WeeVoter Late to the Parade

Some folks are just late to the parade as exemplified in this letter to the editor from Ms. Catherine Theilen published yesterday in the Standard Press website: http://lab.southernlakesnewspapers.com/?p=8685

She criticizes BASD School Board member Larry Anderson for not using Gubnah Walker's "Tools" to twist the thumbs of our local educators to the full extent possible and ONLY saving the citizenry $1.7 million dollars. How selfish and vindictive can the WeeVoters get with their punitive and myopic Tea Party agenda?

She then goes on to say "My suggestion is put the whole district on Obama care." What does that even mean? Does Ms. Theilen know? Does she mistakenly believe that means free healthcare provided by the federal government leaving taxpayers off the hook? My strong suspicion is that she has been the willing, but unknowing consumer of vast amounts of disinformation and likely knows little to nothing about Obamacare.

But the most entertaining and revealing part is that she turns her ill-informed ire on us wayward pamphleteers advising us as follows: "A helpful hint to the people putting political literature on car windshields: please stop.  You are in violation of Burlington city littering ordinance #200-2 sections A & C."

It's NOT Working Walker!

Thanks to the Siren we have an excellent chart that shows plain as day what miserable failures Scott Walker and his "tools" are. Wipe it clean in 2014!

Remember, the Great Republicon Recession started in September 2008, so Wisconsin was holding its own with respect to job creation until Walker took office in December 2010 with his empty promise to create 250,000 private sector jobs.

Can a WeVoter Yell at Someone in Bunny Ears?

A Warren of Lit Droppers

Once again, the WeVoter Poobah Bonnie Ketterhagen just isn’t making any sense. She calls the distribution of campaign leaflets “disrespectful”. What on earth is disrespectful about exercising democracy on public property? Nothing! http://lab.southernlakesnewspapers.com/?p=8566

And threatening to have her Tea Party minions “watch, patrol, police and monitor” these public places for citizens distributing informational literature is just another petty attempt to bully and intimidate. It won’t work, bullies need to be stood up to and called out.

Besides that, just try and yell at someone in BUNNY EARS!

Ten Years After Bush-Cheney Time Bandits & War Criminals

Remember? 12 years ago about this time of year in 2001, before 9/11, Dick Cheney was holding his secret energy task force meetings. Only the Dickster and the fossil industries were allowed to attend or know what was discussed, the public and any other groups were excluded and the content kept secret through executive privilege.

Under a Freedom of Information Act request the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch was able to get three small documents from the conclaves that inadvertently happened to be at the State Dept. and therefore had to be released under the law. These three little documents speak volumes about the agenda of the Cheney Administration.

Public Education is Patriotic!

Healthy public education is a founding principle of our democracy. Our Founders knew that it was vital to nurturing liberty, the pursuit of happiness and justice for all.

In 1784, Thomas Jefferson put forth the Northwest Ordinance, pertaining to the northwest territories of our young Republic, OH, MI, IN, IL and WI. It set aside the 16th Section of every township for the purpose of public education. The proceeds of the sale of this land at $1 per acre was put toward funding public education. This was the first national education law in the world! Public education is a foundational value of our more perfect union, that the citizens of a Republic, a representative democracy must be educated if they are to be free to govern themselves.

To honor and preserve such a system is a core patriotic value. To tear such a system down is not conservatism in the American way, but rather in the British imperial way, when only the eldest sons of the masses, if they were fortunate, might learn the craft of their fathers and only the Aristocrats, whose yoke we threw off with our Revolution were allowed to be truly educated.

The People couldn't be allowed to become educated under the old, pre-revolutionary British imperial way our they might decide they wanted to, and were capable of, governing themselves. To the aristocracy that was unacceptable, the People were to be Ruled! The shot fired around the world shattered that old system and brought forth the freedom of equal rights, self determination and self governance through the informed consent of the citizenry. An informed consent that requires an educated public.

WeVote Burlington is a local affiliate of the Tea Party, which has a national agenda of tearing down our public institutions of education and replacing them with private, for-profit schools that will not serve te public equally. The Ketterhagens, the Koldeways and Mrs. Miller may think this agenda is worthy of advancement through our community's school board, but their moral compass is misdirected and they’ve got their flag turned upside down.
http://burlingtonareaprogressives.blogspot.com/2012/11/ketterhagens-snake-strangled-banner.html

Furthermore, existing board member Phillip Ketterhagen has scapegoated our fellow citizens who teach, referring to them as cattle who need to be hit in the head with a 2x4. Yes, I understand it’s a metaphor, but metaphorically speaking that makes Ketterhagen the equivalent of a bully, berating and threatening our communal family with physical abuse . . . metaphorically of course!
 http://burlingtonareaprogressives.blogspot.com/2012/06/i-have-it-from-reliable-sources-that-tp.html

Our board of education should be a panel to nurture the best interests of our community, our children and our democracy, not a club to be wielded in beating down our family members, friends and neighbors to advance a narrow, radical, self-centered and, in the American way, unconservative political agenda. We mustn’t let our community turn into a dysfunctional family by electing two more tea partiers, Julie Koldeway and Norma Miller to act as enablers for the bully on the board.

We need sound, knowledgeable stewards of the public trust to nurture the health of our schools, both fiscally and educationally. That's why this citizen is voting for Larry Anderson and Jim Bousman for BASD board on April 2nd!

 

WeVote Candidates Refuse Debate

I've just gotten word that the Standard Press is NOT going to have a candidate forum because the WeVote PAC school board candidates have refused to participate. To me, this repeated refusal by the Tea Party candidates, Julie Koldeway and Norma Miller, to face the local press, to face their opponents and most importantly to face the public, the voters, and to answer questions SPEAKS VOLUMES!

I say repeated, because Julie Koldeway had already refused to participate in a public forum sponsored by the Standard Press that was to be held before the primary election. That forum unfortunately was cancelled due to a severe winter storm.

This fear of confronting the public appears at times to border on paranoia with perhaps the absurd notion that the Standard Press might be part of the "liberal media" and out to get the WeVote folks by twisting their words as exemplified by their grand poobah Bonnie Ketterhagen in this Standard Press article where she copies her comments to the WeVoters as documentation stating; “Below is a copy of the email I sent to the Standard Press after they submitted questions and requested an interview with us. If what appears in this week’s edition is different, you will know the truth.” http://lab.southernlakesnewspapers.com/?p=8244&t=Partisan+politics+marks+School+Board+election

I find it interesting that for a Standard Press article published a year or so ago about the WeVotes, Bonnie Ketterhagen and Julie Koldeway both refused to answer questions unless they were submitted in advance, so that they could carefully craft their answers and respond in writing. It's a pattern now and it's obvious that the local tea party people are afraid of something, maybe it's just saying something stupid.

However, the other two candidates, Larry Anderson and Jim Bausman were both willing and eager to participate, to state the cases for their candidacies and answer to the citizens of the Burlington Area School District.

So will it be candidates that are willing to stand forth, be open and up front about themselves and their positions, or those that fear brightlight, questioning and the potential exposure of their group's agenda before the public? The choice is yours Burlington. Vote on April 2nd (or before if you'll be away over spring break!).

Norma TP Miller Not Qualified

Burlington School Board Candidate and Tea Partier, Norma Miller in letter published in yesterday's Standard Press opinion section, said; "Right now we spend 85 cents out of every tax dollar on staff wages and benefits. That means 15 cents out of every tax dollar is spent on our children."


Ah NO, it does NOT! That statement alone demonstrates why she is not qualified to be on the Board, with regard to both her attitude toward our teachers and by her lack of understanding of how the funds to support our students are applied.

Apparently, Ms. Miller doesn't understand that the teachers are there for the students. That's not only completely misguided, it's unprofessional and disrespectful. How else are the students supposed to get educated? Education is a people intensive effort, not just in BASD, but in the schools all over our nation. Of course the bulk of the funding goes to teachers and other staff. They are what makes a building a school!

And her notion that only the remaining 15% goes to the children is equally absurd. That 15% goes to run and maintain district facilities. Like the teachers, are not the buildings also for the students? Of course! But apparently Ms. Miller believes that an ediface is more important than an educator to your children's and granchildren's future and that of our community.

I guess by her way of thinking we can cut costs by 85% and give our children nice buildings where they can stare vacantly at an empty blackboard and magically educate themselves.

I my opinion, Norma Miller offers little prospect of good stewardship over our schools or our future citizens!

The Tea Party is a Cancer!

How can you tell the Tea Party IS A CANCER? Because an investigation of the TPs by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health reveals it's a synthetic concoction funded by the Tobacco and Fossil Industries. Its' safe to breathe around the TP asstroturf, just don't Inhale.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/16042-focus-false-spontaneity-of-the-tea-party