Sykes And His Crony Watch

While driving around our fair community this morning, I caught a wee bit of Charlie Sykes' show this morning. What I heard almost made me lose control of my vehicle, I was so stricken by his total and complete cluelessness.

Sykes said that he was doing something new, which he was calling Crony Watch, or some silly thing.

In today's installment, he was already doing a lot of stretching of the truth and of basic logic, as he tried to claim that Tom Barrett put State Representative Colon on the MMSD Commission as some kind of political favor.

I don't see how that is doing him any favors, but in Sykes' fevered mind, it was.

But the high hypocrisy comes in when one remembers that Sykes is Scott Walker's number one water carrier. Walker is the perfect example of cronyism.

Cory Liebmann pointed out a lot of examples of Walker appointing cronies to cushy county jobs:

Consider some of the following:

• Jim Villa worked for Walker's campaigns bouncing between them and taxpayer financed county jobs.
  
• Robert Dennik, a former lobbyist and Walker campaign manager was appointed as head of the now nonexistent Milwaukee County Division of Economic and Community Development. Let's just say that his time there didn't go so well for him or for Milwaukee County.
  
• Tim Russell has repeatedly bounced back and forth between Walker campaigns and taxpayer funded positions (including a recent promotion). At one point he even took over the train wreck that was the Economic Development job (with not much more success).
  
• Walker wanted to give a county job to Chuck Grapentine even though he didn't even want to move to Milwaukee County. Chuck is the father of a former Walker aide.
  
• Cynthia Archer was appointed as head of Administrative Services in 2007. She was previously a top administrator for Walker's former Republican colleague in the State Assembly, Carol Kelso.
  
• David Bradley Carr had not been out of law school very long before Walker replaced a veteran member of the Ethics Board with him. It was reported at the time that a partner at a law firm suggested Carr to Walker. Several partners and members of that same law firm have also been big campaign contributors to Walker. But I'm sure that had nothing to do with it.

Then there is Darlene Wink. Wink just so happens to be the Co-Vice Chair of the Milwaukee County Republicans and was Walker's Director of Constituency Services. That is until she got caught politicking on county time. That then opened up a whole can of worms for Walker to deal with as he is simultaneously driving his campaign and Milwaukee County into the ground.

One would think that Sykes would go after safer areas to play attack dog for his masters, but then again, Sykes doesn't get paid to be honest about such things.