Murphy’s Law

  David Prosser In the summer of 2008, I was contacted by a source who indicated that Justice David Prosser was interested in publishing a piece in Milwaukee Magazine. This was not long after news stories ran describing how he handled an accusation of clergy sex abuse back in 1978, when he was an Outagamie County District Attorney. At least one media outlet wrongly described Prosser as a Catholic, which gave the misleading impression he had bent over backward to accommodate leaders of his own religion. The incident also occurred more than two decades before the issue of clergy sex…

  “Scott Walker should watch out. Pretty soon they’re going to start calling him Scott Waukesha.” This classic line came from Steve Filmanowicz, at the time an aide to then-Mayor John Norquist. Filmanowicz was responding to a proposal from Walker, early in his tenure as Milwaukee County executive, that seemed to have more benefit for Waukesha than Milwaukee County. Walker had a track record by then: In his days as assembly representative from Wauwatosa, he had frequently voted in favor of legislation that hurt the city of Milwaukee. Still, he was reelected twice in non-partisan races for County Executive and…

  Scott Walker As they gear up to face recalls, some Republican legislators are complaining that their message hasn’t gotten through to the public. The implication is that the media was listening more to the pro-union side and to the GOP’s rationale for eliminating most collective bargaining rights. My impression is that the media was madly scrambling to understand what Gov. Scott Walker was doing and why, without being able to get the full story. The Walker administration’s strategy seemed to involve moving as quickly as possible before enough opponents could scream bloody murder. In doing so, Walker put his…

  Scott Walker The popular liberal view of Gov. Scott Walker is that he is simply a tool of industrialist David Koch, cynically crushing the unions to please his overmasters. I don’t buy it. I think Walker truly believes in what he is doing. He is a small town boy, raised in Delavan, an Eagle Scout and son of a minister who was raised to believe in quite conservative values. If he was not such a true believer, he might be more modulated in his views, something I suspect many Republican legislators would secretly welcome. For the governor could be…

  Tommy Thompson, Tom Ament, Scott Walker This is a story that tells how state benefits – and state power – works. In 1994, former governor Tommy Thompson was running for reelection to his third term. He wanted to win by a wide margin to boast his chances of being considered as a possible candidate for president or vice-president of the United States. So Thompson let union leaders know he was open to improving the pension for state employees. The overture worked. The state employees union backed Thompson in 1994 and again in 1998. And Thompson made good on his…

  Scott Walker Back in 1989, I did an in-depth feature on former state teachers’ union leader Morris Andrews called “The Devil on Knob Hill.” Conservatives loved it because it laid bare his political style, revealing the methods he used to greatly increase the power of his union and the salary and benefits of the teachers. In essence, he took an occupation that offered poor pay and little prestige, and made it a desirable profession. The key to his approach was to find ways to drive up per-pupil spending in Wisconsin’s schools. By the late 1980s, my story noted Wisconsin…

Wow. Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to slash state employee benefits and bargaining rights is a breathtaking proposal, so bold and clear that it forces everyone to take sides. I have in the past criticized the abuses of government benefits in Wisconsin, but those have occurred for selected groups of people (mostly, Milwaukee County and Milwaukee Public Schools employees). But is the average state employee getting some kind of sweetheart deal? The Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance found that the average state worker earned $53,703. This is driven by pay for educators, from teachers to school superintendents, who made up 58 percent of…

You really have to hand it to Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, the Republican congressman from Wisconsin’s Fifth District. He is unapologetic about how he benefits from government wages and benefits – and all the financial perquisites of his office – even as he rails against government spending. Sensenbrenner’s fallback philosophy on many issues is that the free market is the solution. Thus, Sensenbrenner opposes the health care reform act passed under President Barack Obama and instead calls for a “market-based system” of health insurance. But Sensenbrenner himself is covered by the federal health insurance plan, which offers much better coverage…

“The rich are different,” as F. Scott Fitzgerald once declared, but I doubt if he meant quite so different as retail tycoon John Menard. His skinflint mentality, harsh methods of handling employees, and laughably inept methods of evading environmental laws all seem to reflect a man who lives in a world of his own. On the one hand, he is the world’s 136th-richest man, worth $5.5 billion, according to the most recent rating by Forbes magazine. Yet he does anything to pinch pennies, including finding cheap and environmentally harmful ways of handling toxic wastes that have resulted in fines against the…

Rep. Jeff Stone (R-Greenfield) is running for Milwaukee county executive. He is also one of the authors of a bill that could discourage many Milwaukeeans from voting, particularly minorities. That doesn’t seem like the most inclusive way to run for office in this county. The bill would require all voters to have photo ID when they vote. The ostensible reason for this is that the voting system is riddled with fraud. Stone and the Republicans have been arguing that our voting system needs reform since 2004. Prior to the 2004 presidential race, GOP officials claimed there would be as many…