seems, you still have idiot, short-sighted local unions like the Milwaukee Police and Firefighters, who are willing to throw their union brothers and sisters under the bus for their own selfish ends. And like <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/in-film-walker-talks-of-divide-and-conquer-strategy-with-unions-8o57h6f-151049555.html">this clown</a> (towards the end of the story), Terry McGowan, the business manager of Operating Engineers Local 139, who, when faced with Walker's lies, "was troubled by the footage of Walker with Hendricks, but that he was continuing to take Walker at his word given his public statements and conversations he has had with him." At this point, any union or union member supporting Walker and not actively working to recall him are worse than scabs crossing a picket line.<br />
<br />
During the ludicrous effort of another group of radical Republicans to impeach Bill Clinton, there was some, er, material found on a blue dress that ended any question of what had happened in the White House between Clinton and an intern. The footage of Walker and Hendricks is Walker's blue dress, where the result of his on-his-knees behavior with those who would destroy labor unions and other institutions integral to American greatness cannot be denied. The only difference is that Clinton 'fessed up, and Walker continues to deny what the stain on his blue dress means.Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-59169894943954330242012-04-09T15:44:00.001-05:002012-04-09T20:46:19.473-05:00The Journal Sentinel Jumps the SharkAn out-of-state right-wing front group, funded by the usual suspects, pulled together a couple dozen lost, confused souls this past Saturday and conducted an <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/protesters-picket-journal-sentinel-q54tifs-146535945.html">informational picket</a> outside the moat surrounding the Journal Sentinel castle in downtown Milwaukee. "Don't believe the liberal media" was apparently the message sent over from the Koch Brothers, via the Media Research Center in Virginia, and you had to wonder what the hell all those people were doing at the headquarters of the biggest supporter of the FitzWalkerstan regime in the straight media. This is like contraception rights supporters protesting outside of Planned Parenthood. I mean, if you don't know who your friends are...<br />
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<br />
The phony staged and purchased "protest" comes just when the Kings of State Street are winding up to do the previously unthinkable -- to endorse Scott Walker for governor <i>again</i>. </div>
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<br />
The increasingly right-wing J-S editorial board, under the leadership of the unfortunate David Haynes, has been completely clueless ever since Walker and his obedient legislature "dropped the bomb" on public employees and proceeded to run roughshod over the legal rights, local control and voting rights of everyone else. When the Brave Wisconsin 14 made the brilliant move of leaving the state to deny the quorum that the GOP jihad needed to continue their destruction of state government, the Journal Sentinel's collective knee jerked and, with the rest of the right-wing media, it spent more than a month<a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/116434554.html"> screaming</a> for them to come back so that the Republicans could finish the job the Koch brothers bought them to do. And when the Republicans decided to just go ahead and ram the bill through without the required quorum or notice, well, the newspaper was just fine with that.</div>
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</div>
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<br />
But, although they still look down their nose and sneer at the historic efforts of the Brave Wisconsin 14 from time to time, that turned out to be a temporary annoyance to the denizens of FitzWalkerstan and the Journal Sentinel. There were and are bigger fish to fry in the recalls last year and this year, and the fact that the Wisconsin Constitution allows for mid-course corrections in the midst of radical action by an out-of-control majority acting at the behest of the rich drives the editors of the news sections and the editorial board at the only state-wide newspaper absolutely crazy. <br />
<br /></div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
Although the recall process last year has already resulted in a razor thin majority in the Senate (although alleged moderate Dale Schultz has voted for many more bad bills than he stood in the way of) and, now, an even split, leading to a Democratic flip of the Senate in June, moderation and bipartisanship is suddenly the last thing on the newspaper's agenda. "It's bad enough that recall fever has dragged Wisconsin into the muck of bitter and ugly political contests such as the kind we saw last summer," writes the brooding board in its most recent <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/tighten-up-rules-governing-reasons-for-recall-elections-ak4n6p6-144046476.html">anti-recall screed</a> on March 24th. <br />
<br />
<i>Who</i> dragged Wisconsin into the muck again? Talk about blaming the victims. Walker and the Republicans use their unexpected majorities to bring in a radical agenda from Washington think tanks to use Wisconsin as some kind of incubator for bad ideas; Wisconsinites of all stripes use a perfectly legitimate recall process to put the breaks on and <i>we're</i> the bad guys?<br />
</div>
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</div>
<div>
Even funnier was the line that we have to get out of this "muck" so we can concentrate on more important things like...wait for it...the Republican presidential primary! Sounds more like comic relief to me. What this state needs is more Santorum. Nothing makes me feel more right than watching someone so wrong talk on television. But I digress...</div>
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The March 24th editorial is full of the Journal Sentinel's usual snooty, dismissive attitude towards the recall movement. The main point of the editorial is to promote messing around with the state constitution, to push for a constitutional amendment (not just a "bill", as the editorial calls it) to restrict recalls to cases of "misconduct in office", whatever that means. Right now, according to the Kings of State Street, state officials can be recalled they "because someone doesn't like the look of their hair or the dog they own". Really -- they actually wrote something stupid like that. Technically true, except that no one could get a quarter-of-a-million signatures for something like that. Hell, Republicans couldn't even manage to get enough signatures to get recall elections against most of the eligible Brave Wisconsin 14 last year -- and <em>none</em> this year. </div>
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This kind of trivialization of the recall movement is typical of the newspaper's editorial stance. They are apparently just fine with the radical destruction of state government, as long as the party in power was duly elected. Hey, wasn't the Milwaukee County Board and the County Executive at the time duly elected when they voted for the county pension plan in 2002? The Journal Sentinel supported those recall efforts. What if the Republicans now in Madison got drunk on something other than power, snuck in the Capitol in the middle of the night and did the same thing? But internal inconsistency -- especially holding Democrats to higher standards than Republicans -- is what the newspaper does best.</div>
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All of that is what we have come to expect in Journal Sentinel editorials in the Age of Haynes. But the newspaper took a dramatic hard-right turn into the arms of the Bradley/Koch-supported alternative-reality media on Sunday by running a purported "history" of the recall clause on the front page of the opinion section, complete with a photo of Bob LaFollette and the decisive headline <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/not-what-they-meant-democracy-to-look-like-2n4r4t1-146491855.html">"Not what they meant democracy to look like"</a>. Written by long-time well-paid Republican hack Christian Schneider, under the aegis of a Bradly Foundation-funded GOP front-group, the Wisconsin Policy Research "Institute", the immensely inaccurate and misleading piece is presented by the Journal Sentinel -- without an opposing view -- as the definitive word on the intent of those who drafted and passed the recall clause in the 1920s. <br />
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Schneider is identified for the J-S readers as a "senior fellow [heh] at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute and author of 'The History of the Wisconsin Recall.'", which makes it sound like a book, but is only <a href="http://www.wpri.org/Reports/Volume25/Vol25No3/Vol25No3.html">a longer version</a> of the same article in a "WPRI Reports" blog post. WPRI also is not identified as the phony institute and conglomeration of Republican flacks that it is (all you need to know -- editor of its "magazine" and thereby WPRI's Minister of Propaganda: Charlie Sykes). At least when its regular wing-nut columnist Mike Nichols has his say every Sunday (there are no progressives with the same privilege, by the way), the paper tells its readers WPRI is a "nonpartisan conservative think tank". Which is also inaccurate, since WPRI is highly partisan, but it links Nichols at least slightly to the radical fringe currently poisoning the political environment in Wisconsin with false and inflamatory information. No such disclaimer for Schneider's piece.<br />
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How laughably wrong Schneider is about those who promoted the recall clause is obvious just from reading it. It is remarkably fact-free and those language he does quote come mostly from the recall clause's opponents. Prof. Ed Fallone bends Schneider over his knee and spanks him like he deserves in <a href="http://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2012/04/08/the-use-and-misuse-of-history/">this response</a> on his Marquette Faculty Blog. Before taking apart the "facts" of Schneider's piece and sending it to the Land of Broken Toys, Fallone accurately identifies the Orwellian tendencies of today's Right Wing Media establishment:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In his novel <em>1984</em>, George Orwell imagined a future world where a government at war could switch allegiances with the country’s enemies and allies and a docile public would accept the revised version of history unquestioningly. Orwell, a keen observer of the modern world, recognized that history itself could be manufactured and manipulated in the service of broader purposes.</blockquote>
But phony facts and false history is all the right-wing has as they scramble to escape the march of progress, diversity and truth. And the Jounal Sentinel has no business getting into bed with them by running crap like Schneider's piece, basically unattributed and without disclosure of the slanted -- no, upside-down -- perspective of a cheap, dishonest hack; one of those many on the right-wing payroll who are smart enough to know better, but have made a conscious decision to deliver a never-ending stream of lies in the service the Dark Side, for a price. The placement and promotion of Schneider's piece on Sunday is a new low for the Journal Sentinel, indicating they have not hit bottom yet.<br />
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</div>Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-55354043417657043652012-02-12T21:13:00.002-06:002012-02-13T13:29:47.299-06:00What They Heard In That RoomI think I have this thing figured out with the Republicans and their formerly-secret redistricting meetings in the Michael Best offices across the street from the Capitol in Madison.<br />
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It appears in June and July 2011, each Republican in the Assembly and the Senate was brought into a room at the law firm individually and shown a map of their newly-gerrymandered district. One of the leaders was there (in the case of the Assembly, <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/vos-says-redistricting-talking-points-were-prepared-for-him-bv44dk2-138968074.html">Rep. Robin Vos</a>), and probably other people from the law firm and staff involved in the put-the-fix-in-for-Republicans redistricting project. Vos was given<a href="http://media.jsonline.com/documents/talking_points_020712.pdf"> talking points</a>, drafted by an aide who, in a further outrage, now spends most of his time at the firm's offices <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/aide-tells-constituent-kedzie-didnt-sign-agreement--when-he-had-j344s15-139034309.html">instead of at the Capitol</a>. <br />
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The talking points were meant for Vos to run the meeting. The first part of the talking points is strictly ass-covering. Under the heading "General Map Goals", Vos pretended to embrace three of the legitimate, statutory goals of redistricting -- equal population, "properly drawn" minority districts and "compact and contiguous" districts. You could imagine the winking, smirking and laughter around the room as Vos recited the empty rhetoric so that, if asked, the legislators could all say they were told those were the goals. But, seriously, folks...<br />
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Then Vos proceeded to the meat of the meeting -- why the districts were<i> really</i> drawn the way they were. As far as that's concerned, the talking points are silent on the content of what was relayed, but completely clear about what to do with the information -- don't tell a soul and, by the way, sign this <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/lawmakers-were-made-to-pledge-secrecy-over-redistricting-9643ep0-138826854.html">secrecy agreement</a>, just to be sure. I can hear it now: "Your brains or your signature are going to be on that paper..." You'd hope that nobody ended up with a horse head in their bed -- this bunch of Republicans are so obedient anyway, probably not necessary.<br />
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[<strong><em>UPDATE:</em></strong> Or maybe some were coerced into submission. Check out this nugget from <a href="http://wptschedule.org/hereandnowupdate/?p=974">Zac Schultz</a> at Wisconsin Public Television:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em>According to one lawmaker who asked not to be named, the logic they were given was the maps and the documents would be protected by attorney-client privilege, and the secrecy pledges were needed to protect that. But this lawmaker told me he felt part of the pledge was intimidation, to keep the rank and file from complaining. <strong>He was even shown two versions of the map, one more favorable and one less favorable, and was told if he didn’t go along, the less favorable version would become law.</strong></em> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
h/t: <a href="http://www.bluecheddar.net/?p=18547">Blue Cheddar</a>]</blockquote>
<br />"Public comments on this map may be different than what you hear in this room," the talking points pronounce ominously. "Previously signed [secrecy] agreement applies to this meeting." Jesus Christ, what the hell were that talking about in there? What was so damn dirty about What They Heard In That Room that they had to move ahead of time to cover it up by pretending a meeting between legislators is entitled to the attorney-client privilege, just because it is taking place in a law office across the street? If their chief public legal apologist <a href="http://www.sharkandshepherd.blogspot.com/2012/02/few-words-on-redistricting.html">Rick Esenberg</a> is right about how much power they have to gerrymander and design their own future success through redistricting, given the sorry state of the federal and state Supreme Courts, what are they so afraid of? Sounds like a lot of guilty behavior for some awfully guilty people. <br />
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Imagine being soon-to-be ex-senator Van Wanggaard, carted into the room and being told that your friends in the leadership and law firm had eliminated all those icky minorities in the city of Racine and instead carved out <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/125350983.html">a special non-urban area</a> in western Racine and Kenosha counties just for you. (My favorite nugget from the Craig Gilbert piece: "The one section of the city of Racine that's kept in the Wanggaard district is the one where Wanggaard lives." Precious.) There you go -- from barely winning your "community of interest" Racine County district by 300-some votes in 2010 (and getting creamed in the forthcoming recall), you can come back in November and suckle yourself to all those creamy white breasts in those safe parts of two counties. You don't even have to apologize for you and your party being such a bunch of pussies you have to run from a fair fight. Of course you signed the secrecy agreement. Maybe they'll even let you hang out at the law firm until you "win" "your" seat back. <br />
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So many interesting stories from so many formerly-secret meetings. That sound you heard from the Capitol this week is 76 subpoenas hitting the doors of Republicans in the Assembly and Senate who are going to be asked all about this. The chance of any of them honoring all that "the truth and the whole truth" crap is slim-to-none, but it's worth a try. More interesting would be the discussions with the leadership and law firm about how to screw with the Democratic districts -- none of those legislators were invited to Michael Best for so much as a cup of coffee.<br />
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Speaking of Michael Best, the Republican law firm that has its mitts all over all three branches of the radical Republican jihad, James Rowen -- who writes<a href="http://thepoliticalenvironment.blogspot.com/"> the best chronicle</a> of the Walker Horrors on the net -- <a href="http://thepoliticalenvironment.blogspot.com/2012/02/wisconsin-lawyers-should-protest.html">wondered out loud</a> this week whether Wisconsin lawyers might want to sign a petition to protest the creative legal stunts of the firm. Well, as someone who represents people accused of sex offenses and homicide, I know that lawyers should not be known by the sins of their clients -- necessarily. On the other hand, isn't having your clients set up shop in the law firm in an attempt to avoid legal culpability (much less open records requests) how the mob does it?<br />
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No, Jim, no petitions. But there is one interesting way available for the Wisconsin community of lawyers to show their contempt for Michael Best giving us all a bad name. I got an blast e-mail from someone I know in Michael Best asking for the support of one of his partners who happens to be running for State Bar president in an election in April. Both houses of the legislature, the governor, the Supreme Court...now they want the State Bar, too? <br />
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The guy's name is <a href="http://www.wisbar.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Elections&Template=/CM/HTMLDisplay.cfm&ContentID=108192">Bill White</a> and his resume is fairly innocuous. For all I know, they may have him up in an office somewhere, doing real estate work or something far away from the political circus his firm is hosting on another floor. And, in 26 years in the Bar, I have never voted in a State Bar election due to complete lack of interest. <br />
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But, this time, I think I'm going to break that pattern and encourage others to do the same. White's competition for the largely figurehead position is <a href="http://www.wisbar.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Elections&Template=/CM/HTMLDisplay.cfm&ContentID=108195">Patrick J. Fielder</a>. Interestingly, he was Tommy Thompson's Secretary of Corrections before he was a Dane County Judge. He is now in another silk-stocking firm in Madison (there is a reason I don't vote in these things). But, what the heck. He's running against a guy in Michael Best, which is currently the prime legal mover-and-shaker in a state that is being moved and shook by a a bunch of out-of-control radicals.<br />
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Pat Fiedler for State Bar President!<br />
<br />Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-50736898532924057332012-02-08T13:21:00.001-06:002012-02-08T17:32:52.862-06:00A Recall -- Not a Re-DoWhen I first saw <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/a-recall-this-liberal-says-certainly-not-j4412bh-138686004.html">Richard Foster's column</a> in the Sunday paper, my liberal knee reflexively jerked. So, the Journal Sentinel was running a column supporting its anti-recall campaign from a proclaimed liberal who used to write editorials for them. What a surprise.<br />
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Usually, that's when I haul out my snarky anti-Journal Sentinel wisecracks; remind people that the paper endorsed Scott Walker for governor and has been covering for him ever since; pile on about how it's just like them to sneak behind supposed liberal skirts to hide the true Republican nature of their pro-Walker-by-default position; reminisce blissfully about the glory days of the Milwaukee Journal, when the newspaper took on issues great and small with grace and competitive writers, and <a href="http://www.doonesbury.com/strip">Doonesbury</a> ran in the Green Sheet and in color on Sunday...<br />
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All true -- but, not this time. I want to give the ideas in Foster's column the respect they deserve, because the piece is an excellent expression of a sentiment us recall supporters will have to find a way to address. I have a very dear friend who feels the same way. Sure, we have a million signatures on our petitions. But how do we reach the legitimate middle, who hates what Walker and the Republicans are doing and have done, but figure the whole thing is the product of a legitimate election in 2010 that we lost -- badly? The side that loses the election is stuck with the results until next time, aren't they? <br />
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This is not an easy one to answer, but it can be done. The answer lies in the radicalism of the Republicans in Madison; their drastic restructuring of state government; the seizure of control away from local governments; the dictatorial process used by ramming legislation through without a quorum, in the middle of the night, without regard to the rights of the minority (and, as we now know, with <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/lawmakers-were-made-to-pledge-secrecy-over-redistricting-9643ep0-138826854.html">signed secrecy pacts</a> to protect their illegal deliberations); Republicans taking their marching orders from right-wing think-tanks in Washington, rather than from their own Wisconsin hearts. And, yes, the deliberate destruction of the historic and positive collective bargaining relationship between public employees and their employers. <br />
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We can't assume that everyone "gets it", this need for recall that has been so obvious to the rest of us since Walker, in his words, "dropped the bomb" exactly one year ago. We have to make the case to those who should be with us -- to those who hate what the Republicans have done and are doing almost as much as we do but are not convinced a lost election allows a re-do. What I hope they come to understand is that the recall movement is not an attempt at a re-do. We need to convince some that the recalls are a legitimate response to the radical actions of legislators and a governor with an extreme agenda, the likes of which this state has never seen.<br />
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As much as I respect his overall concerns, Foster is off on at least one point. The standard for recall under the Wisconsin constitution isn't anywhere near the "high crimes and misdemeanors" required to remove a president under the U.S. Constitution, and it shouldn't be. Leaving aside for a moment that <a href="http://plaistedwrites.blogspot.com/2012/01/walker-haunted-by-ghost-of-frank-wills.html">we may well get there</a> with Walker, as the vultures circle the political operation he at least condoned in his county executive office, there are no such notorious prerequisites for recall under the Wisconsin Constitution. The only thing required is one-fourth of the number voting in the last election to sign petitions indicating they want one. Foster is right that recall should be "an extraordinarily rare and grave step". But he's wrong when he writes "You don't remove an officeholder before an election simply because you disagree with his or her official acts." Well, you can and you do. It depends on the "acts". Just ask Tom Ament.<br />
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In a way, Scott Walker is just the figurehead for a perfect storm that has led to disastrously bad governance. He wouldn't be in the political predicament he is now if both houses of the legislature hadn't also flipped from Democratic control to an obedient cadre of similarly bought and schooled radical Republicans who were willing to rubber-stamp his drafted-in-Washington agenda. Even with control of both houses of the legislature and the governor, the Republicans could have driven a moderately right-wing agenda without running roughshod over the loyal opposition like they were irrelevant gnats.<br />
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You'd expect them to do stupid things like concealed-carry, Photo ID, giving tax breaks to the rich, raising taxes on the poor, making it harder for regular people to sue the GOP's giant corporate constituents and try to make it easier for mining companies to dig 4-mile wide holes by weakening our historic environmental protections. I mean -- they're Republicans -- bad government is what they are paid to be there for. But it's quite another thing to ramrod the most radical versions of all of that, plus everything in the right-wing handbook, as if Wisconsin were some kind of Laboratory for Bad Nut-Right Ideas. Which is just how the right-wing Washington think-tanks thinks of us.<br />
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I was just thinking today when I was reading about the outrageous GOP secrecy agreements Republicans were required to sign to hide the true intentions of their hyper-political redistricting map -- <i>Who ARE these people??</i> More to the point, <i>who do they THINK they are</i>? Really -- trying to make a meeting of the legislature protected by attorney-client privilege? It's one thing to have control of the entire Capitol building -- it is quite another to swing that power like a bludgeon, without regard for or compromise with a large and legitimate minority in the legislature and an outraged majority in the rest of the state.<br />
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And then there is the end of local control on what have always been local issues. Walker could have just taken collective bargaining rights away from state employees outright -- he alluded to doing that between the election and his inauguration. But he did so much more than that. He took away local control from every local unit of government -- including school boards -- by dictating that they can no longer engage in meaningful collective bargaining with their employees (the remaining "right" to bargain wages only, up to the rate of inflation, is a joke) or allow their employees to have union dues deducted from their paychecks like the United Way, <a href="http://www.uppitywis.org/blogarticle/another-reason-act-10-unconstitutional-it-bans-voluntary-payment">even if they ask for it</a>. Threatening the cut-off of state funding if they don't comply, the Heavy Hand of the State now limits the ability of schools to run referendums even if, as a community, the voters want to fund their schools better. <br />
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This goes far beyond what he had to do to get the health insurance and pension contributions he dictated. All Walker and the Republicans had to do is pass a law saying that pension and health insurance contributions were no longer subjects of collective bargaining for public employees. There would have been a lot of noise, sure. But what they did instead is use the desired health and pension changes as an excuse to destroy organizations that have done nothing but promote labor peace within public employment sector for the past 50 years, and their mostly positive relationship with the school boards and public employers they bargained with. The only reason for this was to advance the national right-wing agenda to destroy public labor unions. The decimation of the public unions does nothing to solve any fiscal problem -- it is all about power and destroying a perceived enemy of the Republican agenda. Like so many of the actions of the radical Republicans in Madison, it had nothing to do with finances or good government and everything to do with a mad power grab.<br />
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As Wisconsin citizens, we don't have to put up with that kind of radical, unchecked governance for four years. The recall process gives us the option, if we can meet the heavy burden of gathering 540,000 some-odd signatures (better -- we doubled it), we have the right -- no, the responsibility -- to try to stop the bleeding. Some of what the Republicans are doing in Madison could have been predicted but so much of the worst stuff could not. The first recalls last year have already served to moderate the Republican onslaught by carving the Republican margin in the Senate to one vote and making the senators now facing recall to think twice before rubber-stamping the rest of the right-wing agenda (see the hesitance of the Senate to approve the Assembly's attack on the environment in the mining bill). In this year's recalls, the Senate will almost certainly flip -- and then the radical Republican revolution is <i>over</i>, whether Walker prevails or not.<br />
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This is the way it should work, I think. The Madison Republicans have definitely gone too far in too many areas, and now Walker, Kleefish and the 4 senators will have to face the public in a recall election they brought on themselves. Richard Foster and my good friend may continue to think that, as an electorate, we get what we deserve for what we let happen in 2010. Elections have consequences, sure; but so do radical actions taken after the election. I hope they and others come to believe that the extreme nature of the Republican agenda calls for an extreme remedy -- <i>RECALL</i>.<br />
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At least Foster admits that he's not going to go into the recall polling booth, hold his nose, and vote for Walker to survive, just on the general principle that there shouldn't be a recall in the first place. He says he'll probably vote to recall him, if it comes to that -- and I think my friend will do that too. We'll appreciate and count their votes. But we really need their support.<br />
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Hey, we might even be doing Walker a favor. If, with the ten of millions of dollars of out-of-state money he is going to be able to spend to lie his way out of this, he survives, the ridiculous Rebecca Kleefish almost certainly will not. Sure, he'll have to deal with a Democrat as lieutenant governor, but at least he'll be rid of that albatross around his neck. Maybe he'll even thank us later.<br />
<br />Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-39049756212014978822012-02-05T00:42:00.001-06:002012-02-05T00:42:43.376-06:00Excuses of the DoomedThe screeching voices of the radio right have been mostly silent about the alleged criminality in Scott Walker's County Executive office. Apparently, the defensive talking points have yet to be developed and the well-paid Republican mouthpieces on the radio just don't know what to do about it, as the dirty water circles down the drain of his soon-to-be short-lived governorship. <br />
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So they squawk about a few recall petitions that seem a bit off as if it proves massive fraud and partake in a few of their other usual and tired diversions. They don't seem to have any problem going after an African-American Milwaukee County supervisor allegedly accepting a small bribe in a simple sting operation and pretending that's the End of Times. But, when it comes to skilled prosecutors closing in on their favorite puppet-governor for putting active political fundraisers on the county payroll and in his office suite -- complete with a separate wireless router and other hardware to try to hide their activities -- well...crickets...<br />
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Into the vacuum steps Bradley Foundation beneficiary and blogger Rick Esenberg. Swinging his supposed academic credentials like they mean something to anyone (which is always and only, sadly, the Journal Sentinel), the once "visiting", now "adjunct" (read: part time) Marquette law professor has taken it upon himself to publish several think pieces on<a href="http://www.sharkandshepherd.blogspot.com/"> his blog</a> lately, presenting an extremely amateur, scattershot legal defense of the charged Walker political operatives and generally ruminating about the supposedly dubious need for criminalizing of political behavior in government buildings in the first place. <br />
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It goes without saying that, in a game of <a href="http://plaistedwrites.blogspot.com/2007/07/what-if-democrat-did-it-home-version.html">What If A Democrat Did It</a>, Esenberg and the other members of the scripted right-wing megaphone universe would be exposed as hypocritical frauds. A Democrat caught doing the same thing would already be in jail, at Esenberg's insistence. But, if it's one thing the well-funded right-wing Walker apologists are, it's <i>shameless</i>.<br />
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Esenberg first dipped his toe in the water of "analysis" of the criminal complaint against Kelly Rindfleisch on<a href="http://sharkandshepherd.blogspot.com/2012/01/john-doe-skirts-edges.html"> January 27th</a>, looking down his elitist nose at this whole notion of criminalizing any behavior that is can ever be attributed to a Republican. "I continue to dislike dealing with this type as a criminal matter," he snoots, even after admitting, yeah, well, fundraising, that's like a bright line. And, charged as four felonies, I mean, that's just too much for him. <br />
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After flirting with "what's the big deal" about this Big Deal, he moves on, without any proof whatsoever, to attack District Attorney John Chisholm for daring to bring the charges. "It [the law] leads to the threat of partisan use of the prosecutorial process...the timing - on the eve of a recall election..." he says of Chisholm, who is and always has been totally beyond reproach. Then, after that unfounded hit-and-run, he lurches into imaginary "they all do it" fantasy. "What would you find if you subjected the offices of Tom Barrett, Jim Doyle or Kathleen Falk to this kind of scrutiny?" Well, probably, you'd be pretty bored. And you certainly wouldn't find their staffers blatantly fundraising for favored candidates 25 feet from the boss's desk.<br />
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At this point, if I'm Esenberg, I realize I'm writing circular nonsense and I either hit delete and start over or at least quit while I'm behind. But, no. "There is still nothing that implicates the Governor in anything," he writes hopefully. Wrong. As we have <a href="http://plaistedwrites.blogspot.com/2012/01/walker-haunted-by-ghost-of-frank-wills.html">discussed</a>, the one e-mail in what is truly a fascinating <a href="http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/80193268">complaint</a> attributed to Walker, written to the head of his Courthouse operation while he was supposedly (heh) Director of Housing (if you asked Tim Russell a housing question, what are the chances he'd be able to answer it? Not much.), telling him to cool it (and, according to the complaint, many things cooled the same day) is all you need to know about who was in charge and who wanted things done <i>exactly the way they were doing it</i> -- until discovered, that is.<br />
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The first post ends with a whimper, not a bang, with rote speculation about the widespread use of the kind of separate campaign IT infrastructure that Russell installed in Walker's office suite in the Courthouse. "I wonder how many public officials use this or other tactics in an attempt to engage in communications that won't be subject to open records requests," he wonders. Well, how about "none"? This comment is interesting -- how does he know the secret infrastructure was "an attempt to engage in communications that won't be subject to open records"? Remember, Esenberg is a proud member of the Republican legal brain trust that brought us Act 10 and so many other wonderful products of the Walker regime, including various defenses to the Brave Wisconsin 14 leaving the state. Perhaps he was consulted ahead of time about how they could get away with fundraising on the taxpayer dime and gave them lousy advice. Again.<br />
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In his <a href="http://sharkandshepherd.blogspot.com/2012/01/more-john-doe.html">second kick</a> at the same cat in the next post, Esenberg elaborates on the "sure they did it, but who cares" meme. He first declares that whatever Rindfleisch and Wink (and Russell and probably Walker) did are technical violations of the law rather than "a threat to the republic". "The offense here is <i>malum prohibitum</i> (wrong because prohibited) rather than <i>malum in se</i> (intrinsically wrong)," he declares. Sez who? Besides throwing around Latin phrases (the last refuge of the legal writer trying to impress -- I haven't used Latin since I was an altar boy in second grade [pre-Vatican II] and certainly never in court, lest the laughter from judges and DAs drown out my argument), setting up a separate IT infrastructure to escape the discovery of your illegal fundraising while on the County dime -- especially if on of you were granted immunity in the caucus scandal and another (Walker) was one of Scooter Jensen's closest associates in the legislature at the time -- is certainly boldly, proudly and intrinsically <i>malum in</i> eff-ing <i>se</i>. Besides, the distinction is legally irrelevant -- except when you get to sentencing. Let Walker make that case when he gets there.<br />
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Almost as amusing and pathetic as Esenberg's excuse-making is the appearance of "school" "choice" whore George Mitchell in the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=20692053&postID=4591990290987816878">comments section</a>. Besides arguing that we should legalize all forms of politicking and fundraising in public offices (whatever happened to the supposed conservative protection of the public dollar?). Mitchell laughably alludes to dark secrets he knows from a time long ago when some people foolishly let him in the room, smearing various Democrats without providing any detail. "[Journal Sentinel Managing Editor] George Stanley was so surprised and offended by what I knew and did he said I was 'lucky the statute of limitations had expired,'" he claims. While I wouldn't be surprised if Stanley said such a thing -- he and his paper have been buying too much of Mitchell's "school" "choice" bullshit for years, I don't know why he wouldn't fall for this load too -- the necessary discussion of the political ramifications of official acts is a far cry from spending hours and days in the County Executive suite sending (literally) thousands of e-mails arranging the grand and minute details of fundraisers (drafting invitations, even) for Walker's favored lieutenant governor candidate. The funniest line of all is Esenberg <a href="http://sharkandshepherd.blogspot.com/2012/02/of-politicians-behaving-politicially.html">writing</a> "George's views can't be easily dismissed." Hilarious. <br />
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Although he gets paid well to be an apologist for anything the Republicans do or get caught doing, I don't envy the heavy task Esenberg has taken upon himself. This is a tough one for the Walkerites to crawl out of, and they know it. Luckily for Walker, Esenberg isn't really offering him legal advice -- he's just helping the Republicans soften up the public for the very real possibility of a Walker indictment by putting a legal gloss on a sow's ear. It's a partisan prosecution, it shouldn't be criminal, everybody does it -- whatever works, the facts be damned. <br />
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Walker himself isn't fooling around. He's got a real criminal defense lawyer now -- Mike Steinle was in my Trial Ad class in law school and is one of the best in town. Walker is going to need all the real help he can get.Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-38226722285407219192012-01-29T14:25:00.003-06:002012-01-29T14:25:44.933-06:00Walker Haunted By The Ghost of Frank WillsCourthouse security was not what it should have been when Scott Walker was pretending to be Milwaukee County Executive and in deep in the throes of his mad clawing to become Wisconsin's first Koch-bought governor. In one of the many actions found to be illegal under his grandstanding, worthless term, in early 2010, Walker declared an <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/86254547.html">"emergency"</a> and laid-off the fine County employees who man-ed and woman-ed the entrances to the Courthouse in favor of low-paid rent-a-cops from Wackenhut, the executives of which were -- naturally -- political contributors. <br />
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I <a href="http://plaistedwrites.blogspot.com/2009/11/walker-undermines-courthouse-security.html">mourned the loss</a> of the familiar faces that greeted me at the doors of the Courthouse every morning when it happened. In short order, the head of the Wackenhut Courthouse effort was found to have a bunch of <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/90958499.html">criminal convictions</a> and had to be replaced. And, in January 2011, an <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/113212479.html">arbitrator ruled</a>, not suprisingly, that Walker's privatization stunt was illegal and ordered the County employees reinstated, with back pay. By then Walker had escaped to the Capitol in Madison, far from where he would be held accountable and from where anyone could ask how he could defend his costly made-for-campaign pose.<br />
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At the time, the failed effort to farm-out the security of the courthouse seemed like just another attack on public employees, something we have now come to expect from the most anti-middle class governor in Wisconsin history. But – maybe something else was afoot. Perhaps the turning over of courthouse security to near-minimum wage, part-time amateurs was designed to deliberately make the courthouse less secure, so that, when the Walker campaign IT people were let in in the middle of the night to install the separate server and wireless, they would be less likely to be discovered monkeying around in the County Executive suite.<br />
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Or not -- this theory may be giving Walker too much credit for devious design. I think the security detail clears out of the courthouse after 5 p.m. anyway, although you’d think maybe at least one person works the second and third shifts, checking doors and listening for odd noises in the night. If so, what do you think the Milwaukee version of Frank Wills would think coming upon people with black bags, computer equipment and screwdrivers in Scott Walker’s office in the middle of the night?<br />
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Frank Wills, you’ll remember, is the security guard in the Watergate building who noticed tape on a door in the complex and eventually found the Nixon burglars cowering under desks in the DNC office, caught in the act of trying to bug Larry O’Brien’s phone. It’s never been at all clear what the paranoid Nixon campaign thought it would learn by the wiretaps, but Frank Wills’ brave exercise in securitizing eventually resulted in the exposure of a criminal president and his removal from office one step ahead of certain impeachment and conviction.<br />
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Imagine what courthouse security would find, if they were touring the third floor on the night the hardware was installed. No doubt, someone with real credentials would be there to shoo them away; Russell, Nardelli, Rindfleish – perhaps Walker himself. You can almost see the stunned looks on the faces of the installers when faced with a real security guard in uniform. “Just fixing some wires and stuff, nothing to see here,” they would claim while the security guard runs through the catalog of known county IT personnel in his head. None of those folks look familiar. Hmm...<br />
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Oh, stop, this ain’t Watergate, they’ll say. Nixon was senselessly bugging the opposition; Walker was prophylactically debugging himself. But, as always, it’s the cover-up that sinks the ship. In Walker’s case, he was covering up ahead of time – trying to prevent the discovery of the full-time campaign operation being run from the County Executive’s office by outrageously creating an entirely separate IT infrastructure. To pretend he didn’t know about the IT setup and intense campaign activity of his staff is ridiculous, especially considering his e-mail to <a href="http://uppitywis.org/blogarticle/timing-walker-email-key-russell-was-not-deputy-cheif-staff-runni">(significantly) </a>then-Director of Housing Russell. "We cannot afford another story like this one," he wrote to Russell. No kidding. As it turns out, he couldn't even afford that one story, once DA John Chisholm and his excellent staff started following the leads.<br />
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Walker’s entire time as County Executive had nothing to do with managing Milwaukee County and everything to do with his lifelong ambition to be the governor. He would send up absurd budgets that were immediately rejected and redone by the grown-ups on the County Board. He used his limited power to strike tough-guy poses, like the illegal security privatization scheme. Nothing was done without both eyes on the governor’s race, whenever he got his chance. <br />
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Milwaukee's version of Frank Wills never got the chance to discover the dark-of-night hardware installation in the County Executive's suite. Walker's undoing will be a combination of his own staff's lameness (Darlene Wink just had to post those comments on JSOnline, didn't she?), his and his campaign's arrogance that they could get away with such a thing as rigging a separate IT infrastructure and the quiet, patient competence of a DA following the trail. No amount of lame excuse-making from the <a href="http://www.sharkandshepherd.blogspot.com/2012/01/john-doe-skirts-edges.html">usual suspects</a> will protect his sorry ass (Esenberg: "I continue to dislike dealing with this type as a criminal matter." Oh, Please.) There is the now-more-likely recall, of course, but that is the least of Scott Walker's problems. He may have to fight to try to stay out of jail. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.<br />Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20755638.post-22495671681321525152012-01-18T22:48:00.000-06:002012-01-18T22:48:45.999-06:00The Illusory Tenant Has Left The Building<br />
<a href="http://illusorytenant.blogspot.com/2012/01/thanks-for-all-cheese.html">Sad news</a> from the blogosphere. Just when we need him most, Tom Foley has headed off to gloriously greater climes, taking a good job in an exotic location and leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves as the denizens of FitzWalkerStan kick and scratch and cheat to try to maintain their ungodly grip on Total Power. In a typically short, obtuse and self-effacing final post, he leaves us only with the glorious solo piano of Art Tatum playing "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1dqJsX0AhM">Over the Rainbow</a>". Which is where Foley is going, by the way. I've seen pictures.<br />
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With all due respect to everybody else who is trying to make some sense and points with their various blogs out here, nobody holds a candle to Tom. He is consistently brilliant, hilarious and right on-the-money. A king of the short-form post, when he puts his mind and time to it, he can write a devastating long treatise on complicated legal subjects that entertain as well as destroy the pompous musings of a certain part-time law professor. <br />
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Speaking of <a href="http://www.sharkandshepherd.blogspot.com/">Rick Esenberg</a>, the latest winner of the Right-Wing Money Sweepstakes (his newly-minted "Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty", neither an "institute" nor much interested in law or liberty, is funded by the Bradley Foundation and other right-wing moneybags) tries to counter Foley's arguments by personally attacking him in his <a href="http://www.sharkandshepherd.blogspot.com/2012/01/this-was-no-peppercorn.html">latest post</a>. The well-heeled Esenberg botches a snarky aside to Foley, writing nonsensically about a "law school graduate (and suspended lawyer)" without naming him, before lurching into yet another defense of the embarrassing middle-finger-to-ethics Justice Michael Gableman and how he didn't get the free legal services from Michael Best that he certainly got. What are you going to believe, says Esenberg -- me, or your lying eyes? Esenberg is obviously going to keep trotting out this line of apologist bullshit until somebody believes it.<br />
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Pointing out Foley's irrelevant state bar status is the kind of politics-of-personal-destruction diversion you expect from right-wingers who are losing the argument (which Esenberg always is). The fact is that Tom -- who I have had the pleasure of showing around the Courthouse and could tell would have been a good lawyer if someone would have just hired him -- let his law license lapse when he realized he was moving on to better things. The fact he isn't a current member of the bar doesn't affect his well-reasoned arguments on any subject one bit. The fact Esenberg would resort to catty asides like this shows how weak he thinks his doomed position really is.<br />
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Tom Foley regularly had the goods on both Esenberg and Gableman -- not to mention Walker, the Fitzgeralds and everyone else making our lives miserable, locally and nationally. I have encouraged him to use the wonders of what he called "the internets" to stay in touch with Wisconsin politics in this critical year and keep posting. Alas, he has declined, for now, not knowing the state of technology in his future slice of Paradise and figuring he'll be too busy working in the bright tropical sunshine. But I hope he finds some time to share with us his unique and brilliant perspective. Or at least drop us a line from time to time.<br />
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I'll miss his friendship and his bass and keyboard playing in my <i>ad hoc</i> semi-annual bands (we kicked <i>ass</i> on "Like a Rolling Stone" at Nod to Bob this year). We'll all miss everything else -- his essential contribution to the Wisconsin conversation. Terribly.<br />Mike Plaistedhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18184502941014520240noreply@blogger.com9