Lawyers helping Families hurt by Lead Paint - BAD; Republicans protecting a lead Paint Company from taking responsibility - GOOD.

Duck, here comes another false equivalency.

First, Journal Sentinel blogger Christian Schneider complained The Guardian article about Scott Walker's John Doe investigation and apparent pay-to-play involving lead based paint, didn't focus on the trial lawyers contributions to the Democrats like it did the lead paint industry donor.

Well, maybe it was because there wasn't illegal campaign coordination...just guessing of course.

But second and most importantly; how are lawyers representing families devastated by the effects of lead based paint (from an industry that dragged its feet while other industrialized countries took it out), equal to conniving Republicans trying to exempt the lead paint industry from ever paying damages?

Stunning disconnect. From Upfront with Mike Gousha:

The lead paint law was a top priority for the state’s business lobby, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, after a 2005 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling exposed lead paint manufacturers to liability for damages in lead poisoning lawsuits. The lead author was Democratic appointee Justice Louis Butler, who Gableman defeated in 2008.

Feingold pushes Republicans to get off their ass and fund Foreign Intelligence & Information Commission to monitor the globe for terrorism.

Journal Sentinel blogger Christian Schneider apparently doesn’t read his own newspaper. He missed a recent article about Russ Feingold's call to increase security. And that just made his attack piece ridiculous and irrelevant.   

Schneider’s article, “Feingold's bad bet on intelligence” is all wrong, and based on right wing rhetoric already circling around the talk radio drain:

Now a candidate to regain the Senate seat he lost in 2010, Feingold was back this week calling for better funding and more focus on intelligence gathering in the wake of last Friday's terrorist attack on Paris. It makes sense that Feingold would want to remake his image by pretending now that he's been for strengthening U.S. intelligence all along. It wouldn't be the first time he's tried to rewrite the past…”

Maybe Schneider skipped this part of Feingold's story:

In the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks, former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold is calling for better funding and … the revival of a dormant oversight commission. The Foreign Intelligence and Information Commission Act was put forward by Feingold, a Democrat, and passed into law in 2010 but has not been funded, nor has the commission been put in place. The commission was meant to ensure that the nation is looking across the globe for terrorist havens and threats and doing so by every means, whether covert spies or foreign diplomats.

Hell, Feingold even worked with Republican Rep. Chuck Hagel:

Feingold worked on the commission proposal with then Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who later served as secretary of defense under Obama. In 2008, Hagel said of an earlier version of the proposal that it would ensure that the U.S. isn't solely focused on the "threat of the day."

Schneider is another conservative who's willing to leave out huge parts of stories and facts to make what he's saying seem logical, in a down-the-rabbit-hole kinda way. 

Oh, and here's another little nugget of truth:

Feingold blamed the rise of the Islamic State group on the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, which he opposed then as a U.S. senator. Whatever actions the U.S. takes next, the nation needs better intelligence, he said.

Separately Monday, Feingold's 2016 opponent, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), called for invading territory held by the terrorist group the Islamic State.

Dumb Ron Johnson must have an extra $2 trillion sitting around for a new war in the Middle East.

Lazy Right Wing thoughts about Voucher Subsidies.

The guy who heads up a conservative lawsuit mill should leave the dumb right wing punditry up to the "professionals."

Rick Esenberg, President and General Counsel of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (more below) and an adjunct professor of law at Marquette University Law School (a frightening thought), agreed with more recent lunacy written by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Christian Schneider:

One of the oddest arguments made about school choice is, as argued here, that it is a "subsidy for the wealthy ..." and somehow enriches ... Christian Schneider pointed out money sent to educate choice students in private schools do not necessarily "cost" the public schools anything. This is because, if the choice program were eliminated, not only tax dollars would return to the public schools. So would the students. Depending on what it would cost the public schools to educate these students, the end of choice would not benefit public schools at all."

Yea, he's a law professor, not an accountant, but still. Perhaps Esenberg and Schneider think school buildings, energy costs, maintenance, taxes etc. aren't included in those student subsidies, the ones stripped away by vouchers?

LaCrosseTribune: Rural districts with wide geographical boundaries shoulder heavier busing costs. Growing districts take on more debt to add classrooms and build new schools.

None of this ever occurred to them, even though they're part of the mythical geniuses known as "fiscal conservatives." Esenberg even went further down-the-rabbit-hole with this gem:

Asking schools to educate kids for amounts well below the average spent in public schools is not a recipe for building wealth. (To be sure, one may be able to find examples of school operators misusing funds but public funds get misused as well. Sadly, such is human nature.) One might make the argument that taxpayers have been "enriched" because children in choice schools receive an education for less than they do in public schools.

Wonderful. After all the whining about misused public school funding, Esenberg is okay with starting a new private school system with the same misused funds? Brilliant.

Perhaps Esenberg and Schneider were unaware of it, or are trying to hide the fact, that voucher advocates are trying to get the same student subsidy as the public schools. Let me see...(click, click, click...) that works out to no taxpayer savings in the "enriched" voucher school systems.

After reading this, I'm sure you've figured out that Esenberg is a highly partisan political opportunist. He's president of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, a lawsuit mill exploiting our sharply conservative activist courts to shape our laws and constitution into jumbled word salad of ever changing Humpty Dumptyisms. And he's teaching our kids. Right wingers would call that "indoctrination."

Republicans don’t understand why densely populated areas need more time to give more people a chance to vote...or they're faking it.

For whatever reason, the Journal Sentinel finds value in the ramblings of simpleton conservative columnist Christian Schneider, whose clichéd observations are supposed to represent an actual viewpoint of our current political environment. Yawn.

Perhaps Schneider’s color-by-number talking points make it so much easier for conservative readers to get the picture.

Thanks to Schneider’s cheap shot column, “Democrats are their own priority,” we can see how quickly Republicans have exploited the lazy media’s pass on the dumb one-size-fits-all early voting limits statewide. It doesn't make any sense. Never mind that Republicans hate one-size-fits-all regulations and are always whining about needing more local control.

“…last week's hysterical eruption by Wisconsin Senate Democrats shows us that they are willing to spend their limited capital on the only thing that matters to them: getting Democrats in power."

This one point kills me. I bet you didn't know Democrats are not supposed to campaign, accept funding, or push their populist agenda during the election season.  

   

Faked Cluelessness: To sell the false premise that early voting hours must be the same everywhere in the state, Republican have to come across like they don’t understand why densely populated areas need more time to give more people a chance to vote. Even conservative newspaper editorial boards are screaming bloody murder over this transparent attempt at Democratic voter suppression in Milwaukee and Madison.

Schneider must be stupid…

On Tuesday, the state Senate took up … a bill that would set uniform hours for polling places during early voting periods; generally, communities such as Milwaukee and Madison that have more government resources are able to keep their clerks' offices open on weekends, giving their voters more of a chance to vote than in rural areas. The GOP argued that this gave heavily Democratic areas an unfair advantage and that uniformity in polling hours would eliminate the distortion this causes. This sent Senate Democrats into an absurd tantrum.

Giving more people more time to vote is a “distortion?”  

Cheap rural Communities: Let’s face it, if rural communities thought voting was important, they would find a way to pay for it. Forgotten by Schneider was the opposition by those closest to this “problem,” the Wisconsin Municipal Clerks Associations:

Diane Hermann-Brown, president of the Wisconsin Municipal Clerks Association, wondered about the practical effect of having her staff turn away absentee ballots while accepting dog licenses and handling other duties … (or) what would clerks do if absentee voters are still in line at 5 p.m. Sun Prairie had an hour and a half wait among absentee voters at 5 p.m. on the Friday before the November election. The bigger the city, the longer the travel time to get to the city clerk's office."

Or the Wisconsin Towns Association:

Richard Stadelman, executive director of the Wisconsin Towns Association said the proposal could be even more vexing for clerks in small towns, who often work part-time and at the convenience of local residents. He said his group opposes the bill as written.

Schneider doesn't get complexity or the overwhelming opposition to a statewide standard. Instead he's projecting that it’s all about getting elected, and it offers him another chance to take a few cheap shots, like:

The last time the state saw such a cavalcade of buffoonery was during the Capitol protests of 2011 … the Senate Democrats' most ridiculous procedural act last week was trying to pull a bill to the floor that would change the way Wisconsin redraws legislative districts.

It’s just a glimpse at what Republican control looks like; jaw dropping disrespect for a citizen’s right to protest their government, which they don't take seriously, and reform for what has become an extreme act of secret partisan redistricting. Authoritarian much?  

Public Apology Demands by petty Right Wingers part of their brand, not part of the Democratic Party's DNA.

I found the following piece of conservative projection funny and clueless. Blogger Christian Schneider wants liberals to be just like Republicans. Like I've told my conservative friend in Milwaukee so many times before, liberals are nothing like conservatives; we don’t act, think or have any inclination to be like them, ever.

One of the dumbest ploys in the conservative quiver is the “public apology.” This modern form of public shaming is childish and so transparently political. 

And I would never ask a Republican to apologize for something they said honestly. Their inadvertent slips reveal who they are, and an apology doesn't take that back. It's what they probably say behind closed doors anyway. 

So in reaction, Schneider feels so embarrassed by his own parties low information voters actions, that he wants to falsely equate Democrat criticisms with the racist, bigoted, gun toting senselessness of the teabilly party:

jsonline: Being liberal means never having to say you're sorry: Last month, the Madison Public Library Foundation ... scheduled an author meet and greet with William Ayers, a domestic terrorist and co-founder of the Weather Underground … It's not as if the liberal city of Madison is new to domestic bombers. For decades, the city has been home to Karl Armstrong … But thank God neither of these guys did something truly objectionable, like opposing Obamacare.

Conservatives are constantly having to apologize for the actions of fringe members of the Republican Party (whether they are actually Republicans or not). Every time some dope stands on a stage and demands President Barack Obama "put down the Qur'an," it is treated as if it were a strain endemic to the GOP.

These apologies even extend to "legitimate" actions, such as the tea party's mission to shut down the government in a feckless attempt to defund Obamacare. There has been a long, thoughtful debate on the right about the tea party's tactics … Yet there is rarely such reflection on the left when it comes to their party's most extreme elements. Democrats almost never have to account for the intemperate actions of their cohorts on the left.

Are you crying alligator tears yet? 

Take, for example, Democratic Florida Congressman Alan Grayson, who last week sent out a fundraising email likening the tea party to the Klu Klux Klan, using a picture of a flaming cross to form the "T" in "tea party." If Grayson were a Republican, he'd be hung around the neck of every GOP politician across the nation.

I thought Grayson's picture was an over-the-top, hard truth about the tea party.

But Schneider, like every other Republican, considers actual criticism “name calling.” For instance, turning working Americans into low wage take-it-or-leave-it employees who can't get food stamps and are denied unemployment, is a form of slavery, so…

In his soon-to-be-released book, Gov. Scott Walker recalls when AFSCME leader Marty Beil called him a "tyrant," saying, "This is all about Scott Walker kind of bringing back, instead of public service, it is public servitude." Beil added, "He's the master of the plantation and we're supposed to be his slaves; that's his philosophy here." Beil made those comments in December 2010; Walker hadn't even taken office yet.

Of course, we all know what would happen if one of the Koch brothers would, say, compare Obamacare to slavery. Conservatives would have to rush to disavow it. But Beil helped orchestrate the Wisconsin Senate Democrats' flight to Illinois to jam up the Legislature for three weeks; he's no bit player. Yet Democrats' obeisance to Beil in blocking government is seen as "fighting for justice," while tea party actions to thwart Obamacare are something for which Republicans apparently have to apologize.

It’s hard to miss the false equivalence here, isn't it?

It's not as if there's a shortage of "what if the shoe was on the other foot" examples. At an anti-shutdown rally in Washington, D.C., two weeks ago, someone waved a sign saying "THANKS TEA-TARDS." Yet I would bet Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) isn't worried that she's ever going to have to explain why she's allied with some of these people.

Next time there's a big showdown between the parties, resist the urge to reflexively blame the tea party. Instead, think about whether the "Scott Walker is a slave owner" contingency is pulling the Democrats too far in their direction.

Sorry, the comparison just doesn't work. 

National Review's Wisconsin Hack Defends Walker's Failed Jobs and Economic Record.

One of the most over rated columnists and conservative voices in the state, Christian Scnheider, has got the connections and format to spread what is basically word of mouth BS. On the right, it doesn’t take much to get a major platform. My mind went numb listening to him recently on WPR’s morning show. He’s got nothing, and here’s more of it.

Excuses, excuses, excuses!!!

According to Schneider, heck, most conservative whiners, Scott Walker’s failure to create jobs is much too complex an issue for you and me to understand. How hard is it to understand that in Gov. Doyle’s last year, Wisconsin ranked 11 in job creation, and Walker’s latest ranking put us at 44^th.  Is that so confusing?

National Review: When Scott Walker ran for Wisconsin governor in 2010, he vowed to create 250,000 jobs during his first term. The political cognoscenti rolled their eyes … These numbers have caught the attention of the folks at websites such as The National Memo, and they’re gleefully celebrating the slow jobs growth under Walker’s reign. Those looking to criticize Walker are happy to pretend job creation is something entirely under the governor’s control, as if Walker sits around his office muttering “now where did I put that ‘create jobs’ button again?” But obviously, a state’s economy is much more complex than that.

Yeah, now it’s complex, too hard for the hard working rabble to understand. After two and a half years, the guy is in big trouble, so here comes the conservative echo chamber with ready-made excuses. The National Review to the rescue.

Despite his attempts to trim business taxes while also closing a $3.6 billion deficit in 2011, business taxes in Wisconsin remain high … So if anything, it seems Wisconsin’s slow growth is attributable to its suffocating taxes and regulations, not because Walker has been handing out tax breaks to big-business cronies. It’s unclear whether Wisconsin will gain enough jobs in the next two years for the voters to give Walker a pass, since it seems almost impossible that he’ll meet his goal. 

I've got a few more reasons Christian: Walker’s tax breaks, Act 10 attack on public workers, tort reform, backroom lost WEDC loans, and mining giveaways apparently haven’t been enough to convince businesses that they won’t be stabbed in the back later on if negotiations soar. Talk to the people at Talgo, they've got quite a story.