In today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Dan Bice revealed that the alleged mistress of State Sen. Randy Hopper, was given a taxpayer-financed job in the state Department of Regulation and Licensing at the urging of the Walker administration. One must wonder if she is in line for one of the more than three-dozen new political positions […]
MADISON, Wis. — One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Scot Ross released the following statements regarding Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce’s “Buy Wisconsin” campaign, designed to try and drown out the statewide outrage over businesses that have supported Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts to put corporations in charge of Wisconsin’s government and take as much money from education, […]
MADISON, Wis. — One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Scot Ross released the following statements regarding Senate Republican Leader Scott Fitzgerald’s planned denial of committee voting rights to 14 Senate Democrats, who represent 2.2 million Wisconsin residents and taxpayers. “Sen. Scott Fitzgerald isn’t content with illegally passing a bill which takes away the rights of 175,000 […]
MADISON, Wis. — One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Scot Ross released the following statements regarding the desperate actions by Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-controlled state legislature to use the government to take away the rights of Wisconsin workers and reward corporations. “Last night’s action orchestrated by Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans, desperate to ram […]
Public opinion might be influencing this group of senators to flee from Gov. Walker’s extreme attempt to take away the rights of workers.
MADISON, Wis. — After abruptly announcing her inability to “fairly represent” taxpayers and planned resignation as Chippewa County Clerk due to her election to the State Assembly, Rep. Kathy Bernier (R-Chippewa Falls) has now filed papers to run for president of the Lake Hallie Village Board. Bernier followed up this embarrassing flip-flop by breaking her […]
MADISON, Wis. — State Rep. Jim Steineke (R-Vandenbroek), who has a long history of driving infractions including drunk driving, hit and run and driving without a license multiple times, when recently asked by a reporter if it was appropriate for him to head Assembly Republicans’ efforts to repeal car insurance requirement responded, “I don’t particularly […]
MADISON, Wis. — The extremism and failed policies advocated by members of the new right-wing Wisconsin legislative majority are available at www.MeetTheMajority.com, a project of One Wisconsin Now. The site currently highlights 13 of the 31 new Assembly and Senate members and more will be added in the coming weeks. “Here is the new conservative […]
Incoming Joint Finance Committee Co-Chair Robin Vos (R-Rochester) has offered regular, nasally diatribes against the use of “non-fiscal policy” items in state budgeting. Here’s one, courtesy of the facebooks. Turns out, now that he’ll be heading the state’s budget writing committee, Vos will make exceptions to the rule. Particularly when it comes to an apparent […]
Republican Leader Scott Fitzgerald took less than 24 hours to break the promise Republicans made to Wisconsin to focus on job creation - telling three media outlets the first bill the state will tackle is restricting the right to vote.
A belated “Happy 63rd Birthday” to State Sen. and Republican ‘Young Gun’ congressional candidate Dan Kapanke who hit the big 6-3 on August 21.
MADISON, Wis. — Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker’s self-appointed tax and spend team in the state legislature, Republicans Robin Vos and Alberta Darling, both called for more General Purpose Revenue funding than requested by Gov. Jim Doyle in state budgets in the past several years. Over the weekend Walker claimed Vos and Darling, who have […]
MADISON, Wis. — Citizens from across Wisconsin who are weary of the anger, divisiveness and misinformation of the Republican-led Tea Party movement can send a message on April 15 about “Why America Works” through a mobile billboard contest launched this week by One Wisconsin Now. “Wisconsinites are tired of hearing Sarah Palin and the Tea […]
Ed Thompson announced today that he’d be singing Grover Norquist’s ‘Taxpayer Protection Pledge.’ In his latest press release, Thompson raises the roof for Norquist and his group, Americans for Tax Reform, for championing a belief in anti-working class tax policies. Score another one for the fat cats.We’ve written about disciples of Norquist’s no new taxes […]
Hardworking State Sen. Dan Kapanke (R-La Crosse) bravely stood up to recent media reports that he had still not paid back taxpayers for the $38,000 tab we had coming after footing the bill for his legal woes over his use of taxpayer resources for campaign business and his obstruction of an open records request: He […]
MADISON, Wis. — A call for reform of Milwaukee Public Schools by Wisconsin Assembly Reps. Brett Davis (R-Monroe) and Leah Vukmir (R-Wauwatosa), ignores recent anti-MPS votes by the duo, including the 2007-09 Assembly Republican budget which would have slashed a plan to give $15 million to Milwaukee Public Schools and an additional $85 million to […]
News last week the unemployment rate nationwide is up over 10 percent for the first time since the Reagan administration. And of course, the Dow is back up over 10,000, because these days, when Wall Street gets rich, real Americans get screwed. Perhaps a different post for a different day. As weve been told so […]
I fully intended on showing up last night at an Oconomowoc country club to hear Leah Vukmir talk about ‘current and proposed legislation affecting Wisconsin health care and insurance’. If not for my squawking eight-month old baby boy, I’d have had a listen. Vukmir, herself a state rep eligible for taxpayer funded health insurance, has […]
Will enough ever be enough for corporate piranhas and their lackeys in the conservative caucuses at the State Capitol? Apparently not for Randy Hopper, whose column in the Oshkosh Northwestern this weekend calls for even more taxpayer financed gifts to corporate interests. Seriously. According to Randy Hopper what Wisconsin really needs to do is levy […]
Heather Blish introduced herself to Rep. Steve Kagen’s Town Hall last week in true Sarah Palin fashion — holding her baby as prop and claiming she is “just a mom” with real concerns about health care reform. Her ‘regular mom’ act was so authentic she even got on the teevee news! You could almost hear […]
MADISON, Wis. — The awarding of ultra-conservative Rep. Leah Vukmir with the American Legislative Exchange Council’s “Legislator of the Year” reflects her embrace of extremist policies which increase pollution, hurt workers and prevent access to affordable health care for all. “For the right-wing fringe, Leah Vukmir is the total package,” said Scot Ross, One Wisconsin […]
Two poignant facts in a recent State Journal article: 1.) For the first time, enrollment in Medicaid, the state’s health insurance plan for the poor, has exceeded 1 million people. 2.) Medicaid, now covering 18 percent of Wisconsin’s population, has a $6 billion budget that makes up a fifth of the state budget. State Sen. […]
MADISON, Wis. — A One Wisconsin Now analysis of the political giving of the announced officials of the Wisconsin Business Council shows that conservatives and Republicans netted 77 percent of member giving, contradicting charges made by Rep. Robin Vos (R-Caledonia) the new organization is a liberal front group. “Robin Vos says an organization whose officials […]
When she’s not desperately trying to prevent the people of Wisconsin from having access to the same health care we pay to allow her to have, Wisconsin’s Michelle-Bachmann-in-training, GOP Rep. Leah Vukmir takes every opportunity to suck up to big business and industry, particularly polluters. During today’s debate and passage on AB 281 to restrict […]
As One Wisconsin Now showed at our comprehensive warehouse of information at WMCWatch.org, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce has an ungodly lock on conservatives in the state legislature. In the 2005-2006 session, the legislature had 76 members (or 57.5%) score 80 percent or higher on the WMC scorecard. This included 19 legislators who never veered from […]
Are you kidding me? After months of complaining about Democratic efforts to get out of the ginormous deficit caused by the economic collapse brought to our fine state by the incompetence and corruption of George W. Bush, Assembly Republicans have outdone themselves. And they haven’t even started yet. Looking at the first two amendments to […]
Lead GOP budget talker Rep. Robin Vos is likely to put his “Protect Rich People” crying towel into overdrive in the coming hours. In the interest of fairness, here are a couple of things to remember when Vos claims that by opposing the tax boost for the top one percent and closing a portion of […]
Judge for yourself. http://www.onewisconsinnow.org/GOPbudget By all accounts it’s still a big, fat nothing from the state Republicans on how to solve the massive budget deficit the eight years of failed George W. Bush policies have levied on Wisconsin and nearly every state in the nation. One Wisconsin Now sent our OWNews reporter Cody Oliphant to […]
GOP state budget spokesperson Rep. Robin Vos must be calculating he’s never going to get called to carpet for anything he tells the press about the state budget. Either that or he can’t read.On an interview posted yesterday on WisconsinEye.com, Vos claims that if the Assembly Republican budget from 2007 had been passed, that Wisconsin […]
On the WisconsinEye newsmakers program taped just this morning, Robin Vos was asked how, as a small business owner, he was doing given the historic economic collapse from which America and Wisconsin desperately tries to emerge. Vos, who explained he has three separate businesses and owns rental property in Whitewater, offered that he and his […]
After more than four months we finally have an answer to the question: What’s the Republican plan for closing the state budget deficit? According to Wispolitics.com, ‘Rep. Robin Vos, R-Racine, said Republicans support closing the gap by reducing spending through furloughs, a pay freeze, reducing the number of state employees and holding departments to last […]
This is good. So Grover Norquist’who’s regularly full of bad ideas (see: Reagan Day)’had a brain fart a few years back from which came the Taxpayer Protection Caucus. But here’s the real kicker: heading up the Wisconsin caucus this year is the one and only Randy Hopper, who once and only once paid state income […]
For some reason, Wispolitics.com offered a lil’ nugget in its afternoon summary about noted minority vote suppressor and GOP state party chair Reince Priebus doing a planned closed-door meeting with ‘business leaders about their concerns.’ ‘It’s closed to the media’ the Wispo gang reports. While my first response was ‘so?’ after thinking for a nanosecond, […]
Making its rounds at the capitol this year is AB38: a bill devised to exclude from taxable income gains from a Wisconsin business. As the Legislative Reference Bureau understands it, a corporation ‘may exclude the capital gain realized from the sale of any asset held more than one year.’ It estimates the bill would decrease […]
The non non-ideological conservative Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance is once again showing its stripes — this time shooting out the same talking points being argued by the Republican members of the state’s budget writing committee. As reported on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s politics blog, WTA head Todd Berry shipped out a newsletter complaining about what is […]
Keith Ripp used to be a farmer and heifer raiser. Now he’s ‘representing’ the good people of the 47th district’his home town is Lodi. According to his campaign website, ‘Agriculture is one of my main issues..it contributes $51.5 billion to the state’s economy.’ But as soon as Ripp fell in with the State Republican Bad […]
There’s a huge rift in conservatism these days. On the one hand, you have a faction that looks back in dismay at three losing election cycles and is trying to retool their message in hope for a better outcome in the future. On the other hand, you have a faction too stubborn to abandon their […]
You may have seen this story last week in the Wisconsin State Journal about a four-way jabfest between One Wisconsin Now, Mark Pocan, Nass, and the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance (Leah Vukmir took a swing too, but her press release was so ridiculous nobody really took it serious). The rundown is basically as follows: OWN called […]
Another headshaker from the Assembly Republican braintrust — this time bringing the same budget shackles to Wisconsin which helped drive California into its near economic collapse and nearly killed a bipartisan solution to their woes. Leah Vukmir and Rich Zipperer, who apparently have created their own Assembly Bad Ideas Caucus, are now pushing for a […]
Sen. Scott Fitzgerald and his right wing allies like Julaine Appling said over and over the ban wasn’t about domestic partners. Now they have done a complete 180.
With leaders like Scott Walker and Scott Jensen, they stretched Wisconsin’s finances beyond the breaking point. Following these Assembly Republicans further down the path of failure would be an enormous mistake to say the least.
Remember last year when Sheldon Wasserman got called out by Alberta Darling for reneging on Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform “No New Taxes” pledge and everyone was like ‘Duh, Sheldon, you shouldn’t have signed that stupid P.O.S. pledge in the first place!’? Thankfully some people, like Gov. Doyle, aren’t insane enough to put their […]
Wisconsin Republican officials are responding to bipartisan overtures at the state and federal level by Democratic leaders by summarily rejecting efforts to create jobs, invest in infrastructure, reform health insurance and tackle the $5.4 billion deficit.
At the beginning of the year I openly wondered if the ‘Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights’ (TABOR) was totally and completely dead because the only one attempting to revive it was off the wall State Representative Frank Lasee (R-Bellevue). He announced his intentions even though TABOR and similar proposals had already been repeatedly shot down by […]
Last week I wrote about Republican State Senate candidate (18th SD) Randy Hopper and how he was complaining about taxes and suggesting that the current tax structure has been unfair to him. In that blog, I wrote that he has a credibility problem on the issue since he only paid Wisconsin personal and business income […]
Republican State Senate candidate (18th SD) Randy Hopper is running a pretty standard campaign for a conservative. In a recent debate he complained about taxes and suggested that the current tax structure has somehow been unfair to him. The only problem with that claim is revealed in a report today by the Fond du Lac […]
Despite his long fealty to an annoying no new taxes pledge, Sheldon Wasserman discovered the hard truth that Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform is nothing but a shill group for Republicans. Y’know, Republicans like convicted crook Jack Abramoff and moral sleazebags like Ralph Reed, and well, Norquist himself ‘ all long associated with ATR. […]
Last week Rep. Frank Lasee announced his latest harebrained scheme, to drill for oil in the Great Lakes. There is nothing like handing over your most precious resource to an industry that can’t be trusted. And for what? For the remote chance that they will find (or spill) oil in 15 years and possibly save […]
From the legislator who brought the great state of Wisconsin a plan to arm teachers with guns in an effort to curb school violence (you all remember his hilarious appearance on the Daily Show about 2 years ago’¦), comes another idea worthy of all kinds of jokes and ridicule ‘ lifting a ban on drilling […]
As they say in the military, there’s always that 2 per cent that doesn’t get the word. Case in point: A number of conservative Republicans find themselves supporting — horrors! — one of the hated liberal trial lawyers for a District II Appeals Court judgeship in southeastern Wisconsin, while the GOP establishment lines up on […]