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.

One of the reasons that I am glad Nischke lost

This is part of the text of a letter to the editor that I was going to send to the Freeman but decided not to:

The Waukesha Taxpayers League is touting the fact that Mayoral candidate Ann Nischke signed their “Pledge To Taxpayers” and Larry Nelson did not. A closer inspection of this pledge reveals that Ann Nischke agreed to “support efforts to require a referendum for borrowing requests greater than $1,000,000.” While this may seem like a great idea in theory, in reality such a requirement would put the City of Waukesha at a huge disadvantage with other Cities when competing for business. The biggest impact would be on Tax Incremental Financing projects. If the City had to hold a referendum whenever they borrowed 1,000,000 it would essentially require a referendum for the creation or expansion of any large TIF districts. If a business owner has a choice between a community whose elected officials has the authority to approve a TIF or a community where any TIF borrowing in excess of $1,000,000 requires an extremely lengthy referendum process with no guarantee it would even be approved, what community do you think they would choose do relocate to? Do you even think they would consider Waukesha? Do you think the taxpayers would benefit from this?