I was listening to WIBA-AM recently (Here and here)and the President-select of Cottage Grove was on Mitch Henck’s show(I am not sure why Henck gives him so much unchallenged airtime) with his “version” of what happened recently at the Capitol and the passage of the collective bargaining bill. Unfortunately, while politicking on our dime, Mr. Mikalsen had most of his “facts” completely wrong. I am not sure if he was doing this because he wanted to muddy the waters with propaganda or else if he truly had no idea what was happening at his workplace. Without a local “PolitiFact” website, let me clear of up some of Mr. Mikalsen’s major misstatements.
1. Mikalsen: “Representative Barca, who takes his orders directly from the union bosses( Phil Neuenfeldt (Wisconsin State AFL-CIO president)probably wrote his speech for him). The bottom line is they got nothing to argue about. They will go to the Kangaroo Courts, which is the Dane County Court System and try to get a liberal judge to interfere with this.”
A quick call to Assemblyman Barca’s office and we find out that he was given a total of 3 minutes to read and then vote on a 44-summary of removing the collective bargaining rights of all public employees. He was denied a chance to hear what was in the bill from Bob Lang, the director of the non-partisan legislative fiscal bureau. Representative Barca, instead of voting, read, the open meetings law statute as written by Republican Attorney General JB Van Hollen. The bill then went in front of Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi(a Tommy Thompson Appointee) who issued a temporary restraining order citing “It seems to me the public policy behind effective enforcement of the open meeting law is so strong that it does outweigh the interest, at least at this time, which may exist in favor of sustaining the validity of the (law).”
2. Mikalsen: “ Mayor Dave Cieslewicz ordered his police chief not to allow city of Madison police officers to assist with securing the building. He himself has confirmed this to the Wisconsin State Journal.”
According to Spokesman Joel Despain, the officers were instructed to go into the capitol for medical emergencies or matters pertaining to public safety. Chief Noble Wray’s mission has been to keep the public safe for democracy to happen, for all citizens of the state no matter what side they are on. Aside from a handful of very minor arrests, there have been no physical arrests and no violence during the duration of the protests. In the spirit of continuing the non-violence, the decision was made to not “forcibly” remove any protestors. Mayor Dave made no such order and Chief Noble Wray said he answers to the citizens and not the Mayor, so even if Mayor Dave had made such an order(which he did not) it would not have been followed if there was a safety issue.3. Mikalsen: “Again for those who say this was an entirely peaceful month of protests, they simply are lying.”
As Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney says” During 19 days of protest and demonstrations not one individual has been hurt or injured and not one incident or confrontation has broke out, contrary to fabricated reports, because, law enforcement has done collectively what they are charged with doing-providing public safety!” Capitol Police Chief Charley Tubbs, who meets with protest leaders regularly and praised the good relationship nurtured by protesters and police alike, “protesting has been very respectful.” As former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin put it “We’ve got teachers and Teamsters. We’ve got firefighters and daycare workers. We’ve got boilermakers and statisticians. We have a breadth of Wisconsin that we never had before.” Long time political reporter Dick Wheeler “”Folks are being absolutely as civil as possible — given the circumstances.”
PolitiFacts response to Mr. Mikalsen would be: pants on fire.
Cottage Grove deserves more than an extreme ideologue as our “non-partisan” Village President. Let’s change the tone of politics in our Village. Please join me in voting Diane Weidenbeck for Cottage Grove Village President April 5th(www.diane4president.com).
