Is Wisconsin Fat, Drunk & Stupid?

Dean Vernon Wormer once said, "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life," but could it be Wisconsin's next tourism slogan?

FAT

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 61% of Wisconsin adults are overweight or obese.

DRUNK

We're all familiar with the University of Wisconsin Madison's reputation as the ultimate party school, but did you know that Wisconsin has about 340,000 licensed drivers with at least one drunken driving conviction, and that 45% of all traffic related crashes in Wisconsin last year involved alcohol? Still Wisconsin remains the only state in the nation to consider first offense drunken driving an ordinance violation rather than a criminal misdemeanor.

This qualifies as drunk and stupid. Maybe that's why Wisconsin was one of 6 states targeted by the Federal government for checkpoints over the Labor Day weekend.

And yeah I did, but then I grew up.

STUPID

Wisconsin has once again been caught dumbing down its academic standards in a thinly veiled attempt to skirt the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. As if this and the abomination that is the Milwaukee Public Schools is not enough to make us look really stupid, Governor Doyle's Board of Regents has found new ways for Wisconsin to fail upward.

First the Regents decided to put diversity ahead of academic standards, now they want students to pay for diversity programs with a tuition surcharge.

AG Candidate Gets Boost from Politician Most Likely to be Indicted

OK. Whose idea was it for Kathleen Falk to feature a picture of herself with Jim Doyle in her campaign ad, hers or his?

I mean, it’s a good deal for him, getting his mug all over the airways on someone else’s dime, but why would a candidate for the state's top law enforcement post want to highlight her cozy relationship with the Wisconsin politician most likely to be indicted?

The Governor says his cameo appearance in the Falk commercial should not be misconstrued as an endorsement of her candidacy. And just because Doyle recruited Falk to run for Attorney General and used his influence to initiate a considerable flow of money to her campaign, doesn’t mean Falk’s ability to investigate and prosecute any future charges brought against the Governor or members of his Administration would be compromised.

Remember what Kathleen Falk said about here decision to run for Attorney General:

"Nobody can tell me what to do - remember, I'm a pretty independent person."

Of course she later told the crowd at a Sheboygan Bar Association forum that Doyle privately encouraged her to run for Attorney General to which Doyle’s flak brillantly responded:

"Any private conversation they had was confidential."

Is that kind of like Attorney-Client privilege?

Politically Impaired?

When Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk launched her race for Attorney General, a reporter asked her whether she'd ever gotten behind the wheel of an automobile after consuming alcohol.

Since Falk is challenging Peg Lautenschlager for Attorney General because a drunken driving arrest is likely to hamper her prospects for re-election, Falk should have been prepared to respond to this line of questioning. And even if the question came as a complete surprise to her, the answer shouldn't have eluded Falk for even a second.

The fact that it did suggests Falk may be more politically impaired by her lack of purpose and vision than Lautenschlager is by her infamous brush with the law.

To her credit Falk is willing to join the other 49 states in the nation in criminalizing first time drunken driving offenses, but as with her own conduct, I doubt she gave the issue any thought until a reporter asked her about it the other day.

(See video footage of Falk responding to a reporter's question about drunken driving)

72106.KATHLEENFALK.WMV

The Genuine Article

"I have made my mark professionally for nearly two decades now and clearly am my own man."

That’s what JB Van Hollen asserted when his opponent Paul Bucher said he felt like he was running against the legacy of JB’s father, John Van Hollen.

Forget the fact that he is only 40 years old and graduated from law school just 15 years ago. JB Van Hollen has used his father’s name and association with Tommy Thompson perpetually since his campaign for Attorney General began over a year ago.

And if in fact this man has been making his own mark for nearly 20 years, why does he continue to blame others for his mistakes? And why did the only original idea to come out of his campaign result in several days of bad press and his permanent loss of credibility with the mainstream media?

Remember the disastrous press conference during which Van Hollen claimed terrorists were raising money and training in Wisconsin, but declined to back up his statements with facts? Van Hollen said that information was top secret and he was not at liberty to share it.

Van Hollen had an equally childish response to criticism by radio talk show host Mark Belling that he was a do nothing U.S. Attorney for failing to find and prosecute corruption in the Doyle Administration. To this Van Hollen proclaimed that he had wanted to pursue corruption cases against Doyle, but higher ups at the U.S. Department of Justice shut him down.

But the best evidence of Van Hollen’s vaucous style came today when his campaign released a radio ad identical in theme to that of Paul Bucher only a few days after Van Hollen criticized Bucher for running the ad.

Van Hollen defended his own statements but said he wouldn't use an ad like Bucher's, saying it could distract voters from the issue of which candidate could solve the Crime Lab problem.

I suppose Van Hollen heard the praise others doled out to Bucher for his effective radio spot and decided if you can’t beat em, join em.

I choose to throw my support behind the candidate who really has been making his mark for two decades, fighting crime and building coalitions in one of Wisconsin’s most populated counties.

Kaufert ---Bows out of Race for Speaker, Voted Miss Congeniality

Wow. That Dean Kaufert is a really nice guy.

Earlier this summer when former DOA Secretary Marc Marotta appeared before the Joint Finance Committee amid concerns that Doyle’s top aids were interfering with the bidding process for state contracts, Kaufert was almost apologetic for taking up his time.

Today after Kaufert learned that Marotta had lied to the Joint Finance Committee in June when he testified that he never got involved with companies bidding for state business once the selection process had begun, Kaufert was willing to view it as simply an “oversight” on Marotta’s part.

Here’s what Marotta told the Joint Finance Committee in June:

"Once a decision is made, the secretary gets out of the way" and does not discuss it with vendors, lawmakers or lobbyists.

"I adhered very strictly to those principles with regard to any communication at all" with potential vendors, he said.

"Any inquiries, whether I spoke with them or not, were quickly referred to the procurement staff" who were actually handling the bids.

The only “oversight” Marotta had was that he never thought anyone would actually plough through his calendar and find the one on one meeting he held with Doug Weas, President of the company who was awarded the $68 million dollar Kenilworth contract.

The meeting between Marotta and Weas took place in April 2004 at the Milwaukee Athletic Club, smack dab in the middle of the bidding process. Seven weeks later, Weas Development was awarded the contract by a panel that included two DOA Officials who served at the pleasure of Marc Marotta.

To add insult to injury, the state is being sued for $5 million because Marotta convinced the State Building Commission to re-bid the contract, which had already been awarded to another company. Marotta told the Commission the do-over was needed to avoid a legal challenge by yet another bidder.

One would think Marotta, who claimed to have strict policy of being hands-off in the bidding process, would have stayed as far away from the second Kenilworth procurement as possible.
Yesterday Marotta’s spokesperson said Marotta also met with officials of the competing companies but executives of both companies said that wasn’t true either.

Kaufert said the revelations about Marotta’s testimony would not concern him unless it was part of a pattern.

I guess nice guys like Dean Kaufert see oversights where the rest of us see patterns.

Limited Bragging Rights

This week in history I achieved greatness, not once but twice...

Adam Ross Jordahl

August 16, 1996

Anna Claire Jordahl

August 18, 1998

Hoisted on Their Own Petard

Democrat or Republican, drunken driver or fraudulent voter, if you’re planning to commit a crime, don’t do it in Waukesha County. Democrat State Senate candidate and frequent voter Donovan Riley is about to learn that lesson the hard way. This week Riley was accused of committing voter fraud in the 2000 election when he voted in Chicago, Illinois and Oconomowoc, Wisconsin.

No doubt Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher will vigorously investigate and prosecute Riley if the allegations prove true, but Bucher would be just as aggressive if a credible complaint were filed against a member of his own party under the same circumstances. The irony is that Democrats have tried to use Bucher’s even handed approach against him on the issue of voter fraud.

Last December Attorney and Waukesha Democrat Party Chair Rick Congdon filed a frivolous complaint against Assembly Candidate Scott Newcomer for voter fraud after Newcomer legally changed his voter registration from his house in Elm Grove to the land he owns in Hartland. Democrats were well aware that Newcomer had sought and followed the advice of the State Elections Board, but persisted in filing the complaint to embarrass Newcomer and put Bucher in a politically difficult situation. Bucher had no choice but to appoint a Special Prosecutor to look into the complaint, even though he knew it had absolutely no merit.

Of course, State Democrat Chair Joe Wineke was all too happy to jump on the bandwagon, calling on Bucher to expedite the investigation. Today Wineke finds himself in a more uncomfortable position than he put Bucher in earlier this year.

DPW chair Joe Wineke said the allegations were "unnerving." He said Riley told him yesterday that he would be consulting with attorneys."Obviously, all I can go on are the press accounts and the conversation I had with Mr. Riley yesterday," Wineke said. "I think that he's assessing the situation and hopefully will come up with the right decision."Wineke said he isn't pushing Riley either way.

"It’s not my role before I know the facts in the case to ask anybody to do anything. Donovan is a mature individual, he and only he knows whether this is a bunch of nothing or if it’s real, and I personally believe that if he did vote twice and he knows he did that, I suspect things will move on from there. But I don’t know all the facts."

If Wineke had been more concerned about the facts in the Newcomer case, Waukesha County taxpayers could have been spared the expense of a Special Prosecutor.

On the other hand, the allegations against Donovan Riley appear to be quite credible, the implications of a conviction are far reaching, and Riley's claim that he simply made a mistake is patently ridiculous.

Democrats have tried to claim the high ground on voter fraud, fighting every effort to require Wisconsin voters to provide a photo id. They say elderly, poor, and minority voters would be disenfranchised because they don’t have access to photo ids. Forget the fact that you need an id to rent a video, buy Sudafed and cash a check, the Democrats say it and the media swoons. And if you believe in voter fraud, you must believe in the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus too.

But Donovan Riley is not a poor, elderly or minority person. Riley is a rich educated white guy who thought he could get away with voter fraud, because he knows that voter fraud is rarely if ever uncovered and prosecuted.

So the Governor and the party that stand behind Riley had better be prepared to answer this question:

If a man like Donovan Riley has committed voter fraud and the only reason we found out is that he’s running for public office, how can Wisconsin voters have any faith in the integrity of our election system without photo id?

A Million More Reasons to Dump Miszewski

What's a million dollars when you're spending other people's money?
That appears to be the attitude of the Doyle Administration as failed IT projects dig taxpayers deeper and deeper into debt.

In April the Joint Legislative Audit Committee called for a review of several, multi-million dollar IT projects that are behind schedule and way over budget. Included in the review is the state server consolidation project led by employees of the consulting firm, Crowe Chizek. The firm walked off the job last week due to a contract dispute with DOA management.

Crowe Chizek officials say they’ve met all the project milestones to date, but DOA is withholding the final payment of $1.8 million for services it says the firm has not delivered.

Crowe officials maintain all of the milestones have been met and were signed off on by Matt Miszewski, the state's chief information officer. They blame state officials for delaying the work by failing to conduct certain tasks, hire and train key personnel and make the physical improvements needed to consolidate the servers.

"All of the milestones have been completed," said company spokeswoman Amanda Stevenson, adding that "many times a change in leadership will require additional effort and education on a project, its history and decisions previously made."

Bablitch, who took over from former Administration Secretary Marc Marotta in October, is "convinced Matt Miszewski did not provide any additional authority" for Crowe to take on extra work, Dilweg said.

Dilweg said state employees will take over management of the server consolidation project, and the longer Crowe Chizek stays off the job, the less they will be needed to complete the work in the future.

Now we learn that DOA will pay another vendor to take over the botched email migration project which has already resulted in a loss of $2.6 million dollars. A cost analysis shows that state employees could perform the work for a million dollars less than the contractor, but DOA says its employees don’t have the expertise needed to get the job done.

I don’t know server consolidation from email migration, so I can’t say whether DOA is right to spend the extra million to hire the consultants or not. The trouble is, with so many missed deadlines and cost overruns, Wisconsin’s Chief Information Officer, Matt Miszewski no longer has the credibility to make the call. Miszewski has spent his career at DOA flitting all over the country boasting about himself and Doyle’s ACE initiative, while things back home are falling apart.

Conventional wisdom is that Miszewski will not be asked to resign his position before the election, as this would amount to a tacit admission of the Administration’s ineptitude managing information technology. Well folks, the cat’s already out of the bag, and keeping him around will only continue to erode public confidence and the morale of hardworking state employees.

Former Rep. Lorge Hired by Doyle Campaign

Today the Doyle campaign revealed the hiring of former State Representative Bill Lorge to assist with campaign communications. He was specifically brought on to help craft the campaign's message through press releases and statements.

Lorge who served in the Wisconsin Assembly from 1989 - 1998 was widely known for his unique writing style that lacked structure and coherence, and included run on sentences, creative use of punctuation, and single line spacing for efficiency.

"What we loved most about Bill's writing style was his ability to ramble on and on about things that almost nobody else understands or cares about, and to leave readers with the impression that he is completely insane or paranoid, or both," said Doyle spokesperson Anson Kaye.

"It's going to be a long and really nasty campaign, and we just wanted to give the media something to smile about. The only caveat we gave Bill was that he needed to leave spaces in between paragraphs, and occasionally between thoughts as well. "

In fact, Lorge's first release for the Doyle campaign was so juvenile that Steve Walters of the Milwaukee Journal actually snorted out loud.

Former State Representative Bill Lorge (right)