We all knew it was coming, Scott Milfred was just dying to write this. I thought about writing a point by point response correcting his factual errors . . . but decided it just wasn’t worth the time or effort. Luckily, someone else did a better job of responding! Thanks to Bill Benedict for his response that starts out like this:
How deflating and tragic was Scott Milfred’s column in the Sunday State Journal about the Progressive Dane Party. At the very least it was insensitive and out of spirit with the Martin Luther King Day celebration and President Barack Obama’s inauguration.
Almost all Americans are rejoicing over the promises of greater social and economic equality, freedom and a “new deal” for the working man and woman. Special interests and deregulators are on the run, the political power of individual citizens at the grassroot level seems to have triumphed.
Now, when a “community organizer” can be elected president of the United States, where there’s some real hope for democratic government with a small “d,” Milfred ironically asks readers to use the occasion of Obama’s inauguration as evidence or an excuse for supporting the demise of the Progressive Dane Party in Dane County.
It was, to say the least, poor timing on Milfred’s part. At a time when people are uniting and coming together and celebrating and even I, was celebrating with the nation, about a President I didn’t vote for (I voted Cynthia McKinney/Rosa Clemente), and the departure of the old one! – he felt the need to be all bitter.
And, since Bill inspired me, here’s a few comments:
– Scott acts like if Progressive Dane holds less than 1/3 of the seats on the council we are in sad shape. Well, there may have been 3 years where we held more than 1/3 of the seats. And part of that was because of an appointment when an alder left their seat. Progressive Dane has ALWAYS held a small portion of the seats on the City Council, never more than 8 – even if the State Journal didn’t act like it.
– Yes, PD’s brand has been damaged – but due in large part to these types of made-up-facts editorials – not news – by the Wisconsin State Journal. But hey – Progressive Dane is a scrappy little organization of regular folks that volunteer to make the community better by participating in local government – and one that can roll with the punches and thrives during times of adversity. It’s always been the underdog.
– The “debate” on the impeachment of the president took 1 hour. And a huge chunk of it was spent listening to members of the public who stayed until 3:00 in the morning to talk to us about this issue that was important to them. Other items that kept us there that long that night were Allied Drive and Bus Wraps.
– Note how Milfred links to a Daily Cardinal opinion that was inaccurate in saying that I introduced ordinances (among other things) – I introduced one ordinance about property of the homeless. And I never said homeless should pee in the park. I said that we should decriminalize homelessness – see for yourself what I said. Maybe Milfred wants to look at the bottom line – it would cost our taxpayers less if these tickets weren’t given and people eventually jailed for not paying them. We all end up paying because we don’t provide adequate services.
– And finally, does Milfred think that we can’t work on basic city services (defined as trash and snow plowing by many – but not buses and human services) and other issues at the same time? Does he think that our community is that simplistic? Or that the issues of lower taxes isn’t impacted by failing to deal with these issues – I guess we’ll just hire more police to deal with it – and watch our taxes go up even more. Even the police have started saying they need help and more services to deal with issues that are more community issues than police issues.
So, ther you have it – a brief response – its more complex of course, but not worth any more time. Perhaps the WSJ should be cutting other positions and then maybe they could actually report factual news instead of uninformed opinion. After all, don’t we read newspapers for NEWS?
