Fitzgerald to Challenge Enough Signatures to Stop Recall

Now we’ll see what the GAB does...

Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald says he plans on challenging enough signatures on recall petitions to stop any election.

Fitzgerald said Tuesday he will also make a number of other challenges, including arguing that newly drawn legislative boundaries should have been in play for the collection of the signatures.

UW-Parkside Threat Was a Hoax

What in the world posseses people to do stuff like this?

SOMERS, Wis.—The Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department said some recent racially motivated threats at University of Wisconsin-Parkside were a hoax.

Authorities said one of the students named on a list of “targeted” black students confessed that she created the list and fliers found in a dormitory. The lists and fliers were found after a report of a rubber band noose found in a residence hall.

Authorities said the student created the list and fliers because she was not happy with the initial response from a resident assistant to the noose.

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.

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.

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.”

Indiana Now Right-to-Work

Welcome to the 21st Century, Indiana!

Gov. Mitch Daniels signed “right to work” bill this afternoon without ceremony making Indiana the 23rd state in the nation with the law,

And to the union folks in Indiana whining about the change—if the services your union provides are as valuable as you say they are, you’ve got nothing to worry about.

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.

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.

Living the Good Life

I’m happy for him.

Hembree, 50, is on death row at Central Prison in Raleigh, N.C., but he’s not looking for any pity in the letter he sent to The Gaston Gazette.

“Is the public aware that I am a gentleman of leisure, watching color TV in the A.C., reading, taking naps at will, eating three well balanced hot meals a day,” Hembree asked in the letter. “I’m housed in a building that connects to the new 55 million dollar hospital with round the clock free medical care 24/7.”

He also asks if the public knows that the chances of his “lawful murder” taking place in the next 20 years, if ever, are “very slim.”

Mankiw on SOPA

I like Greg Mankiw’s comments on SOPA. I don’t think SOPA is the right way to address the problem, but it is a problem.

The anti-SOPA crowd argues that this is a matter of basic liberty.  But it’s not.  In a free society, you don’t have the freedom to steal your neighbor’s property.  And that should include intellectual property.  Moreover, it is the function of the state to enforce those rights.  We don’t leave it up to civil litigation to protect property rights (although that is part of the solution).  We give the state substantial powers to stop theft.  Just as owners of tangible personal property have good cause to call for a police force and a system of criminal courts, owners of intellectual property have good cause to ask the state to stop those who would infringe on their rights.

Read the rest. It’s not long.

The Damaging Impact of Regulations Encouraging Defensive Management

This story is a little convoluted, but it’s extremely revealing. I’m going to cut the story up a little to put into a timeline, because it’s important.

Smiley said her job had became so stressful that she suffered a stroke and was off work for almost three months, beginning July 13, 2009, according to the court filing.

[...]

Smiley, 48, punched out of work for lunch Jan. 28, 2010, but remained at her desk to finish a project assigned by a manager because she did not plan to eat that day, she said.

Smiley, who had passed her 10-year anniversary with the company more than a month before, said another manager told her it was time for her to go to lunch and step away from her desk, but she refused. That manager observed Smiley working on a spreadsheet on her computer, answering the phone and responding to questions by people who approached her desk, according to a filing from the appellate court of Illinois.

[...]

The company’s human resources director then became involved, explaining that hourly non-exempt employees were required to take a 30-minute lunch break, a policy that had been in the company handbook for 10 years, according to the filing. Not following the policy would be a violation of Illinois’ labor laws, the HR director said.

The prominent location of Smiley’s desk, “which was directly at the front door of the office, made this particularly important for her,” according to the human resources director in the court filing. She and Smiley had “many discussions ... over her eating breakfast at her desk,” the filing states

“I knew you couldn’t eat lunch at your desk,” Smiley told ABC News. “I was under the impression that because I was punched out and I could do what I want.”

[...]

Like several states, Illinois has a law that requires employers to provide employees a lunch break. But the law cannot be read to require an employer to fire a worker who refuses to take a break in order to finish her work, said Michael LeRoy, law professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“Nonetheless, Illinois is an employment-at-will state, which means the employer can fire someone for a good reason, no reason, or a bad reason, as long as it is not discriminatory,” he said.

The story goes on to tell us that she had initially been denied unemployment benefits, but an appelete court overrulled that initial decision. But the behavior here is more interesting to me than the legal aspects.

Here we have an long-term employee. Given her tenure, I think we can presume that she performed her duties adequately and to the satisfaction of management. She suffers a stroke allededly due to stress and was on a medical leave until September (or so) of 2009. Three months later she clocks out and is working through her lunch.

It is against Illinois state law for the company to NOT give her time for lunch and, in an effort to comply with that law, it is against company policy to eat at one’s desk. Presumably the policy is designed to force employees to leave their work area for lunch to make sure they aren’t sneaking in work. Management sees the woman working during her required lunch and fires her for not complying with company policy.

(As an aside, this whole discussion if foreign to me. I work through lunch, breakfast, and dinner all the time. My work schedule is dictated by the needs of the business - not by arbitrary time windows.)

So… put yourself in the mind of management. First, they create a policy the demands that employees leave their desks in order to comply with a state law mandating that employers offer a lunch. They likely, and understanably, interpreted the law as meaning that they would get in a heap of trouble if employees were caught working during lunch. One could argue that if employees made a practice of working at lunch, then even if there is a policy that they must take a lunch, the company culture coerced employees to work anyway. So they write the policy and enforce it in a way to prevent employees from sneaking in work during the mandated lunch time.

Second, this particular employee suffered a medical issue allegedly because of stress from work. Yet she is the one working during lunch and not taking advantage of the break, and stress relief, than a half hour lunch can provide. Not only is she breaking the policy, but she is also contributing to work stress that has led to past medical issues - issues that I’m certain would have to be financially covered by the company due to various regulations (short-term disability, workman’s comp, whatever). Furthermore, if the company is shown to have known that she was working through lunch in violation of the law and allowed it, some jury might find them liable for future stress-related medical issues.

At the end of all that… worried about future lawsuits; worried about complying with state law; worried about her health; and worried about consistent enforcement of company policy; they fired a long-term employee and decided that the cost of recruiting and training an adequate replacement was less that the exposure to risk.

That’s defensive management at its finest. I certainly can’t blame the management of the company for what they did. The laws are set up to make it far too risky for them to just sit down with the employee, explain the policy and the reasoning for it, and keep her on board. It’s a shame, really, that the law too often penalizes those who would “do the right thing.”

More Cowbell!

Generally speaking, it’s not a good idea to shove a cop.

Oshkosh Police Department officers arrested the 26-year-old Appleton man after he decided to give an officer more cowbell after the officer requested the group of Recall Walker demonstrators gathered in the 1800 block of Oshkosh Avenue Thursday afternoon stay quiet and avoid blocking a restaurant’s driveway.

OPD spokesman Officer Joe Nichols said officers responded after restaurant customers called to complain the demonstrators had blocked access to the driveway at 4:20 p.m. Thursday. The man continued to shake the cowbell in the officer’s face in spite of his requests to not make excessive noise.

When the officer attempted to take the cowbell, the Appleton man pushed the officer twice.

Nichols said the officer “directed” the man to the ground and requested assistance. As he attempted to handcuff the man, a 25-year-old Appleton woman hit the officer in the back with her picket sign.

Man Starts Fake University from Prison

That’s pretty amazing.

MILWAUKEE — A lifelong con man accused of starting a fake university and churning out fake diplomas — while in prison in Wisconsin — appeared in court Tuesday to face a fraud charge, years after the complex scheme was uncovered.

Kenneth Shong, 45, was allegedly working with associates outside the prison walls to operate a suspected diploma mill that was recruiting students for at least two years before investigators caught on, authorities said. The Associated Press first reported the alleged scheme in February 2010.

Shong, described by a judge in 2005 as having a history of “outwitting, outplaying and outlasting authorities,” was set to be released from prison last Saturday on a forgery conviction. He was instead taken into custody and charged Thursday with fraudulent writings in Winnebago County. A hearing to determine whether he’ll stand trial is scheduled for Jan. 19.

Cheap Life

Sad for his parents. Let’s hope he never gets out of prison.

A 21-year-old Mequon (MEH’-kwan) man has pleaded guilty to killing his parents after they refused to give him $5 for gas.

Dennis Markov was charged with two counts of first-degree intentional homicide. A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report (http://bit.ly/wnaEqy) says he pleaded guilty to both charges Friday.

He was convicted of fatally shooting 45-year-old Victor Markov and 39-year-old Larissa Markov last April.