NYTimes - 'Voter Fraud' is a Code Word:

In its fumbling attempts to explain the purge of United States attorneys, the Bush administration has argued that the fired prosecutors were not aggressive enough about addressing voter fraud. It is a phony argument; there is no evidence that any of them ignored real instances of voter fraud. But more than that, it is a window on what may be a major reason for some of the firings.

In partisan Republican circles, the pursuit of voter fraud is code for suppressing the votes of minorities and poor people. By resisting pressure to crack down on “fraud,” the fired United States attorneys actually appear to have been standing up for the integrity of the election system.
...
There is no evidence of rampant voter fraud in this country. Rather, Republicans under Mr. Bush have used such allegations as an excuse to suppress the votes of Democratic-leaning groups. They have intimidated Native American voter registration campaigners in South Dakota with baseless charges of fraud. They have pushed through harsh voter ID bills in states like Georgia and Missouri, both blocked by the courts, that were designed to make it hard for people who lack drivers’ licenses — who are disproportionately poor, elderly or members of minorities — to vote. Florida passed a law placing such onerous conditions on voter registration drives, which register many members of minorities and poor people, that the League of Women Voters of Florida suspended its registration work in the state.

The claims of vote fraud used to promote these measures usually fall apart on close inspection, as Mr. McKay saw. Missouri Republicans have long charged that St. Louis voters, by which they mean black voters, registered as living on vacant lots. But when The St. Louis Post-Dispatch checked, it found that thousands of people lived in buildings on lots that the city had erroneously classified as vacant.

Contractors (Mercenaries) in Iraq

History and information in this must-read article.

Unbeknownst to many Americans and largely off the Congressional radar, Blackwater has secured a position of remarkable power and protection within the US war apparatus. This company's success represents the realization of the life's work of the conservative officials who formed the core of the Bush Administration's war team, for whom radical privatization has long been a cherished ideological mission. Blackwater has repeatedly cited Rumsfeld's statement that contractors are part of the "Total Force" as evidence that it is a legitimate part of the nation's "warfighting capability and capacity." Invoking Rumsfeld's designation, the company has in effect declared its forces above the law--entitled to the immunity from civilian lawsuits enjoyed by the military, but also not bound by the military's court martial system. While the initial inquiries into Blackwater have focused on the complex labyrinth of secretive subcontracts under which it operates in Iraq, a thorough investigation into the company reveals a frightening picture of a politically connected private army that has become the Bush Administration's Praetorian Guard.

Sheriff Clarke as a Democrat?

Here is a quote I came across:

"While I’m a Republican and Sheriff Clarke was elected as a Democrat"

That's from a commercial recorded with Gehring and Clarke - he can't even say he is a Democrat.

Oshkosh School Board Candidate Becker: Teach Intelligent Design in School

He responded to a question on the OshNW forum:

A question was posed on the general thread about the inclusion of "intelligent design" in the science curriculum.

My position on that issue that is that if we are going to actually make sure that are students are "well rounded" that we need to offer all the possibilities and let the students make the decision as to which is the most plausible. I for one can appreciate both possibilities and while I believe that intelligent design was the "Genesis" of the universe, we must make sure that all possibilities are offered.

Please remember this anti-science view when you vote.

Cartoon of the Day:

WI State Elections Board: Republicans Are Lying to You

The full press release is here.

Wisconsin Elections Have No ‘Integrity Problem’ News Release Falsely
Claims Voter Registration System is Down

MADISON, WI – The Republican Party of Wisconsin’s claim that the Statewide Voter Registration System (SVRS) is broken is false, an Elections Board official said today.

“We can provide public officials and elected representatives with the facts,” said Kevin Kennedy, executive director of the State Elections Board. “Claims such as these undermine the public’s trust in Wisconsin’s election system.”

The Republican news release called the SVRS a “voting system,” and said
the State has already spent its budgeted $27 million on the project. Neither is true.
...
Kennedy said the party’s claims of systemic voter fraud are unsubstantiated.

“It is irresponsible to claim that voter fraud has resulted from use of the SVRS,” Kennedy added.

What????

No Heroes until April 24th?

LWV on VoterID

Here is the release.

Here are excerpts:

...
Let’s put this issue to rest before wasting the paper and ink: this proposal would not improve our elections, but would prevent citizens from voting. Recent studies and common sense say the Legislature should kill this proposal immediately.

Allegations of widespread voter fraud do not hold up to investigation. There is no record of voters acting en mass to misidentify themselves or vote multiple times.
...
The New York Times1 recently confirmed common sense fears: requiring photo IDs to vote keeps people from the polls. The United States Election Assistance Commission (EAC) has decisive statistics verifying that minorities are most affected by this barrier to voting. We have long understood that poll taxes and literacy tests are unfair: they keep specific, targeted populations from voting and lead to a farce of democracy in which only some are represented. Photo ID requirements work the same way.
...
Those with low incomes or disabilities have the most difficulties obtaining an ID. Students and other mobile populations have a difficult time maintaining current IDs. These voters should not be punished.
...
Requiring a photo ID to vote is a proven method of keeping voters from the polls. That is a loss our democracy cannot afford.

A History (and Irony) Lesson For Our Republican Friends...

I found this to be the ultimate in irony as I was reading over my regular internet news stops.

New York Times - On This Day:

1854 - About 50 slavery opponents met in Ripon, Wis., to call for creation of a new political group, which became the Republican Party.

The Wheeler Report:

RPW: Assembly to Take up Photo ID

...the state Assembly announced today it will vote Thursday on a constitutional amendment that would require a Photo ID to vote.

The day before the Republican Party could have been celebrating its birth as an anti-slave, pro-rights institution. It concluded that the highest priority it has is removing the vote from as many poor, indigent, elderly and minority voters as possible.

Try as you might to spin it. This is the result of VoterID.

Leibham, Stone and Courtney should be ashamed of themselves.

And they should learn some appreciation for history.

If Voter ID and the Gay Marriage ban is what Wisconsin Republicans consider to be their priorities, they are no longer descendants of the activists that first met in the Little White School House 153 years ago today.

Don't worry, Wisconsin. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin is ready to take up their fight. It may have been the Republicans that fought slavery 150 years ago, but it will be the Democratic Party that stands for the rights of all Wisconsinites now.

I would like to thank the Wisconsin Senate in advance for picking up where Gov. Doyle's defense of voting rights through veto left off.

The Republican Party in Wisconsin once made history, now they are on the wrong side of it. Bigotry loses, plain and simple.

Gov Doyle Stands Firmly for Fairness

Gov. Jim Doyle said he supports letting the city of Madison and other local governments offer health benefits to their employees' gay and lesbian partners through a state plan.

Doyle has already proposed in his budget extending health benefits to the domestic partners of all state and University of Wisconsin System employees.

In a letter to Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz on Tuesday, Doyle said he supported a change that would allow the city of Madison and other municipalities that use a state health plan for local governments to offer more domestic partner benefits to employees.

"I would also support a change in state law so that the domestic partners of municipal employees who obtain health insurance through their municipal employer through the (state plan) could access this program," Doyle wrote.

The State of American Healthcare: Boy Dies of Toothache

Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache
Sunday.

A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.

If his mother had been insured.

If his family had not lost its Medicaid.

If Medicaid dentists weren't so hard to find.

If his mother hadn't been focused on getting a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth.

By the time Deamonte's own aching tooth got any attention, the bacteria from the abscess had spread to his brain, doctors said. After two operations and more than six weeks of hospital care, the Prince George's County boy died.

Read the rest here, and tell me again about American Healthcare being the best in the world.

AARP: SeniorCare a Better Deal the Medicare Part D

Like we didn't know that...

Rejecting SeniorCare would be a mistake.

It would result in higher costs for nearly all of the folks who are enrolled in the program now. They're getting a better deal from SeniorCare than they would from Part D, according to an analysis by AARP Wisconsin.

It would be a mistake for the federal government, too. The AARP analysis also showed that the federal government saves about $25 million a year through those 105,000 people picking SeniorCare instead of Part D.

Am I too old to go on spring break?

Snow Removal

The Northwestern has a nice editorial about neighbors helping neighbors through the recent snow:

Oshkosh logged nearly a foot of snow over the last few days. Not exactly conducive to travel.

But snowstorms also are opportunity to bundle up, grab a shovel, gas up the blower and help out a neighbor who may have no choice but hunker down.

Especially if you live next door to an elderly or disabled citizen, take the opportunity to help.

Knock on his or her door, introduce yourself and offer to clear a path on his or her behalf.

I actually have a story that is the exact opposite of that...

I was out shovelling my sidewalk Sunday morning (and for those of you who don't know, I am a large young man), when the little, upper middle-aged woman who lives next door to me stopped by and asked if I wanted to use her snow-blower.

Not quite helping your elderly neighbors, but appreciated all the same. Sometimes it is nice to remember that assisting neighbors can go in all directions.

U.S. economy leaving record numbers in severe poverty...

An informative article here:

The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation's "haves" and "have-nots" continues to widen.

A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of 2005 census figures, the latest available, found that nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty. A family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 - half the federal poverty line - was considered severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than $5,080 a year.

The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That's 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period. McClatchy's review also found statistically significant increases in the percentage of the population in severe poverty in 65 of 215 large U.S. counties, and similar increases in 28 states. The review also suggested that the rise in severely poor residents isn't confined to large urban counties but extends to suburban and rural areas.

The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.

These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation's 37 million poor people into deep poverty - the highest rate since at least 1975.

The share of poor Americans in deep poverty has climbed slowly but steadily over the last three decades. But since 2000, the number of severely poor has grown "more than any other segment of the population," according to a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Every Monday at 9:01 PM...

.. I can't wait until Heroes is on next Monday at 8:00 pm.

Results Are In... (Oshkosh City Council)

Bryan L. Bain 2846 22.23% Tony Palmeri 2112 16.49% Meredith Scheuermann 2021 15.78% Jessica J. King 1842 14.39% Bob Cornell 1762 13.76% Mark C. Nielsen 1322 10.32% Kent Monte 885 6.91% Write-in 14 0.11%

The top 6 go on. The top 3 in April become Council Members.

Picture of the Year...

Read the caption here...

or

A float depicting U.S. President George W. Bush being spanked by the Statue Of Liberty passes by during the Rose Monday carnival parade in Mainz, western Germany, on Monday, Feb. 19, 2007. Thousands of spectators attended the traditional street carnival parade in the state of Rhineland-Palatinates's capital. (AP Photo/Bernd Kammerer)

Buses at the Jail

I sent an email to Sheriff Brooks with some questions about safety at the bus pickup outside the jail.

Here is the post. I'll keep up with any reply.

Monte is Again Online, Just With Content Missing and a Big Lie Added...

As a follow-up to yesterday's post about Oshkosh Council Candidate Kent Monte, it seems he is back up online.

However, he seems to have removed several of his posts - and added a bit of a logical puzzle.

As I mentioned yesterday, his blog seems to often traffic in rumor and innuendo, however after the blog shutdown of yesterday, many of the controversial posts seem to be nowhere to be found...

On his blog, he explains his offline time as:

the "glitch" that prevented my site from being viewed on Saturday night. It has been resolved (although I am not sure how)

However, in a comment on my little blog here, he explains:

I didn't change anything with my site and it was "repaired" this morning. It was not planned nor intentional for it to have gone off line sometime between Saturday and Sunday. I did get it fixed as soon as I became aware of the problem. Blogger assures me that it should not have happened and will not happen again.

Well, Kent, which is it? Was it something that was resolved miraculously in a way that you do not know, or did you work with Blogger to fix it? It clearly cannot be both.

Did you lie to everyone on your blog, or just to my readers here?

Also, if you note the timelines of past posts on the side of my blog, I have been using Blogger for almost 3 years now. I have never seen my, or any other blog, spontaniously require you to be part of the blog's inner circle to read it. That needs to be something that is selected by the blog owner.

Kent, where did the posts where you spread false innuendo about current council members go? If you are going to put a false story out there, be resolved enough to stand behind it or correct it, not just delete it as if it never happened.

Where is the post where you falsely claimed that a competitor took money he did not? Where is your explanation of why you went on WOSH to question another candidates integrity and intelligence?

What are you going to do once your are elected? Ask the clerk to go back and change the minutes of meetings if you are not happy with what you said or how you voted?

Kent, if you cannot stand by your word and get your story straight on these little blogs, what will you be on the Council Dias?

This is an odd way to get elected...

... shutting down public information.

above is a screen grab from Kent Monte's Blog site. Kent is a candidate for Oshkosh City Council who has been documented with posting and spreading rumor and innuendo. His blog has a regularly been criticized because of his habit of publishing attacks on councill members and community leaders before he has all the information, then editing or deleting the posts when it is pointed out to him that he is wrong.

It seems that now, Monte feels the best way to get elected is to not allow anyone not approved to view his website and therefore his opinions on the city and it's future.

You know, it may be the smartest campaign move he has ever made.

What do you know, you can ride an Oshkosh Truck to BFE?

Egyptian government, Oshkosh Truck ink deal
OSHKOSH — Oshkosh Truck Corp. Wednesday announced the company won a contract from the Egyptian Ministry of Defense to supply 30 medium tactical trucks.

The trucks will be specially designed to meet the ministry's logistics and transport requirements.

Oshkosh Truck, which is the parent company of Pierce Manufacturing with operations in Grand Chute and the Town of Menasha, said the contract, valued at $4.9 million, is the first major international order for the model line.

C'mon Ziggy, Can't You at Least Give Us Global Warming?

In a past post, I highlighted all the ways that Manitowoc's Bob Ziegelbauer parts from the Democrats that he caucuses with and claims to be a part of.

I can understand that, many of them are issues that really boil down to ones on political views. He happens to be swimming against the political Democratic mainstream, but I guess he could make his own argument.

But, now he is against established science:

"I am not one of those who is rushing to join the bandwagon of accepting as indisputable fact that we have man-made global warming that puts the planet in jeopardy," Ziegelbauer said. "I think that's grossly overstated and most importantly, far from scientifically decided.

"These proposals in the name of a global warming crisis are troubling especially because they use the hysteria to justify a massive government intervention into the day-to-day lives of our community and I find that especially threatening to our future prosperity as well."

The bill in Wisconsin comes after Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle called for creation of a global warming task force. Doyle also has proposed spending $30 million on additional renewable energy sources including solar, wind, hydrogen, biodiesel and ethanol.

Come on Ziggy, are you going to come out against evolution next?

The King Is Gone...

I remember seeing the King and His Court when they came to Princeton as a kid. I was supremely entertained.

Eddie Feigner, arguably the greatest softball player of all time, the amazing pitcher who led his four man team around the world playing conventional nine man teams for 61 years, died February 9th at the age of 81 in Huntsville, AL.

An American Torture...

A contracted interrogator tells his story:

American authorities continue to insist that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident in an otherwise well-run detention system. That insistence, however, stands in sharp contrast to my own experiences as an interrogator in Iraq. I watched as detainees were forced to stand naked all night, shivering in their cold cells and pleading with their captors for help. Others were subjected to long periods of isolation in pitch-black rooms. Food and sleep deprivation were common, along with a variety of physical abuse, including punching and kicking. Aggressive, and in many ways abusive, techniques were used daily in Iraq, all in the name of acquiring the intelligence necessary to bring an end to the insurgency. The violence raging there today is evidence that those tactics never worked. My memories are evidence that those tactics were terribly
wrong.
...
Some may suggest there is no reason to revive the story of abuse in Iraq. Rehashing such mistakes will only harm our country, they will say. But history suggests we should examine such missteps carefully. Oppressive prison environments have created some of the most determined opponents. The British learned that lesson from Napoleon, the French from Ho Chi Minh, Europe from Hitler. The world is learning that lesson again from Ayman al-Zawahiri. What will be the legacy of abusive prisons in Iraq?

Doyle Takes Amendment Head On

The pro-amendment people said that the point of it was nott o deny people benefits. Lets see them prove it.

Doyle Will Ask For Domestic Partner Benefits

POSTED: 2:59 pm CST February 11, 2007
UPDATED: 3:14 pm CST February 11, 2007

MADISON, Wis. -- Gov. Jim Doyle wants the state to pay for health-care benefits for domestic partners of all state employees.

Doyle said he'd put the request in his state budget proposal.

Doyle asked for a similar benefit package for just UW employees in his last budget, but Republicans took it out in the legislature.

Doyle said the benefits are needed to attract the best and brightest people to state jobs.

A spokesman for the Republican Assembly speaker said the governor's headed in "completely the wrong direction."

"Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid"

From MSNBC:

Wal-Mart and unions unite on health care
Retailer, other big employers aim for ‘quality, affordable’ coverage

Executives from Wal-Mart and three other large U.S. employers on Wednesday joined union leaders in calling for “quality, affordable” health care for every American by 2012.

However, they did not propose any specific policies to achieve this goal, or commit to spending any extra money in the near-term to provide health coverage to more workers.

Joining Wal-Mart Stores Inc. CEO Lee Scott and Service Employees International Union leader Andrew Stern at a Washington press conference were top executives from Intel Corp., AT&T Inc. and Kelly Services Inc., a temporary staffing agency.
...
The partnership of business and union leaders laid out four main goals, including universal health-care coverage for all Americans and boosting the value of every U.S. dollar spent on health care. The business and union leaders’ coalition, dubbed “Better Health Care Together,” pledged to convene a national summit by the end of May to recruit others from the private sector, labor, government and non-profits.

However:

(Walmart's) Scott said Wednesday he would not withhold financial support from lawmakers and candidates who oppose universal health care. WakeUpWalMart spokesman Chris Kofinis called that stance “hypocritical,” pointing out that Scott blamed politics as the main reason the nation lacked universal health care.

The Automakers have also called for universal healthcare in meetings with the White House.

If you are against this, you are against history's current path. This is a fight that we can and will win. It is nice to see Wal-Mart aboard

I'm still not shopping there, however.

A Good Decision From Ford

As I noted in a previous post the Ford Taurus was discontinued even though it was their best seller.

Now comes this news:

Ford Set to Rename Five Hundred Sedan "Taurus"

NEW YORK (Reuters)
- Ford
Motor Co. (F.N) is planning to announce that its Five Hundred mid-size sedan will be renamed the Taurus, after its once-popular but now discontinued model, Dow Jones Newswires reported on Tuesday.
The newswire said Ford executives would announce its plan on Wednesday at the Chicago auto show.
No Ford spokesman was immediately available to comment.

Winnebago County Board Size

I have an update on my Winnebago County Board blog here....

Judiciary and Parks Meetings

For Parks And Judiciary click on them for the full agenda.

Parks will be discussing the soccer fees - Judiciary will look at maps for supervisory districts.