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Dear Wisconsin [Dan Collins]

You’re my home state, and I love you like a brother.  I always have, and always will root for the Packers, the Bucks and even the Brewers, because I love you guys.  But you’ve let yourself become total suck, politically.

When I was a kid, I took pride in the fact that Milwaukee was a city with a (still) low crime rate.  It was a place where people still accepted a personal check.  Wisconsin was a state known for its clean politics.  That’s not the way it is, anymore.

Last election cycle, there were campaign troubles from well connected Wisconsin politicos, and the person who should have been in charge of preventing those kinds of violations was actually elected to the Governorship.  The very left mayor of the city left the city in disgrace, but it seems to have had very little impact on how people view government.  The Journal-Sentinel is a shameful excuse for a newspaper.  Doyle is an ass.

Chicago ward bosses, who long ago learned that it was an easy matter for them to send welfare cases out of their city to Wisconsin where the benefits were better, because of your misplaced generosity, have become heavily invested in Wisconsin politics.  You sit there and suck your thumbs while Wisconsin turns into Illinois, and Milwaukee into Chicago.  For decades, out of the goodness of your hearts, you have invested in a university educational system that attracts the most glittering lights of academia to demonstrate to your children that the values of their parents are worthless and stupid. 

You watched as your property taxes rose to the point where the only people who could afford lakefront properties were gay couples and Chicago scam artists.  Remember that little cottage on the lake?  Where are the children in that new McMansion?

I’m here in Vermont, where once again I’ve wasted my vote in the national elections.  It’s a small state.  The same thing’s happening here, with the jet commuters from NYC.  I may survive.  Vermont may, too.  But you all have to realize, you’ve screwed up something really good.  I’m glad that for the most part I’m not there to see it firsthand.  I still love you, you assholes.

BTW: with 200,000 votes in, CNN is already calling the election for Doyle over Green, 50% to 48%.

I guess they figure Madison’s totals will be reported late as usual, just in case.

5 Replies to “Dear Wisconsin [Dan Collins]”

  1. billo riley says:
    November 8, 2006 at 11:48 pm

    Poor widdle biddy baby.

  2. Dan Collins says:
    November 8, 2006 at 11:56 pm

    billo,

    I don’t know.  I think it would be nice to live in a state where property taxes weren’t so high only the rich could afford to live on a lake.

    FOR THE CHILDREN.

  3. Wil the Coyote says:
    November 9, 2006 at 2:40 am

    Wow, I agree with billo, you are a whiner.  Wisconsin has over 15,000 lakes.  That’s a lot of lakefront property up for grabs.  Unless you believe the gays our going to up their recruiting drive.

    You cannot blame Doyle for high property taxes.  Just because he didn’t buy into the centralized state controlled plan put forward by the Republicans doesn’t mean he’s to blame.  If the Republican leadership of the Assembly and State Senate practiced any form of fiscal discipline over during the past 15 years, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in today.  Tommy Thompson, much like George W Bush, actually increased the size of government.

  4. billtent says:
    November 9, 2006 at 8:41 am

    Only the rich can afford lakefront homes because something is too high… wait… oh I remember…

    the price of homes!  No? property taxes, you say? Wow.  I guess economics is best left to the experts.

  5. Dan Collins says:
    November 10, 2006 at 3:27 am

    Only the rich can afford lakefront homes because something is too high… wait… oh I remember…

    the price of homes!  No? property taxes, you say? Wow.  I guess economics is best left to the experts.

    What drove people off of those properties, which had been handed down for generations?  Does it have any relation to the farm situation?

    Here’s our former Attorney General in action, assholes:

    Wisconsin’s Cheesy Reformers

    November 7, 2006; Page A12

    Watching television this election cycle, you may have noticed that “campaign finance reform” hasn’t made political ads any cleaner. You may also have surmised that money counts as much as ever; its sources and middlemen have merely been reshuffled. What “reform” has done, however, is make it easier for incumbents to keep power, and a case study is the Wisconsin Governor’s race.

    The challenger is GOP Congressman Mark Green, who has criticized Democratic incumbent Jim Doyle over his vetoes against tax relief, and has also kicked off a debate on education and tort reform. Or at least those were the issues until Mr. Doyle’s allies used the campaign-finance laws to change the subject and create a phony scandal.

    That story dates back to January 2005 when Mr. Green transferred some $1.3 million from his federal Congressional campaign account into his state campaign account. Legally this was no big deal since the Wisconsin Elections Board has allowed such transfers for some 30 years. Only a few years ago, the board unanimously agreed to such a transfer for then-Congressman Tom Barrett, a Democrat.

    But the elections board has long been a political animal, and it lived up to that reputation by holding a meeting the day after Mr. Green’s transfer. The Democratic majority adopted an “emergency” rule requiring that money spent in gubernatorial races be collected from political action committees registered in the state. In a stroke, this barred Mr. Green from using much of his money.

    Viewing this as a naked political attack, the Republican state legislature jumped into the fray by suspending the rule. The elections board counter-attacked, saying the suspension didn’t apply when the legislature was out of session. The majority in August ordered Mr. Green to divest himself of $468,000 worth of transferred funds. And it took this outrageous step over the advice of its own staff attorney.

    It’s now clear why. A few weeks after the August decision, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel uncovered emails that a paid Doyle lawyer, Michael Maistelman, sent to three Democratic members of the elections board. In one email, Mr. Maistelman informs the Democrats: “We need to accomplish the following . . .” and then lays out Mr. Doyle’s preferred modes of punishment for Mr. Green.

    He also explains to the commissioners: “Even if this ends up in Court it is a PR victory for us since it makes Green spend money and have to defend the use of his [federal] money.” He assures them that “the Gov’s Campaign and the Dem party will give you cover on this in the media.”

    They complied. Governor Doyle has since had a field day. His campaign assailed Mr. Green, accusing him of “breaking the law” and accepting “illegal contributions.” It called on the Republican to return his “dirty money.” And so it came to pass that the Governor was able to turn attention away from other, more substantive issues by using election-money laws to create an aura of corruption around his opponent. It of course helped that any GOP candidate must lug the ball and chain of the party’s baggage in the earmarking and Abramoff scandals.

    Even the exposure of the stage-managed emails haven’t put things right. Many voters have tuned out what has become a complex story about impenetrable campaign-finance regulations. And because the elections board hasn’t brought suit against Mr. Green, the Republican hasn’t had a chance to clear himself in a court case he’d surely win, insofar as any “crime” here was wholly manufactured by this politicized board.

    We wonder what Senator Russ Feingold thinks of all this. He’s the Wisconsin native son who, along with Republican John McCain, famously spearheaded the federal campaign-finance legislation of 2002, promising healthier politics. It hasn’t worked out that way.

    Instead, voters have been treated to the muzzling of political activists, the policing of the Internet by federal bureaucrats, partisan attempts to shut down opposition groups and spectacles like this in Wisconsin. This is reform?

    Y’all suck.  You just do.

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