Barrett Reveals Secret Ingredient that Makes Milwaukee Water Worth 30% More in Taxes

When we started the “Wisconsin Waste Watchers” blog this wasn’t necessarily the kind of waste we anticipated. However, we now understand why Barrett wants to charge so much for water!

From the City that brought you cryptosporidium . . .

Read more at http://wiwastewatchers.blogspot.com/2010/07/barrett-reveals-secret-ingredient-that.html

So when will we start to separate the sewers?

By Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, Washington Post, 7/19/2010

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation’s other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

Read more at http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/

Read the bill at http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/sb1070s.pdf

Because your president, or your US attorney general, didn’t.

P.S. What’s left of it, after a federal judge won’t let a state enforce the fed’s own law!

by Martin Finucane, Globe Staff, boston.com, 7/27/2010

The Massachusetts Legislature has approved a new law intended to bypass the Electoral College system and ensure that the winner of the presidential election is determined by the national popular vote.

“What we are submitting is the idea that the president should be selected by the majority of people in the United States of America,” Senator James B. Eldridge, an Acton Democrat, said before the Senate voted to enact the bill.

Under the new bill, he said, “Every vote will be of the same weight across the country.”

But Senate minority leader Richard Tisei said the state was meddling with a system that was “tried and true” since the founding of the country.

“We’ve had a lot of bad ideas come through this chamber over the years, but this is going to be one of the worst ideas that has surfaced and actually garnered some support,” said Tisei, who is also the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor.

The bill, which passed on a 28-to-9 vote, now heads to Democratic Governor Deval Patrick’s desk. The governor has said in the past that he supports the bill, said his spokeswoman Kim Haberlin.

Under the law, which was enacted by the House last week, all 12 of the state’s electoral votes would be awarded to the candidate who receives the most votes nationally.

Supporters are campaigning, state by state, to get such bills enacted. Once states accounting for a majority of the electoral votes (or 270 of 538) have enacted the laws, the candidate winning the most votes nationally would be assured a majority of Electoral College votes. That would hold true no matter how the other states vote and how their electoral votes are distributed.

Read more at http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/07/mass_legislatur.html?p1=News_links

Join Dan Sebring, Republican candidate
In Wisconsin’s 4th Congressional District
for a brewery tour and meet/greet

on Sunday, August 22nd at 1:00 pm
at Sprecher Brewery, 701 W. Glendale Avenue, Glendale WI

Cost is $20 per person and includes tour, beer and soda sampling, raffles and giveaways.
Come out and support Dan as he takes on Gwen Moore in the upcoming fall election!

Tickets are advance sale only and will not be available the day of the event.
When the 1 pm time slot is full, there will be an additional 2 pm tour time available, based on advance sales.

For more information on Dan, please visit  http://www.dansebringforcongress.com/
Call (414) 321-3605 or email info@dansebringforcongress.com with questions.

by Trevor Loudon, New Zeal, July 26th, 2010

The now closed down JournoList, has caused considerable controversy in recent weeks. According to its opponents, JournoList teamed up some 400 prominent “progressive” journalists in an effort to smooth Barack Obama’s path to the White House.

There have been accusations that “Journolitstas,” deliberately sought to downplay Obama’s association with the Marxist Rev. Jeremiah Wright and tried to smear conservatives or opposing journalists as “racists.”

This post looks at 106 reported “Journolistas” to look for connections or common threads.

Of the known “Jounolistas” and organizations listed below, many can be linked back to two interrelated groups Democratic Socialists of America, the U.S.’s largest Marxist-based organization and the D.S.A.’s “brain,” the Washington DC-based, far left “think tank,” the Institute for Policy Studies.

Between them, D.S.A. and the I.P.S. dominate or influence several organizations affiliated to JournoList, including:

–SNIP–

JournoList was not just a bunch of “liberal’ journos with too much time on their hands.

It was a network of high level opinion makers, united by a “progressive” vision for America. They believed that their superior judgment and insight obligated them to present Americans with a view of reality that they would be too stupid and reactionary to grasp unaided.

At least a few, perhaps many, were committed Marxists who saw journalism, not as a profession, but as a revolutionary tool.

This disgraceful episode should dispel forever the “progressive” lie that the American MainStreamMedia and its “liberal” core, can be trusted to uphold the objective standards of their profession.

Read more at  http://noisyroom.net/blog/2010/07/26/socialist-journolistas/

by Jason Allardyce and Tony Allen-Mills, The Australian July 26, 2010

THE US government secretly advised Scottish ministers it would be “far preferable” to free the Lockerbie bomber than jail him in Libya.

Correspondence obtained by The Sunday Times reveals the Obama administration considered compassionate release more palatable than locking up Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in a Libyan prison.

The intervention, which has angered US relatives of those who died in the attack, was made by Richard LeBaron, deputy head of the US embassy in London, a week before Megrahi was freed in August last year on grounds that he had terminal cancer.

The document, acquired by a well-placed US source, threatens to undermine US President Barack Obama’s claim last week that all Americans were “surprised, disappointed and angry” to learn of Megrahi’s release.

Read more at http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/white-house-backed-release-of-lockerbie-bomber-abdel-baset-al-megrahi/story-e6frg6so-1225896741041

Join the Republican Party of Milwaukee County (RPMC), fellow Republicans and conservatives for a fundraiser to benefit Ron Johnson in his campaign against Senator Feingold for the U.S. Senate.

At the Bavarian Inn, 700 W. Lexington Ave., Glendale, WI 53217
from 5:30pm to 9:00pm.

$30 per person, $60 per couple, $75 (single with a photo of Ron)

Host: $125 (2 tickets an a photo), $250 (4 tickets and a photo), $500 (8 tickets and a photo)

All of the above tickets include a light supper. Cash Bar.

Register online at https://secure.yourpatriot.com/ou/rpmc/190/713/eventsignup.aspx

For further information, call the RPMC at 414-727-1220.

No refunds will be given unless the event is canceled.

DoJ scandal reveals how thousands of military ballots may go uncounted

By Drew Zahn, WorldNetDaily, July 24, 2010

In the wake of the Department of Justice’s New Black Panther Party scandal, a second former DOJ attorney has now come forward, blasting the department for failing to protect American soldiers’ right to vote.

What’s even more alarming, the attorney claims, is that despite congressional mandates passed in 2009 to ensure military personnel overseas can participate in elections, the DOJ’s Voting Section is ignoring the new laws and may allow thousands of ballots to slip through the cracks uncounted in November.

Everybody talks about the problems, but “Taking America Back” actually offers some solutions for what the nation faces. Get it now.

M. Eric Eversole is a former litigation attorney for the Voting Section of the U.S. Department of Justice and an advocate for military voters. In an opinion piece in The Washington Times, Eversole explains how soldiers in the field may be disenfranchised in the 2010 election.

“Absentee ballots must be sent to overseas military voters at least 45 days before an election to give those voters sufficient time to receive and return their ballots,” Eversole explains. “The Military Postal Service Agency goes one step further and recommends that absentee ballots be sent to war zones 60 days before an election.”

But legal complaints, news stories and studies all showed dozens of states failing to give soldiers enough time to vote in the 2008 election – resulting in tens of thousands of soldiers’ mailed ballots that arrived too late to be counted, perhaps enough to swing, for example, Minnesota’s closely contested election of Democrat Senator Al Franken.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=182981

youtube.com, 2:59

CONTACT: Bob Spindell
RPW 4th Cong Dist Chair
414-276-6331
July 23, 2010

The Republican Party of Wisconsin, 4th Congressional District Executive Committee announced it’s unanimous endorsement of 4th Congressional District Republican Candidate Dan Sebring. Running in opposition to incumbent U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, Sebring was a write-in candidate in the 2008 election. He declared his intent to run in the upcoming 2010 election on November 24, 2008, long before current events created today’s very favorable Republican political climate.

A U.S. Navy veteran, Sebring served on the Chief of Naval Operations Intelligence staff at the Pentagon, as well as serving at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A 1975 graduate of New Berlin West High School, former volunteer firefighter, Sebring is the owner of Sebring Garage, a business located at 60th and Howard in Milwaukee. Sebring has lived in the 4th District for the past 23 years and has become a respected member of the community.

Republican Party of Wisconsin, 4th Congressional District Chair Bob Spindell said:

“We are very please and proud to endorse Dan Sebring. Dan and his team have been and are working very hard in this campaign to unseat Gwen Moore. Dan is a conservative small business owner and understands what it is like to operate a business in today’s National and Wisconsin’s increasingly anti-business climate. Along with the Republican Party of Milwaukee County, which also has endorsed Dan, we intend to make sure Dan is the next Congressman from Wisconsin’s 4th Congressional District.”

The Wisconsin’s 4th Congressional District includes the entire City of Milwaukee, Cudahy, St Francis, South Milwaukee, West Milwaukee and portions of West Allis.

###

On Saturday, July 24, we will work to make 65,000 phone calls and knock on 6,500 doors as we head into the final 100 days of the campaign. From 9am-9pm, we will contact voters across the state, and we need your help. Send a message that Wisconsin is ready for new leadership by signing up for a volunteer shift today!

Go to https://spreadsheets1.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dERCM2lvdDZJUklZMGg1Y0k0enhBUnc6MQ#gid=0

You can sign up to volunteer at any of these Milwaukee County offices.

Milwaukee North
311 West Silver Spring, Whitefish Bay

Milwaukee South
3549 East Layton Avenue, Cudahy

Milwaukee West
1233 North Mayfair Road, Suite 301, Wauwatosa

THURSDAY, JULY 22, 2010 from 5 to 7:30 P.M.
$15 / PERSON

DUE TO RAIN, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN MOVED TO

Polish Center, 6941 So. 68th Street, Franklin, WI 53132

http://www.polishcenterofwisconsin.org/directions.html

“Global Warming Update” presented by Representative Jim Ott
Meet Candidates for fall elections
Discuss Issues with Legislators & County Officials
Special Invited Guests Include: County Executive Scott Walker, Lt. Governor candidates Brett Davis, Rebecca Kleefish, David Ross, Attorney General JB Van Hollen, U.S. Senate Candidates Ron Johnson and David Westlake, Pastor David King, Secretary of State Candidate, Scott Feldt, State Treasurer Candidate, 4th Congressional Candidate Dan Sebring. State Senator Mary Lazich, State Representatives Jeff Stone, Mark Honadel, Jim Ott and Leah Vukmir (candidate for State Senate), Jess Ripp, candidate for State Senate, County Supervisor Joe Sanfelippo.

Socialize with Friends and Neighbors
Enjoy a Light Supper and Beverages

RSVP by Monday July 19th
Reply to swsrepublicanclub@yahoo.com
or call 414-421-9337

Make checks payable to Republican Party of Milwaukee County

Flyer is at http://milwaukee.wisgop.info/files/2010/07/2010_sws_lawn_party_invite.pdf

The monthly meeting of the West Allis-West Milwaukee Branch of the Republican Party of Wisconsin will be held at the County Party’s headquarters 1488 S. 84th Street (Yes we have moved to the south end of the building - finally).

The evening will begin at 7:00 pm when both candidates for the 15th Assembly district (currently held by Staskunas) will have the opportunity to speak to the membership for 5-10 minutes. These two candidates are Ron Rieboldt and David Nickel. After they conclude their remarks, the official meeting will commence.

Candidates have come forward, campaigns have been put together and now it is time to get to work!

Come to the meeting and see how YOU can help dump a Democrat while replace them with a Republican.

See you tomorrow,
Kevin M. Soczka, Branch Secretary

by Deroy Murdock, National Review, July 20, 2010

Team Obama marks 18 surprisingly incompetent months in office.

As the Obama administration marks 18 months in power today, no one should be terribly surprised that it is the hardest-Left U.S. government since that of FDR. For those who paid attention, Obama’s hyperliberal U.S. Senate record pierced like a dive light through the squid ink of Hope and Change that Obama squirted at anyone who demanded programmatic specifics. (At 95.5 percent in 2007, according to the National Journal, Obama was the Senate’s No. 1 Left-liberal.)

However, after Obama’s nearly flawless campaign (rattled by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s racist rants, but little else), the big surprise one and a half years after Obama’s momentous and truly moving inauguration is the staggering incompetence of his government. Like some Americans, I expected a nanny-state, socialist agenda from Obama & Co. However, I thought that at least they would manage things smoothly and professionally, in somewhat refreshing contrast to the general ineptitude of the detached, tongue-tied Bush-Rove years. Instead, what America and the world have witnessed is an extravaganza of frequent gaffes, blunders, and catastrophes:

Read more at http://article.nationalreview.com/438405/a-year-and-a-half-of-president-obama/deroy-murdock

Amendment Slipped Into Health Care Legislation Would Track, Tax Coin and Bullion Transactions

By RICH BLAKE, ABC News, July 21, 2010

Those already outraged by the president’s health care legislation now have a new bone of contention — a scarcely noticed tack-on provision to the law that puts gold coin buyers and sellers under closer government scrutiny.

The issue is rising to the fore just as gold coin dealers are attracting attention over sales tactics.

Section 9006 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will amend the Internal Revenue Code to expand the scope of Form 1099. Currently, 1099 forms are used to track and report the miscellaneous income associated with services rendered by independent contractors or self-employed individuals.

Coin Dealers Flipping

Starting Jan. 1, 2012, Form 1099s will become a means of reporting to the Internal Revenue Service the purchases of all goods and services by small businesses and self-employed people that exceed $600 during a calendar year. Precious metals such as coins and bullion fall into this category and coin dealers have been among those most rankled by the change.

Read more at http://abcnews.go.com/Business/gold-coin-dealers-decry-tax-law/story?id=11211611

Its not just about gold coins.

This Form 1099 requirement hasn’t been publicized much, but will be a BIG problem for business.

Its been four months since Obamacare was passed.

Let’s work for REAL change on Tuesday November 2, 2010

63% Favor Repeal of National Health Care Plan

by Jonah Goldberg, LA Times, July 20, 2010

Rep. Paul Ryan’s manifesto doesn’t do away with the social safety net, yet it stays true to the libertarian notion that the best government is that which governs least.

Rep. Paul D. Ryan’s wonky manifesto “A Roadmap for America’s Future” is not what most would call thrilling reading. It makes one want to shout, “Nobody told me there would be math!” Charts battle tables for supremacy over bullet points. But it is an exciting document nonetheless, because it offers something many of us yearn for: a do-over.

The Wisconsin Republican’s Roadmap is not a “reactionary” document, as the left usually describes most anything that involves substantially reducing the size, scope and cost of government. It doesn’t seek to turn back the clock. Rather, it breaks with a strain of libertarian logic that is always at war with the State, while staying true to the idea that the best government is the one that governs least. It advances libertarian ends by admitting the limits of libertarian means.

–SNIP– Non-defense discretionary spending is frozen for 10 years and corporate and capital gains taxes would be replaced by an 8.5% value-added tax.

–SNIP– Yes, there are elements of the plan that can be fairly debated, even on the right. For example, Ryan’s push for private accounts in Social Security strikes me as a political dead letter for now — and too costly. Others fear that his nod to the VAT will help Democrats push for yet another kind of tax.

Read more at http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-goldberg-roadmap-20100720,0,4806100.column

Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright

by Jonathan Strong, The Daily Caller, 7/20/2010

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.

The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”

Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. “George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”

Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

Read more at http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/20/documents-show-media-plotting-to-kill-stories-about-rev-jeremiah-wright/

by Robert Pear, NY Times, July 16, 2010

WASHINGTON — When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”

And that power, they say, is even more sweeping than the federal power to regulate interstate commerce.

Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.

Under the legislation signed by President Obama in March, most Americans will have to maintain “minimum essential coverage” starting in 2014. Many people will be eligible for federal subsidies to help them pay premiums.

In a brief defending the law, the Justice Department says the requirement for people to carry insurance or pay the penalty is “a valid exercise” of Congress’s power to impose taxes.

Congress can use its taxing power “even for purposes that would exceed its powers under other provisions” of the Constitution, the department said. For more than a century, it added, the Supreme Court has held that Congress can tax activities that it could not reach by using its power to regulate commerce.

While Congress was working on the health care legislation, Mr. Obama refused to accept the argument that a mandate to buy insurance, enforced by financial penalties, was equivalent to a tax.

“For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase,” the president said last September, in a spirited exchange with George Stephanopoulos on the ABC News program “This Week.”

When Mr. Stephanopoulos said the penalty appeared to fit the dictionary definition of a tax, Mr. Obama replied, “I absolutely reject that notion.”

Congress anticipated a constitutional challenge to the individual mandate. Accordingly, the law includes 10 detailed findings meant to show that the mandate regulates commercial activity important to the nation’s economy. Nowhere does Congress cite its taxing power as a source of authority.

Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/health/policy/18health.html?_r=1&ref=politics