RYAN: The Left is making a big mistake here. What they're offering people is a full stomach and an empty soul ... You know, this reminds me of a story I heard from Eloise Anderson. She serves in the cabinet of my buddy Gov. Scott Walker. She once met a young boy from a very poor family. And every day at school, he would get a free lunch from a government program. He told Eloise he didn't want a free lunch. He wanted his own lunch. One in a brown paper bag, just like the other kids. He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown paper bag had someone who cared for him. This is what the Left does not understand.
It turns out, that touching story is actually from a book about a kid in New York City in the 1980s, and the lunches he was getting for free were not from the government, they were from an ad sales rep who befriended him ... the Miss Laura and now-adult Maurice of the story are advocates on child hunger, and let's just say they are not out campaigning against free school lunches. No, they're partnering with No Kid Hungry on a mission that includes "connect[ing] kids in need to effective nutrition programs like school breakfast and summer meals."Ryan posted a notice on Facebook saying, “I regret failing to verify the original source of the story.” But this comment nailed Ryan: Sherry Edwardson: “You feel that way yourself Ryan or you wouldn't have repeated it. Quit passing the buck!”
National Review Online praised his argument with the headline, "Paul Ryan's Moving Story That Explains the Difference Between Hard Work and Dependency." On Fox's Happening Now, correspondent Carl Cameron characterized Ryan's speech as taking a "middle-of-the-road tone." Ryan's comments fit in well with conservative media's history of shaming the poor, and in particular, free school lunch programs for children of low-income families. In the past, Fox has even suggested children be forced to work for their meals.Media Matters put this together, comparing Ryan to...Rush? Yes:
Of all the stories I've read about Common Core, from one
shoreline to the other, I've never seen stronger support for it than right here
in Wisconsin. jsonline: As the Senate hearing began, at least 110 Wisconsin school superintendents piled into the room — representing more than a quarter of the state's 425 school districts.
Educators launched a vigorous defense Thursday of the Common Core State Standards, with superintendents, a teacher, parent, university mathematics professor and a school board president telling a packed Capitol parlor that the new academic standards should stay.
The superintendent of the Pewaukee School District said her district's average ACT college entrance exam score has risen faster since the implementation of Common Core than any time in recent history.
Kettle Moraine teacher Terry Kaldhusdal, who was named a Wisconsin teacher of the year in 2007, said his kids were thinking more critically as a result of the new standards for English.
“Our schools exist for many reasons," he said, "but the primary reason is to pass the keys of freedom to the next generation.”
Daily Reporter: An Assembly committee is scheduled to vote Thursday on a bill that would adopt a uniform commercial building code for Wisconsin. The legislation, put forward by the Associated Builders and Contractors of Wisconsin and similar groups, would take away local governments’ ability to set commercial-building standards that are stricter than the state’s. The one exception to the uniform code would be for fire-safety ordinances that cities, villages and towns adopted before May 1, 2013.
AB 782 would also place the responsibility of making revisions to the commercial code in the hands of a building code council made up of building inspectors, contractors, architects and those belonging to similar trades and professions. The council members would be appointed by the governor and would serve three-year terms.
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| Returning to our restaurant countertops and coffee tables... |
jsonline: Even as the nation's second-largest city is moving to ban electronic cigarettes where tobacco smoking is prohibited, Wisconsin lawmakers are considering doing just the opposite. A Republican-sponsored bill to clarify that using e-cigarettes indoors is legal, despite a statewide ban on indoor smoking, drew opposition Wednesday from doctors, scientists and others who cited concerns over the product's safety.
"If this bill passes, Wisconsin's children with their young brains so sensitive to nicotine may be put at risk. Why would we do that?" said Dr. Michael Fiore, a University of Wisconsin professor who also founded the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention … five states and dozens of cities — including the nation's three largest — have moved to treat the newly popular e-cigarettes nearly the same as conventional cigarettes. The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday voted to ban the use of electronic cigarettes in workplaces and public areas.
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| USB rechargeable... |
Sen. Glenn Grothman's bill would do the opposite, explicitly allowing e-cigarette users to inhale the nicotine-laced vapors indoors despite the state's 2009 law that prohibits indoor smoking.
"Why should we compare e-cigarettes to cigarettes when we should be comparing them to clean air?" said Murray Katcher, a Madison pediatrician. Katcher said studies have shown the vapors can contain heavy metals and other toxicants.
What's next? E-cigarette innovation....Don Muehlbauer, owner of DuraSmoke, the largest e-liquid company in the country, said his products are safer than conventional cigarettes. He said the flavored liquid, which is heated by a coil in the devices and turned into a vapor, contains four ingredients: nicotine, flavoring, vegetable glycerin and propylene glycol.
jsonline: District superintendents, university education professors, school board members and representatives of groups such as the Wisconsin State Reading Association are scheduled to hold a news conference in the Capitol to oppose Senate Bill 619 before it gets a hearing in the Senate Education Committee … Lawmakers could accept and amend standards the committee recommended, even if the state superintendent didn't agree.
The School Administrators Alliance organized the news conference, saying the proposal would throw out the expertise and expense the state has put into investing in new college and career-ready standards, which are tied to new state tests coming out this year.
Vukmir and Farrow say … Wisconsin can do better than the "one size fits all" expectations.
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| Other inconvenient bill signings... |
AP: Walker says campaign bills not on his radar: Gov. Scott Walker says he is not pushing a pair of Republican-sponsored bills affecting campaign donations and spending regulations. Walker says he has not been engaged on the bills and instead has been focused on issues related to tax relief, economic development and worker training.The inconvenient adventures of our incidental governor include this, this, this, this, this.
Here are the numbers Burke should get out right-away:Did Burke, as state Commerce secretary under Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, throw Wisconsin for a six-digit jobs loss?
As backup for the jobs claim, the RGA spot cites a very familiar source: A September 2013 item from PolitiFact Wisconsin. But in that item, we rated Mostly False a Walker claim that Doyle’s policies cost the state 133,000 jobs in his second term, from 2007 through 2010. Walker, we noted, got the number right. But experts said the national economic crash had far more to do with Wisconsin’s job losses during that period than any state policies. Indeed, Wisconsin actually fared somewhat better than the rest of the country.
We ran the numbers using US Bureau of Labor Statistics quarterly census of employment and wages data, considered the most accurate measurement: Burke’s state tenure: Gain of more than 55,000 jobs. Start of Doyle’s tenure to end of Burke’s: gain of at least 94,000.The Walker campaign responded with even more lies and deceptions, claiming Burke "misstates" the record. Not only did they not address any misstatements, they're taking credit for the national economic recovery and surplus seen in every other state. Very sad:
jsonline: Walker campaign spokeswoman Alleigh Marre said Burke's ad misstates Walker's record on the economy .I think Politifact above clearly shows Walker "distorting the truth" by blaming Gov. Doyle/Burke for the jobs lost during the Great Recession.
"Wisconsin's unemployment rate is the lowest it's been since 2008, we've seen over 100,000 new jobs created since he took office, and our $3.6 billion deficit has been turned into a nearly billion dollar surplus," Marre said in a statement. "While Mary Burke has resorted to distorting the truth, the facts are clear that Wisconsin is moving forward under Governor Walker's leadership."
Mike Wittenwyler, a lawyer who advises lobbyists and campaign groups, said the bills simply clarify existing law or make it more fair.
The leader of the state Senate Scott Fitzgerald and Sen. Mary Lazich wants to rewrite campaign finance law to allow lobbyists to hand off their clients' campaign checks to lawmakers and other elected officials during the legislative session.
Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign wrote: “A sudden, surprise attack on the ability of Wisconsin citizens to know who is trying to influence their vote at election time was launched without notice yesterday. Senate Bill 654 would take Wisconsin in exactly the opposite direction that the rest of the nation is headed in the wake of the 2010 Citizens United vs. F.E.C. decision.
All other states are headed toward more disclosure of outside money. Eight of nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices in the Citizens United decision urged Congress and the States to enact stronger disclosure laws. Senate Bill 654 would cause less disclosure … and much more dark money in Wisconsin.
Is there a single Wisconsin citizen outside of the Capitol who has ever said we need more campaign contributions from lobbyists in our elections? Does anyone seriously believe we need lobbyists influencing public policy with campaign contributions more than they already do? With this secretive, sudden maneuver, Senators Lazich and Fitzgerald are hoping not many Wisconsinites will notice…”
Scott Walker’s little-known scandal. When he treated welfare recipients like dogs:
When Scott Walker was county executive, how he handled programs for Milwaukee’s poor will shock and amaze you. A “joke” about a woman trying to sign up her dogs for welfare, because “my Dogs are mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can’t speak English and have no frigging clue who the r Daddys are. They expect me to feed them, provide them with housing and medical care, and feel guilty.” The punchline: “My Dogs get their first checks Friday.” Walker’s deputy chief of staff Kelly Rindfleisch replied: “That is hilarious. And so true.”
It’s also worth noting: back when Walker was Milwaukee county executive, and Rindfleisch was a top aide, he managed the county’s welfare programs so abysmally that after lawsuits by local clients, the state was forced to take them over. “They didn't just call people dogs, they treated them like dogs,” one Milwaukee elected official recalled angrily.
“Milwaukee County has demonstrated a sustained inability to successfully provide services to its (poor) customers,” state health services director director Karen Timberlake wrote in a February 2009 letter to Walker announcing the state takeover. Milwaukee became the only one of 72 Wisconsin counties to wind up with its programs for poor people under state control ... to many in Milwaukee, his staff’s racist jokes aren't funny.
Roughly 95 percent of calls to the county’s client-intake call center went unanswered in 2008, a state probe later found. The social services department budget funded 25 positions at the intake center, but a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter found only seven staffers working among empty cubicles ... Walker began arguing for privatizing the social services intake unit. “He was managing it to fail,” charges AFSCME contract administrator Dave Eisner. But the problems weren’t just at the call center. In 2008, one out of five food stamp recipients dropped for ineligibility were in fact eligible, and wrongly cut from the program. In 2007, 60 percent of county decisions to cut food or other aid were overturned on appeal within two months.
Miami Herald: Florida has been limiting Medicaid patients to six emergency room visits a year even though federal officials consider such a cap illegal. As a result, the federal government intends to penalize the state by withholding a portion of Medicaid funding.Rationing, pure and simple: The GOP has even rationalized their limits as "a cost saving measure." Rationing.
“We hope the state will realign their Medicaid program with federal standards to avoid this penalty,” said Emma Sandoe, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Limiting the number of ER visits is intended to be a cost-saving measure. Republican lawmakers in 2012 said it would encourage patients to rely on primary care doctors instead of hospital ERs.This is the kind of policy we'll see from Republicans once they convert to block grants for Medicaid dollars, with no strings attached, leaving the federal government powerless to help.
Such limits on ER visits, the federal agency says, violate the Social Security Act by “arbitrarily” denying coverage of a mandatory benefit and would not be in patients’ best interest.
Among House Republicans, there is little unity on a strategy, even though just a month ago lawmakers had rallied around a proposal made by Republican Senators Burr, Coburn, and Hatch. The Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility, and Empowerment Act is strongly reliant on market competition, with notable differences from Obamacare; it would likely cover fewer uninsured Americans, increase premiums for many older adults, shrink Medicaid, decrease subsidies for middle class Americans, scale back protections for people with preexisting conditions, and allow private insurers to escape many of the consumer-friendly requirements imposed on them by Obamacare ... it would not maintain Obamacare’s individual mandate. The bill’s authors noted: our proposal is roughly budget neutral over a decade,” ... it seeks to modestly reduce the amount of federal spending and taxation.
Representative Tom Price of Georgia, a physician, wants the Affordable Care Act repealed and replaced with he has called a “soup-to-nuts reform of healthcare.”
Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana has proposed a comprehensive bill that would first repeal Obamacare and replace it with regulations placing new limits on medical malpractice suits and expand access to health savings accounts.
Republican Representative Michael Burgess of Texas, an obstetrician, (says) Larger issues — like a repeal — should be postponed until after this year’s midterm elections, when the Republican party may hold a stronger position in Congress.
Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma … did admit that passing an Obamacare replacement would be “tricky” in the House, given the complexities of the American healthcare system and the dividing views in the Republican Party. But repeal and reform is not out of the realm of possibility. In general, market-oriented reforms have been among the most popular for GOP lawmakers.
“…news headlines nationwide screamed of Gov. Scott Walker’s “apparent” knowledge of illegal campaigning…”
“…the Democrat-led Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office … quest for convictions fizzled out. Democrat DA John Chisholm and his prosecution squad … compiled six convictions, only two of them related to the original scope of the John Doe.”
“’I use this private account quite a bit to communicate with SKW,” Cynthia Archer, Walker’s administration director wrote … nothing contained … led to charges of illegal activity against Walker.”
“Left-bending American Bridge, a super political action committee … giddily announced it was launching a new website on Wisconsin’s not-so-secret John Doe probes.”
“…the judge of the nearly three-year “secret” investigation … Wisconsin’s not-so-secret John Doe probes … the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the recipient of so much leaked information from that probe.”
But unlike the previous John Doe, when so many conservatives seemed paralyzed by the investigation’s gag order, some on the right are speaking up and speaking out about what they see as an assault on their First Amendment rights. And they sound like they do not intend to go down quietly without a fight.
"Kramer is accused of groping at least one of the women and making lewd and inappropriate remarks to at least two women."
State Rep. Chris Kapenga accused Kramer of acting inappropriately at a recent meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council in Chicago. Kapenga said in September that Kramer has often displayed poor behavior at various events.
AP: The Republican majority leader in the state Assembly has been asked to resign his post because of allegations that he sexually harassed multiple women at a meeting in Washington, two Republicans with direct knowledge of the situation told The Associated Press on Saturday. Rep. Bill Kramer, of Waukesha, was elected by Republican Assembly members as majority leader in September.
GOP Assembly leaders met late Friday to discuss the situation and agreed that Kramer should step down as majority leader. Kramer did not immediately return a message left at his Capitol office. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel went to Kramer's home Friday night but he was not there.
NEW HURDLES FOR REGULATORS: The House passed a GOP bill (HR 2804) to impose additional paperwork and public-reporting obligations on federal agencies as they go about drafting and implementing rules to carry out laws passed by Congress. Agencies would be required to file monthly reports on the content, status and legal basis of rules they are developing. The Office of Management and Budget unit that receives these filings would have to post them on the Internet and then publish detailed annual reports on all aspects of federal rulemaking, including projected costs on the economy. The executive branch implements 3,000 to 4,000 regulations each year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
RULES TO HELP VETERANS, SENIORS, WOMEN: The House defeated a Democratic bid to prevent HR 2804 (above) from interfering with regulations that expedite veterans’ benefits; protect the health and safety of seniors, children and consumers; ensure pay equity for women; provide refunds and rebates to taxpayers; aid small businesses; prevent discrimination; safeguard drinking water and protect food supplies from food-borne diseases.
CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU: the House passed a Republican bill (HR 3193) to reduce the(ir) authority ... The bill enables the Financial Stability Oversight Council in the Treasury Department to veto the bureau’s proposed regulations by simple majority vote rather than the two-thirds majority now required. The bill also would replace the bureau’s director with a five-person governing body and subject its budget to the congressional appropriations process.That's smaller government? Voting to politicize and trash the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Paul Ryan, James Sensenbrenner, Tom Petri, Sean Duffy, and Reid Ribble. But it gets worse:
PAYDAY LENDERS TO THE MILITARY: the House defeated a Democratic motion to prevent HR 3193 (above) from impeding Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) oversight of payday lenders located on or near military bases, its efforts to help consumers deal with compromised credit cards or its policing of fraud in fees charged for student loans or ATM withdrawals.Can Republican voters really be against something like this? We'll see. Voting no were Ryan, Sensenbrenner, Petri, Duffy, and Ribble.
Example 1: While discussing a fatal Milwaukee parking garage collapse, ex-Walker aide Kelly Rindfleisch joked with a friend — who had complained about the headlines after the tragedy … “You mean Scott didn't push that slab on top of the kid so he could play Guilliani? (sic)” Rindfleisch wrote.
In another exchange, Rindfleisch told her friend Kelly Teelin, a Madison paralegal, that she was looking forward to a social event. To which Teelin responded, “Why, what happened yesterday besides the parking lot falling on some kid.”
Example 2: After Milwaukee County Board member Lynne DeBruin wrote a letter to Walker calling for more security at the county behavioral health department’s walk-in clinic because of incidents in which patients brought in weapons, Walker’s staff discussed ways to defuse the problem.
Tim Russell, the county’s housing director and part of Walker’s inner circle, responded by email: “Lynne is a wholly owned (subsidiary of the) nurses union. These complaints are their agitating, either for more staff or something else. Cindys suggestion to have (county lawyer Tim) schoewe put the fear of god into her and remind her (of her policy) making role would be good. Or a large truck.”
Walker, who was copied on the email, responded: “Yes. Tim S should talk to her.”Even though a recent poll found overwhelmingly support for Democratic issues, voters still favored Republicans candidates in the November elections.
