Now that's a first-term job disaster

Saw that lame jobs report come out on Friday, with only 80,000 seasonally-adjusted jobs added in June, and a tepid average of 75,000 a month since March. It looks like Obama's job-creating record isn't up to snuff, and that lack of performance is probably a good reason to get rid of him. I mean, look at this chart of job losses. We're not even close to coming back.

Yep unacceptable disaster, Obama isn't going to make it. Whoops, hold on a second, something doesn't look right. Let me check the data again.

I apologize. That graph is actually the performance of GEORGE BUSH'S FIRST TERM, including the 6 months before he took office. The start of Dubya's tenure is marked by the 0.00% number, and it runs until June 2004. As you can see, at this point 8 years ago, private sector employment was down 1.6% in the 41 months that Bush had been in office, or nearly 1.8 million jobs lost since January 2001. The only thing keeping the economy from complete disaster was the 766,000 government jobs that had been added in the same time, lowering total job losses to just over 1 million.

OK, let's look at Obama's first 41 months (including the last 3 months of weak job gains), then compare them with Bush, and see how it measures up. As before, 0.00% marks the start of each president's term.

That's right, Obama now leads Bush at the same point in his first term, and not by a little. This is even more remarkable when you see how things were bottoming out when Obama took office, with 3.5 million jobs wiped out in the last 6 months of the Bush years, and 3.4 million gone in Obama's first 6 months. The bottoming out of the Obama losses were in February 2010, right around the time that Census hiring started to kick in, and stimulus projects began to get cranked up full-force (lots of stimulus funding was passed down to states and localities, who had to bid up and prepare projects, which takes a few months to do).

And the Obama jobs numbers show this acceleration in momentum, unlike the Bush years, where it took until Bush's 3rd year in office for jobs to be gained (in no small part due to war spending and an unsustainable housing bubble). I'm going to use the Wisconsin fiscal year of July to June to illustrate, starting in the July before both Bush and Obama were elected, and then going to now, which makes for a 4-year sample size, and also gives each president a pass for their first 5 months of office.

Job change, July-June, Bush and Obama
Year "before" office-
Bush +0.16% total, -0.04% private
Obama -4.77% total, -5.93% private

Year 1 of office
Bush -1.27% total, -1.88% private
Obama -0.37% total, -0.60% private

Year 2 of office
Bush -0.41% total, -0.54% private
Obama +0.99% total, +1.79% private

Year 3 of office
Bush +1.23% total, +1.48% private
Obama +1.35% total, +1.78% private

Yep, that's correct. Obama has beaten Bush's record in jobs for each of the 3 years following each president's first 6 months in office. This is despite the disaster that Obama was handed from the year before he took over, and despite sizable cutbacks in public sector employment (compared to "small government" Bush, who had public employment go up in his first 3 years).

And for those of you who think the last 3 months might be a harbinger of the economy starting to stall out? Let me remind you what things looked like this time last year, and what happened right after the 2nd Quarter.

Avg. monthly job change around Q2 2011, 2012
3 mos. before 2Q- 2011- +192K total, +212K private. 2012 +226K total, +226K private
2Q job change- 2011- +130K total, +158K private. 2012 +75K total, +91K private
6 mos. after 2Q- 2011- +146K total, +166K private.

And those 6 months after includes a couple of rough months in Summer 2011 that were a result of Tea Bagger Congress members trying to screw the country up around the debt ceiling. Once that silliness was resolved in August, the U.S. average gains jumped to over 200,000 jobs for the next 6 months.

Don't be surprised if that history repeats, especially when you see that Congress finally passed a 2-year transportation bill at the end of June after months of delays. Let's see if having known quantities for needed infrastructure and keeping student loan rates low helps to give a bit of a boost to the economy (assuming people don't melt from the heat).

But don't count on the media to tell this truth. They need Obama vs. Romney to be a close, high-spending horse race to keep viewers watching. Since Romney's best chance to win is to have a down economy (even then it may not be enough, look at Bush's first-term), watch for the media and GOP spinmeisters to talk down the still-recovering economy, and try to diminish any good news that might result when the economy springs back to life, much as it did in the last half of 2011.

It's up to us to keep these charts and information handy, and hammer down the many lies we are sure to hear from the right in the next 4 months. Obama was given a garbage hand to work with, and has turned it into something acceptable, unlike George Bush, who lost jobs and could not drag those numbers back in his first three years.

Great moments in Journal-Sentinel false equivalency

July 6 Journal-Sentinel headline: "Barrett, Walker both received out-of-state money."

In the body of the story:

Walker raised and spent nearly $7 million in his final days fighting off the June 5 recall against him in an election that likely will double the previous state spending record. He raised 72% of the money from out-of-state contributors in the latest filing, according to a Journal Sentinel analysis. He took in $37.3 million overall, with 62% of that from out of state.

Barrett raised 48% of his money in the latest filing period from out of state. He brought in $6.6 million overall, with 35% coming from out of state.

Yep, Journal Sentinel math says 72% = 48% for the last month, 62% = 35% overall, and $23.1 million from out-of-state = $2.31 million from out-of-state

Yep, Walker got 10 TIMES the out-of-state money Barrett got, but according to the Journal-Sentinel, they both got something from another state, so it's really the same thing.

Well, I got two words for that type of jouralistic analysis. "FUCK" and "YOU."

Welcome to Arizona, Wisconsin

And not just because both states are riddled with idiotic, Tea-baggers politics. If you're in Southern Wisconsin, you've been dealing with Arizona-style heat and lack of rain so far this Summer. 104 in Madison yesterday, and similar readings throughout the Midwest. And as maps from UW-Madison's excellent State Climatology Office show, the last 30 days has featured near-record heat that is well above the average.

It's also featured a wild variety of precipitation, as Superior's floods and other forms of heavy rain have pelted northern Wisconsin, while southern Wisconsin has been bone-dry.

In fact, the U.S. Drought Monitor has now placed Wisconsin into "moderate drought", and those readings were taken on Tuesday, before 2 straight days of 100+ with no rain in that part of the state.

We've already seen effects from Wisconsin's warm 2012 weather with cherry crop failures nearing 80% around Door County, and large maple syrup losses in other parts of the state, mostly due to premature blooming due to the 80-degree March and then reversion to normal temperatures and freezes in April. The losses were enough to make Governor Walker actually do his job and ask the Obama Administration to help farmers cover their losses with federal disaster aid. Sadly, Walker's empathy and desire for Obama assistance doesn't seem to translate over into helping poor people get medical care for calamaties beyond their control. (I'm sure this inconsistency has nothing to do with Walker winning the rural vote in June)

But two big economic winners from all this heat? Electric companies who will see larger-than-expected revenues (Madison came close to an all-time record for electric usage yesterday, and only failed to break it because many people are off work and on vacation), and movie theaters, as people escape the heat for some A/C. Me and my girlfriend did just that on Wednesday the 4th, heading to Sundance in Madison to see "Ted" (pretty darn funny with a good heart, although some will seem familiar if you watch "Family Guy"), and the lines were huge. I'd be very interested in seeing the holiday week box office figures, because I bet they'll be even larger than the normal 4th of July bump because of this brutal heat.

Off to northeastern Wisconsin for a wedding (not mine), and to take off about 15 degrees on the thermometer. Stay cool and safe till then, and I'll be back here when the weather returns to a point of sanity for Wisconsin.

Grow up, grow out of conservatism

Somehow this story didn't surprise me.

Jonathan Krohn took the political world by storm at 2009’s Conservative Political Action Conference when, at just 13 years old, he delivered an impromptu rallying cry for conservatism that became a viral hit and had some pegging him as a future star of the Republican Party.

Now 17, Krohn — who went on to write a book, “Defining Conservatism,” that was blurbed by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Bill Bennett — still watches that speech from time to time, but it mostly makes him cringe because, well, he’s not a conservative anymore.

“I think it was naive,” Krohn now says of the speech. “It’s a 13-year-old kid saying stuff that he had heard for a long time.… I live in Georgia. We’re inundated with conservative talk in Georgia.… The speech was something that a 13-year-old does. You haven’t formed all your opinions. You’re really defeating yourself if you think you have all of your ideas in your head when you were 12 or 13. It’s impossible. You haven’t done enough.”...

“I want to be Jonathan Krohn,” he said, “and I’m tired of being an ideology, and it’s not fun and it gets boring and it’s not who we are as individuals.”

But a quick rundown of his current political stances suggests a serious pendulum swing away from the right.

Gay marriage? In favor. Obamacare? “It’s a good idea.” Who would he vote for (if he could) in November? “Probably Barack Obama.” His favorite TV shows? “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.” His favorite magazine? The New Yorker. And, perhaps telling of all, Krohn is enrolling this fall at a college not exactly known for its conservatism: New York University.

“One of the first things that changed was that I stopped being a social conservative,” said Krohn. “It just didn’t seem right to me anymore. From there, it branched into other issues, everything from health care to economic issues.… I think I’ve changed a lot, and it’s not because I’ve become a liberal from being a conservative — it’s just that I thought about it more. The issues are so complex, you can’t just go with some ideological mantra for each substantive issue.”

This is also called getting experience, learning about reality, and being able to walk in someone else's shoes. And once you do that, it becomes really hard to stay conservative, at least in the 2012 "as heard on talk radio and Fox News" version.

And it also proves the point that Bill Maher made a little over a week ago, in which he referenced Krohn's book, and said that today's GOP are nothing more than people with the menatlity of middle schoolers.



It's absolutely true. Today's GOP are filled with self-absorbed, jealous weaklings who aren't secure enough to listen and learn from others, and never admit that you might be wrong because somehow you think it may be construed as weakness. And when confronted with facts and realitiy that don't go your way, demean the other person and hang with a group of like-minded bullies to snicker and laugh at those "smarty-pants thinkin' and carin'" types.

I can relate, I was one of those types of "victimized" Republicans, constantly whining about how good other people had it...when I was in high school. Then I grew up, learned things, did different things, met people from different backgrounds, and developed into first a Clinton-voting Dem, and eventually the unapologetic liberal I am today.

I think this is why so many Republicans refuse to believe in evolution, because unlike Jonathan Krohn, they don't have the brains or the guts to EVOLVE past 8th grade. So they stay in permanent adolescence, continually whining, screaming, hating and bullying, and then they can't figure out why things keep failing for them.

There's a reason I chose to teach high schoolers and college kids over middle school, and it's the same reason I don't hang with Tea Baggers. There's no sense wasting my time with people who lack the mental capacity, strength, or maturity to analyze, self-reflect and act respectfully. And the class A jerks in both groups are hopeless, only drag you down to their level and leave you wanting to wring their necks because it's apparently the only way they'll learn something from acting the way they are.

Even Walker's own report says leave WRS alone

Not sure why our Governor didn't release this as a Friday news dump, because it sure wasn't the result he and his Wall Street contributors were looking for. Not only is the WRS fully-funded, but Walker's own committee in charge of writing the June 30 report recommended leaving WRS as-is. Of course, part of the reason that this report reached that honest conclusion is because the independent Office of Employee Trust Funds had a key role in analyzing it, instead of handing it entirely off to pro-Walker hacks, who you know were dying to create a fake fiscal crisis to try to sell off the WRS to high-level campaign contributors. As I mentioned yesterday, this is all the more reason we need independent, unionized public employees, so they don't print misleading bullshit like you see out of the DWD's monthly jobs reports.

So let's see some of the reasons why the report felt staying with WRS' defined benefit plan was the best way to go. I'll start with a report on a similar study by one of our underfunded neighbors. (in much of this report, the defined benefit pension system is referred to as "DB" and the 401 (k)-like Defined Contribution system is called "DC")

Minnesota released a study last year on switching to a DC plan, with the following key findings:
1. High transition costs Mercer’s actuarial analysis indicated there would be a $2.76 billion transition cost to Minnesota over the next decade if Minnesota moved from a DB to DC plan for new hires. These transition costs are similar to those found in studies done by other states such as Nevada, Kansas, Rhode Island, New Mexico, and Missouri.
2. Long term costs higher Mercer found that with a funding structure of 5% employer and 5% employee contributions, the ongoing cost of the existing Minnesota DB plans would be less than the cost of a future replacement DC plan.
3. Higher liabilities Employees exiting the DB plan would decrease the funding available, requiring higher contributions. (Note from Jake: this is a great idea if you want to FUBAR the DB pensions and cause a fiscal crisis through mass retirements)
4. Smaller retirement accounts DC plans run the risk of providing inadequately- funded retirement incomes that may lead to higher public assistance costs.
5. Higher fees DC’s grant many individual employees more control over investments, but individuals usually incur higher investment fees and lower returns.
6. Lower efficiency DB plans can provide the same level of income at roughly half the cost of a DC plan because of DB’s superior investment returns and ability to pool longevity risk.

And the study also points out that studies from both California and New York City show that DB plans are much cheaper to run, and usually have better returns that 401(k)-style DC plans.

The experience in Wisconsin with the WRS echoes these positive attributes in other states, and is relatively efficient and inexpensive. The report mentions that

ETF administers the WRS and other benefit programs. ETF’s administrative expenses for fiscal year 2011 were $27,474,300.41 Administrative costs are financed by a separate appropriation and are allocated to the benefit plans in accordance with Wis. Stat. § 40.04. The sources of funds for this appropriation are investment earnings and third-party reimbursements received from the various programs administered by ETF. The State of Wisconsin Investment Board incurs expenses related to investing the trust funds. As authorized by Wis. Stat. § 25.187 (2), these costs are charged directly to the investment income of each fund. State general purpose revenue raised via taxes collected from Wisconsin citizens does not contribute directly to the administration of the WRS.

(Jake note: Walker's own report says NOT A DIME comes for WRS administration comes from the general taxpayer. Please remember this if Walker or Sykes or some other liar tries shenanigans on pensions down the road.)

Administration of the WRS has proven to be very cost efficient. According to a recent public pension fund administration study:
[1]. Annual per-member administrative expenses associated with WRS retirement and disability programs was $51 per member; the median per-member cost of peer systems was $79; and
[2]. ETF employs on full-time equivalent staff person per 2,100 members, compared to the peer median of one per 1,500 members.

Along with ETF operations, pensions don't burden local budgets in Wisconsin as they do in the rest of the U.S. (1.26% of Wisconsin gov't budgets vs. 2.9% nationwide, as it says on Page 26). This seems to be a small price to pay for a huge amount of stability for a large amount of Wisconsinites, which is paid off in added economic activity in our communities many times over.

The report notes that a big reason that WRS maintains its funding is that it is able to adjust pension payments and contributions as the stock market and other investments go up and down.

The “risk sharing” nature of the WRS, which is fairly unique among public employee pension systems, has helped keep WRS funding relatively stable and capable of paying retirement benefit promises. Participants benefit from positive investment returns and share the risk of negative investment returns. Taxpayers do not bear all of the risk of the WRS. For example, retirees have had their pensions reduced by over $3 billion in the past several years.

Changes in employer and employee contribution rates, for example, are linked to trust fund investment performance. In essence, when returns are high, contribution rates can be decreased; when low, rates may have to be increased. Rate changes are determined each year and are effective the following January.

And yes, that might mean that there is some short-term pain for both pensioners, or for current WRS workers. In fact, just in the last week the ETF has mentioned that both public employees and taxpayers may need to pay about 0.50%-1% more next year. This is the source of the $87 million screw-up that Walker and WisGOP made as part of Act 10, as it required half of the contribution to be kicked in by taxpayers in all circumstances. (These things happen when you try to sneak in a major overhaul in less than a week without hearings)

So naturally, this should end the debate as to whether to tinker with the WRS for the next several years, right? OF COURSE NOT. Check out the weasel words from our fair Governor.

"The report released today confirms that both taxpayers and pensioners are getting a great deal with the WRS," Walker said in a statement. "Compared to other states, Wisconsin consistently rates among the best-performing public pension systems in the country.

"I want to be very clear: I am currently not planning to make any substantial changes to the WRS. However, I will continue to work to ensure that the WRS is fiscally sustainable for both taxpayers and retirees."

"Currently not planning to make any substantial changes"??? What kind of crap is that? I'm no Marty Beil fan, but he's right on the money when he says we need to be vigilant with these ALEC lackeys at the Capitol.

In fact, we need to make this dodged bullet a campaign issue, and make all legislators promise that they won't touch the WRS. And if the politicians use Walker-style weaseling, shout from the rooftops that they're going to sell off WRS to Wall Street slime. and use it against them for the 2012 legislative campaigns. To the WisDems' credit, they're looking to not only protect the WRS, some like Sen. Dave Hansen are looking to expand WRS buy-in to private sector workers and small businesses. And as part of that idea hopefully comes a thought that many private sector workers should have:

"If WRS is being run cheaper and better, and gives public employees a stable retirement, why isn't the same thing happening to me and my neighbors in the private sector?"

Yep, why indeed?

Busted ballot bags in the 262? Throw the votes out!

I admit that I'm disgusted and blown away by these reports of possible vote-tampering in a hotly-contested race in a county that borders Milwaukee. I mean, look at the pictures of these things. Sketchy as hell! No way can you trust this result.

Oh wait, those pictures were from Waukesha County in the Kloppenburg-Prosser recount last year. OK, so what did the GAB say about it? Well, here's how righty smear merchants Media TraKKKers put it.

The GAB statement explains that ”a hole in a ballot bag or a missing security tag is not enough evidence alone to discard the ballots inside. The ability to put a hand into a ballot bag is not by itself evidence of fraud.”

Explaining further, the GAB statement details election day procedures that run ballots through an optical scanner, which in turn prints off a data sheet. “Even if the container or bag is somehow opened later, or if the chain of custody is broken, election officials have the original print-out tape from the machine, as well as the electronic memory device from the machine” enabling “election officials to determine the election night vote count.”

Finally, the GAB has established an “internal review process to check each ward’s recount totals against the original canvass totals to look for variances of plus or minus 10 votes.” So far in Waukesha County, the GAB has found “no significant, unexplained variances of vote totals.”

And indeed, the GAB allowed Prosser to keep his seat in what I can chartiably call a disputed manner (or more honestly call corrupt and illegitimate), and continue to denigrate this state.

So flash forward to today. We have another recount of a close election that determines control of a key part of Wisconsin's government, this time the Lehman-Wangaard State Senate election in Racine. And once again, we are seeing concerns over a lack of security over the ballot bags. This time it's the GOP officials interrogating City fo Racine officials because a couple of ballot bags were apparently sealed with packing tape and not in the correct way.

Well, according to the Media TraKKKers article from last year, if no wards have changed by more than 10 votes, the GAB says there's no need to investigate further evidence of fraud. So let's go to the GAB's running totals on the State Senate recount, and see if that's happened.

Nope, biggest change in any 1 ward so far is in a polling place in the Village of Mount Pleasant, where Wangaard gained 6 votes and Lehman 3. Hilariously, the biggest change is not even the City of Racine, where the GOP is concentrating their complaints (I'm sure this has nothing to do with that fact that minorities in the district tend to live in the City of Racine - and that the Racine County GOP doesn't think dark-skinned people's votes aren't as legitimate as white guys' votes).

Then again, as the Root River Siren reminds us, Wangaard isn't calling the shots here- it's GOP operatives and their well-paid lawyers at Michael, Best and Friedrich. And those people do not care about consistency or fairness in elections.

Not surprisingly, our media is failing to honestly cover this part of the story. Because if they did, they would be asking these MBF and WisGOP mouthpieces the following question.

"If you're saying that the ballot bags show the integrity of the election has been compromised and the votes thrown out, couldn't you say the same for the Waukesha County votes that gave David Prosser the election in 2011?"

The mumbling and stumbling and attempts to talk around the Race-seen racism would be priceless. But hey, I'll make this deal with you WisGOP. I'll let you throw out the Racine votes in this race, if you throw out the Waukesha County votes in Prosser-Kloppenburg. And we'll get new people in power in both places.

Works for me if it works for you.

P.S. Excellent article on My Playful Self discussing the black box voting in Wisconsin, and suspicious outcomes as a result. Hey, if you in the GOP now have a problem with this, let's work together to solve it and make it more transparent.

But I bet you in WisGOP don't want it solved, now do you? Scumbags.

What the message should be - public unionism protects the people from the uncaring hacks

I saw a few articles in recent days that illustrated the problem some individuals have with unionized, public employees, and also why we need public sector unions more than ever.

The first is an excellent rundown of the resentment small-town and small-wage Wisconsin has against public sector employees. The reflections from UW professor Katherine Cramer Walsh show how low-income private sector workers could resent people in their own community, but not resent the CEOs and other pro-corporate slime that caused their dire situation.

But Walsh, a lifelong Wisconsin resident whose parents were public school teachers, says she first ran up against the public/private divide when visiting a community in northwestern Wisconsin during the spring of 2008.

She says that a group of loggers, most of whom were self-employed, believed that while schoolteachers may work hard during the year, they have cushy positions. Among the perks: great benefits, health care, summers off and an annual salary of about $50,000 a year. "Nobody in this town makes anywhere near $50,000," says Walsh, paraphrasing comments she heard. "At the lumber mill, they're making $20,000 and losing their fingers!"

Walsh says when she probes further, asking why people see a public employee/private employee divide and not a rich/poor divide, she gets stares of disbelief.

It seems to come down to what is tangible and what can be controlled. Private-sector workers, many of whom are struggling, perceive that a large portion of their taxes are going to pay for the salaries of public workers. A cut to public-employee wages and benefits would, at least in theory, mean lower taxes.

But these same people don't see themselves as having any control over the salaries and benefit packages of CEOs in the private sector, says Walsh. Moreover, they don't really see anything wrong with top executives making big bucks.

"There's very little blame on the private market," says Walsh. "It always comes back to government."

This goes a long way to explaining why these people could be manipulated into voting for a pro-corporate agenda like Scott Walker's that would further diminish their living standards and on-job protections even further- they don't see the damage that deregulation and corporate greed causes on an everyday basis, but they do see the comfortable standard of living teachers and other public employees get in their community. They're also reminded on hate radio about how much better these people allegedly have it, and their resentment of getting screwed in life gets focused on the public employees that have the wages and benefits they want instead of turning their anger on the people who caused their situation.

Another Isthmus article from Marc Eisen has a good solution to this problem of framing- showing how public unionism keeps government from being run by patronage-installed hacks who don't care about the public that pays their salary.

[Albert] Schmedeman came into office in 1932 as the first Democratic governor in 38 years. He was hell-bent on firing state employees and hiring his friends. Fearful of the Democrats' plan to destroy civil service, the nascent state employees association began organizing. Their objectives included a forthright pledge "to extend and uphold the principle of merit and fitness in public employment." There was also the promise to advance the welfare of state employees.

But organizers took it a step further. They also pledged "to promote efficiency in public services" and to reduce to a minimum "overlapping and duplication of services." In other words, they focused not just on their own needs, but also on looking out for the taxpayers. They were outlining a mission — a cause — that reached beyond their own enrichment

This is precisely what a newly focused public employee unionism needs today to regain relevance. The hard truth is that the old industrial- union model doesn't cut it anymore. Public employees aren't working on a factory floor. The old focus on minutely defined job descriptions, lockstep pay levels and prizing longevity over merit has to give way to a sense of mission and professionalism.

....[Kimberlee] Wright joined the state to run the DNR's Stewardship Program, which purchases valuable natural areas. Her contact with her union left her unimpressed. "I paid about $50 per month [in dues] and personally resent not being better represented."

This came crashing home for her when she alleges she was pressured by Gov. Jim Doyle's office to divvy up the stewardship money in a certain way, and she pushed back.....

Wright's little union, she says, was run by "slick insiders who fed us bullshit to further their own interests." She adds, "I couldn't get the time of day from [the leadership]." Wright, who describes herself as pro-labor, says, "You have to invent the idea of a union all over again."

She's right. Civically minded unions are needed as a counterweight.

This is where people such as AFSCME's Marty Beil and WEAC's Mary Bell have failed in the last 18 months. Instead of turning the debate on public employees into an illlustration of why we need an independent public sector that values competence over ass-kissing and politics, they decided to concentrate on the issue of money and gaining power through politics. And sure, it's hard to get anything done in government without having politicians on your side, but Marty and Mary tried to do this through the insider game (remember their idiotic support of Kathleen Falk early on?) instead of continuing to educate the voters ON THE ISSUES.

And when Marty and Mary take their union brothers and sisters as well as the average voter out of the equation, then it shouldn't come as a surprise that the average voter turns off and is more likely to be suckered into "getting even" with public employees by voting for people like Scott Walker.

Lastly, look at the stories that have come out in the last few days regarding new school-board imposed handbooks for teachers in Madison-area districts, to the mass desertions in New Berlin the year after the new handbook took effect. What Act 10 and the daily rantings from hate radio have done is to devalue public service and is encouraging well-qualified individuals from staying in (or considering) public sector jobs.

This devaluing of public service was something Tom Barrett effectively pointed out in his stump speeches, but the DPW and the unions failed to drive this point home during the recall campaign, leaving the Fitzwalkerstanis to be the ones allowed to define the issue, and portray teachers, road workers, fire fighters, and police officers as "takers" instead of the people who stabilize our communities and improve the quality of life for all of us.

And it plays right into the hands of GOP puppet-masters, who want public service to be just another extension of the elected hacks in the Legislature and the Governor's Office, and not to have accountability to anyone but the corrupt bosses who call the shots. I've hit on this before, with the Walker Administration's hiring of the Brian Deschanes, Val Casses and Tim Russells of the world, and Eisen's article accurately points out how independent whistle-blowers at the DNR stopped high-level Walker appointees and corrupt legislators from the 262 area code putting hundreds of homes near Oconomowoc from being at further risk due to negligence from GOP donators at Herr Environmental.

Notably, there was a go-easy policy for a Republican-connected waste hauler accused of serious environmental lapses. Forget the polite euphemisms — the hauler is accused of spreading human shit too thickly on farm fields in Jefferson County.

"One of the neighbors couldn't hang her laundry out to dry, the smell was so bad," says Kimberlee Wright, head of Midwest Environmental Advocates. "This guy was spreading human waste right up to people's property lines."

Channeling his inner Chicago alderman, Republican State Rep. Joel Kleefisch chose to sit in on enforcement meetings between the hauler and DNR staff. He argued for kid-glove treatment of the shit spreader. Can you imagine how intimidated state regulators felt?

But as Seely reported, a number of dedicated midlevel DNR employees still spoke out on how political considerations seemed to be undermining enforcement decisions.

And THIS type of action is what we should be emphasizing, that public employees are the last check the people have on the corruption and hackery that is endemic to today's political system. Public employees must have the freedom to say "NO" without fear of retribution when they see policies and laws being broken, or when they feel the public is being endangered by politicians and corporations who do not care about the consequences of their actions. This line of reasoning needs to be driven hard for the next 4 months, because the public is aware that government is letting them down, but they often don't think about why this is so, and they choose to take out their frustration on "faceless bureaucrats" and their local teachers instead of the people who are really screwing things up.

So the bottom line I see here is that public unionism is needed more than ever in an age of Citizens United and corporate-politician alliances. And we need to speak up and present this truth now, or else the public's last line of defense from the public sector will be obliterated, and we'll all be badly hurt if that occurs.