Snakeskinned Cowboy Wins BAP's Forked Tongue & Fangs Award!

I'm not a fan of Tommy Thompson, but I never thought he was stupid or hateful. I guess he's got to burnish his Tea Swiller creds.

At a recent Sturtevant fundraiser for Tommy Thompson's senate campaign Right-Wing-Nut-Job Ted Nugent and favorite son of the BLOODY NRA called President Obama a "Chicago gangster." As is typical of Nugent and other RWNJs he has no basis in fact or reasoned argument that he can bring to bear to support his ludicrous claim. But then those kinds of attibutes matter little to the simple-minded TPz who are easily swayed by such fear & loathing.

Of course a little baseless nonsense is never enough, so the Snake-Skinned-Cowboy went on to say; "We are on the fast track toward the end of the American dream with this corrupt, power-abusing criminal gang in the White House right now. These are bad people." Of course Ted has no specifics to support these claims either. Maybe this dick should change his name Van Haten and have his own TV series, Hate Is Enough!

 

 

Ted then went off to soil the Racine County Fair’s 90th anniversary. People who say things like: “Obama’s a piece of shit, and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” should not be given a stage to spew their hatred anywhere, let alone our fair.

He’s a Deadbeat Dad, has been married twice, had children out of wedlock and became the legal guardian of a 17 year old because she was too young legally marry him. And this man is in no way a sportsman as he has been twice convicted of illegal hunting.

He also said: “If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” He’s either an ignorant blowhard or a dangerous traitor. I suspect the former, but either way this man does not represent anything that’s good or wholesome and should never have been invited to bring his creepiness the Racine County Fair! Whose depraved idea was that anyway?

Ted the Dredge is such a prolific spewer of venomous hate that not only is he the latest winner of the Burlington Area Progressives Forked Tongue & Fangs Award, this Snake in the Grass is among the top contenders for the coveted Reptilian Republicon Life Time Achievement Award!

WRWNJCT No. 17.6D Drones Will Take Your Guns!

So what's the latest Whacky-Right-Wing-Nut-Job-Conspiracy-Theory? Drones are going to take away your guns! At least according to Soapbox Jill over at "Real" Debate Wisconsin: http://realdebatewisconsin.blogspot.com/2012/07/who-said-they-could-do-this.html
SBJ: "I hate to drone on about this, but is anybody else paying attention? How can this be allowed?

Surveillance drones have a new mission. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) they will be used for “public safety”. Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the DHS, told a House Committee meeting on Homeland Security that the more than 30,000 drones that will be deployed into American skies are just arbitrarily watching out for US citizens.

Hey, all that new-fangled surveillance just might be useful in the coming efforts to remove the types of weapons from law-abiding citizens that would allow them to protect themselves from, well, a run-away govenment. The chess pieces are being moved into place, some taking to the sky. Paranoia? Justified concern?"

Funny thing is that if you follow the "Surveilance Drones" link it takes you to well known conspiracy nut Alex Jone's Infowars website which of course feeds the fear with the following headline: "DHS Prepares for Civil Unrest as Obama Poised to Destroy 2nd Amendment".

However, if you follow the link about what Napolitano supposedly said from there you come the website called Nextgov, which I know little about. But what you'll find there is that NOWHERE in the article does it reference anything about 30,000 drones, let alone that many being deployed by the Department of Homeland Scrutiny. Instead Napolitano is responding to criticism from members of Congress that DHS is not involved ENOUGH in the setting air traffic control rules which fall under the jurisdiction of the FAA.

Once again we find that Alex Jones has no credibility, but if you're a RWNJ and it suits your fear-based agenda, you'll believe ANYTHING and take it at face value. Now I'm no fan of DHS and yes "justified concern" is warranted, but the TPz will always opt for paranoia. What I find amazing is that they didn't bring up the citizen internment camps that are supposedly being constructed all over America to confine us all. Come on people, let's no leave any of the good scary shtuff out!

The article goes on to point out that the Federal Protective Service (FPS) has been given the responsibility to protecting federally owned property while preparing for civilian led riots expected in the near future. Part of the preparatory measures was an order of 150 sets of riot gear that was requested to be filled exponentially – within 15 days. Ooooooooo 150, talk about your major mobilization! And don't ask me what an "exponentially filled" order is.

Then of course we leap to the guns! Wayne LaPierre, vice president of the BLOODY NRA, has called out Obama as being part of “conspiracy to ensure re-election by lulling gun owners to sleep. All that first term, lip service to gun owners is just part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment during his second term.”

Be afraid afraid of the dark man in the oval office, be very afraid. And keep buyin them guns ya'll, the fear profiteers are smilin all the way to the bank!

Billionaire - "Middle Class are the Job Creators, Not the Rich"

I've been saying this for some time to counter the self-serving GOPropaganda byte "Job Creator" nonsense, but when this guy says he and his rich cohort should pay more taxes and that he and all of us would benefit from that, he's got a lot of credibility. Not to mention some cool and very revealing graphics! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQi6xJ3-7l4

TPz See Obamacare as Vast Chip Dip Conspiracy!

The Tea Swilling Wingnut Whachidoodles on the extreme right are all a flutter with wild conspiracy theories from the completely implausible perennial vast left-wing vote fraud conspiracies run by undetectible supergeniouses, to the UN wants to take you guns, to climate change is a global conspiracy to grab future control and profits, but the denial industry has nothing to do with existing control and profits by the fossil profiteers. But this one may JUST have some merit. Obamacare has a secret plan to insert an RFID chip into every American!

Some would say the panel required by the Affordable Care Act to approve medial devices is designed to make sure that costs are not incurred for prosthetics and other devices that don't work or are medically unnecessary. But not our brethren in the TP! It's secret plan by big brother "the Emperor" to watch your every move!

But don't let me sway you. You can read about this scary, diabolical plan by the dark man in the Oval Office yourself, right here:
http://realdebatewisconsin.blogspot.com/2012/07/obamacare-devil-really-is-in-details.html

Ban Weapons of Mass Murder . . . AGAIN!

When will we outlaw weapons of mass murder like the AR-15 and the high capacity magazine used by the mass murderer du jour in Aurora CO? Oh yeah, we already did it was called the Assault Weapons Ban, but the Republicons gleefully let it expire in 2004 as required by their puppet masters, the NRA.

I'm not against people having guns, but high powered, highly concealable guns with high capacity, easily interchangeable magazine clips that allowed the Virginia Tech mass murderer to spray 170 rounds in 5 minutes are not weapons of sport or self-defense. The only thing they are good for is mass murder, no one needs one and no one should have one, let alone four!

For crying out loud, give us a chance, at least make'em have to RELOAD!

Forked Tongue & Fangs Award

Welcome to the first ever Forked Tongue & Fangs award, given Tea Swillers who go above and beyond in the regurgitating hateful and vile Cult of Con dreck and GOPropaganda.

Today's runner up is someone who calls himself Young Pa who, I suppose, should at least be given credit for the wise choice of using a pseudonym, thus avoiding the embarrassment that would otherwise befall him and his family. You can find his venomous vitriol at http://myracinecounty.com/ under the July 9, 2012 Article Ketterhagen Censured by School Board.

Young Pa: "This is the typical intolerance of the radical left. Ripoff the children for years with their misuse of public money then cry and villify. The public was disgusted when they learned of this and provided the ultimate censure by voting out this legalized graft, arrogance, and incompetence.

Now they want to silence a dissenting opinion. Why? They are afraid of the truth and facts that are derailing their gravy train they have ridden over the kids for years.

We welcome those opinions and snarky invective that is a hallmark of the radical left represented by WEAC and their pawns in administration and the School Board. It’s open and free debate an arena in which their self serving ideas fail over and over again. They cannot compete in that market so they have to shut it down through invented stories in a radical left paper.

Don’t fall for it; look at the facts. They raise taxes and layoff good teachers to keep their bloated pay and benefits to the detriment of the kids that ultimately pay for it with a heavy debt load. In the last three years the District has been bailed out twice with federal money, heaped huge tax increases out of line with the rest of the State of Wisconsin upon its residents, and has failed to promote good administration and innovative learning practices.

These are the last cries and blusters of a system strangling good teachers and the kids who pay for them. Don’t be fooled by all the noise of a sinking ship of diseased rats (like that metaphor union thugs who pray on children?). Get our fiscal house in order by continuing to vote out those who don’t work at being on the Board – but just slap the back of their union buddies and administrators – living it up on the backs of kids.

All this noise is a sign good days are ahead for those kids and the good teachers who have a dream to further their lives instead of living off of them, if we simply persevere and continue on a common sense and just path.

Spend time with your kids and instill discpline and morals that will help the professional teachers do their jobs and continue to set a good example that counteracts the thuggery they have to deal with from their union masters and administration puppets."

How's that for a shrill whistling teapot? Oh yeah FEEL the HATE! I could deconstruct the misinformation, lies and mistakes contained in the ravings above, but that would take a very very long time and I have faith in the intelligence of most readers to see that for themselves.

And now it's time to recoil at an excerpt of the fork-tongued hissings of today's BIG WINNER, Don Vande Sand who apparently blew a gasket at AARP for the audacity of offering to communicate to it's members in Spanish!

Don Vande Sand: "Your web site generously offers us the opportunity to receive all communication in Spanish. ARE YOU KIDDING??? The illegal perpetrators have broken into our 'house', invaded our home without invitation or consent. The President insists we keep these illegal perpetrators in comfort and learn the perpetrator's language so we can communicate our reluctant welcome to them. I DON'T choose to welcome them, to support them, to educate them, to medicate them, or to pay for their food or clothing. American home invaders get arrested. Please explain to me why foreign lawbreakers can enjoy privileges on American soil that Americans do not get? Why do some immigrants have to play the game to be welcomed and others only have to break and enter to be welcomed?"

Well! There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch!

Vande Sand, who won the Humanitarian of the Year in January 2011 for his work with the Burlington Historical Society should be more than aware of the very strong abolitionist movement in southeastern Wisconsin generally, and Burlington specifically. And as such he should NOT scapegoat and condemn whole groups of people just because of their race, their culture or their language. You'd think he'd learn a little from the history he studies and grasp the situation that some of these people find themselves in, victims to what in a lot of ways amounts to modern slavery because of events way beyond their control like NAFTA. Yes, NAFTA which flooded their country with cheap American corn (previously an illegal import) and that destroyed their livelihoods and drove them off their land into the cities. Many of them reluctantly came here so they could continue feed their families, something they apparently feel is important for some reason. 

And our corporations and businesses (and I believe our government, especially Republicons, shhhhh) have welcomed them here with open arms because they drive down the cost of labor, undermine unions and provide workers who are willing to put up with all manner of abuse because they're too afraid to complain. And on top of all that misfortune they have to put up with "humanitarians" like Mr. Vande Sand.

Perhaps the Historical Society should consider whether association with this person is fitting for their organization. The Rotary Club should definitely take back their humanitarian award from this Teapot on the boil!

Congratulation Don Vande Sand, for winning BAP's Forked Tongue & Fangs Award, or perhaps I should say - la Lengua Bífida y Adjudicación Colmillos!

Plutannosaurus Rex!

What Me Worry?

Apparently, the ironically named Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson is an A$$hole. In fact after hearing him quoted on NPR recently, my reaction was that he's got to be one of the pre-eminent A$$holes on the scene today. While he deserves some credit for moving his company from a staunch supporter of climate science denial to admitting that human produced carbon emissions are changing the world's climate, he's still putting greed first and signaling full steam ahead on us all burning more and more of his company's products. Damn the torpedos! http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/27/exxon-climate-idUSL2E8HRA8K20120627

"Changes to weather patterns that move crop production areas around -- we'll adapt to that. It's an engineering problem and it has engineering solutions," Tillerson said in a presentation to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Adapt? Tell that to the the people of Bangladesh who live in a cyclone prone delta flood plain that is only a few inches to a few feet above a rising sea level. What's the "engineering solution" to that?They're not going to get a chance to adapt, they're going to die! Tell that to the people of the Maldives Island nation in the Indian Ocean. They're country will be permanently and completely under water. Is this the new face of social darwinism?

The man at the tiller said, "The fear factor that people want to throw out there to say 'We just have to stop this,' I do not accept."

Fear? Of course! Why would anyone in a low lying coastal plain fear a rising tide? Why would anyone surviving on barely arable land fear an expanding desert? Why would anyone dependent on glacial melt water for drinking and irrigating their crops fear the permanent and complete melting of the mountian glaciers they've depended on for time immemorial? They'll simply adapt.

No doubt Exxon Mobil is at the forefront of paying for the research and solutions that will allow this adaptation, right? Oh sure. I'm sure this A$$hole is sitting safe in mansion somewhere completely insulated from any possibility of having to "adapt" his elitist lifestyle. And I'm sure his children will be well set up too to weather the storm. Adaptation, that's for little people. As Daffy Duck once said, "Consequences shmonsequences, as long as I'm rich."

Well Rex baby, how about other species besides us? How are they going to adapt? Have you thought about them or are you out of touch with the fact that there are other species on this planet besides you and the grass on your fairway? Are you or your company going to pay to relocate plants and animals across barriers to climate zones more suitable to their evolutionary legacy? Or are they just SOL?

Tillerson said issues such as global poverty were more pressing than climate change, and billions of people without access to energy would benefit from oil and gas supplies. "They'd love to burn fossil fuels because their quality of life would rise immeasurably," How touching, Rexy is concerned about the poor and wants to benefit them by letting them burn his oil and gas. Really? Let's get billions of poor people in China, India and elsewhere burning even more of his ancient fossil product and putting it into today's atmosphere and that will make things better? Well for this A$$hole sitting high and dry in conditioned air behind his guarded gates, I guess the answer is, yes.

Slitherin on the 4th!

Robin of Vos, Barren of Ethics, Traitor to Democracy, Rascal, Scoundrel and Vassal to the Corporate Lords at the feudal American Legislative Exchange Council (fALEC) marched in the Waterford Independence Day Parade yesterday in his Tea Party yellow t-shirt waving from the centerline and engaging no one directly, sending his minions out to do that unpleasant task. Jordan Debbink of the WeVoBee TPz tried to hand me a glossy Vossy football schedule before realizing who I was.

I wonder if young Robin, in marching to serve his corprate masters is even vaguely aware that the Boston Tea Party that lead up to our revolution was an anti-corporate event protesting the predatory practices of the British East India Company, probably the largest global corpration of it's time.

I am always amazed at the ability of  fALEC GOPsters like Vos to shamelessly parade themselves before the public like they are full of light and sunshine while pushing hidden agendas from far beyond Wisconsin and stonewalling the citizens here at home on their right to know what their "representatives" are doing on "their behalf". See here: http://host.madison.com/article_c857e6c2-bef3-11e1-af14-001a4bcf887a.html And here: http://www.onewisconsinnow.org/files/OneWINow-VosORR-20120703.pdf I know I couldn't do it, but then I am not only capable of feeling shame, but also of expressing shame when it's appropriate unlike certain reptilians.

Speaking of reptiles and tea swilling delusions, Dave Craig who is supposed to represent the citizens of Wisconsin's 83rd Assembly District marched with a coiled snake flag draped on his vehicle, pronouncing his love of striking vipers and fang injected venom for all to see. Yup it's true, when I think Republicon I do think Snake-in-the-Grass. Can't help it Republicon = Snake. Only the grass the snakes are writhing in is Astroturf funded by Kochish oligarchs through their democracy thwarting nest of vipers, Americans For Plutocracy (AFP). Just plain disgusting!

The Waterford Parade is a good chance to see old friends who live along the parade route and an excuse to start drinking bloody marys at 10am, but it's little more than trucks-n-tractors these days. But hey, at least there weren't any confederate flags this year. Still, I think I need to get into Racine next year where there's less stench of tea, fewer Snakes-in-the Grass and no Vos-Barren of Ethics and see a real 4th of July celebration parade for a change. I miss those. I want to see a real marching band and, if at all possible, playing Stars and Stripes Forever!

The Truth About the Affordable Care Act

In the wake of the recent (somewhat surprising) Supreme Court Decision, I thought it'd be useful if we all had some good information to counter the inevitable right-wing push back concerning The Affordable Care Act (sometimes derisively called "Obamacare").

Happily, the White House has a really good blog containing information about the program -- information that, frankly, the news media has tended to ignore (or outright lie about).  Because of the media's focus on fueling controversy to boost ratings, much of the public remains ignorant about the actual program.

But you can click this sentence and go directly to the source.

Arm yourself with The Truth and push back against the tide of right-wing scare tactics and lies!

Ketterhagen's Cattle Prod

I have it from reliable sources that TP school board member Phil Ketterhagen said at last Monday's meeting something to the effect that teachers need to be trained the same way he trains a wayward bull, with a crack on the head. If our teachers are chattel, perhaps Ketterhagen should invest in a cattle prod so he can deliver his shocking "lesson" with the touch of a button.

People of ill intent like Ketterhagen have no good business being on a school board. But this is what happens when you elect people of ill-will to positions of power. What you have in Ketterhagen is an extremist ideologue with an authoritarian mindset. And what you get from people of this ilk is scapegoating and vengeance against a group that we are told to believe are to blame for whatever "problem" the ill-willed are using to advance their self-centered political goals and they don't care who gets hurt in the process. That is what fascists do.

And make no mistake about it, the people who control the Tea Party agenda are fascists and the Tea Party, whether the rank and file adherants know it or not, is a fascist movement. And Ketterhagen is working to deliver our schools to the corporatist privateers to turn all our children into their revenue streams. And that is only a small portion of the modern American fascist agenda, to turn our government that is supposed to represent us into a money making concern for them.

To clarify, I am not equating Ketterhaggen with Hitler or Mussolini, but it is crystal clear that the Tea Party movement has been co-opted into astroturf by a top down corporate crafted fascist American Legislative Exchange Council (fALEC) type hidden aganda like I saw when I went to the WeVote Burlington legislative night last December. And as Benito himself, the founder of fascism said, "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

My Name is Elmer J Fudd Milwionaire, I Own a Mansion und a Yacht!

Elmer J. Fudd, Millionaire by tobiagorrio

Dear Dick Bergman, thank you for your kind words last week regarding my contributions to the Standard Press, I’m glad that you enjoy my writing and that you look forward to more of it in these very dark times. I do try to inject a little humor in with the serious and substantive issues I address, to try and have a little fun and maintain a positive outlook, as difficult as that is these days.

Speaking of dark times, I just read that the Koch Brothers plan to use the Citizens United ruling by the U.S. Extreme Court to funnel as much as $400,000,000.00 through organizations they control to advance their corporatist interests and their rightwing agenda during the 2012 elections. How much money are you going spend to advance your interests Mr. & Mrs. John & Jane Q. Public? Do you think the government they ordain will represent your interests? They already write and VOTE on the laws that rule you through their organization, the feudal American Legislative Exchange Council (fALEC) and their representative Robin Vos, Wisconsin’s Public Sector fALEC chairman. Is that what freedom feels like?

Americans for Plutocracy (AFP) spent three millions dollars from people like the Koch Bros to help their hero Scott Walker keep doing their work. Heck, Scotty recently raised a million dollars from four out of state billionaires. One of them was Robert Benmosche, you know the CEO of AIG the deregulated global insurance behemoth that helped tank our economy and that George Bush had to bail out with your tax dollars in the Republicon crash of 2008. Is this what plutocracy feels like?

Mr. Benmosche has been thinking about you Mr. & Mrs. P. In a recent interview from his seaside villa in Croatia he said that “Retirement ages will have to move to 70, 80 years old,” “That would make pensions, medical services more affordable. They will keep people working longer and will take that burden off of the youth.” Yeah the burden of jobs off our youth as geezers continue occupy jobs keeping young people from being able to enter the work force, start careers, marry and have families. Talk about your out of touch elitist, but what does he care? He is the rich and the rich are getting richer! Meanwhile, the average net worth of American families dropped by 35% from 2005 to 2010, according to the Census Bureau. No wonder consumer demand, the ONLY “Job Creator” is down. Thank you Greedy Oligarch’s Party (GOP)!

But enough substance, now for the humor part. Just how dumb or ill-informed does one have to be, to be working or middle class and vote Republicon? Yeah, Mitt Romney and his NASCAR team owning friends are going to look after the interests of us average income folk out here, right.

Wait a minute, maybe it's not dumb at all, maybe it's just plain crazy. I've got it! Here is how you can convince yourself that the GOPsters are on the side of your shrinking middle class chances. Repeat after me; "My name is Elmer J. Fudd, Milwionaire, I own a mansion und a yacht." Again! "My name is Elmer J. Fudd, Milwionaire, I own a mansion und a yacht." Keep going, if you can be convinced that the plutoctopus is on your side, you can be made to believe ANYTHING! Right Elmer? Freedumb!

Standard Press: Large Crowds for and Against, REALLY!?

The Thursday June 7, 2012 edition of the Burlington Standard Press had this to say about the Burlington Area Progressives June 2nd event: "MSNBC's Ed Schultz, Burlington native Tom Gilding and columnist John Nichols were all part of the rally at Echo Park, which drew large crowds - both for and against."

Hmmm, large? Both sides? Really?

The Racine Journal Times estimated our supporters at around 350 people. I hardly noticed the counter-protesters that day, perhaps because there was only about a dozen of them. The photos in the paper were just as misleading as the excerpt above, a large one above the article showing four counter-protesters in the Vet's Terrace parking lot, the other a small photo below the article, showing only the bandstand with three of us BAPsters in the picture. I don't know if the piece was intentionally or simply carelessly misleading, but the pictures above are better representation of reality.

The good news is we took measures to make sure we didn't disrupt the outdoor wedding ceremony at Veteran's Terrace and were successful in that regard.

Jordan Debbink of the local TP group WeVote said that another group member organized the counter protest when she found out the rally would be held Saturday. Gee I wonder how she that found out? Could it have been the ads we ran in the Hi-Liter and all the Southern Lakes Newspapers broadsheets? Maybe it was the posters we had up for weeks at Reinemann's and the local grocery stores. It might even have been the listing of the event in the Out and About sections of the Standard Press, Waterford Post, Westine Report, Westosha Report, East Troy Times and Elkhorn Independent. Or it could even have been discovered on this very blog which is viewable by anyone with access to a computer. Whatever it was, kudo's to her on the sleuthing, she must be an investigative genius!

It is interesting to know however, that they will send a raggle-taggle band of protesters to any event we hold, even when they don't know what information is being presented. For example, when we showed Koch Brothers Exposed at the Plaza Theater last fall, they couldn't have known what was in the movie as it had just been released. But they protested anyway. After all, what good Cult of Con member needs knowledge and information to act anyway?

The Koch Bros are Republicons so they's gots to be good right? Nevermind that these plutocrats are writing laws in secret to rule us all from far far away. We'ins is fur freedumb, FREEDUMB!

FUWI

Now I know how rational people of goodwill must have felt when McCarthy was re-elected.

De' ja vu All Over Again

Walker Target of Federal Investigation

EXCERPTS: With the recall election less than two days away, federal prosecutors are closing in on Governor Scott Walker, according to veteran political reporter David Shuster, . . .

"I stand by my reporting 100 percent," Shuster said in the conference call. "It's clear to me that he is, in fact, a target in a federal investigation."

Despite copious reporting, especially in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, about the Milwaukee County district attorney's probe of alleged violations when Walker was county executive -- including a secret email network maintained by his staff for the purpose of conducting illegal campaign activity on county time, the theft of funds intended for the widows and orphans of Iraq War veterans, and possible favorable treatment of campaign donors seeking public contracts, not much has been written about the FBI probe.

In his reporting on FBI involvement in the current probe of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Shuster said he consulted with Justice Department attorneys in the public integrity section and "I got independent confirmation that he's a target."

Read thr rest here: In his reporting on FBI involvement in the current probe of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Shuster said he consulted with Justice Department attorneys in the public integrity section and "I got independent confirmation that he's a target."

Read the rest here: http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=36926&sid=fde5b08ba03e551e673cd61cbb8dcb78

Scott Walker Pro-Abortion?

EXCERPT: Bernadette Gillick was a college freshman in 1988 when she first met Scott Walker. It was spring semester, and she had just transferred to Marquette University. She was assigned a room in O’Donnell Hall (then a women’s dormitory), which she shared with her new roommate, Ruth (not her real name). Ruth was dating Scott Walker, who was 20 at the time, and, according to Bernadette, Ruth was deeply in love with him.


Midway through that spring semester, Bernadette alleges, Ruth found out she was pregnant. She informed her boyfriend, Scott, and initially he was supportive. That support changed to callous indifference for his girlfriend’s predicament after Scott informed his parents of the pregnancy.

Bernadette reports that at this point Scott began denying that he was the father of the baby, and when Ruth said she was considering an abortion, he claimed he didn’t care, as he wasn’t the father anyway.

Bernadette remembers being present when Ruth was dealing with the wrath of Scott’s mother, who allegedly admonished Ruth for trying to “ruin [her son's] reputation.”

“I supported her [Ruth] as he [Scott] went from encouraging her to get an abortion, to telling me it was in my best interest to keep my mouth shut, to denying that he was the father and having his own mother call her and tell her to stop erroneously accusing her son of paternity,” Bernadette recounts.

It was a “horrible time” for her friend. “Imagine her being 18 years old and pregnant, walking around Marquette’s Jesuit Catholic campus with her boyfriend denying he was the father,” says Bernadette.


All this was taking place while Walker was running for student body president. As one of his classmates, Dr. Glenn Barry recalled in a remembrance published last week, Walker’s campaign was, “one of the dirtiest in school history.” The student newspaper Marquette Tribune called him “unfit for office” after his campaign was discovered collecting and throwing out copies of their paper that endorsed his opponent. Commenting on the election and Walker’s political career and style at Marquette, he noted, “Walker lost on all counts, but not before destroying a few people’s reputations, and amassing personal power.”


Read more here: http://wcmcoop.com/members/integrity-the-child-scott-walker-left-behind/

Would Bernadette risk a libel/slander suit and ruin her reputation if thie were false?

EXCERPT: Bernadette is now Dr. Bernadette Gillick a college professor at a major Midwestern university. Through her attorney, Mike Fargione, she issued a statement: “It is rare that you will ever hear from me on issues of politics, as I am a firm believer that most politics are local and can be as local as our own kitchen tables. But I’m asking you to consider what I have to share …”

Over the phone, Bernadette recounted how she watched a recent televised debate between Scott Walker and Tom Barrett. As he talked about his “lifelong integrity” her anger grew. This was a man who had abandoned his pregnant young girlfriend — completely turned his back on her at the most fragile point in her life. She notes his “now-convenient ‘pro-life’ proclamations” after burying his past “indiscretion.” Says Bernadette, “I cannot listen to his lies anymore … I cannot dream of how anyone would support such an evil man. Once a man shows that he has no soul, there is nothing more.”

Thanks to Kay Schultz you can see the photos from yesterdays event if you go here: https://plus.google.com/photos/103660747430003433320/albums/5749661910794641249?banner=pwa&gpsrc=pwrd1#photos/103660747430003433320/albums/5749661910794641249

There are even more on BAP's facebook group plus videos: http://www.facebook.com/groups/111636908877191/

My favorite is the one above with 6 hapless TPz with Walker / Kleefisch signs drooping, trying to figure out what to do about 400 fired up progressives!

TPs & Great BAP Event!

Sorry about the false alarm, I got a call that there were three vans of TP's unloading. But they used the PUBLIC restrooms and moved on. A few showed up later and Kay got great shot of a half dozen of them standing looking confused and dejected, their Walker / Kleefisch signs hanging limply at their sides.


What an awesome event! Thanks to every one of the 300-400 people who came and those who made it happen! Good music, great speakers! Lot's of beautiful pics of Fighting Bob, Ed Schultz, John Nichols, Bowzer and fired up folks on the Burlington Area Progressives facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/groups/111636908877191/

Thank you for all you do!

Sean

MSNBC's Ed Schultz with John Nichols in Burlington!

I Heard it from the man himself, John Nichols on the Ed Schultz radio show yesterday. He and MSNBC's Ed Schultz will be at BAP's Fighting Bob in Burlington GOTV Rally at the Echo Lake Park Bandstand at 3:00 pm!

Then they're moving on to Baraboo for an event sponsored by the Center for Media and Democracy who broke the ALEC story which has lead to yesterday's announcement that WALMART is pulling out of ALEC!

Die ALEC Die! And take your global corporate rule to the grave! We went through that whole fascist experiment in the last century and it didn't turn out so well!

BAP Presents Tom Gilding as Fighting Bob La Follette!

MARK JUNE 2nd on your CALENDARS! The Burlington Area Progressives are Proud to Present Tom Gilding as Wisconsin's Great Progressive Hero Fightin Bob La Follette!

Fighting Bob will hold forth from the period appropriate Bandstand at Echo Lake Park, 595 Milwaukee Avenue (Hwy 36) in downtown Burlington. The fun starts at 3:00 and will include live music by Tamara V and original Recall Songs by Jack La Follette, Jacob Merseberger, Yours Truly and anyone with a voice or noise making implement that wants to join in.

After a long day of phone calls and canvassing you'll be thirsty, tired & hungry, so bring your favorite beverage (Beer, Wine, Soda), lawn chairs and a dish/snack. We have the pavillion too with all the picnic tables in case of hot sun or rain. This is going to be fun and inspirational, so let's get a big crowd and show Burlington how Progressive Badgers roll!

Please feel free to print post and distribute widely the attached 8x11 jpeg poster. I have them in pdf and 11x17 and handbill size versions as well.

"Men must be aggressive for what is right if government is to be saved form men who are aggressive for what is wrong." - Robert M. La Follette, Sr.

FORWARD!

Thank you for all you do!

Sean
(262) 237-4351

FuxSnooze Makes You Dumb

FuxSnooze, nuff said: http://www.thenation.com/blog/167999/its-official-watching-fox-makes-you-stupider?rel=emailNation

EXCERPT: People who work at Fox News might like to think that they are despised by real journalists only because they are conservative and most journalists are liberal. Anyone who read the admiring obituaries of William F. Buckley Jr. in mainstream and liberal outlets would know that is nonsense. Journalists, both liberals and ones with no ideology in particular, are quite capable of respecting conservative pundits and reporters who deserve their respect.

But Fox does not. The reason is not because it holds a set of values that others may not share. And that is only partially because it claims to be “Fair and Balanced” when it is neither.

Rather, it is because it fails the fundamental test of journalism: are you informing your audience? According to a new study by Farleigh Dickinson University, Fox viewers are the least knowledgeable audience of any outlet, and they know even less about politics and current events than people who watch no news at all.

Deer Hunters to Recall Walker - This is HUGE!

What deer hunters need to know before they vote on June 5th: http://www.lodivalleynews.com/human-interest/public-game-management-is-the-last-bastion-of-communism-dr-james-kroll-walker-appointed-deer-trustee/


EXCERPT:According to Wisconsin’s White-Tailed Deer Trustee Dr. James Kroll, people who call for more public hunting opportunities are “pining for socialism.” He further states, “(Public) Game management is the last bastion of communism.”These are just two insights into the man who has been asked to provide analysis and recommended changes to Wisconsin’s deer management program. Kroll’s insights are from an article entitled “Which Side of the Fence Are You On?” by Joe Nick Patoski for a past edition of Texas Monthly.

If nothing more, the article gives an unabashed look into the mind-set that will be providing the Wisconsin DNR with recommendations on how to change their deer management practices. James Kroll (also known as “Deer Dr.”) was appointed to the Wisconsin “deer czar” position last fall. He was hired by the Department of Administration and instructed to complete a review of the state’s deer management program.

Here’s a sample of the article:

“Game Management,” says James Kroll, driving to his high-fenced, two-hundred-acre spread near Nacogdoches, “is the last bastion of communism.” Kroll, also known as Dr. Deer, is the director of the Forestry Resources Institute of Texas at Stephen F. Austin State University, and the “management” he is referring to is the sort practiced by the State of Texas. The 55-year-old Kroll is the leading light in the field of private deer management as a means to add value to the land. His belief is so absolute that some detractors refer to him as Dr. Dough, implying that his eye is on the bottom line more than on the natural world.

Want to win the WI Recall? Make sure this story goes as wide as humanly possible
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/20/1093293/-Want-to-win-the-WI-Recall-Make-sure-this-story-goes-as-wide-as-humanly-possible

Walker's Way is not the Wisconsin Way

Walker is not Wisconsin and that is why he must go. He refuses listen. He won't compromise or negotiate. The day after our Packers won the Super Bowl he told his inner circle that he was going to "drop the bomb", referring to his previously hidden agenda to make scapegoats of our public employees and strip them of their workplace voices. He ruined our victory celebration! That's sneaky. It's impolite. It's authoritarian. And it's not the Wisconsin way.

He single-handedly ignited a political civil war, deeply dividing our purple state, our families, our friends and our neighbors with his “divide and conquer” strategy. We Wisconsinites do not seek to divide our citizens and we certainly do not labor to conquer our neighbors. That is not the Wisconsin way. In Wisconsin we’re not arrogant; we don’t pass with 52% and then act like we got a 100!

This is not about political parties; this is about Wisconsin and who we are. Thirty thousand Wisconsin citizens spent countless hours standing out in the cold to gather the expressed written will of the people to recall Scott Walker as provided by our State Constitution thanks to the legacy of our great progressive Republican leader, Robert "Fighting Bob" Lafollette. I think I can confidently claim that few, if any, of those 30 thousand would have stood for even 30 seconds to recall any other Wisconsin Governor, Republican or Democratic. Simply put, that is not our manner. But Scott Walkers extreme un-Wisconsiness has forced our hand.

The state I love does not willingly suffer authoritarianism. We neither seek to exert authority over our friends and neighbors, nor bow to the false authority of would-be plutocrats who seek to rule us by "virtue" of their extreme wealth and in service only of even more greed. In Wisconsin we are not money-god worshippers. But Scott Walker is not Wisconsin. He is an uncompromising authoritarian and he bows to the false authority of wealth as demonstrated by his fawning on the phone with who he believed to be Oklahoma petro-plutarch David Koch. Alas, that is in keeping with his fundamentalist ideology, which is alien to Wisconsinites.

Walker’s way is not the Wisconsin way. We believe we can run our own affairs here, yet most of the vast sums of money Scott Walker has collected, including for his own criminal defense fund, is from out of state billionaires. That is not the Wisconsin way.

We need to heal our state, so we can get back to our jobs, our families, friends and neighbors. Scott Walker's very Un-Wisconsin extremism has consistently lost jobs and malevolently divided the people of Wisconsin in the name of extreme ideology and party above all, bomb dropping partisanship. Scott Walker hasn’t lived in Wisconsin long enough to understand that “My way or the highway” is not the Wisconsin way, perhaps he never will. Our Constitution provides a remedy for this malignancy. We Badgers need a Scottectomy. And then we need to heal our Wisconsin.

Only Little People Pay Taxes

We owe a debt to Diane Hendricks for fawningly elicting the Divide & Conquer statement out of Walker while practically wanting to give him a fench kiss. But beyond that she is the billionaire posterchild for shillionaire Walker and his fealty to the plutcratic 1% who benefit from a rigged system they've devised and paid for.

Kruella DeHendricks wants to crush unions and working people to feed her greed, because people like her can never get enough. Yet she has $500,000 to throw at Walker to work her will on the people of Wisconsin. And on top of it all her corporate personhood, the ABC Supply company pays no taxes to support the system that acts as its host and from which it extracts its profits. In nature, such a creature is called a parasite: http://www.wisconsinsfuture.org/

I guess not much has changed since Leona Helmsley said "Only little people pay taxes". Except perhaps that the little people are finally waking up and standing up!

Walker Uses $100M of OUR Money to Fight Recall!

We're broke says Walker, that is until the game is up and the recall is coming for him. Then suddenly $100M of the citizen's money magically appears to invest in Milwaukee, something Walker FAILED to do as the County Exec who closed his own office of Economic Development during the Great Recession! http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/05/09/scott-walker-using-100-million-of-taxpayer-money-to-fight-off-recall/

Now GOPocrite Mitt Romney is claimimg credit for saving the auto industry that he said should just go bankrupt. SHEESH!

When he shows up in Wisconsin I'm going to be there with big sign painted like an Etcha-Sketch with flip flops glued all over the screen!

Wait, what's the biggest auto manufacturer in the world today? Oh yeah, General Motors. Thank you President Obama!

Inventor of Romney-Ryan Budget Concept Says Implementing Premium Support Now Would Be "Rash and Irresponsible"

http://www.politiscoop.com/us-politics/wisconsin-politics/1353-romney-ryan-budget-rash-and-irresponsible.html

MADISON - Noted economist Henry Aaron, a co-creator of the "premium support" concept central to the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan budget plan that would end Medicare as we know it, is now stating that the Romney-Ryan budget "won't work.

As detailed in a new report from The Huffington Post, Aaron testified before the House Ways and Means Committee last week, stating, "I've changed my mind" about the concept of premium support. Aaron also slammed the Romney-Ryan budget for failing to adequately regulate health insurance offerings and how they are sold, stating that the health insurance market under such a plan would be "deplorably inefficient" with serious consequences for the Medicare population.

Aaron however praised President Obama's successful Affordable Care Act for taking steps to preserve Medicare and advocated for the full implementation of the Act as the best way to control rising health care costs.

"Medical professionals, the faith community and now even the inventor of the central concept of the Romney-Ryan budget have come forward to say that this budget that ends Medicare as we know it is wrong for America," Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said Thursday. "As more experts come forward, and people learn the truth about the Romney-Ryan budget, it becomes more clear that this budget is fundamentally flawed, with the potential to cause real harm if implemented."
Read the Huffington Post report here.

BAP's Best Event Ever?

Thank you to everyone who came last night, especially State Assembly Candidates Kelley Albrecht and Kim Peterson!

With the possible exception of the Vets fundraiser we did at Bobby Rockets, last night was the largest event the Burlington Area Progressives has ever been associated with. 180 people packed the Plaza Theater, eclipsing even our events that featured local favorites John Nichols and Ed Garvey by 60 to 80 people! A half dozen representatives of the local Tea Party protested outside.

Thank you all! Keep up the good work especially NOW!

Burlington Standard Press - Liberal group’s film showing spurs talk of theater boycott: http://myracinecounty.com/

More info on this nut job can be found here: http://rootriversiren.blogspot.com/

Happiness is a warm gun, bang bang shoo shoot - SHEESH!

Apparently he wasn't cited for the false license or the fake registration. Why not? And did he use his position as investigator (which he should, wrong temperment) to run the license plates of the circulators?

Koch Bros Exposed!

Free Movie Event!



Koch Brothers Exposed

The New Documentary Film by Robert Greenwald

The Plutoctopus’ Reach Revealed



Do You Know?

State Rep. Robin Vos is Public-Sector State Chairman of the

Koch-Funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Do You Know How This Affects YOUR Rights?



Wednesday May 2nd, 2012 at 7:00pm

Plaza Theater

448 Milwaukee Ave. (Hwy 36)

Downtown Burlington, WI

Beer, Wine & Dinners Available

Free to the Public!

(Donations Accepted)



For more infromation

e-mail: burlingtonareaprogressives@gmail.com

Phone: (262) 237-4351

Ketterhagen's Analysis Flawed . . . Again!

I obtained a copy of the Department of Public Instruction spreadsheet with numbers on teacher salaries and benefits state wide, which Teaparty School Board Candidate Phil Ketterhagen kept holding up and waving around at the forum Monday night claiming that BASD teachers averaged $69K in salary and were in the 97th percentile for the state.

I changed none of the original data, but took the liberty of modifying the spreadsheet by adding columns with formulas to yield the following numbers for BASD teachers:

Avg. Total Salary & Bennies: $90,337 = 87.77 percentile
Avg. Salary: $60,563 = 81.37 percentile (NOT $69K/97% as Ketterhagen claimed!)
Avg. Bennies: $29,375 = 69.12 percentile

I'd be happy to provide the original and modified spreadsheets if anyone wants to check my numbers.

I also highlighted the numbers for some other local districts and BASD numbers generally falls in line. Bottom line, once again we see ya just can’t trust Ketterhagen’s numbers or analysis! Nor do I suspect can you trust how nice he was trying to play that night.

On thing that is clear by looking at the spreadsheet is that in metro areas salaries are higher reflecting higher cost of living and as you go further north (where you can by a house for $30K) the salaries drop off. So a statewide comparison is really another apples to oranges analysis, which a specialty of Ketterhagen's. And he didn't get it right in the first place!

Barbarians at the School House Door!

Greetings citizens
and friends of the Burlington Area School District, the barbarians are again at
our gates! Our public schools are under a second round of attack by the Tea
Party (TP) group WeVoteBurlington. Four TP candidates are challenging the
incumbents John Anderson and Susan Kessler in the primary election for school
board on Tuesday February 21st.

These candidates are intent
on inflicting the TP agenda on our schools, an agenda crafted by the corporately
run feudal American Legislative Exchange Council (fALEC) with their local
vassal Robin of Vos who is tasked with enacting the agenda of his corporate
lords in their province of Wisconsin. It is an agenda disseminated to the TPs by
Americans for Plutocracy (they say “Prosperity”, but we know better than that).
The agenda of these special interests includes defunding, dismantling and
privatizing our public schools to make them profit centers and turn our
children and grandchildren into perpetual revenue streams for educational profiteers.
For information about fALEC’s private designs on public education go here: http://alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed

These TP candidates
think of themselves as “taxpayers” and they want you to think of yourself as a
taxpayer too. Personally, I find the term “taxpayer” to be an insulting
epithet. Taxpayers are passive, hapless victims from whom money is extracted. I
am not a “Taxpayer”, I am not a victim, I am a citizen. And as a citizen, one
of the things I do is to pay my dues for living in a civilized society, taxes.
I am very fortunate to have done well enough so that I can and do pay taxes. By
virtue of the public school education that was provided for me by my forbearers,
I have succeeded and therefore pay taxes. By virtue of the people of goodwill
who built this country and established public institutions, public roads,
courts and a system of laws that facilitate an organized and prosperous society,
I have succeeded and therefore, proudly pay my dues. My story is by no means
unique, none of us succeeds on our own, we all benefit from the achievements of
those that came and built before us. It seems that those who gave us so much
would have but one requirement of us, pass it on!

John
Adams said, “Laws for the liberal education of the youth, especially of the
lower class of the people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane
and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant”.

Thomas Jefferson said, "I have indeed two great
measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength:
1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what
will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every county into hundreds,
of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central
school in it."

James Madison wrote,
"The liberal appropriations made by the Legislature of Kentucky for a
general system of Education cannot be too much applauded. A popular Government,
without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to
a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern
ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves
with the power which knowledge gives."

But a vibrant and
interdependent society, buoyed by public institutions and progressing over time
is not the TP vision. They believe in a country of everyman for himself. To
them “public” and “taxes” are dirty words. They want to sack these public institutions
because they don’t want to pay for them. These TP candidates for the Board are
focused on only one aspect of our schools, taxes, money and the “greedy
teachers” who victimize them by taking their beloved money. One of them even
believes that it is appropriate to compare the compensation of educators with
advanced degrees to that of average Wisconsinites with high school diplomas.
These self-centered values and myopic outlook are not what is needed on our
school board. We need rationalism and balance, not extremism and selfishness.

Ask yourself, are you
a citizen or a taxpayer? Do you believe in local control and self-governance or
would you act as a feudal serf and help advance an agenda that comes from your
corporatist lords far beyond Burlington, far beyond Wisconsin? Citizens I
implore you, behave in a manner becoming of humble freemen on February 21st,
vote and repulse the barbarians at our gates!

Burlington Educators Attacked with Flawed Logic

Philip Ketterhagen must think the readers of the Standard Press are fools and wouldn't see through the apples to oranges analysis of Burlington Area School District (BASD) compensation he included in his letter to the editor last week. Ketterhagen's focus is on money alone as he states that "the BASD staff is in the elite percentile of income." True, but what he leaves out, is that the BASD staff is in an even more elite percentile for educational attainment. Philip says he's a college graduate so I'm going to assume the statistics he quotes are accurate. The way he uses them however, is deceptive and inappropriate as demonstrated below using 2010 census data for education level obtained here: http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/2010/Table2-Both.xls and here: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0233.xls for adults 25 years and older.

For his analysis, Mr. Ketterhagen states that he used numbers from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal for the top 128 BASD employees in terms of compensation, skewing his sample right off the bat. He then goes on to compare BASD employee compensation to the of average income for Wisconsin citizens. Now the average income includes people who hold down jobs stocking shelves or driving a delivery van, for example. These jobs are critical to the functioning of our economy and the people who do them deserve our respect, a family supporting wage, family healthcare and a decent retirement, but they're not qualified to educate America's children and naturally they're not compensated as well as those who are and rightly so.

Ketterhagen stated that BASD administrator salaries are in the 76th percentile nationally and in the 86th percentile when benefits are considered, implying that they are over compensated. But BASD administrators have a minimum of a masters degree, putting them in the 92nd percentile for educational attainment nationally (92nd for Wisconsin). They are more likely to have a professional or doctoral degree, both in the 99th percentile nationally! These are management positions where people are responsible for million dollar budgets and hundreds of employees, corresponding to the highest paid jobs in the private sector. People in the 92-99 percentile for their education that are compensated in the 86th percentile nationally are clearly NOT over paid!

Then there are the teachers. First of all it should be recognized that all teachers have continuing education requirements and must obtain a teaching certificate which is an additional requirement beyond a bachelors degree that is not reflected separately in the census data for educational attainment. All of the teachers have minimum of a bachelors degree, which puts them in the 81st percentile nationally and the 74th percentile for citizens of Wisconsin. Fifty-two percent of Wisconsin teachers also have a masters degrees, which places those individuals in the 93rd percentile nationally and the 92nd percentile for Wisconsinites. Assuming the 52% also applies to BASD and aggregating these numbers for teachers with bachelors and masters degrees we come up with a teaching staff at BASD with average educational attainment levels that fall in the 86th percentile nationally and 83rd percentile for our once fair state. And where do the teachers fall in terms of compensation? According to Ketterhagen, the Wall Street Journal says they average in the 68th percentile nationally for pay and the 83rd percentile with benefits included, which they negotiated for in good faith. So BASD teachers are in the 86th percentile nationally for the level of education achieved, but they're compensation falls in the 83rd percentile.

What is Ketterhagen complaining about, why the need for flawed apples to oranges analysis and why his relentless and baseless attack on our educators?

Recall Misinformation

There's some misinformation being spread about the recall effort. First let me tell you that if you want to sign legitimate recall petitions you can go to the SLUE office at 616 Droster Ave. Burlington from 9 am to 6 pm, 7 days per week, behind Coop Plus and across Hwy 36 from Miller Motors. However, if you're going to go there with the intent of destroying a petition as one couple did recently, don't. It's both a felony and an affront to freedom and democracy.

Secondly, the recall process is not being abused at all, but is operating as intended. The recall was put into the Wisconsin State Constitution by our forbearers who were far wiser than we. The founders left the grounds for recalling a public official up to the judgment of we the people. They set the bar high in terms of the number of signatures required to trigger a recall election, which is why they are rare. A lot of citizens have to be very unhappy with an official and very motivated to put forth the level of effort necessary to be successful in gathering the expressed will of the people in the form of their signatures. And there is no reason to change our Constitution or the recall process. Malfeasance or illegal activity in office is already grounds for removal under Wisconsin state law. Did State Senator George Petak commit malfeasance or an illegal act when he voted to include Racine County in the Brewers stadium tax prompting his recall? No. Heck it was the impending recall and subsequent resignation of Tom Ament that cleared the way for Scott Walker to become Milwaukee County Executive.

Then there is the GOPropaganda generated nonsense about Wisconsin being flooded with people from out of state being paid to circulate petitions. Even if I could, I wouldn’t go to another state and stick my nose in their business and we don’t need or want any outside help in this grassroots effort. I’ve yet to meet one person in this cause who is not a local resident, let alone from outside Wisconsin. But today's republicon party runs on this sort of misinformation so one should not be surprised by it. What is already flowing into the state from elsewhere is gobs of money which Walker is using to flood the airwaves in an attempt convince us that “it’s working” despite the fact that Wisconsin lost almost 10,000 mostly private sector jobs in October and that his budget was balanced with one time gimmicks that increase the debt service payments after 2012 according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

Walker, like his republicon counter parts in states like Ohio, Michigan and Indiana has worked to implement a radical hidden agenda on which he did not campaign, that was handed down to him from far beyond Wisconsin. This agenda, including tax breaks for the wealthy few on the backs of the poor and middle class has divided our state as never before and Walker has shown nothing but disdain and disregard for the opinions of a large percentage of Wisconsinites. And in a stark demonstration of the kind of person he is the Governor is now poised to kick 75,000 of our fellow citizens off of Badger Care, a program started by Republican Governor Tommy Thompson. Some of these people will surely die without access to medical care. Apparently Walker doesn't care, better they do so and decrease the surplus population. 25,000 of these rejects are innocent children. No health care for you kiddies, only a lump of coal. Merry Christmas!

Actions have consequences and it’s time for Walker to face his, as provided for by our Wisconsin State Constitution.

John Nichols @ Walworth Dems this Saturday!

Hot Coffee - Occupy the Plaza Theater!

Recall Walker Training & A Movie!

RECALL SCOTT WALKER!
Free Training - Free Movie!

Inside Job
How Wall Street’s 1% Trashed Our Economy
The 2010 Documentary Film by Charles H. Ferguson
Academy Award Winner – Best Documentary

Recall Walker Petition Drive Training by United Wisconsin
Movie to Follow Immediately Thereafter

PUBLIC IS WELCOME - ADMISSION FREE!
Bring a snack and your favorite non-alcoholic beverage

SLUE/WEAC Office Center
616 Droster Ave. Burlington
Saturday Nov. 5th – 6:00pm

e-mail: burlingtonareaprogressives@gmail.com

JOIN US IN RESTORING WISCONSIN! – WE ARE THE NINETY-NINE PERCENT!

BASD's Frightening Emergency

Greetings progressive residents and friends of the Burlington Area School District, we have a frightful emergency. Our public schools are under a coordinated attack from a Tea Party (TP) group in the form of WeVoteBurlington (WVB). The outcome of the first battle (it won’t be the last) in this attack will be decided on Halloween at the School Board meeting to be held in the BHS auditorium on Monday October 31st at 7:30 where they will try to brow beat the members of the Board regarding adoption of the district’s budget.

I’d like to place this event in the broader context to better understand what is happening and why. Mark Belling has promoted this attack and Charlie Sykes is threatening to bring in bus loads of outside agitators, single-issue anti-tax zealots to flood the meeting. People of goodwill need to be present and ready to speak up (three minutes allotted per person) to provide a counter-balance to this coordinated TP attack and to support our elected representatives on the Board who have gone through the months-long process of developing a reasonable budget for our public schools which are the central organizing, social institution of our community! Please email your Board members regardless of whether you can be at this meeting and let them know your position: http://www.basd.k12.wi.us/boardmembers.cfm

Tea Party Connection: I know that “coordinated” sounds like conspiracy, that “attack” may seem like hyperbole and that representatives of WVB recently denied their TP status in the Standard Press. But I will demonstrate why all three are apt descriptions of what we face. WVB held a legislative night on October 8th at Burlington’s public high school which featured as one of the key guests Tim Dake of the Grandsons of Liberty, a bonafide TP group promoting the “Legislative Agenda for the Wisconsin TEA Party Movement – 2010/2012”. The legislative items listed in this agenda are noted as being sponsored by TP groups from all over the state including: Uninfringed Liberty, Campaign for Liberty, Wisconsin GrandSons of Liberty, Two Rivers Tea Party, Rock River Patriots, Menomonee/Marinette Sons and Daughters of Liberty, Manitowoc County TEA Movement, Americans for Constitutional Enforcement and the Rock County Voter Education Forum, a pungent brew indeed. The strategy is to have a Wisconsin TP group adopt a piece of legislation and through activism to help push it through our legislature. To see the disturbingly ill-willed TP legislative agenda which precisely mirrors that presented at the WeVoteBurlington event go here: http://www.wisconsingrandsonsofliberty.com/

Attack on Public Education: That takes care of the TP connection, now to justify my use of the words “coordinated attack”. The TP groups cited above are promoting this legislative agenda, but they didn’t draft the legislation. Most of these bills were written by members of the secretive, Koch brother funded, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), where global corporations pay big bucks to sit down with Republican State Legislators and draft laws in their interest to rule you from your State House. Although the special interests behind this are narrow, their agenda is very broad and includes the dismantling and privatization our public school systems in the United States of America. Why? Power, including the power to make profits for the “Educational Entrepreneurs” and to destroy unions. For more information on ALEC’s moves to starve public education see this article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/14-12 and this website: http://alecexposed.org/wiki/Privatizing_Public_Education,_Higher_Ed_Policy,_and_Teachers
For information on ALEC in general go here: http://alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed

Are the WVB folks aware of the selfish and sinister agenda they’re helping to advance and who is behind it? Probably not. When it comes to public education, they’ve been conditioned to focus on only two things, taxes and thugs (their term for our teachers). But the Tea Party movement has been co-opted and turned from grassroots to astroturf by Americans For Prosperity (Plutocracy), the Club For Growth and other well funded groups founded by one-percent folks like the billionaire Koch Brothers, Dick Armey and others. The agendas of these groups are handed down from on high by corporate sponsored conservative think tanks founded by the Koch brothers and others like them, to serve their self-interest. For some insight on the Americans For Plutocracy and the Koch Bros agenda for our public schools watch this short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mbJhjCbwo8

Furthermore, the WVB people have probably never even heard of ALEC. After all, it is supposed to be a secret. The likes of Belling and Sykes are certainly not going to expose ALEC and its goals. It was only revealed last spring that local State Representative Robin Vos is also the ALEC state Co-chair, tasked with enacting the ALEC agenda in Wisconsin like his counter parts in the other states. You’d think he’d be proud of such a lofty distinction, but he doesn’t discuss it or campaign on its “merits”. Skirting Wisconsin’s good government campaign laws, Vos even got an ALEC “Scholarship” worth thousands of dollars for airfare and hotel accommodations to be wined and dined in a sunnier clime by the ALEC corporate lobbyists who fund the organization. A “Scholarship”, why that’s a major award to be illuminated and displayed prominently before your constituents! But modest Robin never mentions it. You know what they say, news is what people want to keep hidden, every thing else is publicity.

And now PR Watch has discovered who Wisconsin’s secret ALEC Corporate Co-chairs are: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/09/11031/koch-lobbyist-alec-state-co-chair-wisconsin-scholarships-raise-ethics-concerns Every state has them and guess what, one of Wisconsin’s is a lobbyist for Koch Industries! Such a tangled web! And I’ve connected only a few of the dots here. There are more, many more.

The citizens of Burlington have elected a local School Board to represent our interests in our community. It’s called local control, a principle the Republican Party once stood for. We must not let a few vocal people, acting at the behest of squawk-radio propagandists, force on to us a hidden agenda that comes from selfish, narrow and far away special interests that have no stake in what becomes of our children or our community, other than how it advances their national political goals and their potential for future profits to be reaped at the expense of millions of students across the nation and right here at home. Scary!

Thank you for your attention. You are the 99%! Please make yourselves heard at the Board meeting on October 31st. Boo!

Live Feed from NY Occupy Wall Street in the middle of the night.

globalrevolution on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

If you want to chat live with people across the country while watching at the Live Stream website here is the link. It's pretty damn cool.

While I was watching they showed the solar panel flat bed truck that supplies the power for the protesters to use.  It's being provided by Green Peace and says "Give Up Coal" on the side of it.  I'm just so impressed right now.

They have lots of great food available from donations made from all over the country.  Most people have sleeping bags and are curled up sleeping on hard ground toughing it out.

The mainstream media won't even talk to the guys doing the live feed.

Awesome stuff here.

fALEC State Private Sector Co-Chairs are Koch Lobbyists

The secret fALEC Wisconsin State Co-Chairs have been unveiled! Koch industry lobbyists Amy Boyer and Byron Wornson have been revealed by PR Watch as secret private sector Co-Chair that work along side Robin Vos to enact the fALEC agenda in our once proud state of clean and open politics: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/09/11031/koch-lobbyist-alec-state-co-chair-wisconsin-scholarships-raise-ethics-concerns

Lavish all-expenses-paid "Scholarships" are used to skirt Wisconsin's lobbying laws that prohibit ANY gifts and to fly, house, wine, dine and buy corporate access to OUR representatives to enact THEIR laws.This is a traitorous betrayal of the foundational American principle of the right to the informed consent of the governed!

Why didn't Vos tell the voters he's in ALEC? Why didn't he tell us he's the State of Wisconsin Co-chair? Why all the secrecy? If Vos gets his legislative ideas from his constituents as he claims, then he doesn't need ALEC and should renounce ALEC and all it's works as the democracy betraying nest of corporatist vipers that they are.

The Selling of School Choice

DeVoss (Amway) - Can you say Sen. Van "Amway or Highway" Wangaard?
Walton (Walmart) - Can you say Rep. Robin "I like $chool choice becau$e I like $chool choice" Vos?

Selling? I'd say it's more like buying school choice as people who don't live, vote or go to school in Wisconsin flood money into OUR state to fund groups and bribe OUR? representatives to advance their cynical, selfish, national, anti-worker/middle class, privateering agenda to destroy public education (my opinion, not necessarily the Author's). This is the first of an excellent 3 part series of investigative journalism on the subject and well worth the read. http://www.wisconsinwatch.org/2011/09/18/school-choice-part-1/

IMF: Income Inequality Bad for Economic Growth

Well duh! In an economy driven 70% by consumption DEMAND is the ONLY "Job Creator" and income inequality means consumers cannot create demand. That's intuitively obvious, but here is a scholarly study based imperical evidence from the international monetary fund: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/20/income-inequality-economic-growth_n_969933.html

EXCERPT: The widening gap between the wealthy and everyone else in the United States may be hindering a broader economic recovery, according to a new study. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2011/09/Berg.htm

The study out of the International Monetary Fund found that greater income equality positively correlates with stronger economic growth. Released in September, the study more specifically concluded that a 10 percent decrease in inequality increased the expected duration of economic growth by 50 percent.

The IMF paper, which studied a sample of countries around the world between 1950 and 2006, found that in countries with more income inequality, such as Jordan and Cameroon, the economy more frequently plunged into deeper recessions, while economic growth lasted much longer in more equal societies.

Indeed, greater levels of income equality corresponded more strongly to sustained economic growth than other economic factors, including lower debt levels, according to the report. "Sustainable economic reform," the authors write, "is possible only when its benefits are widely shared." The United States

Income inequality has grown in the United States over the past four decades and now more closely compares to the income distributions of Russia and Iran than many other developed economies.

FALEC Member Exposed

If you're intersted in learning more about Robin Vos, particularly his activities with ALEC, or as I prefer FALEC, the fascist American Legislative Exchange Council because it embodies the merger of state and corporate rule, which the definition of facism or corporatism, there is a website for that: http://defeatvos.blogspot.com/2011/08/grassroots-effort-to-defeat-vos.html?spref=tw

In the interest of informed consent of the citizenry.

Your's Truely,

CorpSerf ID: IMFD-OURFD-2

New - Rocking Fun Music, Records and Teen Outreach Grand Opening

Rocking Fun Music, Records and Teen Outreach has just opened and will be having their Grand OpeningTomorrow, Sunday 9/11 at 549 N. Pine St. in Burlington. http://www.rockingfunmusic.com/ A glitch with the Hi-Liter left them without a promo ad for their Grand Opening, so I said I would help get the word out on their new venture. Finally a local place to get strings and other music supplies!

Meet & greet at 5 PM with Recording Studio Manager & Guitar teacher Mark Hill, Owner Kellie Levans, Floor Manager Katie Joike, Administrator Michelle Dorrington and volunteers Chris and Randy. Sign up for guitar lessons (4 lessons, 45 min./session).

Rocking Fun Music tm Records and Teen Outreach is changing the way Burlington is dealing with the strong-hold of drugs, alcohol, and teen suicide rates have on the youth population. Milwaukee Rock Music Examiner Reporter, Kellie Levans, has planned, developed, and opened a retail music store and teen-wi-fi center fand recording studio for the reason of keeping teens talking and sharing through music. Rocking Fun Music tm Records:Teen Outreach, is a comfortable retail shop and hang out. The center will provide a safe environment for social contact with peers. Guitar, drums, vocal lessons, wi-fi access, and fun will be provided.

"The atmosphere is such as the show "Friends," providing a cafe' style setting without the coffee, lol " owner Kellie Levans says. Guitar lessons will be taught by Mark Hill , a community leader and trained in composition and music theory. Teen Wellness was a community program first accepted by the Burlington Wellness Center in 2004. Lack of funding cut the program. Kellie Levans approached the city of Burlington , Wisconsin in July of 2011 asking for a conditional use permit to allow 4 young adults in the store at a time. All counseling issues will be referred to local trained professionals.