Uppity Wisconsin

Update: Robert Miranda, executive director of Esperanza Unida, reportedly is leaving soon for his sixth visit to Turkey. No word on how Laura Manriquez, president of Esperanza Unida, feels about the junkets. This weekend sees the launching of the beginning of the end of the Bush-Cheney-Rove-McCain administration.

But those seeking unity in Wisconsin have to wait two more weeks: Until Sept. 9, Wisconsin primary day.

The most heavily covered Wisconsin Democratic primary race in on Milwaukee’s south side, in which a rightwing Jose Guzman and in-some-wing Laura Manriquez are challenging five-term progressive incumbent, Rep. Pedro Colón.

Manriquez (the board chair of Robert Miranda’s Esperanza Unida, a non-profit taken over by Miranda’s coup a few years back) is echoing the campaign message of Miranda, executive director of Esperanza Unida and editor of the Spanish Journal.

Now, in an unusual campaign charge: (that Colón doesn’t charge enough per diem), Manriquez is looking desperate.

via mal contends - Pro-Life Wisconsin announced their candidate endorsements via its Pro-Life Wisconsin Victory Fund political action committee this week.

Five of the six candidates being run by Tom Reynolds' Clean Sweep Wisconsin (CSW) in the Milwaukee-area Democratic primaries are recipients of the "Pro-Life" endorsements, even though the five candidates themselves have not voiced the extreme anti-abortion and other controversial views of CSW's treasurer and mastermind.

The Pro-Life Wisconsin endorsement corroborates the conventional political wisdom that Tom Reynolds' Clean Sweep Wisconsin is running rightwingers in the Democratic primaries, further eroding his already nearly nonexistent credibility.

Update: Esperanza Unida's payroll problems continue under Miranda's administration The Capital Times just corrected their editorial, “Van Hollen should act fast on petition fraud case” (July 25).
At issue is the nonsensical and internally incoherent assertions of some of Esperanza Unida's people that one of their two opponents for state assembly (whom they failed to knock off the ballot, making Esperanza Unida zero-for-two in this campaign) had improperly received legal counsel.
Ridiculous.
Editorializes the Capital Times today:
We have, as well, come to the view that the law firm and associates of attorney Michael Maistelman acted appropriately in this matter. ... We have been impressed with [attorney] Halbrooks' forthright and detailed responses to the concerns that have arisen. ...

Update: Esperanza Unida's payroll problems continue under Miranda's administration  - Related Update: Esperanza Unida workers say they haven’t been paid for weeks: "While the executive director of Esperanza Unida was traveling in Turkey, some 11 workers at the south side job training agency signed a petition saying they had not been paid in four weeks and that some checks had bounced. (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)."  Related Update - Shepherd-Express on Immigration Cruelty  - When I received a ring from a friend calling from the Government Accountability Board (GAB) informing me that the GAB had unanimously ruled against Laura Manriquez’ effort to knock both of her Democratic primary opponents, Jose Guzman and state Rep. Pedro Colón, off the ballot for a Milwaukee assembly seat, I felt true schadenfreude.

Update: Esperanza Unida's - whose chair and atty tried to remove two opponents from the ballot - payroll problems continue under Miranda's administration The Government Accountability Board (GAB) has unanimously affirmed the candidacy of progressive state Rep. Pedro Colón (D-Milwaukee), rejecting a bad-faith attempt to remove Colón from the ballot from his opponent, Laura Manriquez.

Yah!

One look at this man, and you know he’s never gone hungry his entire life.

So, add this to the growing number of reasons 40-year-incumbent Jim Sensenbrenner needs to face retirement this fall.

His solution to hungry people needing food, hungry people who were not impacted by recent floods, but part of a growing hunger crisis, is to create a bureaucracy to deny them food.

According to Wisconsin’s Hunger Task Force, Milwaukee is the 8th poorest city in the nation, and the 4th highest with children in living poverty.

It came as a big surprise to Sensenbrenner that a bunch of those folks stood in line as early as 5 a.m. to get food vouchers intended for flood victims.

“ … we saw a waste of federal resources that mocked a program designed to help people in dire straits … when it comes to federal funds and federal programs, there needs to be more verification and guidelines when handing out taxpayers’ money,” said Sensenbrenner. 

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
~Edmund Burke

The race for Milwaukee City Attorney is off and running.

Longtime City Attorney Grant Langley versus State Representative Pedro Colón (D-Milwaukee) in what promises to be a spirited race for a heretofore obscure office.

Colón is out to change the position, with an activist’s approach.

Colón has made some enemies and stepped on some toes as an activist attorney and state representative, but he brings a broad coalition in his campaign for the April 1 election.

As has been widely noted, Congresswoman Gwen Moore, District Attorney John Chisholm, the incoming president of the Milwaukee Bar Association and the Wisconsin Trial Lawyers Association and almost all of Milwaukee’s legislative delegation have endorsed Colón’s hard-line approach to flushing out destructive policy, and becoming part of the solution in addressing city-wide problems.

As Greg J. Borowski of the Journal Sentinel wrote in a column from December.

State Representative Pedro Colon kicked off his campaign for Milwaukee City Attorney “from the same southside community center where he learned to box as a young man.”

I was very happy to read this. 

I don’t care for most elected officials. Most seem to be out for themselves; the same with most prosecutors and, frankly, with most people in government generally. They forget the service in public service.

But Pedro Colon is different; he’s one of those people who actually believe in public service in the great tradition of “Fighting Bob,” Robert M. La Follette Sr.