TMJ's Mercure Uses Fallen Heroes For Cheap Political Hits

For the past couple of days, John Mercure, the pseudo-reporter that does the afternoon drive time on WTMJ radio, has been harping on the fact that Tom Barrett wasn't at a ceremony to honor fallen police officers.  Mercure spent two full days on the subject, and upped his faux outrage when he found out that Barrett was speaking to retired UAW workers.  You know, the people that worked for their entire lives helping keeping the economy going.

Was it a faux pas on Barrett's part? One could definitely call it that.

Was it worth two days of news coverage? No.

Especially when one considers that the two days Mercure spent haranguing about Barrett is two days more than what he spent discussing the fact that we have the only sitting governor in the state's long and storied history to have a legal defense fund to help deal with the fact that he ran a caucus scandal-type of campaign machine out of his executive suite at the Milwaukee County Courthouse.

And if Mercure was really concerned about the police who sacrificed their all and their families who survived them, why didn't he report about how the Republicans who threw these brave men and women, and their families, under the ALEC-driven bus, as one of our bravest and finest, and my friend, Brian Austin, reported.  The state legislature was preparing to pass a bill that would have provided health insurance protection for the surviving spouse and children of a fallen officer.  Firefighters already had that protection, but omitted the police.  They were aiming to fix that.  The bill passed the Senate by unanimous vote.  Then it went to the State Assembly where things went bad fast:

At the last minute, the Republican legislators in control of the Assembly blocked the bill from being brought to a vote. Blocked the bill that unanimously passed the Senate. From what I have discovered, the Birkholz family was given the choice of coming to the Capitol for the resolution only, but understandably opted not to attend. In a horrendous display of partisan politics in what should have been a unifying issue, John Jagler, spokesperson for Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, called SB 18 an "unfunded mandate" on local governments that "isn't ready to become law." "We're looking at a more fiscally responsible way of funding it," he added. 

These officers, and their families, have given everything in service to the people of the state of Wisconsin. Lives are lost, and countless others are shattered. The least we could do for them, on behalf of a grateful public, is to give the survivors the peace of mind of health care. It doesn't seem like a lot to ask, but the Assembly Republicans apparently believe it wouldn't be "fiscally responsible." Since that unconscionable decision last year, there has been no progress made in convincing the Assembly Republicans to bring the bill to the floor for a vote. 

The contract broken. 

To the people who blocked this bill: It isn't enough to attend the funerals of fallen officers in your districts, or memorial services during Police Week. It isn't enough to get teary-eyed when the bagpipes play, and to talk about how grateful the citizens of Wisconsin are for this ultimate sacrifice. Your words are hollow, because your actions have broken the contract. These families are trying to put their shattered lives back together, yet all you can talk about is fiscal responsibility. For the sake of decency, please do not attend another officer's funeral, or another police memorial service, until you make this right. You are not welcome to share in our grief until that happens.

You know, Jagler used to work for TMJ as well.  There is no reason why Mercure couldn't call up his old coworker and ask him what this was about.

Or he could have asked Scott Walker why he didn't push to have this law pass.  Doesn't Walker care about the police either?


Well, there is one reason.  Because, like 99% of everything the Republicans have done in the past eighteen months, this would have made them look bad.  And considering that Walker is just weeks away from being recalled, if he doesn't get indicted first, he can't afford any more bad press.

So Mercure spent two days attacking Barrett for no other reason to give cover to Walker's shame and the Republicans' abandonment of Wisconsin's finest.

I sure hope Walker is claiming all these in-kind contributions on his campaign finance reports.

Barrett Can Now Give Sykes A Deep Tunnel Award

During last year's gubernatorial race, it seemed that the entire right side of the blogosphere suddenly realized that they had been traumatized during their toilet training. (We already knew that about Charlie Sykes, who every Friday thrills himself by playing toileting-related soundtracks and handing out an award named after a sewer.  A very far cry from the famed Golden Fleece Award handed out by the late Sen. Proxmire.)  Every time it even rained, the radio squawking heads and the Posse Comatose would practically wet themselves in anticipation that it might be a big rain and that MMSD would have to dump some mixed sewage into Lake Michigan.

The scatologically-fixated right wing zombies would practically poop themselves in order to get their attack posts published.  Charlie Sykes and company would spend days totally obsessed with the subject.  You couldn't turn on WTMJ or WISN radio stations without hearing one of their shock jocks screaming "THERE'S POOP IN THE WATER!!"

Of course, to maintain their attack, they had to ignore that not only was the Milwaukee sewer system working as it was designed to do, it was vastly improved over the old system or the systems of other cities, like Chicago.

It makes wonder what they'll have to say about the latest report of unacceptable amounts of raw sewage being dumped in the waters.  My guess is absolutely nothing.

You see, the culprit flushing their doo-doo in our drinking water is conservative Brookfield, located in the very red Walkersha County. Other culprits include Paul Ryan's Janesville and the Fox Valley's Oshkosh.

It's also worth noting that while the zombie bloggers and squawkers were hollering about how the city of Milwaukee should separate their sewer systems, despite the fact that this would raise their taxes by astronomical amounts, Brookfield does have separate sewers, yet had the same problems.

In summary, even though it would serve no purpose outside of an "I told you so," Mayor Tom Barrett could give Sykes and friends the Deep Tunnel Award for their selective outrage.  Or better yet, we could give them to the Deep Tunnel, which seems almost more fitting.

Father Hypocrite

On Friday morning, Charlie Sykes was squawking about Tom Barrett and his stance for women's rights. Sykes went to so far as to question Barrett's Christianity and Catholicism.

That is a rather bold move given that Sykes has broken at least two of the ten commandments: The one about not committing adultery and the one about not bearing false witness.

In fact, I don't think he's made it a day without breaking the commandment to not bear false witness. I don't really want to know how long he can make it without breaking the other.

The Epic FAIL of Epic FAILS

Last week, Tom Barrett's campaign web site went down for a few hours, either due to problems renewing the domain, or simply due to changing ownership of the domain, much like we experienced at Milwaukee County First earlier this year.

A relatively minor issue, but Scott Walker his his two main cheerleaders, Mark Belling and Charlie Sykes, thought it was worth a lot of attention.

Belling said on his radio show that it was indicative of Barrett's leadership style or some other similar type of rot.

Sykes took the hyperbole even further, calling it an Epic FAIL, and spent literally hours on this.

But I wonder if people would really see that as a failure on Barrett's part. I wonder it even more if they were to compare Barrett's faux pas to the fact that Scott Walker's Twitter account was suspended due to their spamming way.

Faux Outrage, Real Hypocrisy

Scott Walker must not be doing so well in the polls and is feeling pretty nervous.

He has joined in the likes of Charlie Sykes, Mark Belling, Fred Dooley, Tom McMahon, Patrick Dorwin and the rest of the Posse Comatose to attack Tom Barrett about the MMSD dump from the record breaking rainfall a couple of weeks ago. You know, the one that Walker ran away from when his leadership was needed the most.

They wail and moan about the poop in the water and snarl that Barrett hasn't fixed the problem.

The funny thing is, it is these same people that, day in and day out, week after week, month after month, and year after year, piss and moan that their taxes are too high. Now they're pissing and moaning that Barrett didn't raise their taxes enough.

I wonder if they realize how foolish they make themselves look sometime.

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.

But Complaining Is Free

PaddyMac tries one of his half-hearted attempts at taking a swing at Tom Barrett by saying that the squeaky wheel shouldn't get the grease, or something like that. (To be honest, his writing keeps making me sleepy.)

Anyway, I would think that is something the penny-miser Paddy would applaud. After all, complaining is free, whereas if you want Walker to do anything, you have to donate to his campaign fund to even get his attention, much less any services to him.

Lies Woodhouse Strikes Again

A faithful reader reminded me of yet another lie that Lies Woodhouse, aka Charlie Sykes, has been ranting on about. This particular lie was that Harley Davidson was having its problems due to the combined reporting tax law.

He would constantly try to blame Tom Barrett, the Mayor of Milwaukee, for this state law and would say that Barrett would not lift a finger to do anything about it.

Again, Sykes lies:

At a news conference in his City Hall office, Barrett, the likely Democratic nominee for governor, said he and his staff had talked to senior Harley executives, contacted Harley union leaders and discussed the issue with outgoing Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle and his aides.

In talks with Harley's top managers, however, Barrett said, "They have made it clear to us that they do not want this issue politicized." The executives did not ask about tax incentives to stay in Wisconsin, nor did they offer criticisms of the state's combined reporting tax rules, he said.

Instead, the Harley management team wants to work through the issue with employee unions, and Barrett called on management and labor to work together to keep the plants open.

Even Scott Walker throws his mouthpiece under the bus, again:

In a separate interview, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker partly agreed, saying, "Having talked with officials, it is pretty clear what they need right now is support, public support, so they can work on some of their internal costs."

How anyone can believe this pathological liar, who would lie to even his own family, is beyond me.

Throwing Themselves Under the Streetcar

Earlier this week, the Milwaukee Common Council gave the go ahead for the preliminary engineering on putting a streetcar route through downtown Milwaukee.

Needless to say, this got the usual suspects all riled up.

Charlie Sykes started ranting about it on the radio. PaddyMac said that Barrett "hated transit."

The echo chamber, such as Peter DiGaudio and Patrick Dorwin went on the attack.

Obviously, this was all an attempt to take a swipe at Tom Barrett, since their candidate of choice, Scott Walker, is plummeting like a rock in the polls.

Only problem is the same one that usually plagues these folks: Reality doesn't agree with them.

Milwaukee Alderman Robert Bauman issues a press release that shows that the streetcars are just as popular and cost effective as Walker's bus system:

Alderman Bauman, chair of the Common Council’s Public Works Committee and a longtime public transit advocate, said the 2008 data he received from the National Transit Database – the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA’s) primary national database for statistics on the transit industry – and 2009 data directly from the MCTS “clearly shows how the downtown streetcar system will measure up nicely in ridership” with MCTS Freeway Flyer and standard routes.

For instance, he said the 3.6-mile modern street car line is projected to generate daily ridership of 3,800 passengers, a ridership level which exceeds the ridership of all 11 MCTS Freeway Flyer routes and 12 of the 29 MCTS regular trunk routes. The shorter 2.05-mile street car route is projected to generate daily ridership of 1,800 passengers, or a ridership level which also exceeds all 11 Freeway Flyer routes and six of the 29 MCTS regular trunk routes.

When measured by Passengers per Bus Hour (“PBH”), a common industry measure of transit service effectiveness, Alderman Bauman said the Downtown Streetcar Circulator measures up even better. The 3.6-mile modern street car line would generate 51.24 passengers per bus hour. This level exceeds the MCTS system average of 40.33 PBH, far exceeds the PBH of all Freeway Flyer routes, and exceeds the PBH of 24 of the 29 MCTS regular trunk routes. Only MCTS routes 27, 62, 22 and 63 generate a greater PBH.

The streetcar line would generate more passengers per bus hour than the popular route 30 which generates PBH of 50.9, the alderman said.

The shorter 2.05-mile streetcar line would generate PBH of 38.2. This performance level exceeds the PBH of all 11 Freeway Flyer routes and exceeds the PBH of 18 of the 29 regular MCTS trunk routes, he said.

Another common industry measure of transit service effectiveness is “Passengers per Revenue Mile.” According to Alderman Bauman, by this measure, the modern streetcar line also compares well to current MCTS bus service. The 3.6-mile line is projected to generate 5.67 passengers per revenue mile and the 2.05-mile line is projected to generate 4.78 passengers per revenue mile. Both measures exceed the MCTS system average of 3.15 passengers per revenue mile.

I have a feeling those numbers are going to be even higher after the aftermath of Walker's incompetence is truly felt.

Why Sykes Uses So Much Hair Products

I had the mischance to hear parts of Charlie Sykes' show a few times this week as I drove from one appointment to another.

For at least two days, Sykes mocked Tom Barrett's new use of new media with SayNow.

Sykes mocked Barrett for having people calling in which struck me as quite ironic and hypocritical.

Where would a person who makes his living by having a talk show asking people to call in and discuss politics come off mocking a politician who actually listens to the people, unlike his buddy, Walker, who only talks to people, not with them.

Which leads us to the question in the title. Sykes must need that much hair products to keep his head from imploding.

PaddyMac Points The Way. The Wrong Way, That Is.

Paddy doesn't hold back any of his tricks in this post, in which he tries to keep up the Scott Walker talking points about the zoo interchange, even though Walker's bluster and grandstanding is crumbling and falling faster than a block of concrete of the county courthouse.

McIlheran uses the old faux concern, the hypocrisy and the circular logic that has made people like Dad29 and Charlie Sykes think that he is something more than he is, which is nothing more than a puppet.

Even while he makes snide innuendos of blaming Jim Doyle and Tom Barrett, he keeps calling for the end of the "blame game."

Perhaps he is hoping that it ends before too many people find out that Walker is just as culpable as anyone. Maybe even more so, since he took no action whatsoever, good or ill, to fix the interchange:



Is anyone else starting to think that Eddie Haskell was Patrick's hero while growing up?

Charlie Carp

While I was watching Charlie Sykes on his Sunday Incite program, when I wasn't being distracted by missing eyebrows, I did catch something that Sykes said that I remember his harping, or should I say carping, on.

Sykes has repeatedly been making the claim that Tom Barrett has not done anything regarding the pending invasion of the Asian Carp.

I don't know what planet Sykes has been living on, but Barrett's been calling for the locks to be shut down since the beginning of January.

The one that has been silent about the whole carp thing is Sykes' wunderkind, Scott Walker. Of course, that's probably because Team Walker is still trying to teach Scooter that when they are referring to the carp, they don't mean this one.

There Are Taxes, Then There Are Taxes

PaddyMac got a memo from Steve Smith that he needed to support Scott Walker from those that correctly point out that Walker isn't really the tax hawk he likes to pretend that he is. So he tried to do so.

Apparently Paddy no longer thinks that fees equate to taxes, since he doesn't mention Walker's desire to raise taxes on toddlers last summer, even though he didn't even have the authority to do so. Nor does he mention Walker's desire to have parking meters at the lakefront, which would end up double-taxing UWM students, even the ones there to learn journalistic ethics from Jessica Bucher McBride.

But the biggest thing that Paddy misses in his snide sniping at Mayor Barrett. At least Barrett was able to balance his budgets. We are still waiting for Walker to be able to balance his first one.

McIlheran Wants To Raise Your Taxes

In Sunday morning's edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Patrick McIlheran takes on the issue of whether Mayor Tom Barrett whoudl take over MPS.

He is opposed to the take over, arguing that nothing will change, and that those dastardly union workers would only have to influence one person instead of several. I was just starting to wonder if I was reading one of those few pieces by PaddyMac that actually makes sense when I got near the bottom of his column and he wrote this:

Concentrating power hardly seems a solution. A more promising idea, as long as we're speculating, is breaking up the district into manageable pieces, each large enough to feed one high school, like most Wisconsin school districts. Whether this will work is unclear, but it may bring the decision-making closer to families that schools serve.

Ah, there's PaddyMac that we've all come to know and spoof. Instead of having one system, McIlheran offers the idea of creating several, thereby multiplying the numbers of administrations and creating even greater bureaucracy. This will do nothing but raise taxes.

But I'm sure that if one would speak with Paddy, he'd tell you otherwise. And then point out some "friend" of his, or more likely his boss, who would be more than glad to privatize it for you. For a more than nominal fee, of course.

With help like Paddy's, who needs enemies?

But Our Talk Show Hosts Are...

Mayor Barrett is our own hometown hero.

Unfortunately, there are some lunacy coming from the right wing, mostly in the name of Amy Geiger-Hemmer.

AGH blogs at The Right View Wisconsin. RVW also has Kevin Fischer and Jay Weber has contributors.

Somehow, I don't have much expectation that these two cream puffs will have the decency or testicular fortitude to call her on her boorish behavior.

Best Whallah! Quote Of The Day

This comes from Michael Horne, at Milwaukee World, who is talking about an upcoming debate between Scott Walker and Tom Barrett:

Yes, it should be some debate. Regrettably, for Walker it is on a subject where the facts are all stacked in favor of rail, and against the failed and socially destructive policies of Scott Walker and the talk radio cabal.

Remember, people in automobiles listen to talk radio. Folks on mass transit don't. It's an empirical fact, and that's why the A.M. talk radio tunnel of love echo chamber squakfest brigade opposes rail.As I always ask my friends who live in cities with light rail, "What do the talk radio people have to say about rail transit?" The answer -- nothing. They have moved on to other inflammatory topics.