A new start

I have been ingnoring this blog, but there are lots of new issues that I would like to comment on so I am bringing it back, but at a different location:

http://fivepoints.wordpress.com

Guess who's back? After a haitus, I have decided to return to political blogging. Since it is election season, my interest is back.

What have I been up to in the meantime? Developing a food blog called www.eatwisconsin.net. formerly hosted at www.eatwisconsin.blogspot.com

ProHealth Liars.

I wonder if the morons in Oconomowoc and on the Waukesha County Board will finally quit drinking the poison Kool-Aid that ProHealth has been serving them for the past few years. Many intelligent people knew that the only reason ProHealth is opposing Aurora’s plans for a Hospital in Western Waukesha County is because they fear that they will lose employees and patients to the competition. They claim there is no need for any additional hospital space in the area. Funny, today the hypocrites at Aurora's response should be no surprise to anyone.

Light Rail

I may be a liberal, but I know a dumb idea when I see one and the proposed Milwaukee Connector Rail system is about as dumb as they come. I agree with Mark Belling and that is a rare occurrence. Why in the hell would you spend so much money on a system that runs on the current street and has to obey traffic signs? Why not just make more energy efficient busses that have those neato opening doors? That is all this is.

If the City is going to do light rail, it should do it correctly and have it on its own track, separate from traffic. The point of light rail is to provide for fast and efficient travel. This is neither fast nor efficient. Their proposed routes are right-on, the means of travel is way off. When are people going to learn that unless light rail is more convenient, people will avoid it. Anyone who has ridden the bus knows that it is a long long ride, typically 3 -4 times longer than if taken by car. This system will be a tad shorter than a bus ride but nowhere near as short as a car ride.

As much as I do not believe that Milwaukee has the population density to support light rail, if they are going to spend the money anyhow, the City and County should do the right thing and push for real light rail. It should have been part of the Marquette project and the previous I-94 reconstruction. They could have laid the track in the middle or sides of the freeway like in Chicago. This would have provided connections from downtown to Marquette, Miller Park, State Fair, and Waukesha/Brookfield. This current attempt is a joke and is only being brought forth because elected officials are too chicken to stand up to Belling and his listeners who take credit for killing real light rail.

Busy

I have been terribly busy, hence the lack of posts here. I am listening to that Kevin Fisher guy filling in for Belling today. He is talking about people leaving the state because of our horrible tax burden. If these people would like me to send them some real estate sections from these low tax states I would be more than happy to spend my Sunday doing that so I don't have to hear these guys week after week, day after day crying about their high taxes.

A Day Without Latinos, a life without a job.

How many of you could walk out of work and still expect to have a job? Apaprently Latinos who left work without permission or prior approval are suing because they were fired from Applebee's because they left right before lunch to participate in a Day Without Latinos. This, despite the fact that they were told they would be fired if they left. The managers even said had they asked the day before they could have accomodated them. I am guessing that maybe some organizers urged people to leave work in hopes that something like this would happen so they could sue and get more publicity.

The JSonline article states that "An estimated 200 workers were fired, suspended or sanctioned for going to the Milwaukee rally..." Good for those employers. Unless there is some very important circumstance (marching in a protest parade is not one of them) my take on this is if you walk out of work, you deserve to be fired. Plus, its a shitty job at Applebee's. There are 50 or more restaurant jobs in the paper every day. Go find another job and try not to fuck this one up.

When I awoke Saturday morning and made my way down to the Steaming Cup in downtown Waukesha I spotted the headline in the Journal newsbox and hy heart sank. “Not Guilty” screamed the headline. I couldn’t believe it. Nine people were so stupid or lazy that they found the officers accused of beating Jude not guilty. If ever there was a clear cut case this was it. I wonder if this will finally be the wakeup call that the conservative talk show hosts need to stop defending the police under any circumstance. Just last week you could hear Belling trying to find reasons for defending the officers when discussing the discrepancies in the missing wallet story. While I don’t think he can defend this outcome, I guess I will have to wait until this afternoon to find out.

Every year there is a very questionable police killing of an African American male and every year an officer gets off scott free. The conservative talkers are so predictable after a police shooting. There is never a question in their mind that the officer acted in self defense. Lets hope they finally see the light and realize that the police in Milwaukee have a huge credibility problem. And they wonder why so few African Americans trust or cooperate with the police. When the cops don’t even cooperate with the prosecutors when their fellow officers break the law, how can they complain when citizens don’t rat out their neighbors? I am not defending the “no snitching” movement but I understand.

Belling On Nelson

Belling went over his reasoning for Nelson’s victory. As usual he had his gaggle of morons calling to cry about it.

One guy said he (Nelson) was an embarrassment. Um, he hasn’t even been in the Mayor’s chair yet, how can you call him an embarrassment? You don’t know what he is going to do as Mayor. You want an embarrassment; look at your candidate’s pathetic campaign. She ran the worst campaign I have seen since John Kerry’s run for president.

As for all the whining about Nelson raising taxes or implementing fees, please settle down. These matters are up to the Common Council as well. If Nelson proposes something you don’t want, call your alderman! Oh wait, that would require some kind of action on the part of residents. If we can’t get people off their asses to vote for mayor, why would we think they would call their elected officials? They would rather call Charlie, Mark, Jessica, or Jeff and cry about it.

I also find it interesting that the conservatives are solely focusing on local property taxes. They are only a portion of the taxes we pay, yet they are the only taxes that they want to freeze. Why not put a cap on how much money the state can raise from income taxes? Why not cap state spending? Why not cut all of the wasteful state programs? There is far more waste and fat in Madison than at the local level but the folks in Madison don’t want to do any of the heavy lifting so they dump it on the local municipalities whose existence depends on the authority of the state.

Lurkers

I see that I am getting some comments from the conservative bloggers. I think that is great. My goal is to keep a civil dialogue going between all of the Waukesha blogs. I think that some conservatives will discover that I actually support them on some issues and liberals will find that they can piss me off just as easily. As for the guy who claimed that TIF money is corporate welfare, I am working on a long post outlining why you have no clue what you are talking about. Also in that post I hope to outline some of the problems with the Waukesha Taxpayer’s Leagues pledge, which includes support of a referendum for any borrowing request over 1 million dollars

Fox River overflows with Conservative Tears

The whining continues. Jessica Mc Bride just cannot get over the fact that a Democrat is now the Mayor of Waukesha. Day after day these whiners cry about Nelson getting the support of the Democratic Party and their traditional allies (teachers, unions, etc). So friggen what?!?! Like Ann Nischke didn’t have the support of the Waukesha County Republicans, the Republican radio talkers, the Taxpayer’s League. Scott Walker and Dan Vrakas were swept into non-partisan offices with support from the Republican Party and 8-10 hours of free radio air time on right-wing radio for weeks preceding the election.

All of these races are partisan and if voters are dumb enough to believe that they aren’t that is not the fault of Larry Nelson or Ann Nischke. People should do their homework before they vote. Much to the chagrin of the right, people did do their homework and discovered Larry Nelson was the better candidate, period. All of you bloggers just can’t get over the fact that you had to back a terrible candidate. Some of the candidates knocked out in the primary I actually thought would have made a great Mayor, despite their Republican ties. Nischke got past the primary on on name recognition and spending and that is it. The voters were smart enough to see that she offered no enthusiasm or vision for Waukesha. When it came down to the general election all she had was her support of TABOR and the TPA.

The Three Stooges

I found it very disheartening that all three people featured in Monday's "Word On The Street" feature in the Waukesha Freeman didn't vote. In fact one didn't even know there was an election in Waukesha last Tuesday. This bothers me for two reasons: First, would it have been too much to ask that the Freeman ask a few more people to get a quote from someone who followed the election, voted, and had an opinion on the outcome? Given that only 1 out of 5 citizens even bothered to vote it may have taken hours to find enough qoutes to met this criteria. Number 2, can I have a guarantee that each and every one of the 78 percent of Waukesha residents that were to lazy, stupid, or apathetic to vote will never ever complain about anything that the City of Waukesha does under the Nelson administration? If are eligible to vote but chose not to, you have no reason to complain.