Richland County Democrats

MADISON-Perennial candidate Mark Neumann engaged in some more of his patented oddball behavior today in a bizarre grandstand at the federal offices of U.S. Rep Gwen Moore, where Neumann and a handful of his supporters dumped hundreds of "petitions," a majority of which were from people who claimed to live outside of Moore's district.

The "petitioners'" identities could not be verified because they did not include addresses or signatures.

"Neumann authored not a single piece of legislation to expand or reform health care during his mediocre two terms in Congress. He has provided no specific plan to reduce health care premiums or increase patient control over health care during his latest grasp at high office," Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said Monday. "Rep. Moore, meanwhile, has long championed real reform of the health care system and Wisconsin is lucky to have someone like her on the House Budget Committee that today is writing historic reform legislation."

MADISON – Eight days ago, while appearing on Mike Gousha’s “UpFront” television program, longtime Secretary Tommy Thompson (R – DC) aide and fellow health insurance industry “uber-lobbyist” Bill McCoshen, said that there will be an exploratory committee set up by Thompson before the end of March.

“Is Secretary Thompson going to explore the budget deficit he walked away from when he left Wisconsin for Washington?” asked Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate. “Or is Thompson going to explore his legacy of sticking it to taxpayers”

As Wisconsin Governor, Thompson expanded the size of government and left the state with budget deficits. According to news reports, “figures show that debt rose the most - by $1.8 billion- under Thompson between 1996 and 2001” and state spending doubled in the 1990’s when Thompson was governor. Conservative Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Columnist Patrick McIlheran, in a 2006 column, even credited Thompson as being responsible for the “birth” of the states “structural deficit.”

According to a 2009 report, instead of putting Wisconsin on a path toward fiscal stability when the economy was in better shape, Thompson left lawmakers, Governors McCallum and Doyle, as well as taxpayers, unprepared to confront a financial crisis when he left in 2001 to join the Bush Administration. In fact, “officials had just $49 set aside to cushion the state budget in hard times.

The Green Bay Press Gazette recently highlighted the Secretary’s tenure stating: “The Wisconsin budget's $2.3 billion structural deficit has its roots in the Thompson years.”

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 last week, Thompson 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.”

An exploratory committee would allow Thompson to raise money from many of the corporate interests he represents. Politico recently reported that Thompson has already collected over $200,000 in pledges from donors. Thompson has spent the last five years as a Washington D.C. 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. He has refused to release his current list of clients.

MADISON – In the five months since beginning his Senate campaign, real estate magnate and pumpkin farmer, Terrence Wall has failed to publicly discuss any plans to support and foster Wisconsin’s vitally important agricultural industry.

As National Agriculture Week begins, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin highlighted the fact that Wall’s views on agriculture and farming here in Wisconsin are noticeably absent from his website. In fact, his website doesn’t even include anything about his famous pumpkin farm. Media reports have indicated that Wall avoided more than $264,000 in property taxes by taking advantage of Wisconsin tax laws that were set up to assist struggling farmers.

“Terrence Wall’s record on Wisconsin’s agricultural issues is limited to his milking of the tax laws specifically designed to protect family farms from developers like Wall,” said Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate.

In 2009, Terrence Wall successfully petitioned the Middleton City Assessor to rezone his Greenway Acres commercial development in Downtown Middleton from “commercial” to “agricultural” property, specifically to avoid paying taxes on the valuable land parcels. The “agriculture” found on the property? - A few rotting pumpkins…

Before Wall convinced the City Assessor of his farming chops, the Greenway Acres development property was assessed at $2,000,000. After the rezoning, the tax liability for the “pumpkin farm” was about $10. The Middleton City Assessor, Paul Musser, told the Capital Times, “You hate to do it but it's one of those things.” Musser also told Madison’s WKOW the law “was originally set up to preserve farmland" – not allow wealthy developers like Terrence Wall to dodge their taxes.

“Wall’s accounting gimmicks and exploitation of tax loopholes is a pattern,” said Tate.

MADISON-Speaking at his alma mater, failed Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker today blamed his well-publicized and deliberate attack on the work of the Milwaukee 7 economic group on its very successes. He previously had attacked the work of the group to bring jobs to Wisconsin as "putting lipstick on a pig," a reflection of his larger hostility to jobs-creation programs and policies.

Today, speaking at Marquette University’s Law School’s "On the Issues" forum with Mike Gousha, Walker said:

“Those very comments that I made were largely part of the impetus to make sure that the M7 went beyond just that Web site to things that actually had an impact on jobs in this region...I think that's why they have had the kind of successes that they have had up until now."

Huh?

The problem is, Walker’s contemporary observers did not see Walker's mockery as constructive. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in an October 2005 editorial commented, “Walker’s lipstick on-a-pig statement about regional marketing efforts came in answer to a question at the downtown Rotary Club…It is exceedingly unhelpful when one of the alleged leaders of a promising effort to market the region’s positives begins working at cross-purposes with the group so publicly, so early.” (MJS, 10/7/05)

From Republic Airways to C+D Technologies to Ingeteam, M-7 has helped save and attract some 2,000 jobs to Wisconsin in the past four months alone. As an original co-founder and the current co-chair, Tom Barrett has been an instrumental part of these successes.

In fact, under Barrett’s leadership the City of Milwaukee has invested $150,000 in M-7, compared to just $25,000 from Scott Walker’s County. When asked which entity has played a bigger role in helping the regional economic development effort, M-7 president Pat O’Brien said “the city has more tools at their disposal,” ranging from tax credits to an active economic development office. (MJS, 2/25/10)

"Scott Walker can try all he wants, but he can't wash the lipstick from the pig of his "lipstick-on-a-pig" attack on Wisconsin jobs," Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said Thursday.

MADISON-On the day he debuts a television commercial that conveniently ignores the promise he broke by giving himself a $50,000 raise two years ago, Scott Walker today goes before students at his alma mater, Marquette University, to face questions.

Here are six you won't hear him answer:

1. Because of your mismanagement, the rest of Wisconsin is footing the bill for Milwaukee County's food aid, child care and medical assistance programs. How can you claim to fiscal responsibility when you passed the buck to Wisconsin's taxpayers, who now must pay the price of your poor performance and mismanagement?

2. The county's Economic Support Division had to be taken over in recent years because of your gross mismanagement. The Walker Behavioral Health Division is beset by various probes into negligence and sexual assault, including a new report today (link). The Walker transit system is in crisis. The Walker budget is busted. The Walker parks system is in decay. Property taxes and spending have spiked under Walker watch. How can you in good conscience go before Wisconsin voters and ask them to submit to your reckless management?

3. You have called for a $287 million tax giveaway to the richest one percent of Wisconsinites. Why should "Walker One Percenters" get $287 million, and not middle-class and working families who have suffered the most under the Bush-Walker economy?

4. You have proposed cutting taxes to the rich and the corporate elite by $2 billion, and the state already faces a projected $2 billion deficit. Can you share with voters specifically how you plan to pay for these tax giveaways to the wealthiest, which investments will have to be cut – education, aid to local communities, health care, and which communities will be most impacted, to offset them?

5. You've eliminated Milwaukee County's jobs-creation division during the worst economic crisis since the Depression. You've mocked the work of the "M 7" economic development group, which has brought and created 2000 jobs in Wisconsin in the past 4 months alone, as putting "lipstick on a pig." Your actions have not helped to create a single job for Wisconsin. How are your job creation promises at all credible?

6. Your proposed spending has increased 35 percent since you became county executive, your proposed tax levy has increased by 18 percent. You promised you would cut both spending and the tax levy while in office and have done neither. How does your rhetoric square with your record?

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."

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.

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.”

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.

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?"