3 days in a row, not a habit yet . . . but forming. And with a little attitude this morning. It’s nice to have more opinion, less reporting. 🙂
LOCAL NEWS
COUNCIL UNDIES IN A TWIST
I’m curious why no one complained when Mayor Dave made unilateral decisions, but they are just twisted about Soglin doing the same. Ride the Drive was never anything the council approved, it was a mayoral proclamation. In my estimation, he’s 10 times more communicative than Mayor Dave ever was, so I don’t really understand why the council is so wigged out, except that the main people concerned (Mark Clear, Lauren Cnare and Shiva Bidar-Sielaff) all supported Mayor Dave. They should be celebrating the new openness in the mayor’s office, not freaking out. Tho, I guess it is weird to have a Mayor that cares more about issues than his political career and the next election – I guess change is hard. But this is a change they should embrace. In the end, he wants more public and council input on the Ride the Drive event, how is that bad? Check out the concerns he has heard about and that have been ignored for the past few years. A bit of an aside, I’ve known about the cancellation for weeks along with Verveer and didn’t even know it was a big deal. I can’t believe they didn’t know, I think they are just playing politics with this one which is kind of a bummer.
WHERE’S THE ARTICLE ABOUT PARISI/COUNTY BOARD RIFT?
Parisi’s first veto in less than a month and a half. Why isn’t THAT news about executive and legislative strife? He vetoed a compromise . . . and yet the article is about boaters, you know the issues, not the personalities. Why doesn’t the media treat the above issue the same way? What’s the difference between the city and county that the city is about personalities and the county is focused on issues? Is it the media or the elected officials?
WOULD YOU WANT YOUR DOCTOR NOTES TO BE PUBLIC RECORDS?
I’m not sure how I feel about this one. I’m all for open records and appreciate new agencies that fight open records issues in court, but this one feels iffy to me. I’m not sure that doctor’s notes should be open records. Medical records, including who your doctors are and when and if you were sick doesn’t feel like it should be an open record. What if the doctor is a psychologist? Or another type of specialist that would reveal and illness that is none of the public’s concern? Perhaps the school district could have released them with it mostly redacted – probably making the release useless, but I think they should fight giving up these records in the end. Am I missing something? I’m a bit conflicted on this one, but I think the balancing test falls with the school district on this one.
LOVE THE CITY ATTITUDE ON BOOMBOX THE WASTELAND
Nice to see the support for the event.
UNION WINS BATTLE AGAINST OSCAR MAYER
$4.2M settlement and getting paid in the future. Good to see.
THE FARLEY CENTER IS COOL!
Read the article for details. 🙂
STATE NEWS
PROTESTERS DISRUPT JOINT FINANCE
I gotta say, I thought the look on Senator Lena Taylor’s face was the best as Senator Bob Jauch tried to explain why the protesters might want to stop.
FIRE CODE VIOLATIONS AT THE CAPITOL FOUND
Duh. Why’d it take this long for this to come out? Its been months now.
REPUBLICAN RIFT OVER ROAD PROJECTS
Busted by their own. Article starts out as follows:
The president of the state Senate is calling a budget provision approved by fellow Republicans “stupid,” costly to taxpayers and seemingly beneficial only to the GOP’s friends in the road-building industry.
Sing it!
SCONZIE HAS A “SCOOP” THAT IS NEWS THAT IS WEEKS OLD?
Um, silly. Pocan, Roys, Erpenbach and I”m sure others have been making calls for a while now. My call log says I knew this back on May 18th. Scoop? Not.
WE ARE STILL THE DAIRY STATE
Breakfast on the Farm, Cows on the Councourse . . . gotta love Wisconsin.
NOT IN THE NEWS
LOUIS BUTLER FEDERAL APPOINTMENT IN JEOPARDY, PLEASE HELP
Facebook note from a friend and former employee . . .
(Important: Re. Louis Butler) Dear Madison Friends,
I’m writing because my former boss, mentor, friend, and the best judge I’ve ever known, Louis Butler, is on the verge of losing his judicial career for good, thanks to the CONTINUED unfair (and yes, racist) smear campaign against him that began when I was serving as his last judicial law clerk, that cost him his seat on the state supreme court, and is now about to cost him his confirmation to the federal bench. Unless people start speaking out to save his nomination to the federal bench, it looks like history is about to repeat itself.
I cannot stand to sit by and watch this wonderful man and judge’s career get destroyed all over again because of a certain contingent of powerful interest groups that (1) don’t like that he issued a decision potentially holding lead paint companies accountable for dangerous products and (2) that then preyed upon the basest and most racist instincts of the least-educated but most manipulable of the voter base to defeat Justice Butler through a campaign of gory slasher flick ads that falsely implied he’d set rapists and murderers free in his career and was pro-criminal (because they knew that if they campaigned on the lead paint issue, they’d lose… the whole “public defenders shouldn’t be judges” approach was strategic and effective, but they never really believed it, of course).
As you all may remember, many of these ads had the phone numbers for our chambers at the ends of the ads and implored voters to call Justice Butler and tell him how they felt about him “setting rapists and murderers free.” As a result, for a month leading up to the election, as I was trying to help Justice Butler do the work of the court, we were constantly flooded with ugly calls from people spouting such hate as “I can’t believe we have a BLACK supreme court justice” and even “his daughter should be raped so he knows what it feels like.” I thought that surely, come election day, he would be vindicated, as his track record as a stellar judge (and moderate, “swing vote” judge whose rulings reflected an impartial application of the law) would speak for itself. But the problem was, not enough supporters rallied behind him, and he lost his seat… narrowly.
Now history is repeating itself. I’m taking it upon myself to write you this email BEGGING you to do what you can to fight for his confirmation because no one else seems to be leading any effort to save his federal nomination, and it’s about to be too late.
From my understanding, there’s only ONE thing that must happen to save his confirmation: Senator Johnson needs to be persuaded to release his hold on the nomination. It’s all about putting pressure on Johnson to end this ongoing, ill-founded, unjust campaign to destroy a wonderful man’s career as a judge, depriving Wisconsin of a great, fair, jurist.
Maybe that means everyone reading this calling Johnson and having five other friends call him. Maybe it means those of you with more connections and leadership tendencies organizing something even more powerful. All I know is we’re running out of time, and it’s just about to be too late, and no one seems to be doing anything. I just can’t sit by and watch history repeat itself and watch Justice Butler get thrown under the bus all over again without doing what I can to try to stop it. I’m counting on the fact that some (most?) of you feel the same.
At the very least, please contact Johnson and try to put some pressure on him to release his hold on Butler’s nomination when you see this, and ask a few friends to do the same. Any other efforts would be great too.
PS- this would be Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, who can be reached at (202) 224-5323.
Sigh.
EMERSON EAST YARD SALE
The Emerson East neighborhood will be holding its annual Yard Sale Day this coming Saturday. In addition to household sales, there will be plant sales at 2517 Hoard and 2605 Schofield to support maintenance of a prairie planted berm in Demetral Park, and a bake sale at 1948 E. Mifflin to raise money for an accessible sandbox toy for Graaskamp
Park. And Assumption Greek Orthodox Church will have its rummage sale on the same day. Map at http://www.emersoneast.org/images/yardsalemap2011.pdf
Brenda I agree 100% with your comments
about Council being upset about Mayor Paul’s very wise decision to cancel the
September Ride the Drive. I’m glad Paul
is concerned about our downtown business
community and isn’t catering to the bicycle interests like Mayor Dave did.
These thoughtful decisions of Mayor Paul’s are one reason I voted for him. It is time the favoritism Dave gave to
certain community groups and neighborhood associations stopped and after 8 years it has :o) Rosemary