GOP Bullsh*t Mountain, Obamacare 11-13 style

Lot of lies about Obamacare are continuing this week, as the computer registration program's glitches are getting worked on, and I want to go over some of these developments, and help to remind you of a past that Republicans don't want you to recall.

1. Bryan Beutler in Salon.com rightfully puts Obama's now-infamous and incorrect quote of "If you like your health plan, you can keep it," into context. If you recall how things were this time 4 years ago, the GOP was using deceptive Frank Luntz talking points about "government options" and "government takeovers" of the health care industry.

Part of it can be attributed to the Democrats’ elephantine memory of Bill Clinton’s failed attempt to overhaul the healthcare system. It turns out that the biggest obstacle facing anyone trying to reform the healthcare system is that you can’t do it without creating some amount of disruption, and most people in the country have insurance they’re pretty happy with. So Obama wanted to minimize not just the disruption but the fear of disruption itself. A fair critique of Obamacare is that it leaves too many of the worst parts of the old system in place, but that’s no consolation if you took Obama at his word.

Another part of the story, though, is that he was responding to an incredible amount of bullshit...

Noble lies have in many ways defined the debate over the Affordable Care Act, but the vast majority of them have been lies conservatives told in a failed effort to nix reform. Death panels are the most famous such lie. Another is that Obamacare is destroying the economy, creating a part-time labor pandemic and a major obstacle to recovery from the great recession. A third is that it will blow up the debt.

A fourth, also still with us, is that Obamacare is a stalking horse for socialized healthcare. (I wish it was!)

Given all of this noise being thrown around by the GOP (and amplified by right-wing radio and Faux News), Obama felt he had to reassure people that the changes in Obamacare would not be a major disruption to most people's lives, especially those that already had insurance.

Now this doesn't make what Obama said OK, precisely because it was predictable that some insurance companies and businesses would use Obamacare as an excuse to hurt their current customers, and turn the exchanges into the back-door public option that it is. What Obama should have done is been tougher and said "If you're currently insured, you'll keep your plan, unless your insurance company refuses to raise its coverage to an acceptable standard, or your employer wants to be cheap and shed costs. In that case, we can insure you through the exchanges." But of course, this was the Obama that was naively clinging to the belief that he was a ""post-partisan" president that should work with TeaBag Republicans, and not put the spotlight on businesses who were screwing over their customers. And he's now paying the price for that naivete.

2. Jon Stewart used Obama's "If you like your health care, you can keep it" statement to start up a segment where he ended up destroying Faux News and Republicans for lying their asses off about what Obamacare does and does not do, and also on how they're lying over what effects it is having on the insurance market.



But then again, all of the right-wing volume on Obamacare glitches is just another trip up what Stewart accurately called "Bullshit Mountain", a right-wing bubble-world of misinformation.

3. And when Obamacare is fully in place in early 2014, the Republicans trying to take political advantage of the glitches are going to look even worse (and we better not allow people to forget what they said). It's not like the current registration difficulties are leading to major changes in people's opinions about Obamacare. A recent Reuters poll showed that nationwide approval for Obamacare actually went UP in October to 47 percent from 44 in September, and this is particularly true among those who need Obamacare for their insurance.

The uninsured view the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, more favorably since online marketplaces opened - 44 percent compared with 37 percent in September, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll. It found that 56 percent oppose the program compared with 63 percent in September.

A higher proportion of the uninsured also said they are interested in buying insurance on the exchanges, with 42 percent in October, saying they were likely to enroll compared with 37 percent in September. The results have a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

"The launch of the exchanges, that's the first real world event for a lot of people," said Chris Jackson, an Ipsos pollster. "There's been this sense that once people got familiar with it, public opinion would start to move in its direction."

And I'd imagine it'll do even better once people's coverage begins, and folks look around in Summer 2014 and realize the world didn't end, unlike what the Republicans have claimed would happen over the last 4 years.

But if the Republicans want to keep trying to TeaBag Obamacare, especially when they have to come to another budget deal in December and January, they might want to keep in mind that Obamacare repeal was a LOSER in the recent election for governor in Virginia. Washington Post's Greg Sargent reports that only 27% of Virginians wanted Obamacare to be repealed, and Gov-elect Terry McAuliffe's pollster says Ken Cuccinelli's anti-Obamacare stance turned off more voters than it turned on.

“We tested Cuccinelli’s brag that he was the first attorney general to sue to stop Obamacare,” [Geoff] Garin said. “That actually made more voters less likely to support him than more.”

“A majority disapproved of the Affordable Care Act, but in Virginia, as elsewhere, we found that a lot of these voters want to fix the law,” Garin said. “Cuccinellis’ position on Obamacare actually supported what we were saying about him, which is that he was extreme and supported a national Tea Party agenda.”

So please proceed with your no-solution bashing of the Obama Administration and Obamacare, GOPs. It'll lead to a whole lotta Dem wins in 2014.

John Doe Deux and other GOP money-laundering

This is an outstanding rundown by Lisa Kaiser of the Shepherd Express, showing the large number of right-wing organizations that have popped up in Wisconsin over the last 3 years (i.e. the Citizens United era). In addition to the remarkable way these folks launder funds from one group to the other, starting with DC orgs like Club for Growth, AFP/Koch and the Republican Governors Association, going down to the Bradley machine and its propaganda outlets (Wisconsin Distorter, MacIver, etc.), and over to connected GOPs like Scooter Jensen, R.J. Johnson, Luke Hilgemann and John Connors.

This comes on the heels of Brendan Fischer at the Center for Media and Democracy exposing the many ways GOP mega-donor Terry Kohler has created these front groups gotten people like Connors, R.J. Johnson, and Johnson's wife to run the day-to-day operations), and tried to hide just how much he calls the shots for these fronts. The Journal-Sentinel revealed during its look into the United Sportsmen scandal (click here for a brief recap) that Kohler was right at the center of that scam.

According to open records requests for communications with lawmakers about the group, Kohler personally reached out to Republican lawmakers on the budget committee and urged that they support "a Sporting Heritage Legacy Grant to the United Sportsmen." (This revelation contradicted [then-State Rep. and current paper industry lobbyist Scott] Suder’s earlier statements that the grant was not being steered towards United Sportsmen and was meant to be competitive.)

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, a long-time member and leader of ALEC, called Kohler a “good friend” and a "big supporter" of Republicans.

"If Terry sends me a letter, I read it," Fitzgerald told the Journal-Sentinel.

You know, Hillary Clinton was laughed at by many when she said this 15 years ago-

But I do believe that this is a battle. I mean, look at the very people who are involved in this — they have popped up in other settings. This is — the great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it - is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president. -Hillary Clinton

Not so funny today, now that it's pretty clear that there is a right-wing cabal calling the shots for the Wisconsin GOP, trying to get all the benefits of sending large amounts of money to promote right-wing causes, but without having their role be exposed. Both Lisa Kaiser and Brendan Fischer have done great work in showing the tentacles of these groups and the scummy oligarchs who fund them, and I highly suggest you let others be aware of it, so they can call out the next fake GOP front groups when they inevitably appear for the 2014 elections.

WisGOP austerity leading to double-digit increases in welfare

Here's an interesting item in tomorrow's Joint Finance Committee meeting. They have what are know as "Section 13.10 meetings", and they happen at the JFC every couple of months to deal with adjustments in situations. It usually requires a reallocation of budgeted funds in some way, and the item I wants to go over includes welfare, which has exploded in the last year in Fitzwalkerstan.

W-2 (or Wisconsin Works) is the program that gives assistance and some money for people below a certain level of income. According to this week's LFB report on W-2, the Walker Administration feels comfortable releasing some funds it had held back due to a dispute with the feds over how it billed certain services. Basically, the state won't have to pay back all of the funds it claimed with one of its methods, so that money can be used elsewhere.

But the problem is that the Walker folks predicted that the welfare rolls would shrink in Wisconsin, and instead they have gone way up over the last year. As a result, the state needs millions in additional funds to make up the difference.

Coinciding with the implementation of the new 2013-2016 W-2 agency contracts on January 1, 2013, caseloads and expenditures began to increase in January, 2013. As a result, additional funding of $9,882,500 in 2013-14 and $8,402,000 in 2014-15 was provided for W-2 benefit payments by the Legislature under 2013 Act 20. The increase in funding for W-2 benefit payments assumed that caseloads and expenditures would decline by 1% per month, beginning April, 2013. In addition, Act 20 changed statutory provisions to codify the practice under the 2013-2016 W-2 agency contracts of having DCF, rather than a W-2 agency, making W-2 benefit payments.

With the exception of expenditure amounts in March, 2013, declining from February, 2013, W-2 paid caseloads and expenditures have increased every month through September, 2013, in CY 2013...

The caseload in CY 2013 has increased 15.6% from January, 2013, through September, 2013. Monthly expenditures increased 18.4% over this same time period.

LFB goes onto say that if the amount of expenses and W-2 enrollment remains at those high September 2013 levels, then the state will have to come up with another $16.9 million until the end of this year to fully fund W-2, since they budgeted a much lower amount of cases. The Governor has only asked for $9.9 million of these funds at this time, and instead will use the rest of the money to go to a minor program targeting at-risk youth in Milwaukee, provides Medicaid's lapse for this budget, and leave around $7 million unfunded as of this time.

Now the key question for tomorrow is this. Will the GOP-run Joint Finance Committee fully fund W-2, or compromise and approve Walker's lower level of funding? Or do they look at these numbers, and say "Let the poor fry!", and not fund it at all? I'd keep an eye on this, because will the GOPs go full-on Bagger, will they take the middle ground, or will they use some of their alleged surplus to help some of the people being increasingly left behind in the Age of Fitzwalkerstan? I think the answer will tell a lot.

But one thing there is no doubt about is that for an increasing amount of low-income Wisconsinites, it's not working, despite the Governor's talking up of the (tepid) increase of jobs in the state. It also makes you wonder if it's time to raise the state's minimum wage and other wage structures, because we should not be seeing a 17.4% year-over-year increase in W-2 cases if more people are allegedly working unless people are not getting paid SQUAT. The large amount of low-wage jobs is a real problem in this country and especially here, and it's something that should be hit at hard by any candidate looking to grab bystanders, because it illustrates the real, deep problem of the two-tier society that everyone can see, but far too few politicians want to talk about.

Real health care moochers- drug companies

Two stories out today on settlements involving the Wisconsin Department of Justice that should remind you just how rotten to the core a whole lot of our medical and prescription drug industry has been over the recent years.

1. The U.S. Department of Justice announced a settlement with Johnson and Johnson where the corporation will pay a $2.2 billion settlement related to deceptive marketing and distribution of prescription drugs. The drugs were mostly given to children, adolescents, and seniors, and Johnson and Johnson deceived on what the drugs should be allowed for, and paid off doctors and agencies to make sure their drugs were prescribed.

The cases, which date from the late 1990s through the early 2000s, involve alleged kickbacks to doctors and pharmacies to promote the antipsychotic drugs Risperdal and Invega, and a heart drug, Natrecor. The widely anticipated agreement was one of the largest health-care fraud settlements in U.S. history.

Federal investigators accused a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary of promoting Risperdal for controlling anxiety and aggression in elderly dementia patients, as well as for treating behavioral problems in other “vulnerable” populations, such as children and the mentally disabled, even though the Food and Drug Administration initially approved the drug only for schizophrenia. Officials said the company also promoted off-label uses for Invega and “made false and misleading statements about its safety and efficacy.”

In addition to overly-expansive proscribing of the pills, there were reports of awful side effects, including ,a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/edsilverman/2012/01/20/after-the-risperdal-trial-jj-looks-more-like-humpty-dumpty/"> studies that pointed to an increased risk of diabetes (with courtroom testimony indicating J&J buried those studies from the public), and numerous alleged instances of young boys growing breasts after taking the drugs. It appears to be a flagrant example of late '90s and 2000s corporate greed overtaking any semblance of responsible administration of drugs, and a lack of caring about who was damaged as long as the monthly quotas were hit.

Locally, Wisconsin is one of many states that will join in the settlement, as the state's DOJ announced today. According to today's release, $24 million will go back to the state's Medicaid program, which will help to pay the extra bills we have due to Gov. Walker's decision to turn down Obamacare funding.

2. And the Medicaid program received funds as part of another settlement with drug companies doing seamy items. McKesson and First Data bank ran through an elaborate, years-long scheme where they inflating pill prices, ripping off the state's taxpayers in the process. You can read about the whole deception here, with the scam starting in Summer 2001, and continuing through much of the 2000s. With this settlement, the state gets its money back from McKesson's Bush-era scam, and First Data's negligence (or worse, cooperation) in allowing it to go through.

Under the terms of the settlement agreement, McKesson has paid the State $13,916,115.60 and First DataBank has provided the State $276,881.25 in credits for its services. The McKesson settlement payment included $11,596,763 in restitution to Wisconsin Medicaid and $2,319,352.60 for attorneys’ fees and costs.

In Wisconsin, it is unlawful for any person or company to make representations that are untrue, misleading or deceptive with respect to the sale of pharmaceuticals. McKesson reported false, fraudulent and inflated average wholesale prices to First DataBank, Inc., who in turn published this false information, causing the Wisconsin Medicaid program to overpay for the drugs it purchased.

Combined with the first settlement, that looks like $37 million into the Medicaid program, which might go a long way toward closing the $52 million gap in Medicaid that is projected. Won't do much good for the future years, but at least it might keep even more severe cuts from happening.

This type of corporate fraud was a major part of the "freedom" of what Tea Baggers were calling the "greatest health care system in the world" 3-4 years ago. As Tom Tomorrow brings up in "This Modern World", it's what you get when you have a health care system run by Dr. Hand.

Oh, but it's poor people that mooch off the system, right Dr. Hand? It's not these corrupt drug companies. Suuuure it is.

2010s capitalism- Wealth creation and lobbying > Job creation

Two reports sum up how this country's economy has devolved into a two-tier society.

In Racine, SC Johnson and Company announced plans to lay off 200 employees on Friday. Is that because of a downturn in business or related supply-and-demand issue? Not exactly.

SC Johnson has had five years of record sales and profits, and the fiscal year that ended June 30 was its best ever, Semrau said. But she said the consumer products industry is changing fast and SC Johnson is trying to position itself better to compete with its main competitors: Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Clorox and Reckitt Benckiser.

"There are two ways to do what we do: You invent the brand or you buy a brand," [spokeswoman Kelly]Semrau said. "... But sometimes acquiring is faster and better because people already know about it."

Buying other companies is expensive, however, and SC Johnson is trying to set aside more cash for future acquisitions, she said.

That's right, SC Johnson is letting 200 people go so they have to get more cash to pay for mergers. Nothing to do with production or efficiency, just to hoard profits to buy out other companies.

And this may stun you, but SC Johnson doesn't just use those record profits to buy up companies, but also to pay big bucks for DC lobbyists and politicians. According to Open Secrets, SC Johnson's corporation and employees gave more than $295,000 to DC lobbyists in 2012, and more than $75,000 to Congressional candidates in the 2012 election cycle. SC tends to spread around their political campaigns, giving about 3/4 to Republicans and 1/4 to Democrats, and $3,500 of those funds found their way to the guy who "represents" Racine in Congress, Paul Ryan.

                            We know who you work for, kid.

That type of lobbying paid off for SC Johnson in 2005, when Purty Mouth Pau-lie promoted a bill suspending import taxes on certain products to help SC Johnson's profit margins.

"I rise today to introduce legislation on behalf of SC Johnson, a family-owned and family-managed company," Ryan stated in prepared text inserted into the Congressional Record. "The company is a global manufacturer and marketer of a broad range of well known consumer household brands including Windex, Raid, Glade, Pledge, Edge shaving gel, Ziploc and Scrubbing Bubbles. SC Johnson has 12,000 employees worldwide and 3,000 employees located in Racine, WI."

Ryan then got down to the air-freshener business. "The two bills that I am offering today will help accomplish this important objective by suspending duties for multiple components of unique air freshener products that are imported from abroad and incorporated into finished products assembled by SC Johnson in the United States," he stated. "One of the devices is a continuous-action device that pumps fragrance throughout a room. The other device is plugged into an electrical outlet and diffuses warmed fragrance throughout an area. No comparable products are produced in this country. Suspending the tariffs will bring down SC Johnson's costs of doing business at home."

I also coudn't help but notice that in the same day that the report of SC Johnson's layoffs came out, 47 million Americans got a reduction in food stamp benefits. And if Rep. Ryan and his fellow House Republicans had their way, several million more lower-income people would see further cuts to food aid and related programs.

Put the SC Johnson layoffs together with its lobbying successes and the War on the Poor, and is it really a surprise that the top 1% got 11.2% richer between 2009 and 2011, while the other 99% got 0.4% poorer? Is it really a surprise that the Dow Jones industrial average is up 136% since March 2009, while at the same time, median household income is DOWN 4.4%. When you have a government and corporate system that emphasizes paper wealth over real jobs, and use tax and spending policy to benefit campaign contributors over citizens, this is a natural result. Trickle-down? More like "funneling up".

It's the type of politics that raises demand for one product in particular- guillotines.

The latest in the Obamacare media fail and sabotage

A couple of video links and other discussions on this Friday evening for you, exposing just how badly our mainstream local and national media do in discussing issues.

The first is an epic Jon Stewart takedown of the media acting surprised that Jon Stewart would be criticize Obama and his Administration because of some of the implementation issues surrounding Obamacare. As Jon brings up, it's kind of his JOB to make fun of public figures, but like a lot of issues, our media doesn't seem to interested into why that might be.

It even has an appearance by the "Go f*ck yourselves" choir!



Ed Schultz also discussed Obamacare this week, and took the media to take for not discussing GOP sabotage and lies to account, particularly about the fact that scam insurance is getting replaced by insurance that actually covers things.



Ed asks the legitimate question "Why does Kentucky get it so right, and a number of other states that are rejecting Obamacare get it so wrong? Republican-led states get it wrong?" He rightly asks the media to "get off its ass" and instead of caring more about conflict and politiCS, start asking questions about the poliCY, and what it does.

Amazingly, it is DC Villager rag Politico that did get off its ass, with an article called "The Obamacare Sabotage Campaign."

The opposition was strategic from the start: Derail President Barack Obama’s biggest ambition, and derail Obama himself. Party leaders enforced discipline, withholding any support for the new law — which passed with only Democratic votes, thus undermining its acceptance. Partisan divisions also meant that Democrats could not pass legislation smoothing out some rough language in the draft bill that passed the Senate. That left the administration forced to fill far more gaps through regulation than it otherwise would have had to do, because attempts — usually routine — to re-open the bill for small changes could have led to wholesale debate in the Senate all over again.

But the bitter fight over passage was only the beginning of the war to stop Obamacare. Most Republican governors declined to create their own state insurance exchanges (Governor Scott Walker did this Wisconsin). — an option inserted in the bill in the Senate to appeal to the classic conservative preference for local control — forcing the federal government to take at least partial responsibility for creating marketplaces serving 36 states — far more than ever intended.

Then congressional Republicans refused repeatedly to appropriate dedicated funds to do all that extra work, leaving the Health and Human Services Department and other agencies to cobble together HealthCare.gov by redirecting funds from existing programs. On top of that, nearly half of the states declined to expand their Medicaid programs using federal funds, as the law envisioned. (Wisconsin was one of those states as well)

And MAL does a great job showing how Gov. Walker's sabotage is especially disgusting given that this guy has lived off of taxpayer-funded health care his entire adult life.

We need to stay on the reality that Republicans have no plan to assist the uninsured, and actively have pursued policies making it tougher for them to be insured. We cannot allow the media to turn it into political game that relieves the GOPs of responsibility for the sedition they are practicing on the American people.

This week in WisGOP school privatization scams

The war on public education in Wisconsin continues, with more evidence that GOP-led privatization and curriculum control is failing the state. This has shown in 2 different stories that emerged over the last 2 days.

1. The first involves the Department of Public Instruction releasing information on the first group of students included in the expanded voucher program that was part of the budget passed by the GOP-run Legislature, and signed by Governor Walker.

For the 2013-14 school year, there are 512 students receiving a voucher, which totals 499.9 full-time-equivalent (FTE) students. Four-year-old kindergarten students attending partial day programs are counted as 0.5 FTE or 0.6 FTE, depending on the services provided. Of students receiving vouchers this year, 406 (79 percent) did not attend a Wisconsin public school last year. Twenty-one percent of students (106) were from public schools and 73 percent (371) attended a private school during the 2012-13 school year.

Participating Appleton and Green Bay/De Pere private schools have the highest voucher enrollment, each with 53 FTE students. Private schools in Oshkosh are enrolling 49 FTE voucher students for the 2013-14 school year, followed by Wisconsin Rapids with 43 FTE; the Eau Claire/Altoona area with 37 FTE; and Manitowoc with 36 FTE students.

And even those numbers don't give you an indication of the scam that this expanded voucher system is proving to be. When you account for all students that attended ANY type of school in Wisconsin last year, the private school percentage goes up to 75.9%, and another 2.5% were homeschooled. 22 others didn't attend school at all, and many of them also might have been going to private school this year before they received a voucher.

So at least 3/4 of those who got vouchers ALREADY WOULD HAVE GONE TO SCHOOLS LIKE THIS, which means the schools (via the families) are getting nothing short of a taxpayer-funded subsidy for these students, and trading it for any tuition costs. And yes, every one of these schools are Christian-based, with more than 3/4 being Catholic.

So we're giving straight cash to churches, which very likely is going to "other needs" outside of education (and very possibly to things no public school would ever be allowed to get with), while taking money away from every other public school district in the state to pay for this program. And there's no real evidence that these schools do any better in educating students. Even the right-leaning Politico called out the bad performance of voucher schools this month.

In Milwaukee, just 13 percent of voucher students scored proficient in math and 11 percent made the bar in reading this spring. That’s worse on both counts than students in the city’s public schools. In Cleveland, voucher students in most grades performed worse than their peers in public schools in math, though they did better in reading.

In New Orleans, voucher students who struggle academically haven’t advanced to grade-level work any faster over the past two years than students in the public schools, many of which are rated D or F, state data show.

And speaking of tests and school standards, that was part of the next level of GOP education fail.

2. Wisconsin was one of 45 states to go along with nationalized, Common Core standards in 2010, but the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee inserted a provision into the last budget allowing for reconsideration about the standards. As part of that GOP-approved provision in the budget, the Legislature and DPI have held hearings in various locations of the state to discuss how Common Core would work in Wisconsin, and whether the state should stick with it.

Yesterday, Rep. Christine Sinicki pulled back the curtain on these hearings, saying she would not continue as a Dem reprentative to these Common Core hearings, and denounced them as a GOP-led sham.

It has become painfully clear that this committee and its activities are occurring at the behest of interested parties outside of this Legislature, and even this state. I believe that this SCCCS is primarily a roadshow, in conjunction with the Republican National Committee (RNC) and its April 2013 resolution, to distract from that party’s recent national failures. The general criticisms of the Common Core Standards here in Wisconsin echo the extreme statements coming out of the RNC, which is a campaign organization, and other Republican sources in Washington, D.C. and around the country.

This extremism about common standards, not to mention public education in general, seems to emanate from the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party. And in turn, they have attracted another extreme and very rich ally in the national John Birch Society (JBS), which is conveniently headquartered here in Wisconsin. Each of the SCCCS’s informational hearings have featured speakers suggested to the SCCCS chairs by the JBS, and whose travel expenses from distant parts of the country have been paid for by the American Opinion Foundation (AOF), a proud arm of the Birch Society. On Wisconsin Eye video of the Eau Claire SCCCS hearing, these invited speakers from other states say, bizarrely, that they don’t know who it was that called and invited them but that, upon arrival, they were handed expense checks issued by AOF (which they then show the committee members). In the meantime, actual Wisconsin educators who have attended the hearings on their own initiative have often been turned away from testifying due to the bulk of attention and time being reserved for invited speakers.

On top of the above, the last straw for me as a Milwaukee legislator has been the omission of Milwaukee Public Schools in the SCCCS’s hearing schedule. MPS is the state’s largest school district and its educators have already spent thousands of hours designing curricula for hundreds of different classrooms under the guidance of the Common Core Standards. These experienced staff should have had the chance to talk about their successful effort with the CCS without having to drive hours away to do so.

Blue Cheddar has more on the John Birch connections, with video of the meeting Rep. Sinicki references. It is also worth mentioning that the Wisconsin public school officials that have testified at these meeting have almost universally said that they want the state to continue to adopt Common Core. If the state would not do so, it would cause districts to have to go back to the drawing board, wasting many hours that have been spent adjusting school curricula and standards, which would likely hurt public schools' performance and morale of staff.

Not surprisingly, that doesn't matter to the bratty kids that define today's WisGOP. And they weren't going to let Sinicki's statement about the Tea Party-led effort to screw up Common Core go quietly. Democurmudgeon does a good job laying out today's low-class insults and borderline misogyny by Waukesha County GOP Sen. Paul Farrow and fellow Bagger Rep. Jeremy (let the homeschoolers play for whoever they want) Thiesfeldt. That might impress the dead-enders that listen to Milwaukee hate radio, but it sure doesn't help our state figure out the best way to teach its K-12 students.

Of course, screwing up public schools isn't something that concerns today's GOP, in fact, they'd probably prefer it, so they could justify cutting further aid to those schools, and sending more money to vouchers, who in turn send the money back to GOP legislators in the form of campaign contributions. Look at how convicted criminal Scooter Jensen is trying to buy the South Milwaukee-area Assembly race for voucher puppet Jessie Rodriguez.

Given that we know that facts and results don't matter to today's WisGOP, only money and power do, it means they won't adjust their thinking on their own. So we have to take these radical haters of public education out of office, and put the failed school privatization movement into the dustbin of Wisconsin history, before we lose any more of one of our state's few economic advantages- strong public schools. With three GOP-leaning-but-winnable Assembly seats being decided in the next 50 days, there's no better time than now to start making these bums pay.