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!