If you’re a lefty blogger, Milwaukee County Exec Scott Walker and his sidekick, Chief O'Staff Tom Nardelli, are gifts that just keep on giving.
Walker’s still trying, day by day, to spin away from what started as a total rejection of any federal stimulus projects in Milwaukee County.
It seems Nardo got out in front of his boss on this one, saying in a Dec. 22 e-mail to a county supervisor that forwarding a list of backlogged county parks projects to Gov. Jim Doyle was an "excellent" suggestion, the Journal Sentinel reported.
Nardo, the guy Walker wanted to give a $26,000 raise in these trying times, also fired off an email to a county supervisor basically calling his County Board colleagues stupid. Said Nardo:
"The county is very fortunate to have someone of your caliber serving in office. ... God knows you are an island in a sea of stupidity"
Meanwhile, happy to help keep the stimulus story alive, Kenosha County Exec Jim Kreuser said he’d be happy to take any of the stimulus money and jobs that Walker doesn’t want.
No wonder WisPolitics reports that Mark Neumann, an ex-Congressman and failed Senate candidate, says he's leaning toward a run for guv in 2010.
“I’m more positive about it than I’ve ever been,” he told WisPolitics. Walker has all but announced he’s running for gov in 2010.
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Mystifying Mistele coverage. Is it just me, or does it seem like John Nichols and the Capital Times are giving a lot of coverage (can’t say ink, since they don’t print a paper any more) to Nancy Mistele, the conservative challenger to Dane County Exec Kathleen Falk.
Two recent pieces, here and here give Mistele a lot of pretty positive attention. Could this be payback for Falk’s defeat of former AG Peg Lautenschlager, Nichols & Company’s favorite?
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Prisons our only growth industry?. A new consultants’ report says Wisconsin will need to spend $1.2-billion on prisons in the next 10 years unless it changes its ways.
The state had 22,795 men and 1.434 women locked up in July 2008. (Minnesota, by comparison, has about 15,000 people in prison or jail. Wisconsin, if you add in jail, has about 36,000, according to The Sentencing Project.)
Corrections Secretary Rick Raemisch says the right thing:
"Given the massive (budget) deficit Wisconsin is facing, the plan provides a blueprint of where we don't want to be in 10 years."
But, as Fighting Ed Garvey points out, there is no plan to change the way Wisconsin operates.