Monday, April 6, 2009

Cognitive Election Recommendations

Tomorrow, Tuesday, April 7, is the general election for the spring of 2009. Here are my recommendations:

Supreme Court

This is the race between Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson and Judge Randy Koschnick.

Abrahamson has been Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court for years, and is well respected around the state and the nation. Koschnick, on the other hand, can't even handle a traffic ticket without it being overturned.

Koschnick has also accused Chief Justice Abrahamson of being partisan and an activist. He then turns around and proudly claims that he is conservative, has been to most of the conservative events around the state, and tells us what his agenda is, which is legislating from the bench in the favor of the NRA, big business and other conservative special interests.

Abrahamson has run a level-headed campaign without a lot of negativity, while Koschnick has said almost nothing positive about himself, continuously attacked the CJ, and has a pattern of contradicting himself, making one if Koschnick does have any ability of level-headed decision making.

He's such a bad candidate that WMC, which bought seats on the bench for Annette Ziegler and Michael Gableman, both of whom have started their stint on the Supreme Court under clouds of shame and unethical behaviors, chose not to back what was to be their candidate this time around.

The clear choice is to return Chief Justice Abrahamson to the Supreme Court.

For further, more detailed information on these candidates, I would point the gentle reader to Illusory Tenant and Eye On Wisconsin, both of whom have done tremendous work on this race.


State Superintendent of Public Instruction

If you were hurt or sick, and needed medical attention, would you rather go to the hospital with its trained and licensed doctors and registered nurses or to the clinic (if it's still there when you go) with no trained doctors or nurses, but staffed with people that have watched ER and Gray's Anatomy on the TV?

That is basically how the State Superintendent's race is boiling down to. Tony Evers is the candidate that has decades of experience in both education and administration. He knows that the state's school systems are in trouble and need help, and the best way to fix them.

His opponent, Rose Fernandez, has no faith in the schools and no experience in the field of education. All she does have is the backing of large, out of state private interests who would privatize the entire system with their gimmicky plans, all at the expense of the tax payers. As an example of bad some of her ideas are, she proposed that MPS be broken down to a number of smaller systems, raising the costs to the taxpayers. Then she also suggested that a turnaround team consisting of people from Mayor Barrett's and Scott Walker's administrations work on changing things. These are the two same groups that had to have federal intervention to resolve an old, old question of what to do with the $91.5 million for transit.

Jay Bullock and Cory Liebmann have done the yeoman's work on this race, and both are worthwhile reads.

Tony Evers is the only cognitive choice for this race.


Milwaukee Public School Board

My recommendations for the three races for Milwaukee Public School Board are Michael Mathias and Peter Blewett. I was originally just going to endorse these people, but now the feeling his stronger.

I had the opportunity to her Michael Mathias speak briefly and he has some clear, realistic ideas that could be started right away.

Another reason is again ethics. While Mathias and Blewett have both run clean campaigns, their three opponents, Annie Woodward and ReDonna Rodgers, cannot necessarily say the same.

It has been reported that a special interest group, Advocates for Student Achievement, recruited the three, gave them advice and talking points, as well as campaign contributions. All of which was not reported, but done on the sly, in violation of campaign laws. These are not the type of people that we need running a school system that is trying to recover from the bad reputation from people like Charlene Hardin.

Circuit Court Races

In the race between J.D. Watts and Daniel Gabler, I was originally torn between the two. But as in the Supreme Court race, one candidate did a great job of pushing voters away. Gabler has shown poor judgment in the way he ran his campaign. He has shown a great deal of hypocrisy in his attacks on his opponents in the primary, and not the sense in how to correct his mistakes once they were revealed.

On top of all that, Watts has the experience Gabler lacks, and has shown a good demeanor during his opponent's flailing about.

The other race is between Christopher Lipscomb and Ellen Brostrom. I have great respect for both candidates, and think that both would prove to be good judges in the circuit court system. However, my recommendation goes to Lipscomb based on the fact that he has experience being a municipal judge for many years and would be able to make an easy transition to the circuit court.

Other races

I would be remiss to not remind the gentle reader to vote for Zachary Wisniewski for the South Milwaukee School Board and for Janet Evans in the race for Franklin's school board. Both of these fine people have shown a high level of interest in their communities and have shown a good grasp of the issues that their communities and their schools face, and are ready to take those issues on.

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for the kind words, capper.

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  2. Thanks for your support!

    And good luck to Zach, too.

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  3. Tis always my pleasure to speak the truth.

    Good luck to you both.

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  4. "If you ... needed medical attention, would you rather go to the hospital with its trained and licensed doctors and registered nurses or to the clinic ... with no trained doctors or nurses, but staffed with people that have watched ER and Gray's Anatomy on the TV?"

    You just made a great arguement for John McCain :) about 5 months too late though :(

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  5. Rich,

    Scott Walker fits that bill.

    But how many years did McCain serve as POTUS that made him more experienced?

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