The Empty Chairs On Thanksgiving Day

AMEN!

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Janesville Teachers Ally With AFL-CIO

Here's some good news for a change and just in time for Thanksgiving. This collaborative effort should leverage collective strengths and resources to create meaningful long-terms impacts and help forge an outline to meet the educational system challenges of the future.

The new alliance also might be able to make up for some of the charitable voids left in the wake of GM, and should be granted equal access into Janesville schools for fund-raising activities.

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Council Stiffs Homeowners - Tavern Sneaks Inn

After being rejected the first time around by a partial city council, a property developer and his business clients came back to try again when a pro-special interest member of the council was present.

Most folks watching knew it didn't look good the moment they noticed Councilman Bill Truman's absence at Monday's city council meeting. Not that his presence would have made a difference anyways when it came time to vote on introducing a tavern and volley ball court into the front side of a residential neighborhood in Janesville. It still would have been approved. The most telling part was watching city administration official Brad Cantrell set the stage and tone in favor of the business interests when he presented pictures that falsely isolated the nearby homeowners from the adverse effects of the proposed tavern.

But it might not have mattered. The neighborhood had much more than that working against them. After publishing several articles in favor of the tavern business including a community-dividing editorial on October 15th, the Janesville Gazette flexed their muscles just enough to change public opinion against the homeowners residing closest to the tavern project. It should be noted that during Monday's meeting, the developer and several people who spoke strongly in favor of the business are not residents of the subject neighborhood. However, taking in all the comments from the extended neighborhood but not including those from outside the general vicinity, the in-person comments ran 8 to 6 opposing the tavern introduction.

Folks can continue to ignore all this, that's their choice, but the media aspect is by far the most powerful weapon used against unsuspecting taxpayers and voters. The truth is, other than this blog, there is no other media source or commentary in Janesville offering an independent point of view or unwashed analysis. And put it this way, I'm not bragging.

And it doesn't help that there was no presentation from the city or a citizen action team on behalf of the nearby effected neighborhood. Yet, it shouldn't be ignored or come as a surprise that so-called neighborhood action teams have taken positions in the past that were largely pro-city administration. In this particular case, the citizens were left to shift for themselves while their taxes pay for an administration including the council and committees to work against them.

In the end, the Janesville City council sided with a deep-pocketed non-constituent special interest over the voices and concerns from long-time city residents. Council members Rashkin, Voskuil, Steeber and Perrotto sent the wrong message to their taxpaying and homeowning community by rejecting those concerns. There is no way to get around the anti-homeowner and special interest city council unless you vote them out. That is the only way.

Quote from homeowner at council meeting
"Them that have the gold...rules."

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Bush Advisory Panels Undermining Health Care Debate?

For the past several days, Republicans and their insurance industry allies have contended that new controversial breast cancer screening guidelines are an example of how Democrats will ration health care.

Yahoo Excerpt:
Republicans are seizing on this week's recommendations for fewer Pap smears and mammograms to fuel concern about government-rationed medical care - and try to chip away support by women for Predsident Barack Obama's proposed health care panel overhaul.

Think the timing or context of those reports was coincidental? On Sunday during Geraldo's Fox News Show, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said every one of the sixteen members on the panel for health care recommendations was appointed by the Bush Administration.

The AP article above was titled "GOP: This is how rationing begins," in Saturday's Janesville Gazette. They should know, they practically wrote it.

Additional reading: Wasserman Schultz said GOP is politicizing breast cancer.

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Health Care Debate Passes Senate 60-39

Saturday's 60-39 vote cleared the way for a full-scale debate beginning after Thanksgiving on the legislation, which is designed to extend coverage to roughly 31 million who lack it, crack down on insurance company practices that deny or dilute benefits and curtail the growth of spending on medical care nationally.

Chicago Tribune Excerpt:
The Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said the vote was anything but procedural — casting it as a referendum on the bill itself, which he said would raise taxes, cut Medicare and create a "massive and unsustainable debt."

Still fighting to deny coverage to roughly 31 million Americans and against those who want to crack down on heartless insurance company practices. Republicans, the Dr. No's of nothing.

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One Year Later: Ryan A Moderate?

About one year ago, I took note of Janesville's talk radio host Stan Milam's suggestion that Rep. Paul Ryan should or might join Obama's congressional team of cross party moderates.

JG Excerpt: (Nov. 7, 2008)
Milam, of WCLO AM radio's "The Stan Milam Show," said Ryan might not want to languish in a Democrat-dominated Congress. Obama's Election Night speech, in which he reached out to those who did not vote for him, signaled that Obama would recruit Republicans for his administration, Milam suggested. "I can't think of a better Republican to be a part of that than Paul Ryan, who has demonstrated moderation and leadership in areas of finance and in the budget. There ought be place for him on that team," Milam said.

RNR Excerpt: (Nov. 10, 2008)
Milam has a point. After spending most of his career kowtowing to the Bush Administration and becoming a dependable party-line rubber stamp among his colleagues, Ryan would now find himself reduced to nothing more than an obstacle to progress by opposing the Democratic-led majority in Congress. He would find himself opposing the Obama Administration by as much as 90% of the time if history is correct. And what good would that do for his career?

One year has passed since, and Ryan has clearly chosen to be nothing more than a teabagging obstacle to the President and the Democratic-led majority in Congress. I've never thought of Ryan as a moderate or a leader, but back then (Nov. 2008) I would have guessed Ryan's drive for a career opportunity outside of a leadership role would have displaced his ideological rigidity. I was wrong. History is correct.

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Developer Makes Bizarre Statement On Investment Capital

After overhearing a short blurp on Wednesday's Neil Cavuto Show on Fox News Channel about a seemingly obsolete if not genuinely bizarre method a developer in Alabama is undertaking to fund his business venture, I googled country crossing gilley.

WTVY News Excerpt:
Gilley also explained how country crossing is the largest private investment in Alabama and he's not about to ask the government for any help. "We're not asking the taxpayers to pay for anything else, and we are certainly not asking our state or federal government for money they don't have."

"Build it and they will come. We are creating jobs."

The "not to ... pay for anything else" part is a little puzzling and I don't know how much truth there is to Gilley's claims about absolutely no government help or money. Still, it's the basic premise of his statement that struck me and how much of a big deal they were making out of it on Cavuto's Show. No taxpayer dollars used on a multi-million dollar private development? Imagine. That's unheard of around these parts. If something like that ever catches on, it might pose the greatest threat to capitalism as we know it.

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Paul Ryan - Scaremonger Squarepants

Ryan Press Excerpt:
WASHINGTON – Wisconsin’s First District Congressman Paul Ryan spoke out against efforts by the Obama Administration to welcome detained terrorists to the Midwest.

What sort of folks did our congressman think the supermax prison facility in Thomson, Illinois was supposed to house? Spongebob Squarepants and Elmo? Besides, isn’t it a little late to begin worrying about what kind of people will occupy a supermax prison after it was completed nearly eight years ago?

Ryan's statement including those from his fellow Republicans on this matter are typical of what is wrong with the right-wing perspective. Why does Ryan and his GOP cohorts continually think America can’t do anything right? Is it because we're not quite as smart as they are? To be polite to ourselves, we're just a bunch of socialist losers. But don't worry, Ryan is clutching "Atlas Shrugged," he'll set us straight.

To most of these folks, American cities weren’t even worthy to hold the Olympics. Our prisons can’t hold prisoners and our justice system will surely fail. Government is completely inept on all fronts. Yet, why is it that government can’t do anything right - a'hem, except partner with corporate interests of course. That little trick they seem to have whittled down to absolute perfection.

Seriously, he should be employed and working his confounding individualism for the folks he really represents in Congress - the corporate sector. Show me one private sector worker whose job is to undermine the chief executive officer of their company and to publicize the notion that his fellow workers are constantly on the wrong path - and I'll show you a fired worker. Granted, congressmen don't work for the President, but our congressman is the public sector equivalent proudly undermining the majority and the president.

No one can convince me that international terrorists or the so-called jihadists would rather target a prison facility housing their confederates instead of the Willis (Sears) Tower in Chicago, nuclear energy installations or even state capital buildings. Or to feel any different provocation because their friends are awaiting justice to be served on American soil. Those backward cave dwellers outsmarted us before when they attacked us on 9/11, certainly they'll outfox us again if we let them. So, we're supposed to cower in fear theorizing they'll attack us again. That's supposed to strike fear in our hearts? Oh please. Let’s put our tail between our legs and run off squealing looking for the nearest closet to hide in.

That's not the America I know. And as far as bringing the Gitmo prisoners, every bagged and shackled one of them, to as close as 50 miles from the Wisconsin border. I say “Bring 'em On.”

JG Excerpt:
The prison is the Thomson Correctional Center, a high-security “supermax” facility in Thomson, Ill., about 115 miles from Janesville.

It's too bad it's not closer to Janesville. We could use the jobs.

Republican Fight Song

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It's Twilight Time For Wisconsin

JS Online Excerpts: (parsed)
He called his vetoes "surgical".... Walker did not have a revised figure for the total number of county jobs that would be eliminated as a result of the vetoes. His original budget called for paring nearly 400 jobs.

SCOTT WALKER FAVORS MISINFORMATION WHILE TREATING SOME EMPLOYEES AS SECOND-CLASS CITIZENS

Milwaukee County Supervisor Excerpt:
Scott Walker and others are trying their best to misinform the public about what this legislation does. It is essential that the public be properly informed to stand up against this misinformation campaign.”

From Forward Thinking Blog -- Scott Walker, what a ...

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