Walker Goes Further Over The Deep End

by capper

The morning's paper shows that Walker is going further along with his folly of privatization. Even though his buddy, Chris Kujawa, who has been a beneficiary of Walker's previous privatization of parts of the park system, lost big in his election bid last year, and even though everyone of the candidates that he backed in this year's primary didn't survive to see the general election, Walker steams ahead like a mindless puppet.

Walker's solution, when he is not trying to foist the blame for his errors on other people, is to hack and slash the County and to sell off the parts to the highest campaign contributor bidder. This even includes the privatization of Mitchell Airport, a move that even some of his out of county fans (he apparently has very few in the county) find to be questionable at best.

I have written time and time again about Walker's inane policy decisions. This time, I will just refer to Erich Roden, a community advisor for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who wrote this earlier this month:

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker got a lesson in budgetary forensics last week with the resignation of half of his pathologists in the medical examiners office. Although his attempts to hold the line on unsustainable entitlements should be lauded, his perpetual devaluation of county employees should not. When it comes to vital governmental services, you actually get what you pay for. Let's hope he finally realizes this and leaves his budgetary philosophy where it belongs - the morgue.

Let's not forget that Walker's bid to privatize everything he can comes after his pledge not to privatize.

I say, I do believe it is Walker, not Senator Taylor, who appears to be utterly lost and confused.

Pop Goes The Weasel

by capper

Saturday is Groundhog's day. As you may or may not have known, Milwaukee has no groundhog. The resident groundhog at the Milwaukee County Zoo, Walnut, passed away last summer, and no replacement was brought in. This was even though there was more than seven months to find a suitable successor.

And as we all know, this has been a less than fun winter. In fact, as I write this post, the Weather Service as just changed the snow advisory to a winter storm warning, with 6-8 inches expected, and even more by the lake.

To help ease people's fear that this winter will never end, Scott Walker has taken bold and decisive action. No, he didn't get us a new groundhog. Instead, he privatized the service in a no-bid contract to Weasels'R'Us. The new mascot you will be seeing Saturday is Wally Weasel (pictured on the right).

Unfortunately, there were a few setbacks to Walker's plan. First, the contract turned out to be more expensive than planned, and much more expensive than it would have been to let a County-owned groundhog do the job. To make up for the expense, Walker cut sixteen busroutes, and denied food stamps to 439 people.

The other unforeseen consequence is that Wally won't tell us what kind of winter we will have yet to face. Instead, if he sees his shadow, we will have eight more weeks of Walker. If he doesn't see his shadow, then we will only have to face 56 more days of him.

We are also waiting for verification, but there is suspicion that Ma Brawler will be asking for an independent investigation for the posibility of nepotism.

Country Roads

by capper

The one negative that I had from the weekend was driving on some of the country roads. The County roads and state highways were just fine. Well plowed and salted.

The country roads on the other hand had about an inch of ice on them, which was covered by another inch of snow. Instead of salt, or a salt and sand mixture, it was just sand. Which apparently had been administered with a salt shaker that had half its holes plugged up. I never knew sand was a precious commodity.

Needless to say, mrs. capper and I were very glad that we had good tires and good traction control. There were enough cars in the ditches without adding ours.

So, I went into town on Monday to find out why the back roads were in such terrible shape. I found out that the county plows the state highways and the county roads, but the back country roads were privatized. Apparently, they give a local construction company a contract with a flat amount to do the plowing for the year. If you complain to the government, they refer you to the company, which conveniently has no one available to take calls.

Then I came home and was perusing the blogosphere and saw Nick Schweitzer's view of privatization and this:

Then the next time someone suggests we "privatize" something, the liberals go through the list of the other things we pseudo-privatized and shows what a bad job they've done, and how we've had to bail them out. And to a certain extent, they're absolutely right. The myth is that this can be used as proof that private enterprise is less efficient than government at doing something. But if you never fully cut the cord, and let private enterprise take care of something soup to nuts, then it's not actually privatization. Call it something else... boondogglization, nonprofitization... whatever.... but it sure as hell isn't privatization.

Uh, Nick, privatization your way doesn't work any better than the other way. Sorry.

Ironically, I also received the property tax. The township's share dropped $4.35. Oh boy. Does anyone know a tow truck company and body shop that would fix a car for $4.35? If not, then slap the five bucks back onto my taxes and plow and salt the roads the right way, please.

The Morgan Stanley Starbucks Verizon Wireless Miller General Billy Mitchell International Airport

by capper

Scott Walker must be looking for more publicity in the face of the upcoming election.

Today's MSJ has a story about how Walker, County Board Supervisor Paul Cesarz, and County Board Patricia Jursik met with with representatives from Morgan Stanley, who were pitching the idea of privatizing the airport. If you remember, Walker did tried to do a back door deal to do this a ways back, and it blew up in his face.

The story makes the proposition look rosy, saying that the county could see anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion dollars. That is a very tempting offer to a county that has been strapped for cash since the pension scandal, the second pension scandal, and Walker's repeated ham-handed attempts at creating a budget, which inevitably blows up.

But there are many unanswered questions in this story. For example, how long would the lease be for? If it is only a year, even I would urge Walker to take it. If it over 99 years, well then it's not such a great deal after all.

And what are the chances of it even happening? The article reports that Chicago has already put in a bid, and the feds are saying only one midsize to large airport could be privatized at this time.
Not only that, but come April, there might be a whole new slate of faces running the county government, besides Lena Taylor being the new County Executive. Even Walker himself said that nothing would be done on this until after the elections.

And the same questions arise, that were brought up from the last time Walker tried to privatize the airport. There are no answers yet about how it may affect airport operations, how it may affect people living in close vicinity to the airport, and what would happen if the private agency would fail.

I'll spare you the rehashing of the local endeavors of privatization of public entities that have flopped. Things like the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare, the Public Museum and MMSD. And I won't go into a big, long spiel about how many time Walker has lied to the people of Milwaukee County about these wonderful things he does.

All I will say is: It may or may not be a good idea, and it might or might not happen, but why is this being reported without these answers, unless it is just Walker trying to get some attention. So much for the liberal media.

UPDATE: Even Ed Garvey and Owen Robinson agree with me. Will wonders never cease?