Up Lake Michigan Without a Shovel
 Mayor Tom Barrett runs the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD). He appoints every member of its board. Six years ago he campaigned for office promising to end the recurring disaster of raw sewage dumps when heavy rains overwhelm the MMSD’s stupidly-conceived deep tunnel system. To this day, nothing’s been done.
Two weeks ago the MMSD dumped more than two billion gallons of sewage into Lake Michigan. Not a peep issued from an environmental movement that would take to the streets if this happened on a Republican’s watch. Not one syllable about Barrett’s accountability was written by a “mainstream” media that would print blood-red headlines if either of Barrett’s GOP competitors for the governor’s office were remotely involved.
Ending Milwaukee’s habit of fouling Lake Michigan will demand long-term, costly and therefore unpopular action by Tom Barrett or any mayor, but that’s leadership. The alternative is to keep pouring filth into a national treasure. Watch for the Obama EPA to go merciless the instant Wisconsin has a Republican governor.
Word From the Hood
 Ray LaHood—the kind of Republican whose congressional career helps explain why Republicans lost their majorities—says we’re going to have car-speed rail service in Wisconsin whether we want it or not.
Last week the Obama transportation secretary visited Watertown to join Governor Doyle signing the paperwork to waste a preliminary $47 million on the train hardly anybody except Jim Doyle and Tom Barrett wants. Dissing the Republican gubernatorial candidates who have pledged to stop the insanity the moment they take office, LaHood pronounced the project “unstoppable.”
For a determined earmarker like the former Illinois congressman, halting waste before it gets worse is an alien concept. When he says there’s no turning back from a taxpayer-financed boondoggle, it translates as “stop me when you can.”
In fact, Mr. LaHood inadvertently performs a public service by clarifying what the November election is all about. It’s a chance—perhaps the last chance for a very long time— to reject the notion that we have no choice but to go along with super-sized government and the schemes contrived by Mr. LaHood and his ilk to secure their lifetime careers.
That ploy has worked for an embarrassingly long time, but it’s getting threadbare. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported both Doyle and LaHood running a bluff [our characterization, not the newspaper’s] calling “high-speed” rail a national project that’s simply going to proceed, like the Interstate highway system, and the operating costs will be too trivial to mention.
They’re counting on you forgetting three things: 1) We already have the I-system; 2) Most people think building it was a good idea; and most important, 3) It takes you where you want to go, and faster because you aren’t stopping repeatedly to deposit other people somewhere sort of in the area of their destinations.
Come November, thank Ray LaHood for reminding you that he and his friends don’t give a damn what you want.
See No Evil
 “We have an obligation to make certain our election system is fair and legal." So said Wisconsin Attorney General J. B. Van Hollen last Thursday.
If the statement sounds like garden-variety common sense keep in mind it needs repeating because important people in Wisconsin don’t get it. One is Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who wants to become governor. Another is the ex-DNR secretary who seeks to replace Van Hollen in the A-G’s office. Good luck having clean elections if that happens.
Van Hollen announced an expansion of the Milwaukee County Election Fraud Task Force to 11 additional counties, to share information and tactics and demonstrate that people trying to steal elections will be prosecuted.
In a year when stark differences between the political camps are routine, the issue of voter fraud makes the leap from stark to shocking. Mayor Barrett continues to pretend it’s a non-problem even as the indictments roll in. And ex-Secretary Scott Hassett dismisses the task force expansion as a “waste of resources,” according to an Associated Press account.
Maybe Hassett and Barrett are just naïve. And maybe the moon really is made of cheese. If they truly doubt fraud is an important issue, here’s a suggestion: Ask the bipartisan team of district attorneys joining the task force. And ask the 17 people indicted so far in Milwaukee County.
Those people thought their actions mattered enough to vote both absentee and at the polls; to use a dead spouse’s name to cast a fraudulent vote; and most sinister because it’s systematic and therefore clearly expected to affect the outcome, to register nonexistent voters.
Alongside organized fictitious registration, recent Wisconsin elections have seen the son of a Member of Congress sabotaging vehicles used to transport lawful voters to the polls. Democrats at the top of their ticket shrug this off. That speaks for itself.
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