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September 22, 2010
Volume 4, Number 36
In This Issue:
1) Loose Lips
2) Bend Over
3) Cone of Silence
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Loose Lips Reveal Ilegal Coordination
 After eight years of rigid ideology, cronyism and contempt for the rule of law, Wisconsin sorely needs genuine leadership. The prospect of getting it from Tom Barrett seems remote. Now we have a better idea just how remote, thanks to a blabbermouth union lobbyist.
Dan Bice lays it all out in Sunday’s Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, exposing collusion between the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Tom Barrett, the Doyle administration, and members of the Milwaukee County Board. It’s not “Barrett for Governor” so much as it’s a “Slander Scott Walker” campaign.
There is clearly active collusion in a trumped-up campaign to blame Walker for the fatal accident at the O’Donnell Park garage, featuring the mayor calling for legislative action, county supervisors demanding an “independent” investigation and the Doyle administration lurking in the wings to reinforce the suggestion of scandal.
It’s the kind of thing they’d call “abuse of power” if Richard Nixon were involved but they won’t here, because most of the media are complicit in whatever it takes to get Barrett elected.
The episode reinforces suspicions that Barrett is a reluctant candidate, dragooned into running by a White House making an offer he couldn’t refuse and now passively going along. The SEIU invents smarmy tactics and drags Walker through mud it manufactures. The theory appears to be that nobody will need a reason to actually want Tom Barrett as governor, if Barack Obama’s favorite union sells the lie that the alternative is depraved incompetence.
To quote a famous Democrat, it’s “the politics of personal destruction,” and the enthusiasm with which Democrats practice it proves they have nothing else to offer.
Bend Over, Here Comes the Train
 President Obama’s Labor Day speech in Milwaukee received extensive coverage, as expected, but the focus was almost exclusively on his tiresome blah, blah, blah about how he’s the one who really knows how to manage our economy.
All but overlooked was Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s latest warning to Wisconsin taxpayers that “high-speed” rail is an offer we can’t refuse.
As WisPolitics reported:
"High speed rail is coming to Wisconsin," LaHood said, to loud cheers and a few boos. "Nobody can stop this train."
Referring to $810 million in federal funding earmarked for Wisconsin's high-speed rail project, LaHood said, ‘You don't want that money going somewhere else, you want that money right here where it will connect you to America.’”
LaHood’s crude warning—you simply aren’t allowed to say no to government waste —speaks for itself. More important to note is his throwaway remark about connecting us to America, because this isn’t about just putting taxpayers on the hook for a mind-blowingly inefficient rail line between Madison and Milwaukee.
What’s really important is the grand plan for so-called high-speed rail crisscrossing the Midwest, from the Twin Cities through Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis and who-knows where else. Imagine the trillions that “state central planning” will dump into a system for hauling empty train seats back and forth across the plains and prairies. Milwaukee-Madison is the foot in the door.
Almost daily, it becomes more obvious that this crowd’s intention is to make government the dominant force in all our lives.
Feingold and the Cone of Silence
 Last Monday Russ Feingold started running television ads appearing to illustrate, with TV news video, hypocrisy on the part of challenger Ron Johnson. A federal loan helped Johnson build his manufacturing business, the video shows. Feingold conflates this into a charge of hypocrisy against Johnson, who has criticized Feingold’s votes supporting outright bailouts and federal stimulus spending.
This is quite a stretch but they aren’t unheard of in hard-fought campaigns. What’s beyond the pale is Feingold’s reply and the stony silence of other media when the TV station complained that its copyrighted news content was being used without permission and its meaning distorted.
"They took out all the context, balance and other side of the story," said WKOW-TV News Director Perry Boxx in remarks posted on the station’s web site. "He [Feingold] did it without any permission. It may be legal, but it's just plain wrong."
WKOW asked the Feingold campaign to take the ad down. Feingold himself directly refused.
WKOW-TV has a reputation for investigative reporting and letting the chips fall where they may. If it were carrying water for Ron Johnson, it presumably wouldn’t have done the original story. Meanwhile other media, some with the Feingold ad running on their air, treat allegations that it’s deceptive as if they were a state secret. The only conceivable beneficiary is Russ Feingold.
Most of the media—especially those with the greatest pretensions to respectability—have long since put ordinary Liberal bias behind them and become active agents of deception in service to the Left.
Conservative candidates elected this fall will have won in spite of the mainstream media’s best efforts. They would be well advised to remember this when, come January, the media suddenly need them.
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