Journal Sentinel

FBI Raid, John Doe Probe Put Walker Transparency Pledge To The Test

September 14, 2011 by The Political E...

Just a reminder, as a John Doe probe unfolds, that Walker said of transparency during his Gubernatorial campaign, and posted on his candidate website, "I've lived it...it would apply to anything..."

The text came from a newspaper interview the Walker campaign thought important enough to reprint, just below the Walker campaign's web page graphic.

You can decide whether Walker's year in office that began with a sneak-attack on collective bargaining, garnered the most PolitiFact "false" ratings of any Wisconsin public figure and has run through today's Journal Sentinel continually-updating story - -

FBI seizes items at home of former top aide to Gov. Walker 

- - meshes with his sweeping claim and endorsement of transparency.

16 Democratic state senators; Do I hear 17? Going once, going twice ...

September 13, 2011 by Uppity Wisconsin

You've heard it here before and will no doubt hear it again: What's going on, Democrats?

On Tuesday, we celebrated the swearing-in of two new State Senators, Jennifer Schilling and Jessica King, slicing the Republican majority in the upper house to a single vote, at 17-16.

Those two women won recall elections last month, but Democrats failed to pick up the third seat they needed to be able to block the further passage of the Scott Walker/right-wing Republlican agenda.

A month ago, taking over the State Senate was life and death. So, have we given up, when one more seat would swing the balance? That's the way the media portrays it, reporting only about the possibility of recalling Walker himself next year and speculating about whether that will or could happen.

The latest Journal Sentinel story all but wrote off the legislature:

Eugene Kane Says Voter ID Law Suppresses The Vote

September 13, 2011 by The Political E...

Well said.

I'm officially done arguing with people about whether the new photo ID law is a plan to suppress the vote in the minority community or not.

Thanks to a whistle-blower in Madison, I've finally got my answer.

I've been taking that position for some time - - back in January, and recently here and here - - but Kane, at the Journal Sentinel, has a much larger megaphone and his message will reach further.

And this is a good a time to remind readers that the League of Women Voters in Wisconsin is funding a legl challenge to the law.

Information, here.

PolitiFact Acknowledges Walker Has Most "False" Ratings

September 5, 2011 by The Political E...

I was pleased to see that the Journal Sentinel's truthiness rating service PolitiFact finds that Scott Walker has the most negative ratings among Wisconsin officials, leaving Democrats like Tom Barrett in the dust.

I'd done the tally myself more than once - - a recent example is here - - and am glad to see Walker with the first-year PolitiFact First-place Falsehoods' Finish.

Turns out our Governor is more transparent than he intended.

Both PolitiFact and this blog show Walker with the most false ratings, though my total is larger (I credit Walker with 31, opposed to PolitiFact's 13) because I fully credit Walker with "false" if the rating begins with the category "mostly false" all the way through "false" and "pants on fire."

PolitiFact balances its findings by also saying Walker has the most "true" ratings - - four - - and explains that as a lightning rod, he has had the most statements rated.

Faint praise: Walker's habitual unfamiliarity with facts has helped vault him into first place.

Take this example from just a few days ago that I posted, using PolitiFact:

Abe Lincoln, And John Paul II, Rightly Honored Labor

September 5, 2011 by The Political E...

E. J. Dionne Jr at The Washington Post notes that these historical figures and moral leaders were also friends of labor.

So it would take a brave man to point out that unions “grew up from the struggle of the workers — workers in general but especially the industrial workers — to protect their just rights vis-a-vis the entrepreneurs and the owners of the means of production,” or to insist that “the experience of history teaches that organizations of this type are an indispensable element of social life.”

That’s what Pope John Paul II said (the italics are his) in the 1981 encyclical “Laborem Exercens.” Like Lincoln, John Paul repeatedly asserted “the priority of labor over capital."

And as someone whose first job at the Journal Sentinel was labor reporter, I winced when I read this Dionne paragraph: