Neumann!

Interesting.

Solar energy companies owned by a tea party Republican running for an open U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin who is strongly opposed to the 2009 federal stimulus package have received $500,000 in grants under the program.

Herein I consider the relative paradox of these situations. Is it possible to oppose a program but still take advantage of it? Perhaps Neumann opposes the stimulus programs, but if they are out there, why shouldn’t he partake in them?

Let’s put this in another context… I oppose the Earned Income Credit as a policy matter. If I qualified for it (I don’t), would I take advantage of it? Yes, I would. So does it pollute the position if one who opposes the stimulus programs to take advantage of them? Perhaps.

While readers of this blog know that I don’t support Neumann, I have difficulty in finding fault in his behavior here.

Ruling on GAB Vacated By Appeals Court

Interetsing.

A state Court of Appeals Friday reversed a lower-court order that the Government Accountability Board must seek out duplicate and obviously fictitious recall petition signatures.

The 4th District panel ruled that Waukesha County Circuit Judge Mac Davis should have allowed pro-recall groups to intervene in the lawsuit brought by Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign.

“We conclude that the recall committees are entitled to intervene as a matter of right,” the court said, adding later in the decision that “it cannot be seriously disputed that the recall committees have an interest in the procedures that will be used to review their recall petitions and strike names.”

The decision ordered Davis to reconsider all “later rulings that were made without the participation of the intervenors” — including the Jan. 5 ruling that GAB enact additional procedures to ferret out invalid signatures.

Notice that the court didn’t dipute the actual ruling. They merely said that the recall committees should have been allowed to participate. I suspect that we’ll come to the same conclusion even after listening to the recall folks bloviate for a while.

Kramer Carries

I would do the same thing.

Bill Kramer of Waukesha is speaker pro tem of the Assembly. He controls debate and can order spectators out of the chamber.

He says he obtained a permit to carry a concealed weapon in November and has at times carried a Glock 26 on the Assembly floor.

He says he feels he needs the weapon given the toxic atmosphere at the state Capitol. Bands of protesters still angry over Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s contentious collective bargaining law have spent the past year harassing GOP legislators.

Although… I’m not a huge fan of Glocks.

Odd FoodShare Spending

Well, that does seem odd.

The Legislative Audit Bureau reports Friday that a portion of recipients on the Wisconsin FoodShare program spent almost $33 million outside the state last year.

Program participants are legally allowed to purchase food anywhere in the country. But the report shows some FoodShare cards were used for purchases in Wisconsin on the same day the card’s account number was manually entered for purchases in another state.

Milwaukee County Supervisor Busted for Taking Bribe

Ouch.

A Milwaukee County Board supervisor was charged Thursday with misconduct in public office and accepting a bribe for allegedly pocketing $500 in exchange for ensuring a vote on a county contract, according to a criminal complaint filed by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm.

John L. Thomas Jr., 43, was charged with two felony counts as a result of an investigation by Chisholm’s office aided by Patrick Farley, director of the Milwaukee County Department of Administrative Services. In addition to serving on the Milwaukee County Board, Thomas is a candidate for Milwaukee city comptroller.

The Chicago Way

The Democrats are looking to Chicago to help them in Wisconsin. That explains a lot.

On Thursday, Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman Michael Tate and pollster Paul Maslin will headline an event at Adelstein and Liston’s office, where they’ll talk about the recall effort. (The invitation says it’s not a fundraiser.) The firm landed the recall-related business because of their relationship with Tate.

[...]

Two other Chicago-based political consulting firms are involved in the Wisconsin recall battle. David Axelrod’s former consulting firm, AKPD Message and Media, is working for Kathleen Falk, a former Dane County executive, who is running for governor against Walker. And Evanston-based Strategy Group worked on the direct-mail efforts for the 2011 state Senate recalls.

Goons Fight Tickets

If they really did try to grab the lady, they should have been charged with assault.

RACINE — All 17 protesters ticketed last month for allegedly picketing outside of a Racine home during a political fundraiser for state Rep. Robin Vos are fighting the local ordinance violations on constitutional grounds, their attorney said Wednesday.

Seventeen protesters, who live in Racine County and other locales in Wisconsin, were cited Jan. 5 with picketing of residences for protesting in a residential area, according to police reports. The group was accused of picketing outside the home of Fred Young in the 3200 block of Michigan Boulevard. A fundraiser was occurring inside for Vos, R-Rochester.

[...]

Young said several party guests told him “they had been accosted by the picketers” outside his residence, police reports stated.

“Some (guests) were elderly and visibly traumatized by the confrontation,” the report stated. That included a 75-year-old Racine County woman, who “was trembling and near tears,” according to the report. “One (protester) kept trying to grab her and force her to have a photograph taken with the group. She said they were mocking her.”

Inside Information

This struck me as a little odd. As part of a puff piece about folks behind United Wisconsin, there was this tidbit:

But, sensing a political opportunity fueled by the John Doe criminal investigation…

Bear in mind that they are talking about a meeting they had in September or October of last year - long before the John Doe investigation issued any charges. Given how badly, and illegally, the John Doe investigation leaked, did they have some inside information? Did the DA collude with them on the timing of the charges? Given that the rationale behind the recall is their opposition to Walker’s governance, why would the John Doe investigation matter? Did they adjust their timing because they knew last fall that charges would be issued in January?

Perhaps somebody should look into if the Milwaukee DA was illegally leaking information to recall supporters.

Coggs Staffer Alleges Criminal Behavior By Staff

Well, well...

A former aide to Spencer Coggs has filed a complaint with the GAB charging the Dem state senator hired a Capitol staffer largely to work on his lt. guv campaign and had other employees in his office attend to personal family matters, including helping his wife’s business.

Jana Williams, who Coggs terminated last January, alleges in the complaint that Enis Ragland’s “support and interest” in the senator’s 2010 lt. guv campaign was evident from the time he was hired just months before Coggs announced in December 2009.

But Coggs, D-Milwaukee, denied the allegations in an interview with WisPolitics.com and said he has not been contacted by the Government Accountability Board about the allegations. He was aware a complaint had been filed against Ragland, who was hired eight months before Coggs announced for lt. guv, according to Senate records. But Coggs said he had not been told he was involved and disputed the allegations that any of his staffers did anything improper.

You you know what’s (not at all) shocking about this allegation?

Jana Williams said she first raised the allegations with the GAB in November 2010 after she was notified she would be fired.

According to the Milwaukee DA, this is felony behavior. Yet it was alleged over a year ago and nobody has done anything about it? Oh yeah, I forgot… these are Democrats. Only Republicans get charged with this kind of stuff.

Doing Doors With Bill

Bill has done tremendous work on the Washington County Board. We need more like him.

Four years ago, when I first ran for the County Board, transparency in government was one of my key issues. I have worked very hard to force county government to share information and started a website several years ago just for that purpose. I just launched a new website, http://www.CountySupervisorBill.com to fo,cus more on current issues and respond better to constituents’ questions. I think government should be by, of, and for the people and I am proud to be working for folks to make it that way.

Concealed Carry Works

As far as I know, this is the first reported incident of a CCW holder thwarting crime in Wisconsin. True, many situations go unreported, but this is the first reported one.

It was just after 7 p.m. Monday when two men stormed into the Aldi at 76th Street and Villard Avenue. Police said at least one of them was waving a shotgun, despite the presence of two unarmed security guards.
Still, they couldn’t have counted on a customer legally carrying a concealed handgun, who opened fire on them.

Milwaukee police responded to the report of an armed robbery and shooting, only it turned out the shooter wasn’t one of the robbers.

One of the suspects, a 20-year-old man, was shot and is being treated at an area hospital. He and the other suspect are in police custody. Police believe they’re linked to a string of similar robberies.

Verify Your Signature

I’ve spent Saturday through today helping to verify the recall signatures. Sure, we found a few goofy signatures—Condi Rice, Adolf Hitler, and the like, but mostly they were just regular folks signing their names.

The thing that surprised me the most was how poorly people filled out their information. Most of the petitions had places for a printed name, a signature, a street address (no PO boxes), a city, a zip code, a municipality, and a date.

Yet people left things blank, crossed things of, scribble, or left things incomplete. It was the weirdest thing. When I am signing something important, I like to think that I read the details first, fill it out, then check it over. So I was surprised that there were so many errors.

Another thing that surprised me is how many people don’t seem to know what their municipality is. If you live in Milwaukee, your municipality can’t be Wauwatosa. Many people seemed to put their county name there instead of the place they vote.

The thing that bothered me the most was the initials people thought corrected errors. For example, if I were signing the petition and filled out all the information including the date, the person circulating the petition has no right to change my information and initial it. Putting the initials there did not make the change okay. There were probably thousands of signatures I have seen in the past few days where the person circulating the petition wrote in or changed the date, municipality, address, even the very NAME on a petition and initialed the change. That is the equivalent of you writing me a check and me changing the amount of the check and initialing it. You don’t get to change that sort of thing. There were a lot of initials-happy circulators, and as a Walker supporter, I thank you. But I do cringe that people seem to think that’s okay.

Anyway, it has been a truly interesting experience. It’s my opinion that there was a lot of fraud—both intentional and unintentional—but that most of the signatures were from people who just disagree with Walker. I hope we never have to do this again, but I did get a chance to meet all kinds of new people who like were riled up by these events. If anything, I think this recall has brought together conservatives and made us stronger. So, thanks, recallers.

The camera phone age

My column for the Daily News is online. It’s called, “The camera phone age.”

GAB Conceals Walker Petitions in Blatant Partisan Act

This is ridiculous.

Madison - State election officials put off making recall petitions available publicly on Monday after hearing privacy concerns from people who signed them.

The state Government Accountability Board provided copies of the petitions against Gov. Scott Walker to Walker’s campaign on Friday and had said that it planned to post copies of them on its website on Monday. But agency spokesman Reid Magney said the board was holding off on posting them online after hearing concerns about a stalking victim and others who did not want their names released.

Recall petitions have always been public documents. Even the GAB released the petitions for senators last year and this year. But now they appear to be stalling public disclosure. Liberal Bill Lueders is right:

Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, said that the petitions should be public and that he expected that they would be made public either by the accountability board or an outside group. Lueders said signing a recall petition was a public act like signing a nomination signature for a candidate, not a private act such as voting.

“You can’t sign a petition to recall an elected public official in secret,” Lueders said.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… disband the GAB. Start over. And next time, don’t staff it with the same people who failed at the previous iteration.

The High Cost of College

Here’s another story about the high cost of college.

The cost of college has far out-paced inflation over the past five decades, making it harder for students to work their way through college and come out debt-free, or even with manageable debt. Tuition, books and living expenses for an in-state student living on an adequate but moderate budget is estimated at $22,542 at UW-Madison for 2011-12. It was $1,430 in 1960, which equates to $10,867 in 2011 dollars, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

It’s an issue that leaders at both the state and national levels are looking at closely. President Barack Obama unveiled a plan Friday to tie a college’s eligibility for federal aid to the institution’s success at improving affordability. The UW Board of Regents will discuss how to keep costs down at its February meeting.

The reporter tells the tale of a young lady who is struggling to pay for school at UW Madison as the costs continue to go up. It’s an important issue with a lot of layers. How much should taxpayers subsidize college education? If so, how much control should the taxpayers exert over universities? Why are costs going up so much faster than inflation? Etc. There were two things that caught my eye about this particular story. Here’s the first one:

“It is much harder to work your way through college than it was,” Baum said. “That said, there didn’t used to be all this financial aid.”

Hmmmm… that’s interesting. So is the availability of “all this financial aid” driving the price of college? Generally speaking, when one is having to work to pay for something, they are generally more particular about what classes they are willing to pay for. Is the availability of “free” money (and I say “free” including borrowed money which many college students never think about how they will pay it back) resulting in colleges expanding into unwise areas just to soak up those dollars? It wouldn’t be the first time that “free” money created an entire industry designed to get it.

Perhaps that sentence in the story caught my eye because of the second part of the story that got my attention:

Ohlinger is double-majoring in horticulture, and community and environmental sociology, with a certificate in global cultures.

That’s the lady whose story weaves throughout the article. OK… so here we have a young lady who is struggling to attend UW Madison. She admits that she’ll be $40,000 in debt after college and, on her 5th year, she’s easily going to spend $100,000 or more for her education. What’s the ROI on a $100 degree in Horticulture and community and environmental sociology? Might I suggest that if she is struggling to pay for school that she attend a less expensive university? Or get a degree in something that has better job prospects? And if there wasn’t so much “free” money available, would UW Madison even offer a degree in community and environmental sociology?