Those may be lyrics to the pre-school favorite purple dinosaur’s television song but you could barely notice a difference when hearing the two republican candidates for Governor square off. Rather than a true debate and candidates taking each other and their ideas to task, the debates are more like a hug-fest with Barney and a Tickle me Elmo doll.

And no, there’s no purple and red fur flying.

Debates usually have the benefit of bringing out differences between the candidates in a race. Candidates Scott Walker and Mark Neuman appear to be saying the same thing. What’s even stranger is that Walker appears to have the blessing of the Republican establishment despite his less than stellar record. If this were a democratic primary, you could be assured that liberals across the state would be fuming if they were watching a debate as lackluster and boring as the ones that republicans are putting on.

What’s just as crazy is that one of the candidates, Scott Walker, is criticizing the only Democrat for the general election for not attending a Republican primary debate.

Psst… someone might want to whisper in Walker’s ear that the race he needs to have his eye on right now is the primary.

Todays political rhetoric would have called separate facilities for different gender patients “wasteful spending” but now we see what the true impact of what cutting taxes can have when it fails to take into account a human need as basic as safety.

As we all read the stories that are coming out, we need to consider the context of the debate. First, we are in a one newspaper town. If a story runs in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and it is not correct, there is not another news outlet that will call them out on it. This leads to less responsible journalism and reporters taking liberties that they would otherwise be unable to take.

Here at Watchdog Milwaukee we have written about the one of those reporters, Steve Schulze in the past. Schulze is one of the reporters covering the BHD rape case and he is essentially accusing BHD administrators of being evasive. He is right that they are being evasive but they are legally required to be. If they answered all of his questions they would be violating HIPA, the patient confidentiality law that protects patients from having their personal information released. By not telling the whole story, Schulze has effectively demonized administrators who are simply following the law. Are these administrators perfect? Of course not, but by avoiding the context that they are legally unable to answer some of Schulze’s questions for legal reasons makes for hard hitting sound bites, but gives the public little understanding of the issue.

None of this excuses the events that took place at BHD. Framing the discussion as administrators being cagey without understanding the context is something that the Journal-Sentinel has failed at with this issue. Whether they have deliberately chosen to do this because a story of that sort is less than sexy, or whether they are simply on a witch hunt isn’t something this citizen journalist is prepared to address, but the fact remains that they have omitted key facts that provide context of this entire discussion.

One of the County Supervisors, Lynne DeBruin, has chosen to come out and publicly lambaste BHD administrators. Again, context is important. Like many other politicians, DeBruin is a media hound. She is not the first politician to make sweeping allegations and present herself as the savior of the people and the protector of the unfortunate and she will not be the last.

But DeBruin is not Jesus Christ.

She is just a politician who is seeking to put herself in the public spotlight in a level of government that is often ignored by the media. Her willingness to violate the spirit of the law and run to the media with confidential information she learned in a closed meeting do not show herself to be a watchdog and protector of the weak, they show her to be someone who lacked the basic responsible discretion to work to fix problems in-house because she wanted to put her own political needs ahead of the needs of the patients in the BHD. Her actions put the County and therefore the taxpayer at risk for a lawsuit without doing anything to fix the problem. In the end, this may result in a lawsuit and the very people who elected her will have to contribute to a settlement should this become a legal matter.

Really now, wouldn’t you think that everyone would have something better to do than complain about MMSD? I mean, I get it — there is sewage dumping that happens a few times a year in order to reduce the possibility of sewage backups into peoples basements. That dumping goes into Lake Michigan and it’s understandable that people are upset, but rather than complain all the time, what solutions do they bring to the table?

None.

While the MMSD board has greatly reduced dumping to levels even lower than its neighboring Chicago, even folks from Chicago have pointed to MMSD and threatened lawsuits due to the dumping. What has Chicago done to solve their problem? They divert their waste into the Mississippi River rather than dumping into Lake Michigan. Let’s face it — neither is a good solution but with the massive reduction of incidents, why the continued gripe without solutions.

I’d really like to hear what their solutions are because all that’s coming out of the inappropriately named conservatives these days is venomous rhetoric and no solutions.

Think about it. Customers are already paying for the services in the form of taxes. They deserve good customer service right? That’s how business would run.

As a successful business owner I’m left asking myself what would happen if I ran my business like Walker runs his county. If I followed the Walker model, I would take my customers money, and provide substandard services and products to my customers. Rather than focus on the good, I would blame others including my suppliers, my employees and even my customers for poor service.

But rather than focus on the end result — a high level of service, Walker is pursuing a policy of following the party line. The Republican party line includes privatizing everything possible. This sometimes saves money but at other times is costly as private contractors often offer low wages to their employees and get low productivity back. If the county has low levels of productivity from its contractors, the people who will suffer are those in the public who need the services.

Part of running a business also means taking care of your infrastructure before it breaks down and certainly before anyone gets hurt. This is just simple business practices that save money and make for a happier customer. Whether it is tools, buildings or vehicles, any business owner will tell you that it’s easier and makes more sense to pay for the ongoing maintenance rather than bearing the high cost of full replacement. Walker should start to follow this model. To date, he has ignored it as is evident from the fatal accident at a Milwaukee County parking garage recently when concrete fell on a teen.

In the construction industry there are laws and standards that govern safety and safe work practices. A smart business owner will assure that there is adequate staff to assure that a lift by a crane of a heavy object can be done without endangering others and while maintaining safety. In the end, it is both cheaper and more responsible to not put a smaller amount of workers in danger in order to save a few dollars. Walker should follow this model also. Had he, the lady who suffered from mental illness at the County’s Behavioral Health division would not have been raped by a dangerous high-risk mentally ill inpatient man who was unsupervised at the time of the crime.

Running a successful business is difficult. But while it is difficult, it also can be rewarding when you can see the difference that you can make in peoples lives.

Disgusting, politicizing, all words to describe my guilt for connecting the obvious dots. I wonder why no one says these things when it is Walker who does things like cutting funding for adequate oversight at the mental health division. You put dangerous mentally disturbed individuals in the same areas as vulnerable mentally disturbed individuals, and what do you suppose happens? Oh yeah, a rape. Oh, but that’s not Walker’s fault. No. It must be some mystical cause which Walker and his lackeys will blame when they’re busy carrying water for him.

Here’s the thing — having dealt with these folks from the right they’ll of course deflect and say that Walker had nothing to do with it. And yes, it was the fault of the rapist but it was also the fault of Walker who chose to underfund an area of the county that should have assured adequate safety and security for the victim.

But back to the parking garage — it is not a stretch to say that the parking garage and other areas in the County have undergone severe neglect over the past few years. One of the only mentions of the O’Donnell parking garage comes in the 2007 capital improvements budget which funded a new parking gate and the systems to make it work. A internet search all the way back to the 2005 budget, the last budget online on MilwaukeeCounty.org, shows Walker hasn’t spent any money on the garage which for years prior was always a concern and a hot topic in County Board committee meetings, several of which I attended in the early part of the last decade. For an area which was of such great concern for so many pre-Walker years, you would think that Walker would have spent some time and effort making sure that problems didn’t persist.

So when I assert that neglect from Walker caused the problem, oh good gracious, hell scorn upon me. Who am I to analyze the situation and connect the obvious dots — well there is that whole business about being there for 6 county budgets and then there’s that whole business about having served on the Parks committee, the same committee that would discuss the ailing O’Donnell parking structure and recommend fixes for it. Of course after Walker succeeded in getting his cronnies in to rubber stamp whatever he said and to help brush under the table anything that he might not want the county to see — well things, uh, changed.

Taxes became an even dirtier word than they had been and anything that required tax dollars took a back seat. So when I say that Walker is responsible, I mean he’s responsible. Yes, he saved the money that could have gone to structural oversight of the ailing garage. Yes he saved the money that could have gone to testing of bolts, brackets and other elements that are holding the facade of the structure on. And yes, he saved the money that would have had to have been expended had he dedicated staff to occasionally checking on the site.

But no, he didn’t.

And tonight the guilt for Walker’s neglect is compounded. Yes, both the rape of the inpatient woman in the County’s Behavioral Heath Division and the teen killed when part of the County parking garage fell on him are tragedies, but they were both preventable if the County had an Executive who would have dedicated the resources to those areas instead of focusing his energies on running for Governor to satiate his craven lust for power.

UPDATE: The Recess Supervisor from Playground Politics points out that the Republicans don’t like Democrats to make conclusions despite their highly politicized attack on Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett where they accused the local Milwaukee Mayor for creating a problem on the problem on the federal Interstate. Calling it the “Barrett Bypass” in a knee jerk billboard ad, they are taking umbrage with the fact that I’m crediting County Executive Scott Walker for the County parking garage problem which led to the death of a 15 year boy.

Note: I’m crediting the County Executive for a County infrastructure problem.
They credit a City Mayor for a Federal Interstate Highway maintained and run by the State.

Yesterday a 30 foot wide concrete wall fell from the County parking garage near Summerfest, fatally injuring a 15 year old boy and injuring two others. This was a case where a death could have been avoided had Walker paid more attention to governing, and less attention to politicking.

The parking garage under O’Donnell park has had structural problems for years — almost since the day it was built. Past County Executives have dedicated sufficient funds to maintain the structure and assure safety for the public. Sadly, O’Donnell Park was named after former County Executive Bill O’Donnell who did pay attention to County infrastructure and yes, he did raise taxes to pay for County needs and ensure public safety. It has always struck me as being an unfitting memorial to name an ailing parking garage after a former giant in County politics.

Walker has chosen to neglect the garage infrastructure to save money so he can position himself as champion of the taxpayer for his run for Governor. Of course Walker had to use this tragedy as an opportunity to grab a little media attention for himself. In an interview near the O’Donnell parking garage Walker said, “For me, personally, obviously it rips my heart out”… For a man who has built his career on doing as little as possible to keep government providing services and infrastructure, his claim that it “rips my heart out” rings hollow. With chunks of concrete falling from other County buildings and with neglected maintenance needs, this tragedy was entirely predictable.

Tonight there are two parents who have lost a son because Walker has decided that politics is more important than safety.

This isn’t the first time that County infrastructure has caused problems. A few months ago, chunks of the Milwaukee County Courthouse fell off, endangering the public. Maintenance could have avoided those problems, but Walker doesn’t want to fund maintenance. Funding maintenance of infrastructure isn’t a sexy campaign issue.

Then again, neither is killing off constituents to satisfy a craven lust for power.

Walker criticizes Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett at every opportunity for the same reasons he neglected maintaining County infrastructure; to further his own political aspirations. Walker is vying for the Republican nomination for Governor and to many, he is the Republican golden child who is considered a shoe-in for the nomination. Barrett is the only Democrat running. Former Congressman Mark Neumann is running against Walker for the nomination and Team Walker is doing their best to undermine and belittle Neumann.

Neumann should strike back hard.

Imagine the commercial — a piece of concrete falls and shatters. A newspaper headline shows County Courthouse crumbling. Another piece of concrete falls. A newspaper headline shows the Journal-Sentinel headline “1 Dead, 2 injured in downtown Concrete collapse”. Voice over: If Walker can’t even take care of his own County, how can we trust him to run the entire State?

If Neumann fails to hit Walker for this dangerous neglect, Neumann will lose to Walker in the primary and fade into permanent political obscurity. Neumann may not have been a great Congressman, but at least no one died due to his neglect or on his watch.

Should Neumann choose not to pursue this issue, he will leave it up to Barrett who would certainly have to use this issue in his campaign.

There is a reason for closed meetings. Those reasons include keeping from the public things that would otherwise get the County sued. Who pays for these lawsuits if the county loses or ends up settling for a monetary loss? The taxpayers.

DeBruin failed in her fiscal responsibility to both the County as well as her constituents. They are among those who will pay should the County have to shell out cash for DeBruin’s desire to grab headlines.

Several Supervisors choose to short change their constituents by working part-time while drawing a full-time salary. DeBruin is one of them. The way that they can be perceived as working hard for their constituents is to toss out a press release from time to time and make sure they get media attention and over the years. That way it looks like they are doing work when they’re busy gardening or watching their favorite reruns of Oprah. It’s not exactly the best use of taxpayer dollars but the main people who are hurt are their constituents who have less representation in the crafting of ordinances and resolutions. DeBruin has mastered this pricey ruse.

The Supervisor claims that she spilled the beans in order to keep vulnerable patients safe but there are other ways to accomplish her goals in appropriate ways that do not put the taxpayer at risk. But they require something that DeBruin has, for years, been unwilling to do.

Work.

By pulling her colleagues together and calling for the proper audits and holding department heads accountable, DeBruin could have accomplished the same thing without risking taxpayer dollars and without violating HIPPA, the federal law that is supposed to protect the privacy of patients.

But all that work would not have resulted in DeBruin grabbing headlines. She wouldn’t have been the darling of talk radio. She wouldn’t have had the attention focus on her and her narcissistic appetite for attention would not have been fed.

Hats off to the liberal blogosphere for quickly debunking CRG’s lies and innuendo about Liebenthal, known to his readers as simply “Capper”. It turns out that the blogs that CRG alledged that Capper wrote while punched in on the county clock, were written on his days off. They point to specific dates that Capper wrote those blog entries but didn’t do a simple internet search to discover that the dates they alledged he was writing on included holidays, vacation days and involuntary furlough days. Even more ridiculous, the dates that they cite include times of late night entries and even some after most folks would be in bed.

Yes it’s ridiculous and clearly a bogus attempt for CRG to get some cheap media attention.

I wonder if the blogosphere was as prolific and important in 2002 as it is today, what would have happened?

Think about it. 2002 was the year that a fairly obscure State Representative who represented a nearly all white constituency rose to power. Prior to tossing around his accusations he was mocked by some of the local media elite for his press release “Walker opposes Million Man March”. Really, who cared. Walker was a Republican and had managed to get into the good graces of then-Governor Tommy Thompson. Back then Walker supported and even authored bills that specifically were anti-Milwaukee which wasn’t a huge deal for him back then since he didn’t represent any part of the Cream City.

And then there was the pension scandal.

Walker claimed that then County Executive Tom Ament was trying to line his own pockets. Morning talk show host Charlie Sykes spent day after day ranting about how horrible Ament and the County Board were. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel was the only major newspaper in town. Ament started out by refusing to talk about it. When he did respond to an accusatory question, he responded with an inaccurate quote that the JS didn’t bother to fact check. It made Ament look really bad. The only source taxpayers had to go to in order to get information was Journal Communications who owned both the only major newspaper in town, and the radio station that Republican activist Charlie Sykes used for his non stop rants against all things liberal. With Ament and several County Supervisors being card carrying members of the Democratic party despite their non-partisan offices they held, Republicans smelled blood in the water.

It was a perfect storm.

Walker, and his supporters from CRG were happy as pigs in slop. Liberals were made to look bad and all they had to do was continue to accuse. No one stood up to fact check any of them.

Fast forward and Ament retired and 7 then-County Supervisors (including yours truly) were removed from office by a recall system in Wisconsin which requires no proof, no facts, and no charges — in short, innuendo.

But what would have happened had the liberal blogosphere been alive and well in 2002 as it is now? Would they have come to the aid of liberal Supervisors?

I can’t help but think that most of them would have. Back then everyone had questions and those questions deserved to be answered, but there was no way for anyone but right-wing zealots to get any real media attention. The focus of the media, which now included television media, was to generate profit and reputations be damned. It seemed that no one really wanted to know what really happened. It was Milwaukee’s modern day red scare.

Would things have been different? I can’t help but think the answer is yes.

Their target this time is liberal blogger Chris Liebenthal. Liebenthal, known as “Capper” in the blogosphere is a County employee who has earned the hate and fury of the right for daring to expose some of the dirty little secrets of Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker. Walker is making his second attempt at a run for Governor but has a primary. As the darling of the right, Walker has built his career on innuendo and false accusations with the help of the right wing hate group, Citizens for Responsible Government (CRG). CRG claims to be looking out for the taxpayer but they are comfortable exploiting the system to waste tax dollars if it furthers their agenda.

One of CRG’s big attack dogs is Orville Seeymer who makes it a point to get his face on television with the occasional ridiculous stunt or accusation. Seeymer is claiming that Liebenthal was blogging during county work hours and earning a county salary while criticizing Walker. This comes on the heels of an investigation that showed that Darlene Wink, County Executive Scott Walker’s Constituent Services Coordinator in his Milwaukee County office was posting pro-Walker commentary on the internet to boost Walker’s gubernatorial hopes, all at the time that she was drawing a $40,000 salary courtesy of Milwaukee County taxpayers.

Wink, by the way, is the Vice Chair of the Milwaukee County Republican party.

Yes it is wrong to hire a staff member who uses Milwaukee County taxpayer money to help you run for governor. And yes, if someone else was using county computers while they were on the clock and the taxpayers were paying them, it would be wrong also if someone was using those resources to criticize Walker.

But that didn’t happen.

Seeymer is hoping to capitalize on this and yes he’s almost certainly going to get some ink for his accusation because that’s what our local media does, but just because a CRG henchman says something, doesn’t make it true.

It is true that Capper posted a blog entry on the internet on what would otherwise have been a work day. The problem with the accusation is that Capper wasn’t on the clock. He was on furlough. One of the things that Walker did was furlough County workers because Walker failed to budget for a proper staffing level. Therefore, certain county workers will have an occasional involuntary day off.

That’s where Capper was — on his involuntary furlough day.

Now Seeymer is making a big deal out of the fact that the District Attorney’s office is looking into the matter. Of course it is. That’s what happens when there’s an accusation like this. The DA’s office always looks into the matter. It’s not that there’s something that happened that was nefarious, it’s just that proper procedure is being followed. That doesn’t mean that the DA will do anything with the accusation beyond looking at it. If it is found to be another CRG stunt and fishing expedition, as it certainly will be, it will die and CRG, like a misbehaving child who screams to get attention, will have succeeded in having someone look at them.

Now the big question is, how much media attention will this really get?

Good for them.

It’s about time this project was looked at. For years, the Kinnickinnic (KK) river has acted as a dangerous water cannon rocketing water through the south side without regards to flooding or safety. The river has claimed many children’s lives who have ventured toward its concrete banks to marvel at the speed of the water. One errant slip, as has happened many fateful times, has been all it has taken to claim the lives of children of our community.

Kudos to MMSD for showing vision and daring to advocate for change from a dangerous and poorly designed water hazard.

Many Mexican nationals come to this country to improve their lot in life, just as Irish nationals did. But what’s different? The border for one. It’s massive. We do not share a border with Ireland. Had we shared a border with them, Ireland would have surely been depopulated during Black 47 — the year of the Irish potato famine, or at least the year it began.

Now I get it, people here are angry. They think the Mexicans are going to take our jobs, but really folks, they aren’t here to eat our babies or impregnate our teenage daughters. They’re not casting spells to hurt our health or ferreting in demons and goblins or any other imaginary monsters. They’re just here to do better for themselves and most are here in the hopes that they will achieve the American dream and become Americans.

Yes it is true that some are happy to fly the Mexican flag while enjoying American rights and freedoms and somehow find fault that many of us, who would have to fight to defend this country, aren’t too happy that we’re extending rights to those who have no responsibility as Americans nor it seems a willingness to stand with us or fly our flag. I get that too.

But I can’t help but believe that most of the people who have come here as immigrants, whatever their ethnic background, want to embrace the entire package.

Yes it’s frustrating, but imagine how they must feel. They’ve come to a country, wanting all that country has to offer but not truly understanding the responsibilities, and before they’ve come to love this country they’re told to get out and threatened to be hunted at the border by groups like the Minutemen. If that’s their first introduction to people who seem to be authorities in this country, one can understand why they may not feel the same love that others do.

The reality is that the people working hard to exclude Mexican immigrants are those in the Republican party. They’re folks that call themselves “conservatives” and some even are part of the Tea Party movement. They complain that the Mexicans aren’t paying taxes. Now, if you were to apply a little logic here, isn’t the entire mantra of these folks that we pay too much in taxes? Isn’t their American dream to not pay taxes? Are they upset that the Mexicans are achieving the American dream but they are not?

If that’s the case, they need to be realistic — Mexican immigrants do pay taxes in the form of sales taxes. Some even pay income taxes knowing they will never get the benefit of social security which many pay into.

It is difficult to try to figure out the real truth but you just have to keep asking.

That was the case this morning. Last night I published a column on how Lowe’s installation crews were violating the lead safe renovation requirements. Those are simple facts. On my quiet little street in Brown Deer there were no cautionary safety ropes keeping people away from a lead containment zone. There was no plastic tacked down to deal with debris on the outside of the house. I do not know whether or not furniture of bedding in the rooms Lowe’s is installing new windows in has been covered with plastic. I can only assume that since lead safe practices are not being used on the outside of the home, they are being ignored on the inside.

So I did what any responsible journalist would do — I followed up with the management team at the Brown Deer store. The store manager, I was told, was not in today but the gentleman who is in charge of window installation, a man named Justin, took my call.

Justin indicated that a lead safe test is done on all windows as required by the EPA. I explained to Justin that there is a requirement in Wisconsin that homes with lead levels above .06% must have lead safe renovating practices applied and that there was no plastic or containment fields at his job site. Further, there is no commercially available test that is on the market today that will test for levels that low and that if they used a test, it would have tested for the national levels of .5% which is less stringent than the state requirement. This puts their installers, who by the way are finishing up their job without lead safe practices today, in violation of State law which took effect April 22nd.

Justin’s response, “the windows were sold prior to April 22nd so the law doesn’t apply to this job”. Incorrect, I told Justin. All jobs installed on April 22nd or after must adhere to the requirements. Justin didn’t feel our conversation was going anywhere and that’s when he hung up.

But the story of Justin and his reaction are not typical of the service I have gotten from Lowe’s. For home improvement needs, I still believe they are the best choice for service. For the most part, they seem to know their stuff.

As a Lead Safe Renovator I realize that I know more about this stuff than Justin and I don’t fault him, I fault Lowe’s corporate. Lowe’s corporate has a responsibility to stay on top of the laws and to educate their workforce accordingly. In mid-2009 I asked a Lowe’s associate if their windows qualify for the federal tax credit. He responded that all of their windows that say “energy star” do qualify. He was wrong. The Obama stimulus package requires a u-factor of .30 or less and a SHGC (solar heat gain coefficient) of .30 or less. Many windows that carry the energy star logo do not, in fact, meet those requirements. Again, this is not Justin’s fault. For all I know he was not a Lowe’s employee at the time. This is the fault of Lowe’s corporate for failing to educate their workforce.

Like everyone else, Lowe’s needs to be profitable. But like other general contractors, Lowe’s uses subcontractors for their installations. If they are going to sell an installed product, which is clearly not their area of expertise, they, like all other legitimate contractors, should start adhering to the law.

At the same time, there appears to be no government oversight nor funding to oversee problems. If the government is going to require registrations and certifications for businesses to use lead safe practices, they should do the oversight rather than simply stripping struggling businesses of the additional fees to feed additional red tape.

###
Jim McGuigan is a Lead Safe Renovator who has passed coursework required by the EPA and State of Wisconsin.

Lowe's Window Installation

Lead was a common paint additive prior to 1978 and high levels of lead contamination have caused people to become ill and for children to develop cognitive disabilities. Especially at high risk are children and women who may be pregnant. The federal government requires lead safe renovation on all homes with lead paint levels of 0.5% or more to go through strict containment procedures. For 49 of the 50 states, there is a readily available test on the market that will tell renovators if lead levels are high enough to require that lead safe renovator practices must be used. Wisconsin lawmakers decided to make compliance even more difficult and Wisconsin is the only state in the country to require lead safe renovations where lead levels are higher than 0.06%. The technology is not yet available to make a commercially available and economically affordable test that will record lead levels that low. This means that legitimate, law abiding contractors must either purchase a $40,000 machine to test lead levels or they must assume lead is present and take precautions accordingly.

Lowe’s is not one of those law abiding contractors.

Last month I warned of this in my column. I wrote that there will be some contractors who simply ignore the laws rather than deal with the approximately $100 per window cost that contractors will have to bear. It was my assessment at that time that it would be the small, unlicensed Mom and Pop operations that happen to own a truck and a ladder and masquerade as legitimate contractors who would ignore the laws. It was those unlicensed businesses, I contended, that would continue to sell windows at the same market price as they always had, while legitimate contractors who had taken the courses, acquired the certifications, purchased the equipment, and used lead safe renovation techniques would be at a disadvantage.

Well I was right — sort of. I say sort of because the first contractor I saw violate this law was Lowe’s.

I did not expect to see a “Lowe’s Installation in Progress” sign in front of one of my neighbors home with workers slamming in windows without any roping off of the job site or any plastic containment barriers.

Having taken the courses and incurred the expenses to become a Lead Safe Renovator, I was appalled to see installers ignoring all safety requirements in a home with two small children. Lead poisoning is not a funny little game. It is a serious problem requiring painful chelation therapy for anyone who has been adversely affected by high lead levels. Even then, the damage done by lead poisoning may not be reversible. It is unconscionable for a contractor to cut corners to safe a few dollars when children are standing nearby watching the installation and playing in the work zone. To see a renovator who so blatantly ignores these rules when children and women of child bearing age are nearby is mind-blowingly irresponsible.

But never, never in a million years, would I have expected one of my favorite home improvement stores to be utilizing such unsafe practices and putting homeowners, children and even possibly babies inutero at danger. I am saddened to see that Lowe’s would use such irresponsible practices to make a buck.

But that is changing.

For the first time ever, I saw footage of pro-immigrant protesters carrying the American flag at Mitchell Park this past weekend. To me that meant something. It meant they want to stand with us instead of simply taking advantage of all that is good with America while bearing none of the responsibility.

What a breath of fresh air. What a weight off of all of our collective shoulders. I know many people feel the same as I do. They don’t object to people from other countries coming to America but they sure as hell don’t want to put up with having to see others whine that their American rights are being trampled as they fly the flag of another country. I mean really, if you want to live by the rules and laws of another country then you really ought to go back from where you came.

Now I realize that some will say that this isn’t the way a good liberal things. My response to those folks — get your head screwed on right and if you don’t love this country, if you cannot embrace it warts and all, if you don’t feel the same patriotism that I feel when I see the flag, or a copy of our constitution or bill of rights, then really, just leave. Get out. Liberalism never has meant an abandonment of American principles or an abandonment of patriotism or American loyalty. Liberalism is a respect for our Bill of Rights. Liberalism is a respect for our flag and all that it represents. Liberalism is what has made America great.

Our flag represents all that is right with our country. It represents where we have come from. It represents where we will go.

When someone flies our flag it tells me that they share our values. It tells me that they are part of a collective “us”.

So I feel heartened. I feel proud. I feel as though these immigrant groups should have been standing with me all along and only recently have they embraced our country as their own. As long as they embrace our country as their own, they should be afforded the rights of Americans, and yes, that includes the right to protest peacefully.

But what about the facts?

There was nothing cohesive or cordial about the joke that the Republicans played. Over a year of stringing democrats along in the interest of “bipartisanship” the Democrats finally realized it was all just a scam. By getting nothing done for so long, dems looked ineffective and it wasn’t until the cloture vote on health care reform that (by the way the Republicans used several times when Clinton was in office) the dems got anything done. The big problem was that the Dems didn’t realize from the get go that the Republicans had no interest in working with them — the GOP was and is more interest in power than actually having to govern. One-upsmanship is their motto and it’s petty and irresponsible.

But boo-hoo, the tea party folks, who apparently make up a whole 18% of the population, say — why hasn’t Obama been able to do in one year what took George Bush and his tea party allies eight years to screw up? Although Bush was able to create the Great Recession turning unparralleled prosperity into economic despair in 8 years, how is it that Obama can’t turn economic despair into prosperity in just one year? Huh. What do you suppose causes that?

As for name calling, give it a rest. It was the conservatives that started calling Obama names like Hitler, throwing out accusations of socialism and communism and even using photoshop to make him look like an African witch doctor, bone in hair and all. And using a soviet sickle substituted for letters in our President’s name? Please. Yeah, it’s all the liberals fault right?

As for wealth redisribution, it is the poor and middle class who have had their wealth redistributed away from them. The rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer and that happened under the watchful eye of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

The US Environmental Protection Agency is making it really difficult on renovators. There is a special exhaustive process that must be taken by contractors to ensure that an area they work on is not contaminated by lead dust. The problem is that many of the problems that have happened in the past were done by contractors — the problems of the past were caused by homeowners (who are exempted from the new law) and landlords looking for a quick fix.

Now lead poisoning is a real problem and the EPA recognizes that. They set a standard so that any home built prior to 1978 must be tested for lead paint. If the area to be renovated has more than 0.5% of lead paint in it, lead safe renovator practices must be applied. Compliance requires each contractor to spend about a thousand dollars per crew on education and basic supplies, but each job they sell will now cost a contractor several hundred dollars in supplies just to do their job to the letter of the law. There is an exception in 49 of the 50 states however — if a standardized test which you can buy at most hardware stores for just $20 shows the area is negative for lead paint, the lead safe renovation time and cost do not apply. Many homes, even homes built prior to 1978 will test negative as not ALL homes built prior to 1978 contain lead paint.

Here’s the rub — Wisconsin decided to get tough on contractors. The Wisconsin state requirement is that anyone with more than 0.06% of lead in the area to be renovated must apply all lead safe renovator processes to each job. The average cost to the contractor is about $100 per window. The problem is, that homes CANNOT test out of this unless a costly lab process is done to assess whether lead of those small amounts is present. For instance, an x-ray machine that can test for these amounts is over $40,000 each. You can contract with a lab to have it done, but they will test the job on their schedule and when they can come out to a customers home.

How is a legitimate contractor going to price out a job in Wisconsin? They don’t know if they have to charge to cover their costs of lead safe renovating or not. Contractors will take one of two approaches. One, they will simply assume that lead of those levels is present and apply the process for lead safe renovating to all jobs prior to 1978. The alternative is that many contractors, in order to stay competitive with the many people in the industry who lack the proper licenses in the first place, will simply not use lead safe renovating processes.

Wisconsin legislators should do the common sense thing and suspend the stricter laws that Wisconsin renovators must comply with until such time that a commercially available test that can measure lead amounts as small as 0.06% are available on the market. If they do not, more contractors than not will be ignoring the new lead safe renovator requirements.

Wisconsin has chosen to institute two new fees for contractors already struggling to make a living. One requires you to first pass a nearly $300 all day course before the government takes their fee, and the other one appears to be just a fee for fees sake.

Now the State Senate has passed legislation to outlaw schools from having indian mascots.

I understand that we ought not be insensitive but some of these mascots have been around for many decades. It’s not like all these schools have names that are ethnic slurs. Someone, please, enlighten me as to why we need this new law.

I get it, you’re angry. What I’d like to know is how you managed to get so much media attention. After all, according to a poll by the New York Times, this ‘massive up-swelling of political activism’ of yours is just 18% of the population. Compared to the 53% of the population that supported President Obama during the election, only 7% of you think he’s doing well.

Now I’m not a mathematician, but it strikes me that the attention should be on the guy who won 53% of popular support not the 18% who are angry.

Another thing that I’m really not horribly perplexed about but the national media appears to be completely flummoxed about is that you claim you don’t want to be a new political party. Now I get that. Every person I’ve talked to describes themselves as a conservative but doesn’t want to be called a Republican. However, all of the tea party people I have met call President Obama a socialist, some even call him a fascist, and at the same time, they almost all vote for exclusively Republicans. In fact, only 32.9% of Americans are Republicans.

Now this “movement” that we’re all being told by the media is serious and something we should all take notice of, started right after President Barack Obama took office. Yeah, I get it. You’re angry that you lost. You’re angry that the guy you wanted didn’t win. A lot of people weren’t happy when former President George W. Bush didn’t win but the media didn’t say that they were part of a massive movement. They were part of a minority and were with the party that didn’t win, just as you are now.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that since 73% of you are self described “conservatives”, that you didn’t vote for the President in the first place. After all, it’s pretty clear to most folks that “conservative” is the same as “republican” these days. Cry foul all you want, but the rest of us aren’t dumb.

So what’s your goal here? It’s pretty clear where you are politically. Heck, 63% of you look to Fox News to give you your political insights and one of your favorites is inflammatory teavangelist Glenn Beck. And yes, it’s pretty clear the vast majority of us now that Fox News is a Republican mouthpiece.

One other thing that throws me for a loop is how anyone claims that racism isn’t part of your movement. The fact is the major policy initiative of Barack Obama was also the same policy initiative that Bill Clinton tried, but failed, to pass and that is health care reform. Popular signs at your rallys have compared Obama to Hitler and some tea party folk have even called for the President to be assassinated. A tea party fundraiser letter showed a photoshopped image of President Obama as a pimp and one of the tea party attack images during the health care debate was of the President as a witch doctor with bones in his hair and the Soviet hammer and sickle used to spell out ObamaCare. Now I can’t help but notice that 89% of you are white and you defend your more aggressive attacks against Obama (who supported the same type of policies that Clinton did) by saying that the fact that President Obama is black “has nothing to do with your discontent”. At the same time, 52% of you think that “too much is being made of the problems of black Americans”.

I hate to break it to the 18% of you who are part of this “uprising”, but we really weren’t born yesterday.

Now I know that you’re marketing yourselves as a broad spectrum of the American people but the vast majority of people I have seen in these tea party rally photos are white men. In fact, 59% of you are men.

The one connection I’m not getting here is the whole evangelical christian connection. 39% of you describe yourself as evangelical christians. There seems to be a correlation. Ok, well maybe one other thing — 58% of you are gun owners. What’s the deal there?

Now on how the economy is faring, that’s your big issue right? I’m having a tough time understanding why there was no tea party movement when Republican Ronald Reagan was driving up the deficit to record numbers. When Democrat Bill Clinton was in office the Reagan deficit was turned into a surplus through some really tough cuts in government spending but you didn’t rally behind him. Then when Republican G.W. Bush was President the deficit rose again to record number and there was no tea party screams of socialism or calls for impeachment from you tea party folk.

So how is this economy affecting you?

Well it turns out that over 20% of you are making over $100,000 a year. Not bad coin. Remind me again, how are the Obama policies hurting you? It turns out that 62% of you think that Medicare and Social Security are just fine entitlements. Could that be that 75% of you are over 45 years old and 32% of you are already retired?

For the 6% of you who are unemployed, I get it. You want change. You would like to have hope. You are hurting now and you don’t feel the government is being of any help. Now I’m going to share a personal story. A good friend of mine, a self-described conservative who argues for all things Republican whenever he can, just went for two years without a job. Fortunately, and I’m happy for him, he found a job and recently celebrated receiving a pay check. But for the majority of those two years he was the beneficiary of unemployment compensation, and yes, that’s a liberal program. He and his family were also the beneficiaries of a liberal health care program here in Wisconsin called Badgercare. Still, he argued against all things liberal while cashing his checks he got for doing nothing, and caring for his family’s healthcare needs through a government run free program.

I’d ask you how he reconciles that but since so many of you are making six figure incomes and still believe the world is coming to an end, I don’t reckon’ I’ll get an answer I’ll be able to reconcile as coherent.

Apparently the south is angrier than the rest of the country since 36% of you are from the south. I understand that the south is a place where discontent is almost cultural. After all, it was the south that ceceded from the union back in the mid-19th century and it was in the south that civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was slain as well as where Democratic President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I’m just hopeful that President Obama doesn’t take any chances with security since it turns out that 58% of you have a gun in the house.

But back to finances — 52% of you say your own taxes are fair. So what’s the gripe? Now 93% of you think the economy is in bad shape. Well that’s no shock. Most of us in the general public think the economy isn’t great but I’d put money on the belief that most of the rest of us think that things are getting better. I can say things are getting better with my business and since my Republican friend just got a job, I would say things are getting better for him too. But are things really all that bad if 20% of you are making over $100,000 per year? Really now — are you concerned that you’ll have to take one less cruise this year? Maybe you’ll have to cut short that two week vacation to Cozumel?

Well I guess I’d have to admit that the more I think about it, and even as I write this, the wackier it seems to me that there is even 18% of the population who is bent out of shape enough to protest.

One thing that is becoming abundantly clear is that it’s really not a popular uprising of new people concerned about the democratic process. What it really is, is a bunch of people who didn’t get their way in the last election who are looking for an outlet to claim that they’re victims.

Those are the questions that the folks in the news media ought to be asking.

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker has sought to borrow additional funds in the form of pension obligation bonds — a form of borrowing never even broached by any Milwaukee County Executive before him. Now Walker is happily waving around $8 million that he claims he saved taxpayers. He boasts this, he says, because of additional privatization and furloughs that he forced upon the workforce of County workers.

Of course workers are crying foul and want the money. Walker is bellyaching that he wants more cuts. It turns out that when constituents don’t get County services they’re paying for, they don’t call the County Executive, they call their County Supervisor so Supervisors are the ones taking heat for services not being performed. No wonder Walker doesn’t mind not providing the services County residents expect — no heat, no responsibility.

And now Walker wants cuts in services at Mitchell International Airport, which is owned by Milwaukee County but operated privately. Walker wants to use those funds in other places. The problem is that the airport is run in what is called an Enterprise fund. County taxpayers don’t pay for operation of the airport — additional fees that airline passengers pay for are used for the operation of the airport. It doesn’t much make sense for Walker to skim away money from ticket revenues if the decades old agreement with the airlines has worked to serve citizens of Milwaukee County and the metro area well for years.

If Walker wants to claim that there is a surplus, he should first return all of the funds he has borrowed and fully fund the County pension rather than borrow on its behalf and then skim money way from it.

How is it that Walker, who claims to be the savior of County finances, criticize Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett when Barrett’s city budget fully funds their pension obligation?

When are people going to realize that Thompson is more addicted to the attention than public policy? He’s the kind of guy who is happy to talk about himself, taking a breath only to suggest, ‘enough about me, what do you think about me’?

He won’t run. He’ll never again run for anything. That would mean he would have to give it some effort. He would have to not only turn on the charm and polish, but work to win an office. And why would he? He’s already been Governor. Going after that seat is just doing what he’s already done. He’s been the Secretary of Health and Human Services under the George W. Bush administration. In both of his last two jobs he was the top dog in charge. First in charge of the executive branch in Wisconsin and second in charge of the entire national department of Health and Human Services.

Now he’s suggesting that he might be interested in running against Russ Feingold for Senate? Really? Tommy Thompson being satisfied with being one of 100 senators? Having only 1/100th of the influence to make a policy happen? I just don’t see it. Thompson’s ego is just too huge.

When he was in the Governors mansion he could put out a press release and everyone would cover it. If he were one of 100 senators competing for news coverage, he would barely ever see his name in print.

So for those waiting in anticipation of Thompson announcing today that he’ll run against Feingold — don’t waste your time. Tommy Thompson’s days of running for office are done.

If that’s the case, then there is little reason to pass the ban on texting while driving because it’s impossible to enforce. How can a police officer know if someone is texting while driving? When they pull you over, are they going to ask for your license, registration, insurance and cell phone? Does anyone seriously think that police officers are going to be going through the “sent items” folder on all of the cell phones they request?

The reality is that it is unenforceable but in a law I saw no reason for before, I at least understand why they passed it. The reason is this — I sat down for several hours last month and talked with a lady who had lost her husband to a teenager who was texting and driving. The teen had been tapping away at her cell phone and ran into the man while he was driving his Harley-Davidson motorcycle last summer.

The widow explained to me how they had plans for retirement. They were looking forward to spending more time together and going to civil war re-enactments and more Indian pow-wows. She had pictures of him on her living room walls — pictures which kept him alive in her memories. Her eyes welled up a few times with tears but I tried to bring levity to the situation. I knew she hadn’t laughed as much these past few months.

Still, Wisconsin does already have laws on the books against inattentive driving. This law is little more than a feel good measure for legislators who want to pass a law that they perceive will make them look caring at election time and since it passed on a 30 to 3 vote, it seems that everyone in the chamber wanted to get on board with the tough on texting legislation. The problem is that this is knee jerk legislating. If there’s already a law on the books to address inattentive driving, why do we need another law to do the same thing? The reality is that we don’t.

If they wanted to make it tough, they should have required that violators of this new law go into high schools classrooms a few times a year for some lengthy period of time — say a decade, and explain how their texting while driving caused harm to persons or property.

After all, while I have been driving, I have noticed people texting while driving and there is a marked difference in how people text and drive across the generations. Young people, including people in their teens and early 20′s I have noticed, sit there and stare at their phones until their messages are done; driving with their knees and giggling. People a little older hit a few keys and return their attention to the road before looking back down at their phones. This is not to say that either is safe — in fact both are dangerous. However, only the oblivious would argue that they are equally dangerous.

The tapes which Republican pundits and Republican Congressmen lauded as exemplary journalism by an activist conservative duo were bogus. They took long segments of discussions to grab little sections that could be taken out of context. Then they edited them together to make something which looked sinister, illegal, and underhanded.

As an example, there was an African American woman who was questioned about how the woman who was posing as a prostitute could find housing. “Don’t give up” was what Fox News kept running over and over. The implication was that the ACORN representative was telling her not to give up on starting her own prostitution business — not that she was urging the woman not to give up on finding housing.

In another shot, the man who was supposedly posing and dressed as a pimp was asking another ACORN employee various questions and that employee was helpful to the man. The problem was that the unedited film, which was never shown on Fox News, showed that the poser was not wearing his pimp outfit — rather he was wearing a pin striped shirt.

All of this was exposed by an investigation from Jerry Brown, the California Attorney General, and was recently featured on the Rachel Maddow show, but how many people will see this? Fox and its commentators and “reporters” have dedicated hundreds of hours to publicize the horrible seeming dis-service that ACORN has inflicted upon the community. Will they, or the Congressmen who wrote a Congressional resolution lauding the fraudulent duo now condemn them for their lies? My guess is no because that would actually be news. They would be exposed for having egg on their faces. They would then have to admit that they were part of the machine that propagated a lie that smeared several ACORN employees and even ended up bringing down an organization, albeit a poorly managed one, that helped poor people.

If ever there was a reason to enact a law allowing and requiring the state to go after people (and their assets) who knowingly and fraudulently spread information meant to smear and discredit a person or organization, this would be it.

Countries like Ireland have already enacted bans and they haven’t hurt business. But opponents here say it will hurt business for bars. What makes Wisconsin bars different than those in Ireland?

Take an opportunity to think about what the differences will be for yourself and for people with respiratory challenges such as asthma and chronic bronchitis. Then leave a comment finishing this sentence, “In 100 days I’ll be able to ….”

Implementation of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Program’s Education Criteria for Performance Excellence would not only help Milwaukee Public Schools focus on student learning and achievement, it would provide a proven framework for MPS to improve itself and become a draw to the community rather than a drain on it.

In 2008, Iredell-Statesville Schools in North Carolina won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for Education. With 20,902 students and 3,416 employees, the district is about one-third to one-fourth the size of MPS (82.444 students and 10,943 FTE employees), but it is comparable. It has a combination of schools, student population and some of the same areas of concern as MPS.

When it started its journey six years ago, had just fired its superintendent. It had budget problems, along with low student achievement, community expectations, trust from community and workforce, and morale. It did, however, have excellent employees.

Over the next 6 years, the Iredell-Statesville School district started with its leaders—ensuring that they understood and lived the proven performance excellence criteria of the Baldrige Program. They laid a foundation for leadership that helped them to build a passion for learning in their students and their teachers.

Wherever they went, leaders (Board of Education, Central and School leaders) would ask three questions:

1. What is getting in the way of student learning?
2. What do you need to help all children learn to high levels?
3. What do you expect from the superintendent (or the principal or whoever was asking the question)?

They slowly created the conditions for change that would last. They built relationships, they repeated small behavior changes, and they reframed their beliefs. They created a sense of urgency and the results have been remarkable.

Their graduation rate has increased from 61% to 81% (all numbers are for 2002 and 2008), grades 3-8 reading has gone from 75th to 20th in the state, while grades 3-8 math has increased from 68th to 12th. Dropout rate has improved from 106th in the state to 10th and their attendance rate has skyrocketed from 55th to 3rd.

All of this has happened through a commitment to implementing the proven performance excellence criteria in the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Program. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t without its pitfalls. But it worked. It worked for the children of the Iredell-Stateville Schools and it will work for the children of Milwaukee, too.

For more information about Iredell-Statesville Schools, look at their Baldrige application: http://www.baldrige.nist.gov/PDF_files/2008_Iredell_Statesville_Application_Summary.pdf. For more information about Baldrige, go to: http://www.baldrige.nist.gov/. For the Baldrige Performance Excellence Criteria, go to http://www.baldrige.nist.gov/Education_Criteria.htm.

That appears to be what’s about to happen to Milwaukee County Supervisor Toni Clark. Clark is expected to accept a plea deal and plead guilty to falsifying campaign finance documents which is a felony. Convicted felons are not allowed to hold public office which means that as soon as her conviction becomes official, her representation of her district ends.

Clark came onto the political landscape a few years ago by bashing then-County Supervisor Robert Krug. Krug, who had served as a hard-working full-time Supervisor, had represented the far north side district for years but Clark promised change and had implied that Krug didn’t do enough while serving as Supervisor. After taking office, Clark decided to only serve part-time while taking the full-time salary, meaning the district which had in the past had many projects and strong representation, now had no one to lobby on their behalf.

Clark did show up for required meetings, but developed a reputation among her peers for doing little more than the minimum — something many of her constituents were left unaware of. One thing that Clark did however, was to hold a fundraiser and rather than use it for her campaign, she pocketed the cash. Nothing was raised for her she claimed, but donors to her campaign cried foul when they discovered that the money they had given to her went into her personal bank account.

So is Clark a loss for her district? Certainly not. If anything, her constituents will once again have an opportunity to elect a new County Supervisor. Let’s hope that this time they make a better choice.

This promises to be a difficult race where Barrett’s biggest challenge is to respond to the simple republican slogan “cut taxes”. Barrett has shown amazing fiscal responsibility while serving as Mayor of Milwaukee and has even managed to fully fund the city’s pension fund while other governments have borrowed heavily to run day-to-day expenses. While states like California have found themselves mortgaged to the hilt due to their excessive borrowing. Barrett makes it clear in his video that he believes in the pay-as-you-go method that families across Wisconsin have to live by.

Simply pulling out the credit card every time there is a bill shouldn’t be an option and under Barrett, the City of Milwaukee has remained financially strong without massive increases in taxes.

The show The West Wing put the fictional President Jed Bartlett in the same position that Mayor Barrett is in now. Bartlett was faced with complex issues but an opponent who offered little more than a simple two word slogan to answer everything. In a debate, Bartlett faced an opponent who had the same “cut taxes” rhetoric that Barrett’s opponents have but Bartlett responded by asking another two word answer — what’s next?

What’s next.

Boiling down the running of an entire level of government to a trite “cut taxes” slogan needs to answered by Barrett in much the same way that Bartlett answered. “What’s next”?

Should Barrett end up running against Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker if Walker wins the nomination, he will be well positioned to ask that question. Why? Because Walker has already shown what’s next by his actions. By borrowing money to operate the Milwaukee County, County Executive Walker has greatly increased the County’s debt load while the county pension debt has grown since Walker has taken over. Unlike Barrett who also faced mounting problems with pension investments adversely affected by the stock market, Walker has chosen the path of Nero — fiddling as Rome burned.

Should Barrett win, he will leave a City that is financially solvent and move into a job where he will face many challenges. But, unlike his opponent, Barrett will be entering office with a proven track record of success and a legacy of fiscal responsibility.

I will try to make more frequent appearances here in the future.

California’s Arnold Schwartzenegger would be a more appropriate match for Walker’s fiscal style. Schwartzenegger has borrowed heavily rather than raise taxes today. This has resulted in yet another fiscal mess coming from California. The borrow and spend tactic only lasts so long as California is sending out IOU’s instead of checks. With the way that Walker following the Schwatzenegger lead at the County level, it’s obvious that Walker cares more about the power and the rhetoric than the fiscal well being of residents of his own state.

My neighbor at the the time was well into his 80′s. His health had started to fail him but I could tell he had always been an independent and hard-working kind of guy. He would fix things around his house and in his yard and I had always admired how he did things. He would putter around in the yard in the summer and always used his small push mower to cut his grass. All of us had them in our little southside neighborhood back then — mowers that would spin and cut the grass only when you pushed them. I don’t know that most kids today would even recognize what it was, let alone how to use it.

I woke up early, as I suppose most kids do who have an 8pm bedtime. By 6am I was wide awake.

We lived on a corner lot back in those days so when it snowed, we had about twice as much work as many of our neighbors. Nobody had snowblowers back then. You just had to dig out. That was just the way it was.

One of my chores was to shovel the snow. I would get dressed and start the task. I’d start by the stairs, shovel the sidewalk along the side of the house, and finish by continuing across the front. If it was early enough, and I still had time before school, I would continue to shovel the next house. That was George’s house. I’d shovel the front, then I’d just continue along the side of his house and even the short little back walk in his back yard that led to his garage.

George didn’t know.

I kept this up for months. I figured that he would appreciate it but I didn’t really want him knowing who had taken an interest in helping him out. Leave a little mystery in it, I thought, even at my young age. After all, it was only a year or two earlier that I’d discovered that Santa Claus wasn’t real. Young optimism and maybe a sprinkling of the magic of the holidays wasn’t lost on me.

One day I decided to use one of George’s shovels to finish the job. My parents had always bought the flat bladed shovels that were about as wide as they were tall. George had the scoop type shovels, long and thin with a nice curve to push the snow instead of simply digging and tossing as my shovel had been designed to do. They were beautiful shovels. Solid steel, well coated with a layer of brown rust. They were heavy and George had put a nice hand grip on the end of each one. The handle was as tall as I was and when I used it I could feel the bottom scraping the pavement clean. Those were great shovels.

Now I didn’t think George would mind too much if I used his shovels on his sidewalks, and more importantly, I figured he would never find out who his benefactor was. Before George was even awake, I thought, I would be finished with the shoveling and back in my house drinking some hot chocolate.

Well that’s not exactly how it worked. Our neighborhood was a series of polish flats, as we called them back then. There were some bungalos and a few small duplexes thrown in, but they were all close. The lots were maybe 40 feet across. When I shoveled the sidewalk along the side of George’s house, he may have been sleeping 8 feet up and just on the other side of the wall for all I knew.

One day, part of the way through the winter, George surprised me by coming out.

I was busted. The gig was up. For some reason, I thought to myself, I hope he’s not mad. I know it sounds silly, but I was 10 years old and on his property and it wasn’t even yet 7am.

George came up to me and pressed a quarter or two into my mittened hand. “So you’re the one who’s doing this. Thanks. Good job”.

Whew. He wasn’t mad. There I was, with his shovel in my hand, albeit shoveling his walkway, and he was thanking me. This didn’t work out half bad I thought to myself.

George showed me the way he liked his snow shoveled. He liked the edges to be tapered back. He showed me with his shovel how he would end at the end of the concrete and lift, continuing to push the shovel toward the outside as he threw it. George’s sidewalk looked like a perfect luge when he was done.

It was a work of art I thought to myself.

And then George did something I didn’t expect, couldn’t even hope for. George told me to keep the shovel. This wasn’t your ordinary shovel I remember thinking. This was a great shovel.

George didn’t realize it then, but he made an impression on that young boy that would last a lifetime. Every time I go into the garage and see that shovel, I remember my neighbor George. Every time I have used that shovel I think about George’s how-to lesson on shoveling.

While many years have passed and most of my snow removal duties around the house these days consist of using a snow blower, every once in a while, when the snow is high, I find myself pulling out the old shovel to sculpt the perfect tapered edges.

Limbaugh said that Bin Laden’s recent comments “sounds like this could easily be [said by] Russ Feingold, the Senator from Wisconsin.”

Limbaugh clearly doesn’t understand the differences between Wisconsin’s squeaky clean maverick senator and a cave dwelling, mass-murdering terrorist. But it’s not the first time that Limbaugh has used inflammatory rhetoric to incite his audience and it won’t be the last.

According to state records, Dohnal is hoping to cash in with a lawsuit against Blonien.

Hat tip: Dan Bice

Yes, we’ve all heard about the poll putting Tom Barrett over both Scott Walker and Mark Neumann in the race for Governor next fall. The reality is that much can happen between now and next November and a poll taken today means little.

So ignore those polls until a month or so before the election. If they show a significant gap between the candidates, they might be a harbinger of things to come. If not, they’re just some pol or some pundit jumping up and down over something that matters little.

Consider how all of us benefit society. In our young lives we symbolize hope and optimism. As enter our working years we keep the engines of industry and commerce going. As we enter our golden age we can share wisdom and a less harried calm with our fellow man.

At least that’s the way it is in a perfect world. In real life everyone struggles to get by and we compete for finite resources to improve the lives of our families — whichever age we fall into.

That’s why good zoning is so important. A community with mostly children may forget its seniors. A community with mostly seniors may forget its children. Communities which favor one group or another do so at their collective peril.

Consider Brown Deer for instance. A village of 12,000 in Milwaukee’s northern suburbs has, over the last 10 years built two very large apartment buildings with the requirement that they be only used for senior living. Another is being built on one of their last few parcels — changing it from commercial to residential.

But why is this not good?

Although we all have needs as human beings, we are not all treated the same by our government. Consider this — children do not have the right to vote. They rely entirely on others for their livelihood. Our taxes pay for schools and everyone pays. Seniors do not have the same ability to productively work at the same level as their younger years. Both groups, our young and our old need some sort of aid. Just as children have schools, seniors are the beneficiaries of medicare and social security. But a key difference in both of these groups is that seniors get to vote and that vote, when it comes to children, is cast locally and since schools are a local issue and taxed locally, the decisions of seniors can be the deciding factor.

As a side note, social security and medicare are paid federally zoning does not come into play.

Communities like Brown Deer who haphazardly approve housing which favors one age group over another do so at their own peril. In Brown Deer, school referrendums have gone down in flames in large part because of an organized senior population which has united to oppose additional school spending.

Young people who are looking for a new home want the best for their children. They are looking for a home in a community with good schools. Communities which reject school spending will have fewer young people wanting to purchase homes in those communities. That will drive down property values which in turn will increase the burden of essential services on those who remain.

Critics of MPS correctly point out that the school system has been poorly managed and many business and community leaders look to the Mayor of the City of Milwaukee for a fix. Unfortuately the current system gives the Mayor no voice and no control over the running of MPS. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett would like the authority to appoint the Superintendent of MPS. Since the Mayor ends up taking on much of the blame for the failing schools, it makes sense that he would have control over it.

Not surprisingly, the MPS school board members aren’t in favor of this. They’ve rallied to maintain control and anti-reform advocates have found allies in an unlikely coalition in the State Assembly. Since any change of this magnitude for MPS would require a change in state law, a coalition of democratic legislators from the central city and the entire republican caucus has vowed to oppose the reform.

Why?

The answer isn’t obvious but it’s borne from fear and cynicism.

The central city democrats oppose it out of fear that the Mayor, whoever will be in that position, would be difficult to control and his or her could make sweeping changes that they perceive would be harmful. Urban anti-reform advocates say that this would reduce their ability to have a say in the political process since elected school board members who no longer have a say in the appointment of the new Superintendent of Schools. They miss one key element here — the Mayor is an elected position who they will continue to be able to vote for or against even if this proposal passes.

Republicans oppose the bill because it would give a win to Mayor Barrett who happens to be running for Governor. Desperate to grab onto power, they don’t feel they can allow Barrett to win on any issues — especially anything that has to do with reform. If Barrett were to succeed to cobbling together a majority of legislators to support his plan, he would emerge as a leader who has fought for reform and that would make him a formidable candidate in the election for Governor this fall.

Right now the only thing bottling up a vote on MPS reform is the State Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, a Democrat. Decker doesn’t want to schedule a vote on the bill and if it is a Democrat who kills the reform, then Barrett loses. If it turns out that it is the Republicans who have united to oppose the reform, and the bill goes down, then Barrett gets a major win because he will be able to travel the state saying that his reform efforts would have passed, but the Republicans opposed them. And who would the public like to see in office, those who oppose reform, or the champion of reform?

State Senator Julie Lassa is one of those pro-choice democrats who was also Catholic. An Archbishop on a mission, then-Archbishop Burke, decided to make an example out of her and denied her communion and also denied her ability to have her child baptized in the church.

What a bone-headed move.

To scorn an individual is one thing. To scorn their child is heartless and cruel. Burke not only turned his back on Lassa, he turned his back on an infant who bore no blame for the disagreement that Burke had with Lassa.

Lassa is seeking revenge.

Now she has a bill before the legislature to virtually eliminate the whole statutes of limitations on lawsuits. This would have a devastating effect on the archdioces since many sex scandal victims of the Catholic Church cannot file claims because it is way beyond the statues of limitation. Lassa wants to eliminate those statutes which would open up the church to lawsuits which in turn could bankrupt the archdioces.

The Journal-Sentinel belives it’s a great thing and they want to be a part of it. Their recent editorial suggested that the bill was a good thing and the only redress for victims of sexual abuse by clergy. They fail to address all of the good that the church does as though this bill would somehow make it possible for victims to gain closure. But that’s simply not true. Victims would get money from the church which doesn’t amount to closure – it just amounts to taking away funds from an organization whose clothing the poor and feeding the hungry.

It seems as though the Journal-Sentinel isn’t looking at the big picture here. If the Catholic Church has to deal with more lawsuits, it would likely go bankrupt and calls for the church to help the poor will go unanswered. Those that have no means cannot offer help. If you strip away the archdioces means, they will be unable to come to the aid of those who so desperately rely upon them.

Lassa has also been a victim here though. Because she is pro-choice, she and her child were singled out as not being eligible for the benefits of the sacriments. How out of touch did the church have to be? Did they just think that there actions would never have ramifications? Apparently Burke forgot that Jesus was both a forgiving and understanding man — both traits that then Archbishop Burked lacked.

None of this is to excuse what happened with the sexual abuse scandal that wracked the archdioces. But Lassa’s bill will do little to soothe the hearts of those who were wronged. Lassa’s bill does little but offer her the ability to retaliate against a church that has turned its back against her and her child. The catholic church preaches about extending compassion to others but denied that compassion to Lassa and after the way they treated her, she’s not about to turn the other cheek.

Who cares.

Unfortunately that twisted sentiment is one that “welfare queens” and corporate CEO’s share. Neither really cares about the next person just trying to get by. Welfare queens care less that someone else has to work hard to pay their way. Corporate CEO’s could care less about the workers under them and whether they’ll be able to pay their own bills.

Both have convinced themselves they ought to get more.

Are either any better? Of course not all people on welfare are bad people trying to scam the system just like not all corporate CEO’s are looking to screw over their workers to earn themselves million dollar bonuses. But right now it’s not the welfare queens that are making small amounts off the system that are the problem. Corporate CEO’s on the other hand are. The CEO’s aren’t looking at taking large cuts in their own salaries but they are looking to cut their staffs at the worst possible time in our economy.

Yet who makes the headlines? Who do we as a society seem to get more enraged over? The person who indefinately lays off a thousand workers or the person who get their check for a few hundred dollars a month? Forgive me if I am too logical here, but shouldn’t we be more outraged at the person who chose to throw people out of work so they can justify a fat bonus for themselves?

Just last week there was a story in the news about a corporate executive who was outraged because the bank that she worked for had capped her salary at a few hundred thousand for the year because our government, who with the power of our taxes which helped to bail out the bank, demanded the capped salary. Well maybe, just maybe, that exec should have been enraged when she saw that the decisions in her bank were so lousy that they would lead to the bank needing a bailout. Did she think of that?

So forgive me if I’m not compassionate enough for the corporate CEO’s and the corporate executives who are bringing home hundreds of thousands and in many cases millions of dollars while the staff underneath them is having their salaries cut or their jobs eliminated. Forgive me if I don’t feel pain over the fact that they might not be able to afford to pay cash for that new yacht they were thinking of picking up, or that month long vacation to a warm climate where white sand beaches and the smell of coconut drinks are their only care in the world while their workers worry about how they’re going to feed their families.

The problem is that a general lack of civics, decency and morals that have pervaded the business world. At no time do many of these folks stop to think about how their fellow man will be affected. At no time do they think, “gee, maybe this will hurt someone”. No, their thought is for themselves and what’s strictly in it for them. They think, like the welfare queens that society has bashed for over thirty years now, that they deserve everything they get little thought goes to the thousands of workers and former workers who are struggling to figure out how they’re going to pay the mortgage this month.

One of the biggest and most dishonest pieces of rhetoric is “cut taxes”. We’ve all heard it. Sometimes the candidate that simply says they will cut taxes prevails — much like if Fred Flintstone said, “rock good”.

The result of elections where this type of thing prevails can be disasterous as we saw several years back when a bunch of “cut taxes” politicians in California did just that and decided that a scheme investing in high-yield derivatives would allow them to maintain services while cutting taxes. Well Orange County lost big and rather than blame the simplistic politicians, Orange County resident blamed the derivatives. Now in the same state, Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger wants to borrow money to pay for operating expenses and the debt load is growing out of control and their bond rating is poised to suffer.

Locally we have Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker who has consistently used the same rhetoric and the voters have rewarded him by returning him to office. The problem is that the public doesn’t have a solid grasp on what he has done to the fiscal state of the County. Walker has done what Schwartzenegger has done — he has borrowed heavily to pay for ongoing operating expenses. As an example, the pension plan which Milwaukee County is legally committed to funding is not fully funded. Walker has invested the funds in risky places and has lost big. Voters have to make up the difference but Walker has simply borrowed money so voters don’t realize that their taxes have gone sky high because of his poor decisions. The irony here is that Walker did receive a large chunk of money via a lawsuit against Mercer for bad advice the county was given regarding their pension plans several years ago. Where did that money go?

Operating expenses.

After all, why tax when you can borrow to pay for expenses? That way you can put off todays expenses and get all the benefits of a public happy with a sustained level of services. Of course this isn’t sustainable but the public doesn’t know that. Since Walker is running for Governor, it won’t much matter to him if he loses because the next guy will have to figure out how to pay the bill that Walker has run up. It’s a bit like inviting someone to a dinner party at a restaurant and leaving the last guy to arrive with the check.

The reality is that Walker’s over simplistic message has no place in good government and a trite “cut taxes” has about as much substance as “yabadabadoo”.

Well you vote against what the President supports, right?

Unfortunately right in several instances. The democrats in the senate from historically conservative districts are doing exactly what the conservative democrats did in Clintons mid-term election. They’re running for their lives from all that is perceived as liberal. But like the democratic congressmen and congresswomen running for office in Clinton’s mid-term, they will lose their seats.

They will lose their seat not because their own districts did not believe in the same things they believe in. They will lose their seats because they lacked the backbone to accomplish anything that separates them from the republicans. They chose to listen, not to the many people who supported them, but rather to the people who opposed them in the past and to those who will oppose them next November. They should lose. They deserve to lose. After all, if democrats can’t even rally around an issue as fundamentally democratic as healthcare as a right as opposed to healthcare only for the rich, and we’re clearly moving in that direction, cowardly democrats deserve to lose.

But is this, or should it be all doom and gloom for democrats? Of course not. Remember, this is a new crew of democrats than in Clinton’s mid-term. They don’t have the experience of seeing their red-state democratic friends box up their belongings to clear out their offices for the next wave of rabid republicans.

And yes, they do deserve to lose.

This may be the year that congressional democrats are given their virtual pink slips, but the remaining democrats will see who wins their seats and who loses. Those who fought the tough fight and held firm on a public option will go home and campaign this fall. Some of them will win and return to the Senate and the House. The Senators who opposed the pubic option but did not fall as they were not up for re-election will see this and maybe some of them will find a little courage knowing that when a democrat stands for a democratic ideal, they are rewarded by the electorate, but a democrat who stands for nothing will almost always be punished. (I can’t help but be reminded of the first Batman movie where Jack Nicholson’s Joker character proclaimed, “this town needs an enema”.)

To top it off, democrats still hold the White House and President Obama is every bit as shrewd as his predecessor. There is little doubt that he will take every opportunity to bash a new Republican house which opposes is every move. There is little doubt that he will place the blame for failures exactly where it belongs — on the obstructionists.

And that, is the short version of why Obama will be rewarded by the electorate with a second term.

The economy threw many people out of work and many of those that continued to work were underemployed and of course the stock market tanked.

A spate of deaths among family and friends in late 2008 was carried forward with the loss of my Grandfather in 2009. On top of that, this site was hacked and it took a huge effort to get things back and running smoothly and safely.

I held out hope for a public option for healthcare but that didn’t happen. Milwaukee County government, under the glazed eyed Scott Walker, saw the loss of more services and raised their debt load even more to pay for ongoing operating expenses. All this despite winning a sizable sum in a lawsuit which, ironically, was only won because County leaders (who Walker demonized in his successful effort to win his seat in 2001) were given misleading information which led to a costly mistake.

Anti-reform advocates came together to fight against a plan to turn MPS governance over to the City of Milwaukee, despite the fact that MPS, under the not-so-watchful eye of a part-time school board, has had failing marks for years. Of course when businesses locate to a community they look to the Mayor to find out what is going on with a city and speculate on whether they wil have an adequately educated workforce. Since MPS Board members don’t have to deal with those issues, and they can’t anyway because they have to work full-time jobs to support their own families, the problems are kept from them, as is the blame for a failing system.

In Brown Deer, Village officials lacked vision and understanding of diversity approved another senior housing complex at he exclusion of working families and children. With the trend of seniors organizing to oppose nearly every school referrendum on the ballot, this may well tip the balance from a family friendly community to an educational black hole.

Unemployment stands at just over 10% (worse for minorities), many people have lost their homes to forclosure due to the fact that lending and investments have been largely deregulated by Republicans in the last 30 years and of course the swine flu outbreak (H1N1 if you want a more sterilized way of putting it).

If there was a silver lining, it was the folks down at City Hall in Milwaukee. Despite having investments which hurt the pension plan investments for all governments, Mayor Tom Barrett and the City Council passed a budget that funded the plan for retirees by 99% and didn’t borrow money to do it. They cut back in many areas but still managed to keep the costs down to the rate of inflation. On top of that, Barrett hasn’t given up on the plan to turn MPS over to the City and now has both the Governor and key State Senators on his side. Fortunately Barrett has chosen to run for Governor, unfortunately so has Walker. The outcome of that race will help to decide whether 2010 will suck also or whether it will bring hope for a new and responsible 2011.

On a personal and more positive note, I just became a Godfather for a wonderful little niece of mine named Anna.

So there’s still hope for 2010.

Republicans seem to have chosen Scott Walker as their golden boy to spite the fact that the primary has not even yet. This seems odd since Walker has far more negatives than does Neumann. As the Milwaukee County executive, Scott Walker has sold finite assets and borrowed money to pay for ongoing expenses. Still, Walker claims that he is a conservative candidate. Rather than look at any substance Republicans seem happy to line up behind him.

This is proof that the Republican leadership – that is the ones that are pulling all the strings, have little interest in traditional conservative values these days. Big ideas have little value to them. What they do put a value on though is electability above all costs and Walker now has a track record of running aggressive and simplistic campaigns which have won him a few elections.

Walker has run his campaigns on a simple message – taxes are bad and his opponent, whoever it is or whatever they believe in or have stood for in the past, is for big taxes. His simplistic demonizing and redefining his opponent has worked well for him since the media has happily been complacent in spreading Walker’s propaganda rather than reporting the news and doing any fact checking.

But will it work this time?

Nationally there has been a sea change in how news is covered. Republicans on the national scene have been successful at demonizing Democrats and, for the most part, the entire mainstream media has gone along and “reported” the horrible claims that Republicans have had about Democrats as though they were facts. This all changed just a few years ago when Comedy Central’s The Daily Show came on the scene and showed the absurdity of the claims. As ratings soared, The Colbert Report quickly followed, providing the only liberal balance to the mainstream media. Despite its comical setting, liberal and moderate viewers began to think of The Daily Show as one of the only honest reporter of the news. Seeing soaring ratings on Comedy Central, NBC responded by starting to report the news and by starting to do some fact checking. MSNBC brought on two liberal commentators, Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow. Both have become extremely popular.

But there is no local Olberman and there is no local Maddow.

Without fact checking from the mainstream Wisconsin media, Will Walker be successful in his bid to demonize Barrett?

That is still unknown because while we do not have our local Olberman or Maddow, we do have blogs. There are plenty of blogs out there that offer little to no insight into what is happening, but if you take the time to look, and keep in mind the perspective of the writer, you can still gain insight into a candidate and an issue.

The best blogs out there are the ones where the writers have some experience or have done some investigation into issues. And no, I’m not talking about someone who has surfed the web and now considers themselves an expert. There are blogs, such as Eye on Wisconsin, written by Private Investigator Cory Liebmann, which state facts and even will take the time to pull public records to support an argument. Then there are blogs from former public employees such as James Rowen’s blog, The Political Environment. Former Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter Gretchen Schulz writes an informative blog called Milwaukee Rising where she explores mass transit, parks issues and all things Milwaukee. New Urbanist Dave Reid does a good job with his blog Urban Milwaukee. And of course I’ve written Watchdog Milwaukee from the perspective of a former County Supervisor and former Planning Commissioner for years.

Are the blogs on par with Maddow or Olberman—of course not, but they do help to disseminate information to the public who is thirsty for more than just Republican talking points.

Of course there are traditional republican blogs where the focus is all talking points all the time. You’ll find little disagreement on these blogs and no new ideas to solve complex problems, but if you’re looking for well linked blogs that link to other republican blogs, the republicans have that mastered.

But back to the Governor’s race.

The interesting thing about this race is that the republican blogs pretty much all lined up behind Walker. The mainstream media appears to have given Walker its blessing despite the fact that his opponent, Mark Neuman is a former Congressman with extensive private sector experience. Yes, it is odd that the Republican Party of Wisconsin, who preaches about how government should be run like a business, appears to be turning its back on a successful businessman like Neuman, but is embracing Walker who has never held a private sector job in his life.

Am I the only one sensing a conflict here?

Over the better part of the next year we will see these campaigns being covered more or less by the media. It will be interesting to see if the mainstream media continues to ignore Neuman and if the winner of the Republican nomination gets a free pass as it has in the past. But maybe, just maybe, it won’t matter what ideas or facts the mainstream media wants to limit our facts to this time. Maybe, just maybe, voters will seek out informative blogs to get the real stories.