What A Tangled Web They Weave

Ed Garvey has a column in The Cap Times which highlights an unholy alliance between UW and WPRI:

In Wisconsin, St. Norbert’s College polling is used by public radio and public TV. And now we also have the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute/University of Wisconsin-Madison poll -- a “partnership” between right-wing WPRI and our great state university’s political science department. Whoa, Nelly! The institute apparently needed credibility to persuade people to pay attention to the Bradley Foundation poll, so it is easy to figure out its goal in creating this “partnership”: instant credibility. (No one has ever accused WPRI of neutrality on issues of importance to the Bradley Foundation.) In essence the institute rents the good name of the UW.

Garvey details how they did an open records requests and found that, basically, all of the WPRI - UW polls are tainted and only go to push the neoconservative agenda of the Bradley Foundation.

As Garvey and others points out, it throws doubt on anything that this group produces. Garvey et alia have also raised questions about the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel publishing WPRI's reports like they are gospel truth. That is easily explained, since I've already shown the incestuous relationships with the Bradley Foundation's Michael Grebe, Journal Communication's Steve Smith and wannabe governor Scott "It's my turn, dammit" Walker.

And to deepen the ties to Charlie Sykes, who already has been shown to be in the midst of this mess, is the fact that old Chuckles is a member of WPRI's brigade of propagandists.

In summary, WPRI is a front for the Bradley Foundation. The Bradley Foundation and WPRI, lacking credibility on their own, are using UW as their beard. And as for Sykes and Walker, they each of an arm of the Bradley Foundation so far up their posteriors, their resembles to Mortimer Snerd is more than coincidental.

In other words, you can't believe a word from the lot of them.

ADDENDUM: As Xoff points out in the comments, OWN was the first one to break the story of their skullduggery.

Cross posted at Cog Dis.

McIlheran: Blogging From Egypt

Well, he must be in Egypt, since he is in denial. In a post from today, he tries to put Ed Garvey down for calling Scott Walker out on his poor execution of his duties as County Executive:

About which it's profitable to deconstruct. Sell county parks? Well, no, unless you think letting people buy coffee at Red Arrow is a sale or that contemplating disposing of never-used and now surplus land in Franklin is simply unthinkable. Cut social services? The guy has been a prime mover in providing some kind of improved housing for the mentally ill. Close swimming pools for kids? Well, no -- he proposed replacing cracked, underused wading pools with waterpark-like splash pads.

Oh, really now, Patrick? Not sell county parks? Well, I'll give you that one. Walker does want to sell off a lot of county land, but not the parks. The parks he wants to privatize to campaign donors.

And on to mental health...Yes, Walker has finally agreed to get some new housing for the mentally ill. One thing that McIlheran conveniently forgets to mention is that this comes from an almost year long expose, by his own paper, on how Walker had first abandoned the mentally ill. He also forgot to mention that Walker's poor decision making led to a crisis at the mental health complex as well, and one that he wants to make worse.

And the pools. McIlheran must have forgotten this story, again from his own newspaper, in which Walker wanted to close all but four parks. Not quite the way that McIlheran tries to spin it.

So why would McIlheran be spinning out of control like this? Well, it could just be that he is a tad put off himself, when Garvey wrote this:

Democracy is under assault. Businesses often insist that parties agree to use private arbitrators rather than a court of law; Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce wants to buy the courts; special interests nominate and fund corrupt candidates for office; and the Bradley Foundation, Charlie Sykes and GMC folks think they can operate the airports, highways, museums and schools better than those do-good civil servants.

Enough of doomsday nonsense. It is time for our governments at all levels to get together to find real solutions to huge problems. We can solve our fiscal problems if we arrive at the table in good faith and with a commitment to serve the commonwealth -- not just private wealth.

Ending government is not the answer. Electing good people to office with public campaign funding makes more sense.