Stone announces for Walker's third term

He practically said as much.

Could Walker, who got 38% of the vote for governor in the county, win a third term himself? Doubtful.

But we do have to ask: Everyone has known for six weeks that Walker was leaving the job.

A small army of Democrats are still milling around, asking each other whether to run, while time slips away. It is now about nine weeks to the primary, and then seven more to the general election.

That's precious little time to assemble a serious campaign or raise the kind of money it will take to win. Stone will be well-funded, and will no doubt be able to build on the Milwaukee County organization Walker just built for November.

What in the hell are the Dems waiting for?

No, Patrick, Competence Matters

Patrick McIlheran has his Sunday opinion piece up and this one is a real laugher. Patrick is actually trying to portray Scott Walker as the responsible candidate in the race for governor.

To prove his point, he decries the state's failure to keep petty criminals locked up for excessive lengths of time or to be able to turn around Milwaukee County's Income Maintenance program in one day:

The state doesn't pick up garbage anyhow, but surely the mayor meant it as a sign of some task that no one questions. The state has some of those - keeping prisoners locked up, for instance, or passing out food stamps. Gov. Jim Doyle decided the state couldn't afford the former and started releasing inmates early. His administration so badly botched the food stamps that federal authorities stepped in.

However, before Walker dumped the House of Correction on the Sheriff's Office, one of myriad of problems occurring there were prison escapes. I guess it's better if you make it look like you're not releasing them intentionally, but through negligence.

Paddy also forgets to mention that the reason the state took over the food stamp program was because Walker had mismanaged it so poorly that it was either the state take over and fix it (which they did do) or let the taxpayers in the state and Milwaukee County be hit with a multimillion dollar class action lawsuit.

Not exactly a stellar example of Walker's responsibility, is it?

But the best of the worst is when PaddyMac tries to make Walker's use of a private cleaning company better for the courthouse and the tax payers, and that budgets should be cut.

Apparently, in Paddy's world, instead of some county worker making $10 an hour is much better to give the CEO of a cleaning company a big old contract. Never mind that said CEO is a campaign contributor.

And about those budget cuts. They only produced situations like the horrible events that have been occurring at the mental health complex or the county's infrastructure to fall down. I wonder if Paddy would also call these things a "trade off."

Wagner Run Amok

A faithful reader tipped me off to this story.

Last Friday, Wagner dedicated a fair amount of air time to blasting the staff at Mitchell International Airport. It seems that he was in an uproar because some snow caused some planes to be diverted. One of these planes happened to be carrying a friend of his, who is also a business associate of his wife.

During his tirade, he spoke to Airport Director Barry Bateman on the phone. Mr. Bateman explained that the problem was that the FAA landing system equipment failed due to the snow. You can read the whole explanation here.

In Wagner's squall of squawking, he gets several facts wrong.

• He claims that the plows weren't called in until 7:30 p.m. The story reports they started plowing at 6:45 p.m.
• Wagner said every weather report predicted the snow earlier. The National Weather Service didn't predict it until much later.
• Wagner doesn't understand that there are two levels of government here, and confuses the county with the feds.
• He feels that one can treat a sensitive piece of equipment like one would treat their TV satellite dish, even though he says that he wouldn't have done it.
• Wagner claims that the airport was closed, even though planes were taking off. They just couldn't land.

Wagner also goes on to state at one time that planes couldn't land because of the FAA equipment, and in less than two minutes, blames the plow drivers for not clearing the runway. In fact, he blames just about everyone short of me.

He was so manic about this issue, that he wouldn't listen to the man he was interviewing. If you don't believe me, you can hear the audio of it for yourself. But be warned, you will feel the urge to yell out, "Objection, your Honor. He's badgering the witness."

What he fails to mention is that if it was due to the plowing, or lack thereof, that this would have stemmed from the draconian budget cuts issued by County Executive Scott Walker.

And now that they are forecasting snow again for Thursday, don't be surprised by a repeat performance.