Alernate-alternate title: DOOM.

You know, when I saw this secondhand whine from Wisconsin Democrats upset that the DNC apparently wasn’t prepared to throw half a million dollars at the general recall election, I assumed that this would be resolved. I mean, really: the Left has already thrown away tens of millions of dollars; what’s a bit more? Admittedly, not throwing utterly horrible money after bad (we’ve passed the ‘throwing good money after bad’ stage already) would be the right answer, in a strictly utilitarian sense; but the state party is in a bad way right now. They sort of need an indication that the President cares for more than his own election, right?

Well… that’s apparently not going to happen. MSNBC’s Chuck Todd asked Obama’s deputy* campaign manager Stephanie Cutter whether the DNC would be sending money earmarked for the recall, and Ms. Cutter said… nothing in particular. And definitely nothing that would commit the DNC to giving out money.

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Alernate-alternate title: DOOM.

You know, when I saw this secondhand whine from Wisconsin Democrats upset that the DNC apparently wasn’t prepared to throw half a million dollars at the general recall election, I assumed that this would be resolved. I mean, really: the Left has already thrown away tens of millions of dollars; what’s a bit more? Admittedly, not throwing utterly horrible money after bad (we’ve passed the ‘throwing good money after bad’ stage already) would be the right answer, in a strictly utilitarian sense; but the state party is in a bad way right now. They sort of need an indication that the President cares for more than his own election, right?

Well… that’s apparently not going to happen. MSNBC’s Chuck Todd asked Obama’s deputy* campaign manager Stephanie Cutter whether the DNC would be sending money earmarked for the recall, and Ms. Cutter said… nothing in particular. And definitely nothing that would commit the DNC to giving out money.

Read More →

Promoted from the diaries

By: Brian Sikma

Kris Barrett, the politically active spouse of Tom Barrett, current mayor of Milwaukee and the Democratic nominee running against Gov. Scott Walker, has been caught using her taxpayer funded e-mail account to lobby and campaign for Democratic candidates and causes. Mrs. Barrett is a public school teacher and last year she was employed by Milwaukee Public Schools, Wisconsin’s largest school district. The district has two policies that prohibit employees from using any government resources, including e-mail addresses, for political purposes.

Using Wisconsin’s open records law Collin Roth, a researcher with the conservative investigative watchdog group Media Trackers, obtained e-mails from Mrs. Barrett’s account showing her lobbying Democratic lawmakers to vote against Gov. Walker’s collective bargaining reforms. Another e-mail exchange found Mrs. Barrett recruiting fellow public school teachers to campaign against a conservative Republican candidate running for county executive in Milwaukee County.

Wisconsin has a public purpose doctrine upheld by state courts that prohibits government employees from using public resources for political purposes. More specifically, Milwaukee Public Schools has an ethics code and an acceptable use policy for school resources that specifically prohibit staff from using government resources to promote a political agenda or candidate. The ethics code reads in part, “[Employees] may contribute to political candidates, either with financial resources or in donation of services, provided donations do not utilize MPS equipment, time, or work product.”

Last summer Wisconsin public school teacher and union boss Shelly Moore ran as a Democrat in one of the state Senate recall elections. After it was discovered that she had hijacked taxpayer resources and used her e-mail for political and campaign work a complaint was filed against her. This time around, Democrats and Big Labor groups are hoping that an arguably compromised legal investigation into county government employees who worked for Walker and used their work computers for political activities becomes a scandal that sinks his candidacy in the June 5th recall election.

Reflecting that strategy, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett has ratcheted up his public musing about the investigation and roundly condemned those who broke the rules. With his own wife now discovered to have abused public resources and violating school district rules, Barrett’s attack may need some modification.

As of Monday afternoon the Barrett campaign had not commented about the situation. Kris Barrett is a regular surrogate for the campaign reaching out to women voters and those who oppose Walker’s collective bargaining reforms.

Brian Sikma is the communications director for Media Trackers. 

Promoted from the diaries

By: Brian Sikma

Kris Barrett, the politically active spouse of Tom Barrett, current mayor of Milwaukee and the Democratic nominee running against Gov. Scott Walker, has been caught using her taxpayer funded e-mail account to lobby and campaign for Democratic candidates and causes. Mrs. Barrett is a public school teacher and last year she was employed by Milwaukee Public Schools, Wisconsin’s largest school district. The district has two policies that prohibit employees from using any government resources, including e-mail addresses, for political purposes.

Using Wisconsin’s open records law Collin Roth, a researcher with the conservative investigative watchdog group Media Trackers, obtained e-mails from Mrs. Barrett’s account showing her lobbying Democratic lawmakers to vote against Gov. Walker’s collective bargaining reforms. Another e-mail exchange found Mrs. Barrett recruiting fellow public school teachers to campaign against a conservative Republican candidate running for county executive in Milwaukee County.

Wisconsin has a public purpose doctrine upheld by state courts that prohibits government employees from using public resources for political purposes. More specifically, Milwaukee Public Schools has an ethics code and an acceptable use policy for school resources that specifically prohibit staff from using government resources to promote a political agenda or candidate. The ethics code reads in part, “[Employees] may contribute to political candidates, either with financial resources or in donation of services, provided donations do not utilize MPS equipment, time, or work product.”

Last summer Wisconsin public school teacher and union boss Shelly Moore ran as a Democrat in one of the state Senate recall elections. After it was discovered that she had hijacked taxpayer resources and used her e-mail for political and campaign work a complaint was filed against her. This time around, Democrats and Big Labor groups are hoping that an arguably compromised legal investigation into county government employees who worked for Walker and used their work computers for political activities becomes a scandal that sinks his candidacy in the June 5th recall election.

Reflecting that strategy, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett has ratcheted up his public musing about the investigation and roundly condemned those who broke the rules. With his own wife now discovered to have abused public resources and violating school district rules, Barrett’s attack may need some modification.

As of Monday afternoon the Barrett campaign had not commented about the situation. Kris Barrett is a regular surrogate for the campaign reaching out to women voters and those who oppose Walker’s collective bargaining reforms.

Brian Sikma is the communications director for Media Trackers. 

Second year running.

Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s administration said Thursday that its new revenue projections show the state will finish the 2011-2013 budget years with a surplus rather than the deficit predicted earlier this year.

The projections were based on stronger-than-anticipated personal income growth last year, Walker officials said. The numbers could give the governor a boost as he heads into a June 5 recall election against Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.

Gee, you think?

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Second year running.

Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s administration said Thursday that its new revenue projections show the state will finish the 2011-2013 budget years with a surplus rather than the deficit predicted earlier this year.

The projections were based on stronger-than-anticipated personal income growth last year, Walker officials said. The numbers could give the governor a boost as he heads into a June 5 recall election against Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.

Gee, you think?

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Big Labor suffered a big loss in Wisconsin Tuesday.

Here are the final results of last night’s primary contest, and presumably a variant of this[***] will end up on Democratic political operatives’ desks across the breadth of Wisconsin:

Note that that total does not include the almost 20K of ‘Republican’ votes accumulated by ‘Republican’ Arthur Kohl-Riggs, given that the use of square quotes in both cases is justified.: he’s not a Republican, and neither were his supporters. And let me make this one point: Kohl-Riggs demonstrates why I don’t really believe in strategic opposite-side voting and/or Operation Chaos-style shenanigans.  I am not convinced that such things worked, and yesterday’s results seems to back me up on that. Yes, I know that Republican spoiler Isaac Weix came in second in the LT-GOV primary recall (which is why nobody on the Left is bring that race’s total voters up); but I should note that he did not, in point of fact, actually win.

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Here are the final results of last night’s primary contest, and presumably a variant of this[***] will end up on Democratic political operatives’ desks across the breadth of Wisconsin:

Note that that total does not include the almost 20K of ‘Republican’ votes accumulated by ‘Republican’ Arthur Kohl-Riggs, given that the use of square quotes in both cases is justified.: he’s not a Republican, and neither were his supporters. And let me make this one point: Kohl-Riggs demonstrates why I don’t really believe in strategic opposite-side voting and/or Operation Chaos-style shenanigans.  I am not convinced that such things worked, and yesterday’s results seems to back me up on that. Yes, I know that Republican spoiler Isaac Weix came in second in the LT-GOV primary recall (which is why nobody on the Left is bring that race’s total voters up); but I should note that he did not, in point of fact, actually win.

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One initial point to ponder: if the No-H8 campaign tries to fire up in North Carolina as the No-A1 campaign, people will wonder why they are campaigning against steak sauce. Probably won’t happen. North Carolina did not pass a ban on gay marriage as the media reports. Rather they refused to allow their definition of marriage to be changed. The marriage definition was put into law years ago, but with an onslaught of judicial activists, the voters in North Carolina decided to shut down any further consideration of the issue.

The most fascinating bit of it all is that time and time again gay marriage polls quite well in the United States. Time and time again, gay marriage proponents go down to defeat at the actual polls. Said one gay marriage proponent on Twitter last night to me, “It will be a happy day when all hate filled Xians are dead.” Xians is “Christians” in Twitter speak. At first I thought it was a Xenu or Thetans reference.

This was a bad night for Barack Obama. Whoever decided to put the Democratic National Convention in North Carolina should be given a lollipop by the GOP for the intense level of comedic schadenfreude we can all now watch. The Democrats will convene in a proudly right to work state whose state Democratic Party is imploding due to a gay sexual harassment scandal, the state itself just voted for marriage by a margin few statewide candidates in North Carolina get, and twenty percent of Democrats voted against Barack Obama in the North Carolina Democratic Primary.

On the bright side, North Carolina is not West Virginia where a felon in federal prison in Texas locked up 40% of the vote in the Democratic Primary against Barack Obama. The Chain Gang looks to be as popular as the Change Gang.

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