Category: Journal Sentinel

Accuracy begins at home

September 1, 2010 by Uppity Wisconsin

Word is that the Journal Sentinel is about to launch a big new project, with several staffers, to fact check statements being made during this election campaign.

Ho hum.  It will, of course, be a pox on everyone's houses.  It's totally predictable that no political statement will completely pass the newspaper's test.

Here's hoping they start there fact checking with the columns and blog of one Patrick McIlheran, a JS employee who never lets an inconvenient fact get in the way of his  right-wing agenda.

His editors clearly aren't up to it.  Maybe the new team will be.

Wanna bet?

Wascally Walker waffles, weaves, wiggles and weasels

August 27, 2010 by Uppity Wisconsin

" Say that quickly five times.

What Scott Walker's doing is not even mildly amusing, however.  It could mean taking away health coverage for as many as 350,000 Wisconsin residents.

For a year now, Walker's been bashing BadgerCare, one of Wisconsin's proudest accomplishments, which gives access to health care coverage for children, expectant mothers, and people whose employers don't provide health insurance coverage.

It's one of the state's real success stories.  But Walker has repeatedly attacked it, calling the program "an example of government waste," and callilng for time limits on how long people can be on the program.

He hasn't just said it once, and it was no slip of the tongue, as he tried to say after his debate with Msrk Neumann this week.  Here's what he said in the debate:

If Ron Johnson's against the war, he'll never tell

August 24, 2010 by Uppity Wisconsin

Ron Johnson, in the Journal Sentinel:

Johnson’s most pointed comments were directed at Feingold, saying that when he and other senators “come out and start demanding a U.S. pullout and that kind of thing in public, it just undermines what our troops are trying to do.”

Said Johnson: “That’s not saying if you have real grave concerns as a member of Congress you should not be talking to the administration. It’s just extremely harmful to our nation when it’s all done in public.”

Asked whether he was saying it’s improper for Feingold or other senators to be speaking out publicly against the war, Johnson said: “I guess what I really object to is how quick and early he has been throughout his career (to criticize military action) . . . he has been carping about this from the sidelines forever.”

Johnson then repeated his suggestion that when there are troops in the field, lawmakers opposed to U.S. policy should be expressing their opposition in private rather than in public.

“There’s an appropriate way of opposing a policy and an inappropriate way,” he said. “The appropriate way if I’m a U.S. senator is going to be not public. If I’m opposed to something, I’ll make those views known very, very well, but privately with the administration.”

Heads should roll, and Walker should be ashamed

August 23, 2010 by Uppity Wisconsin

A Journal Sentinel editorial:

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker should fire John Chianelli immediately as part of the effort to eradicate problems at the county's Mental Health Complex.

But Walker should not stop there. He should insist that any Mental Health Complex employees who knowingly falsified documents or otherwise failed to do their jobs be shown the door. Their failures allowed a known predator, Omowale Atkins, to viciously sexually assault patients and impregnate one of them.

Even though the Journal Sentinel Watchdog team has shown a pattern of neglect and mismanagement at the complex, it appears very little discipline has been meted out. Heads need to roll, and that should begin with Chianelli, administrator of the Milwaukee County Behavioral Health Division. He is in charge of the Mental Health Complex.

But it should not stop there, either. Walker, who points fingers in every direction but his own whenever there is a problem in county government, owns this one.

He needs to take some responsiblity himself for allowing this to happen. It did not happen overnight, but after an extended period of neglect on Walker's watch.  And he has defended the decision-makers.