HEADLINES

The Old Inside Out-ski

Neumann’s An Outsider? Because He Can’t Get Elected?

MADISON-In a new television blitz beginning today, wealthy home builder Mark Neumann rails against "insiders."

Heady rhetoric from someone who has mounted four Congressional campaigns, a U.S. Senate campaign and now a big-bucks bid to become Wisconsin's governor.

"The only reason Mark Neumann is on the outside looking in is that voters don't want him on the inside working for special interests," Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said Wednesday. "The only thing an extremist politician like Mark Neumann is outside of is the mainstream."

Walker Broken Promises Hit the Small Screen

Claim About Salary Exposed

MADISON-Scott Walker blatantly misleads the public about his broken promise to return his executive pay in a new television commercial scheduled to begin airing Thursday that doesn't tell the public about the $40,000 raise he gave himself in 2008.

In the campaign commercial, Walker does not mention his broken 2003 promise of returning 47 percent of his pay, a practice he ended without explanation two years ago, giving himself a $40,000 pay raise to almost $120,000. [Source: “Walker would lower salary givebacks,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 3/19/08, http://www.jsonline.com/news/ milwaukee/29505169.html]

In the commercial, Walker also continued his use of a "brown bag" campaign that was developed for him by an East Coast p.r. firm.

"Scott Walker promised to give back 47 percent of his pay and then broke that promise in each of the last two years. He also makes noises about working for the people who eat their lunches out of brown bags, while the tax cuts he proposes would benefit only the richest one percent of Wisconsinites," Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said Thursday. "Again and again, Scott Walker promises one thing and does another. His first commercial of this campaign is chock full of such deceptions and show’s he’s a politician Wisconsin families can’t trust."

To learn more about Scott Walker’s phony claims and see what real Wisconsinites are saying, go to http://bagscottwalker.com.

Tommy Continues to 

“Stick it to ‘em!”

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Reports that Thompson’s Tax Lives On…and On

MADISON –While Tommy Thompson is in Washington D.C. listening to “lots of people in Washington” and working on behalf of corporate interests, his taxing legacy lives on… and on.

In 1995, Thompson jammed through a special sales tax on the people of Milwaukee, Waukesha, Racine, Ozaukee and Washington counties to fund a new stadium for the Brewers and famously said “Stick it to ‘em,” referring to the $310 million in tax increases he assigned to residents of Southeastern Wisconsin. 

As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported today, Tommy is still sticking it taxpayers ten years after he left Wisconsin for the Bush Administration:

“New financial projections released Tuesday suggest the sunset year for the Miller Park stadium sales tax will be between 2016 and 2018, at least two years later than originally thought.”

“Long after Tommy’s departure, his taxing legacy of sticking it to taxpayers lives on,” said Mike Tate, Chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.  “Today’s story is a reminder of the tax and spend record Thompson will have to answer for when he gets on the campaign trail this year.”

For full audio of Tommy’s famous “Stick it to ‘em” quote, visit http://libertycontrol.net/ uploads/wisconsin_dems/ stickit.mp3

Statement of DPW Chairman Mike Tate on Latest Scott Walker Stimulus Hypocrisy

Scott Walker Again Not Walking the Walk
MADISON-A day after raising champagne toasts in a Milwaukee ballroom to the Bush economic legacy, while pretending to a "brown bag" mantle, Scott Walker attacked federal recovery dollars even though he has desperately relied on these resources to keep his horribly mismanaged budget and capital projects afloat.

"Just as Scott Walker cannot simply make jobs claims up out of thin air, a desperate candidate for governor like him cannot be allowed to deride the very stimulus dollars that he used to try to mask his own budget ineptness," Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said late Tuesday. "The record is clear on Scott Walker’s phony leadership and stimulus money, the hypocrisy is staggering.”

Lobbyists Look for a Friend in U.S. Senate

McCoshen: Thompson has “the right people in the room.”

MADISON- Yesterday, Republican “Uber-Lobbyist” Bill McCoshen went on Mike Gousha’s “UpFront” TV program and all but announced that Tommy Thompson is running for U.S. Senate, saying “this is the most serious I've seen him.”

McCoshen said Thompson has “the right people in the room,” and “I'd want the people around me that he's got around him right now.” He didn’t say who those “people” were.

“Who’s in the room? Corporate lobbyists,” said Mike Tate Chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, “Where is the room? Washington D.C. Tommy’s campaign is off to a really bad start and it’s only going to get worse because the last thing Wisconsin voters want is a friend of special interests in the U.S. Senate.”

As the Associated Press reported in 2007, McCoshen signed a “secret agreement” with investors in an Indian Gaming casino in Kenosha. The deal, initially signed in 1997 and revised in 2000, called for the firm to receive $4.5 million once the project was approved by Thompson and then $42 million over the next several years for what a report by state gaming investigators called virtually no work. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has also reported that “As a lobbyist, he also has represented many controversial firms, including liquor interests, the auto title loan industry, a video lottery firm and Wal-Mart.”

News reports last week revealed that one of Thompson’s colleagues at the DC lobbying shop he works for,  Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, said, “lots of people in Washington” want him to be Wisconsin’s next Senator. For his own part, Thompson told reporters that the election would be decided by issues “that are not that particular to Wisconsin.”

Bob Wood, a former Thompson operative and current President of Washington’s most elite GOP lobbying firm, Barbour, Griffith, Rogers, has registered websites for Thompson’s campaign and McCoshen said they are all planning to set up an exploratory committee in the coming weeks so and that he expects Thompson to announce his candidacy at the Republican convention in May. An exploratory committee would allow Thompson to raise money from many of the corporate interests he represents. Last week, Politico reported that Thompson has already collected over $200,000 in pledges from donors.

Thompson has spent the last five years as Washington DC insider who has made millions of dollars working on behalf of special interests including health insurance and pharmaceutical companies and the finance industry. Thompson recently told the media on camera he doesn’t know how many corporate interests he works for.

We Would Hide, Too:

Walker Eats Caviar, Toasts Bush, Cowers From Press

MADISON-Scott Walker and his rich cronies will be dining on caviar and hummingbird wings tomorrow in a posh Milwaukee ballroom with John Ellis "Jeb" Bush, but don't expect to see any footage of their champagne toasts to the Bush economic policies that  took from working people to give to Lehman Brothers bankers.
 
That's because the $2,000-per-table tribute Monday at the Pfister Hotel to George W. Bush is closed to the press.
 
The Democratic Party of Wisconsin, meanwhile, will be hosting a $10-per-brown-bag brat-and-beer supper a block away for those not fortunate enough to have profited off the Bush years of greed and recklessness.

"If Scott Walker wants to associate himself with the Bush legacy, he should not cower from the cameras," Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chairman Mike Tate said Sunday. "Our brown bag supper Monday is wide open to the press. Why doesn't Walker want the press inside the ballroom to witness him waltzing with Bush special interests? What do their caviar-covered mouths have to hide?"