Oh, Yes, He Did Say That

by capper

A lot of the right wing bloggers have been also posting about the upcoming election for Milwaukee County Executive. Doing my civic duty, I pointed out that Walker has yet to formally announce that he is running for re-election. I also pointed out that Walker promised he wouldn't be running for re-election in 2008.

Apparently, Pug J at Daily Takes took umbrage, and posted this comment:

Capper,
You have fallen behind on reading Milwaukee Mags. Bruce Murphy already apologized for saying Walker promised to not run for re election. Awaiting your mea culpa.

He also cited this article from Bruce Murphy, who wrote:

My last column’s contention that Scott Walker promised not to run for re-election as county executive in 2008 was a bit overstated: He said he had no plans to do so, helping to buttress his image as a nonpolitician, but made no outright promise. He certainly fooled this voter.

Not quite an apology, but more of a clarification. But I digress. To Pug J, and others who may disagree with my assertion, I would like to refer you to a post by xoff, in which he quotes from JSOnline:

Walker clarifies '02 re-election comments

County Executive Scott Walker said today that comments he made six years ago about not running for re-election in 2008 weren't serious promises.Walker last week touted his accomplishments in office and strongly suggested he plans to run for re-election next year."I certainly didn't make that as a pledge" in 2002, Walker said in an interview today. "I didn't put it anywhere in my literature."Any remarks he might have made in 2002 about not seeking re-election in 2008 might have been joking references, Walker said...

In a campaign forum on April 24, 2002, Walker was asked if he'd seek re-election as county executive and how long he would hold the office. According to a transcript of the forum, Walker replied:

"I will focus on cleaning up the waste and abuse during the next two years. To put in place reforms to insure these changes stay in place, I am open to a run for a full term in 2004, but will not run beyond that term."

... As pointed out here earlier, Walker also told the newspaper editorial board, in an interview possted on April 21, 2002:

Q: Just so everyone is clear, you do, if you win, plan to run again in 2004?
A: Yes. I don't have an interest in running beyond that.

Now a grammarian might point out that he did not specifically "promise" not to run again, but as they say, "It's good enough for government work."

Are we swiftboating Annette Ziegler?

by folkbum

The political lexicon lacks a great deal of flexibility (the -gate suffix's being attached to every potential scandal a generation later is just one example of how stale the vocabulary is), but swiftboat, I think, is a welcome and reasonable addition to the party. If used correctly, that is.

The word, of course, comes from the "Swiftboat Veterans for Truth" organization, a group ironically dedicated to spreading demonstrably false stories about John Kerry during the 2004 election season. I like Wikipedia's definition: "By using credible-sounding sources to make sensational and difficult-to-disprove accusations against an opponent, the campaign leverages media tendencies to focus on a controversial story." In other words, as happened in the 2004 campaign, gather a bunch of veterans who, though they served in Vietnam on a switftboat never actually served with Kerry; have them question Kerry's service; then let the media's faux-balance desire for "he said-he said" journalism take over, thereby legitimizing the false statements.

In the end, swiftboating is just a media-savvy version of "When did you stop beating your wife?" It's all about smear, and not so much about truth.

Washington County Judge Annette Ziegler has--on this blog, elsewhere on the internet, and in the traditional media now, too--been severely criticized for lapses in her ethical judgment. Some of the criticisms, such as perhaps the Wal*Mart case flap, are pushing it (which is why I haven't touched the Wal*Mart flap lately, since I tend to dwell in the realm of Things That Matter). But other allegations, in my opinion, have merit. Consider, for example, some of the non-Wal*Mart examples listed by One Wisconsin Now:

According to Ziegler's own Statement of Economic Interest filings with the State Ethics Board, Ziegler's husband J.J. Ziegler has worked for West Bend Savings Bank as a paid director and she has claimed income from the bank for renting property to them. (3) (4 [pdf])

In addition, state and Washington County Register of deed records show that Ziegler has received $3.1 million in loans from West Bend Savings Bank, including a $2 million loan during her campaign for our highest court. (2 [pdf]), (5), (6 [pdf])

Ziegler has also heard 46 cases involving West Bend Savings Bank.

In the cases involving her husband's bank, Ziegler has ruled in favor of West Bend Savings Bank with well over $100,000 in cash settlements, home foreclosures and seized vehicles.

When questioned by the Wisconsin State Journal, Ziegler's campaign manager Mark Graul, initially told the paper that Ziegler's practice in cases involving the bank was to disclose the conflict and "offer to the parties to recuse herself" or to have them waive the requirement and allow her to continue. (7)

The Wisconsin State Journal reported that, "He insisted she had notified the parties and gotten approval to continue presiding over the cases." (7) [. . .]

[I]t wasn't the truth. A Wisconsin State Journal report revealed that in 46 cases involving West Bend Savings Bank where Ziegler was the sitting judge, there are "no indications that Ziegler withdrew from West Bend Savings cases, and no notices to the parties of any conflict." (8)

The defendants in 4 cases looked at by the Wisconsin State Journal told the paper the Washington County Circuit judge did not withdraw from the cases - nor did she disclose her conflict - as required by Supreme Court rules governing the conduct of Judges in Wisconsin. (7) [. . .]

To date, Ziegler has offered no evidence that she disclosed the conflict to any of the parties in the cases. Instead, Ziegler has said she relied on a "gut check" rather than court rules about conflicts in deciding to hear the cases. (8)

Or consider this specific story, from a Linda Clifford press release:

Jeanie Kidd appeared before Ziegler last year as a defendant against West Bend Savings Bank. Kidd's case is one of 46 that Judge Ziegler has heard that involved the bank. Ziegler's husband is a paid member of the bank's board of directors and the Ziegler family leases the bank space. In addition, the bank has loaned Ziegler over $3 million.

Because Kidd resided out of state, she requested a postponement of the hearing on seizure of her automobile. Judge Ziegler denied the request and ordered Kidd to appear at the hearing by telephone. At the time of the hearing, the bank failed to show. Although a statute allowed dismissal for the bank's failure to appear, Ziegler instead adjourned the hearing for the benefit of the bank. At the adjourned hearing, judgment was awarded to the bank.

In at least nine cases, Ziegler faced the opposite scenario where a defendant failed to appear while West Bank Savings did. In each of these instances no continuance was granted, Ziegler instead ruled in the bank's favor.

Setting aside the source of that information, the underlying facts of this and other cases are not in distpute--not by Ziegler, not by Graul (any more), not by the documentary evidence available from the courts. What is described here is accurate and true to the greatest extent that everybody involved can prove.

Which is why I'm surprised to see someone call this a swiftboating, particularly someone who tends to run to the liberal side:

What I really hate, and have to suck it up anyway is the way professional journalists, strategists, career statesmen and good old boys are masquerading as "citizen bloggers" to orchestrate old-fashioned mud-slinging campaigns. Okay, so some party people were freaked out at the "new Power" that bloggers had with the Dean business and the Dan Rather thing and all that. Even if it works in your favor, it's a rogue element - uncontrollable if it genuinely comes from The People.

So get a bunch of Good Old Boys in there - not the shaggy t-shirt crowd that bloggers were to start, but established journalists and seasoned power boys in their 50s and 60s who know the ropes and can hopefully steer things in a coordinated direction. But most importantly, protect the status quo. Edge out the uncontrolled rogue elements with flashier sites and greater posting frequency and that so-lovely air of entitlement. Whatever.

Funny thing is - I wonder how long till the Republicans get a private investigator to set up a blog where s/he can disseminate the stuff they dig up about Democratic candidates. The guys who did the swift-boating of Kerry believed they were following a higher cause too, that they had a sacred mission to keep an Undesirable out of office. They would have said they were just "telling the truth". Yet, though I am a "liberal" I think it is quite obvious that the Republican judge in this "non-partisan" race is being swift-boated too from the point of view of HER supporters. The definition you use depends on the side you are on and all words have no solid meaning anymore. All wars are sacred, all words are partisan - it's quite a gift we have all been given by the power-obsessed among us.

I think that somewhere in there Jody's making a point about groups like Progressive Majority or even One Wisconsin, which I think might distill, as Dave Diamond suggests, into something like a complaint that bloggers are being ruined by partisan influences, or something. But it's the accusation of swiftboating that hangs in my craw: I have not heard "HER supporters" toss around that word and, in fact, the more considered (and more lawyerly) among them concede that Ziegler was wrong on many of those cases.

So are we swiftboating Annette Ziegler? Does what's happening here rise (sink?) to the "When did you stop beating your wife?" level of political discourse?

Perhaps I'm biased and defensive, as one who broke parts of this story, but I say no. For starters, unlike the claims of the "Swiftboat Veterans for Truth," the only allegations I have made--and the only allegations made in the media, as led by the Wisconsin State Journal--are ones supported by the evidence at hand. There is no crime or shame in, as the Journal Sentinel editorial board did, saying, "Here's what we know based on facts in evidence; can you explain it?" to a campaign or to a candidate--a far cry from the insinuations or falsehoods of a true swiftboating.

In fact, the only aspersions I see being cast around are things like Jessica McBride's laughable "media bias" claims. (And I mean laughable; McBride reprints her shockingly indignant email to the managing editor of the Wisconsin State Journal and his answers. I was embarrassed for her.) That and Jody's assertion that me and my baggy-shirted colleagues are getting strung along by The Powers That Be.

Until someone can show me that somehow every shred of documentary evidence we have is wrong, that every defendant now complaining that Ziegler never disclosed her conflicts is lying, or that Ziegler somehow doesn't own stocks in the numbers that put her in violation of a judicial ethics review panel's ruling, I will not back down from this, and I will not assent to being called a swiftboater.

I won't go so far as Gregory "Deke Rivers" Humphrey and call for Zielger to drop out of the race. I won't even go so far as Bruce Murphy and suggest that now she's unelectable (I won't underestimate the power of the state's business lobby and all the TV airtime they can buy). But I also won't let clear ethical lapses and clear violations of an enforceable code of judicial conflict go without comment. Even if it means trading in my baggy shirt.

As long as we're talking about McIlheran: Residency

On Sunday, I posted a long series of links and commentary about the Milwaukee Public Schools, and I included a reference to--and quoted from--what I called "an unsigned op-ed" about the MPS residency requirement.

When I first read that op-ed--it was some time before I got around to linking it--I thought it had had Patrick McIlheran's name in the byline. So when I wanted to dredge it up, I first searched through his old columns, where I could not find it. Then I Googled his name and keywords like "residency" to find it, which was also fruitless. When I did find it and finally re-read it, I thought it was in his style, even. But since there was no name on the page I would link to, I didn't feel I could make the attribution.

But last night I got an email from a reader who thought he remembered McIlheran's name on the original--and thought so independent of my telling anyone about it. Still, without a physical paper in hand from that day or some other evidence, I left it alone.

While researching the story below, however, I read Bruce Murphy's June 27 Milwaukee Magazine column, where he notes (way at the bottom):

On Sunday, columnist Patrick McIlhern compounded the error in a column arguing that residency may need to be reconsidered.

The date and the content match; we have a winner.

The question is, why was that piece stripped of its byline? I'm willing to believe accident, but it'd be nice to have some answers.

McIlheran Watch: Living in the Past on Vouchers

I have a half-finsihed post about P-Mac and the economy, but I'll let it simmer a while longer while we talk about vouchers.

McIlheran (gotta make sure he knows I spell his name right) blogs today about Milwaukee Magazine columnist Bruce Murphy's new piece. In that column, Murphy mentions the Department of Education study I wrote about on Saturday, using its good news for public schools as a jumping-off point to write his own version of McIlheran Watch. Murphy calls McIlheran a parrot for simply repeating Republican talking points instead of thinking critically. While I have long considered that a key element of the McIlheran Formula, apparently when Murphy says it--and misspells P-Mac's name--it ruffles the man's feathers. (rimshot) Here's MacIlheran:

What [Murphy]’s doing is droning on about school choice, saying something about how nothing’s certain about it or some such. He takes some time out to cite me as being a party ideologist on the subject because of a column I wrote last October in which I said suburban Republicans have little to gain from supporting school choice and in fact pay some price.

My logic, and it stems from what several nonpartisan political observers have mentioned to me, is that the program arouses opposition from teachers unions statewide, even prompting that union in three successive elections to campaign against suburban and outstate lawmakers who back school choice. Meanwhile, the program directly benefits no one in any suburban or outstate area--its aid goes entirely to parents and children in Milwaukee. In fact, groups opposed to school choice have long contended--incorrectly--that school choice in Milwaukee costs the rest of the state’s schools money. [. . .]

Whatever. He says I’m not cynical enough. Then he goes and says I have a thing for Republicans because I referred to “mayors from nice Republican places” in an ironical aside about local officials who didn’t like the Taxpayer Protection Amendment. In which case, it wasn’t a case of his being admirably cynical but of perhaps being insufficiently conscious while reading.

This is what makes my task here so easy: It's not just that P-Mac is partisan--I would be nothing less were I cursed with his job--it's that he doesn't learn, and he undercuts his own arguments so terribly much. Let's start with the whole matter of whether or not choice costs or benefits the rest of the state.

I've explained to McIlheran before that, in fact, for one biennial budget cycle, legislators did fund the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program's vouchers by reducing general aid to all districts in the state--in fact, costing most non-Milwaukee districts money. The "contended" link from McIlheran's post goes to a page from the People for the American Way's website, which is an archived html version of a 2002 study--a study that was accurate at the time it was completed, and which now I can't even find by looking through PfAW's Public Education section. I wonder if he's kept this page bookmarked for just such an occasion when pretending the past is the present would make him look good?

Actually, he's trying to contrast the PfAW study with a contemporaneously old Journal Sentinel article (the link on "incorrectly") that supposedly disproves it. Let's compare, shall we?

PfAW: Prior to the 2001-02 school year, when the legislature essentially created a separate line item in the general budget for the voucher program, half these costs were subtracted from state equalization aid to the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), and the other half was taken away from the aid for Wisconsin’s other 425 school districts. If MPS and other districts wanted to recover the lost revenue, they would have needed to raise local property taxes.

Journal Sentinel: Under a system in place for the past two years, the state gets the $49 million for vouchers by reducing the aid it pays to each school district in Wisconsin. Half the money comes from aid to Milwaukee Public Schools, the other half from aid to other districts. Districts can raise property taxes to replace the lost aid. In estimating its overall aid package, the state assumes all districts will do so, said Russ Kava, an analyst in the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. Since state aid is proportional to the total of local property taxes around Wisconsin, the higher taxes mean a larger pool of state aid. [. . .] Combining the deduction for choice and the bigger aid pool, MPS has a net loss of $22.1 million. Other districts, together, have a net gain of $5.8 million, although nearly 240 individual districts outside Milwaukee have net losses.

Where is the contradiction? Is it that districts besides those 240 had net gains--gains that came only from raising property taxes to offset losses? Maybe. In either case, PfAW was accurate when it said vouchers took money from other districts; I was accurate when I pointed it out to P-Mac in February. And if McIlheran is trying to say that higher taxes for state taxpayers is an overall boon . . . well, that might require even more of an examination of his conservative credentials.

What about now?, you might be asking, recognizing that it's not 2002 anymore, and suburban and outstate Republicans are no longer eager to tinker with the funding formula. Do vouchers hurt or help school districts outside Milwaukee? The best way to answer that might be to consider what would happen were the program to vanish. Luckily, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau did just that; it became the basis for Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett's neglected pleas last winter to adjust the funding formula. Seth from In Effect has posted the LFB's letter here (.pdf), and it makes it pretty clear: If the voucher program vanished, and all the students in the progam ended up at MPS, the state's other school districts would lose between $74 million and $121 million in state general aid. That money would either have to be made up by property tax increases--as happened in the 1999-2001 biennium--or by cutting services drastically.

Knowing that, I would like to see McIlheran's explanation for how he can write (from his original October column, as quoted by Murphy), "suburban Republicans’ support for school choice has been pretty selfless. None of that money flows to their constituents.” They know the school districts they represent would suffer were choice to end. Period. Regardless of whether any choice money flows into their districts. (Don't forget that Alberta Darling keeps trying to change that.) They will not run to the Democrats' aid--to Milwaukee taxpayers' aid--knowing that the end of the voucher program would spike taxes for their constituents. It may have been true in 2001, when that Journal Sentinel article was published, that supporting choice would hurt suburban Republicans. But it is now now, not then.

Be nice if McIlheran learned that.

Murphy's column will eventually be archived here, so if the link above doesn't have a McIlheran story to it (scroll down), try this one.