Citizen Action's "Radio Active" Milwaukee Campaign shakes up Walker wingnut media Lapdog Media Trackers.

Citizen Action has taken on the Herculean task of trying to get liberal talk radio into the Milwaukee market. JS:

...try to find the money to buy their own radio station and create a progressive format to give more voices a say. The effort is led by the grass-roots organization Citizen Action of Wisconsin.

Media Tracker's Brian Sikma's piece, "Citizen Action Declares War on Conservative Talk Radio," suggests any criticism or challenge to conservative radios monopoly in Milwaukee is a declaration of war. So much for Citizen Action's 1st Amendment right to speak out and call into question their market dominance.

You have to wonder why Sikma is so defensive. You'd think he had something to hide. Does he have a problem with competition, the supposed backbone of free market conservatism? The conservative media elite's radio monopoly in Milwaukee, and their liberal radio blackout, does need some explanation. But Sikma took a pass.

Sikma appearance on WPR's Joy Cardin Show should have been focused on the title of his article, "Citizen Action Declares War on Conservative Talk Radio." For 20 minutes, Sikma talked up diversity and a liberal presence, even though he called it a "war on conservative talk radio" in his article.

Oh, and did you know, Milwaukee's "diverse opinions" are only on the right:

"There is a diversity of viewpoints on a variety of issues. They might not be touting what might be considered progressive or liberal ideas, but when it comes to prescriptions for what conservatives in state government should do when it comes to looking at candidates for public office, there is certainly a diversity of viewpoints."

Right Wing Authoritarian Pretzel Logic: Sikma inadvertently admitted that the conservative leaning Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is actually liberal because it has at times been skeptical of Scott Walker's policies. So if the media isn't completely on board with Scott Walker's agenda, any analysis of the facts running counter to Walker must be politically charged liberalism? Here's Sikma reinforcing that idea:



Here's Robert Kraig's take on the situation in Milwaukee, and his response to ridiculous two right wing callers:

Citizen Action Demolishes PolitiFact over Walker Claim of increasing Health Care Coverage.

This was hard to edit, since every fact presented by Citizen Action, who has been a strong advocate for expanding health care coverage, was misquoted and seriously edited to the benefit of Scott Walker. Funny how that happens all the time. Like the poll that shows Walker and Mary Burke tied at 47%. To this day, no one mentions it. 

This is the kind of stuff we've seen over and over again with Republican politicians. Why they're given the benefit of the doubt or given a pass over the most damaging things is unexplainable and surreal. Like a report on the near bankruptcy of Milwaukee County under Scott Walker. It was kept from the press because the authors didn't want it to become campaign fodder. I still can't get over that one. Here's Citizen Action's response to PolitiFact:

On a May 7th article by PolitiFact, Scott Walker was challenged on a recent campaign ad he ran declaring that…"more are going to sleep knowing they have access to health care."

Knowing our work advocating for health reform, Citizen Action of Wisconsin was asked to weigh in. We pointed out that the Governor was trying to take credit for the coverage expansion in the Affordable Care Act, which he worked so long to block. That the only numbers the state had any right to talk about were the BadgerCare enrollment figures. Here's where Politifact didn't do their job: Politifact quoted us as saying..."estimated 83,000 more people became eligible for Medicaid, while 77,000 were removed from Medicaid -- a net gain, of sorts, of 6,000 people, according to the liberal Citizen Action of Wisconsin"

But here's the thing, we didn't say there was a net gain under Walker's tenure. In email correspondence with reporters at Politifact, we pointed out that Walker had worked long and hard to reduce, not add, people to BadgerCare. Cutting people off of BadgerCare, changing eligibility rules and more. The Walker Administration was even sued for not adding people that were legally eligible for BadgerCare.

Here's what we told Politifact: "The State [BadgerCare] enrollment as of March 2014 was 738,758, the state BC+ enrollment in Jan 2011 was 775,586. Even accounting for the 6,000 more eligible it means that between now and when Walker first became governor,there are 30,828 fewer people in BadgerCare". (Email, May 1st)

When it comes to relying our position, Politifact quoted Citizen Action as saying there was a net gain of 6,000 to BadgerCare; when actually we said that there are over 30,000 fewer people in BadgerCare during Walker's tenure, and tens of thousands more could have been covered had Wisconsin accepted the federal funds for BadgerCare.