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Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Revolver Map!
Cool Java App I just posted to the left. You can post it on your site as well...it keeps track of visitors. Note I have been back 3 or 4 times since I embedded the code.
Tea Party Governor Walker An Incompetent Ideologue
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rachel-maddow-asks-when-democrats-are-goin
Walker’s Gone, But We Are Still Stuck With His Bills:
But it was Scott Walker who got all the presents, and the tax payers who got stuck with the bills.
In the fall of 2009, as our elected leaders were hashing out the 2010 budget, Scott Walker included a plan to privatize the security guards at the Courthouse and other buildings. The Board rejected that idea and cut it out of their budget. Walker used his Frankenstein veto pen to reinstate the privatization. Again, the Board overrode his veto.
But after 2010 started, Walker declared a fiscal emergency and went ahead and privatized the guards, giving a lucrative contract to Wackenhut, over the protests of the County Board.
To make matters even worse, Walker bungled the whole thing.
First, he didn’t county on the professionalism of the county guards, who stayed on duty to the bitter end. So Walker had county security guards as well as the Wackenhut guards on duty at the same posts. To top it off, he also had Sheriff Deputies on duty, some on overtime, at the same posts.
Secondly, the jobs he took from Milwaukee County citizens ended up going to people from Chicago and Florida. The it turned out that one of the Wackenhut supervisors had a criminal history, including inappropriate sexual conduct, all while he was the police chief for Manawa.
Despite Walker’s claims that it would save tax payers hundreds of thousands of dollars, the reality was that it barely made it to $70,000.
And now, even that small savings has been obliterated, because Walker, as he is prone to do, overstepped his authority and the whole thing was done illegally.
The unions took the matter to arbitration, and the ruling of the arbitration came out late today. It was in the favor of the unions.
Walker’s Gone, But We Are Still Stuck With His Bills:
But it was Scott Walker who got all the presents, and the tax payers who got stuck with the bills.
In the fall of 2009, as our elected leaders were hashing out the 2010 budget, Scott Walker included a plan to privatize the security guards at the Courthouse and other buildings. The Board rejected that idea and cut it out of their budget. Walker used his Frankenstein veto pen to reinstate the privatization. Again, the Board overrode his veto.
But after 2010 started, Walker declared a fiscal emergency and went ahead and privatized the guards, giving a lucrative contract to Wackenhut, over the protests of the County Board.
To make matters even worse, Walker bungled the whole thing.
First, he didn’t county on the professionalism of the county guards, who stayed on duty to the bitter end. So Walker had county security guards as well as the Wackenhut guards on duty at the same posts. To top it off, he also had Sheriff Deputies on duty, some on overtime, at the same posts.
Secondly, the jobs he took from Milwaukee County citizens ended up going to people from Chicago and Florida. The it turned out that one of the Wackenhut supervisors had a criminal history, including inappropriate sexual conduct, all while he was the police chief for Manawa.
Despite Walker’s claims that it would save tax payers hundreds of thousands of dollars, the reality was that it barely made it to $70,000.
And now, even that small savings has been obliterated, because Walker, as he is prone to do, overstepped his authority and the whole thing was done illegally.
The unions took the matter to arbitration, and the ruling of the arbitration came out late today. It was in the favor of the unions.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Found Metanoia2k rant from August, 2008
Responding to the linked piece.
"Oh for crying out loud, another Bush apologist lards on the grease to help the club footed Bush II legacy squeeze into the princess slipper of history. Poor misunderstood George. According to Rosen, the administration "... tries to get its message out but not vigorously or shrewdly enough to actually succeed. Abysmal marketing has plagued the White House since Bush took office in 2001..." Are we talking about the same Bush Administration that rode roughshod over a meek and compliant media establishment in the run-up to the war in Iraq? Here I am talking about the calculated campaign of lies and distortion that attended Undersecretary of State Richard Feith's selling of the Iraq-Al-Qaida connection based on a series of discredited articles by New York Times Columnist William Saffire. I am also referring to the now infamous manipulation of New York Times reporter Judith Miller who beat the drums for the discredited Weapons of Mass Destruction litany that helped lay the groundwork for the Iraq invasion. I am also referring to the collusion between Scooter Libby and Nationally Syndicated Columnist Robert Novak in the outing of Valerie Plame in order to wreak vengeance on administration critic Ambassador Joseph Wilson. It would be more accurate to say that, when it matters most to George Bush, the media is there for him. If the media isn't "there" for him on his good deeds, perhaps that initiative doesn't matter so much to him that the infamous White House PR machine hasn't been committed to the story. It is just as likely, however, that the PR machine is adrift due to resignation, indictment or imprisonment. Perhaps, too, there is a recently found skepticism on the part of a media that, struggling to overcome years of manipulation by the Bush Administration is chary to hail his percieved success lest they learn, as is so often the case with the Bushniks, that things are not as they appear. The most that George Bush can hope for in terms of legacy is to avoid being tried for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. -m2k"
"Oh for crying out loud, another Bush apologist lards on the grease to help the club footed Bush II legacy squeeze into the princess slipper of history. Poor misunderstood George. According to Rosen, the administration "... tries to get its message out but not vigorously or shrewdly enough to actually succeed. Abysmal marketing has plagued the White House since Bush took office in 2001..." Are we talking about the same Bush Administration that rode roughshod over a meek and compliant media establishment in the run-up to the war in Iraq? Here I am talking about the calculated campaign of lies and distortion that attended Undersecretary of State Richard Feith's selling of the Iraq-Al-Qaida connection based on a series of discredited articles by New York Times Columnist William Saffire. I am also referring to the now infamous manipulation of New York Times reporter Judith Miller who beat the drums for the discredited Weapons of Mass Destruction litany that helped lay the groundwork for the Iraq invasion. I am also referring to the collusion between Scooter Libby and Nationally Syndicated Columnist Robert Novak in the outing of Valerie Plame in order to wreak vengeance on administration critic Ambassador Joseph Wilson. It would be more accurate to say that, when it matters most to George Bush, the media is there for him. If the media isn't "there" for him on his good deeds, perhaps that initiative doesn't matter so much to him that the infamous White House PR machine hasn't been committed to the story. It is just as likely, however, that the PR machine is adrift due to resignation, indictment or imprisonment. Perhaps, too, there is a recently found skepticism on the part of a media that, struggling to overcome years of manipulation by the Bush Administration is chary to hail his percieved success lest they learn, as is so often the case with the Bushniks, that things are not as they appear. The most that George Bush can hope for in terms of legacy is to avoid being tried for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity. -m2k"
Friday, February 18, 2011
Meditation on Madison: Dictator Reagan Deposed After 30 Years of Rule!
I granted him that things did appear to be different on the surface. We have freedoms of speech...in theory. We have freedom of the press...in theory. We are an open and tolerant society...in theory. And, importantly, we have the rights of free association and assembly...in theory.
But beneath the theoretical surface of rights and freedoms, there has been a collusion of powerful forces working to fundamentally alter everything that we are taught is great about this country: a generation ago, C Wright Mills called them the Power Elite. The Occult Right-Wing calls them The Illuminati. I call it The Reagan Revolution. The bad news, folks, is that they won 30 years ago and have been instituting changes so fundamental that our freedoms are now merely symbolic gestures under a capitalist and corporatist dictatorship. In that context, President Obama is merely the caretaker of the fundamental power structure put in place 30 years ago that reduces citizenship to consumerism, speech to money, free association to the marketplace and labor a simple commodity in the provision of service. The 'social contract'? That has been reduced to a mere side agreement of the greater duty of society to serve the profit interests of corporatist strategists, planners, lawyers and CPAs.
The good news? Madison, Wisconsin.
The service class has become the slave class. In a world where manufacturing competes with 3rd world salaries and the corporatist benefits from high unemployment to keep wages and salaries low, labor is a bargain and the Dictatorship of Corporatariate wrought by the Reagan revolution wants to keep it that way.
The Republican Party, the Party of Reagan, has now become ideologically pure--beyond even Ronald Reagan's imaginings. I don't think, in fact, that Ronald Reagan would approve of what his Party has become. He was, after all, a genial proxy for a lot of powerful forces that revolved in, out and through his administration.
The transformation of the Republican Party is the important work of high-level corporate manipulators and capitalists with no particular ideology other than greed who have struck an alliance with ideologues and libertarians to frame the speech that reduces the social democrat's world view to a joke. "Where from the government and we're here to help" Hahahaha. Funny. "Government IS the problem" Reagan famously said. In so doing, he effectively neutralized the ONLY social institution with the power to provide checks and balances to the corporatists whose agenda is to privatise profit, socialize costs, and turn Americans into an uncritical mass of drones and consumers. The only regulation that the corporatists want to see are the toilet habits of their workers and spending habits of their consumers. Under the Dictatorship of the Corporariate the only questions the Elite want you to ask is 'what's on sale', 'what colors do they come in', and "how much to supersize?"
Under the Reagan Revolution life became precious in the womb, but once that fetus exits the womb, he or she better not ask for the right of free assembly, the right to collectively bargain, the right for decent health care or the right to a decent pension. Under the Reagan Revolution the Supreme Court has determined that money is a form of speech and Corporations are the same as persons. Thanks to the Billions contributed by the Corporatists (like the Koch Brothers and Richard Mellon Scaife) they have pushed the Reagan revolution and its lexicon into media echo-chamber and a manufactured patriotism that, ironically, serves the interests of a crown corporation (BP) more than the Commonweal. The Tea Party serves like the Jack-booted thugs of the Dictatorship. The likes of Limbaugh, Palin, etc. are the propaganda ministers. But guess what. It isn't going to work. The era of Reagan is coming to an end.
The people who refused to join the manufactured revolution of the Corporatists are summonsing an old-fashioned American populism that we haven't seen for some time.
We are seeing it in Madison, Wisconsin.
The Dictatorship of the Corporariate under Reaganovich and the Republicanskya has gone about as far as astroturf, money and borderline personalities can get them.
The Reign of the Dictator Reagan is ending in Madison just like we saw Mubarak fall in Cairo. And just like Cairo is inspiring revolution throughout the Middle East, I pray that Madison inspires the same throughout America.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Friday, February 04, 2011
Thursday, February 03, 2011
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