Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Bradley Foundation Confirmed As Funding Source For Racist, Voter Intimidation Billboards



On Monday, I wrote about how the good folks at One Wisconsin Now joined forces with theGrio to expose the people behind the racist billboards which popped up in the Milwaukee area in 2010 and again earlier this year. The funding for these attempts at voter intimidation came from the Bradley Foundation, laundered through the Einhorn Family Foundation.

Today, Dan Bice verified that it was indeed the Bradley Foundation that funded the racist billboards using the Einhorn Family Foundation as a front group. Bice verified the story directly with Michael Grebe, head of the Bradley Foundation and Scott Walker's two-time campaign chair, who readily admitted that his group supplied the money for the billboards.

But Grebe had a couple of jokes about the whole thing.

One joke went like this:
Grebe said the donation had nothing to do with Walker’s campaign.

“We have always maintained strict separation between my personal political involvement and the foundation’s activities, which are not political,” Grebe said.
Yeah, and if you believe that, you'll believe that Brian Sikma and Christian Schneider are bona fide reporters.

The other joke was this one:
In response, Grebe said the grant was never secret - Bradley annually publishes a list of grant recipients - and the billboards were not racist. He noted that the billboards appeared in such places as Ozaukee and Washington counties.
As one commenter on Bice's article pointed out, if one wore their white hood and robe in Waukesha, that means they're not racist because that's a predominately white area, right?

Interestingly, Charlie Sykes, just this morning, had already used the argument that the billboards weren't racist because they had some of them in predominately white areas. I say it is interesting due to Sykes' relationship with the Bradley Foundation, which I had pointed out in my original post about the billboards:
OK, I have to admit that I just love the fact that it was the braggart Sykes that gave up his buddies.

For those that are unfamiliar with the details, Sykes had an affair with Bradley Foundation spokeswoman Janet Riorden. He eventually married her after divorcing Justice Diane Sykes. He also had her on his shows, but under the alias Liz Woodhouse, because he believes in being open and honest his listeners.
Something that I had omitted in that post is that the Bradley Foundation also bankrolls the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, where Sykes is the editor.

Adding to the hilarity of it all is James Wigderson playing the one man echo chamber with his "Yeah, what he said" post.

Now, the giggles really start when one looks at Sykes' "proof" that the billboards weren't racist. Sykes posted this map, which allegedly shows the location of the billboards:


Now, unlike Brian Sikma would do, I cannot and will not vouch for the accuracy or veracity of the map, since it does come from a source which is well known to be highly unreliable.

But for the sake of discussion, let's presume that the map is accurate and that is the true layout of where the maps were placed.

I don't know about the gentle reader, but golly gee, they seem to be pretty well concentrated on the inner city of Milwaukee. In fact, the concentration of these billboards is so high, they make the outlying ones more of an exception to the rule, thereby strengthening the point that they are indeed racist, rather than evidence that there was no racist intent.

And that is, of course, if one can look past that the first set of billboards, like the one at the top of this post, showed minorities behind bars. Yeah, no racism there at all.

Unlike Wigderson, I won't waste the pixels to demand that Grebe and company issue a public apology for the racist billboards or for trying to intimidate voters.

The lot of them thinks that being rich/conservative/white means never having to say you're sorry.

9 comments:

  1. They don't have to say their sorry, they are already sorry sacks of shit.

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  2. To my knowledge the only person charged with voter fraud in the 2010 elections was Ann Coulter.
    She appears to be white, but has not yet given up her genome for examination.

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    1. There was a case in 2008 where a white couple committed voter fraud because they believed talk radio's voter fraud stories.

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  3. Let's look at the biggest opponents of voter id laws, minorities. Why would anyone be against voter id? The only answer that I can think of is to commit voter fraud, and before someone gets all worked up and says that some people just can't get an id that they don't even have to pay for, it is a complete joke. Proper identification is required for all facets of life except for voting. What's next, don't drink and drive signs in milwaukee are racist because black people drink, or how about billboards against abortion, are those racist if put in milwaukee too. Maybe minorities should be given a little more credit than all the democrats that continually treat them as victims. If someone continued to act on my behalf claiming that I am offended by something or unable to do something I would really be offended that they don't give me enough credit for being able to think and act on my own. Oh, and finally, I thought democrats were huge proponents of freedom of speech and all that after their takeover of the state capital for weeks, or does that only apply to your agenda? You can't have it both ways.

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    1. First of all, there is no constitutional right to buy cold medicine, have a banking account or to buy alcohol and cigarettes. There is, however, a constitutional right to being able to vote and that that right should be unabridged. Voter ID is a poll tax and thus illegal.

      Secondly, Voter ID affects not only minorities, but the poor, the elderly and the disabled. If that unconstitutional law was allowed to stand, thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Wisconsinites would have been illegally deprived of their right to vote.

      And there are limits to the Freedom of Speech, especially when it infringes on the rights of others. During the protests, you could have freely gone to the Capitol. So again, your argument is moot.

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    2. I bin wonderin where it was.

      They shoulda made that paragraph longer for ease of reading...

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    3. Should a disabled vet who doesn't drive because he is a quadriplegic be denied the right to vote because he can't register to vote with an ID although he doesn't need one?

      Should a nursing home resident be denied the right to vote?

      Not everyone buys cold medicine, beer, boards planes, etc. Not everyone carries identification if they rarely leave their residence. Aren't they Americans with legal rights?

      You are so smug yet you don't understand the cost of your solution that is looking for a problem. Instead of stopping people from fraudulently voting you are stopping people from voting in the first place. People with legal rights to vote. You are hurting more than you are protecting. You also use this "what if" argument for saying the vote has an opportunity to be misused and illegally cast. We know that for sure people who voted in the last Presidential election would not be able to vote in this under those rules due to the burden placed on them which is against the law. That is provable whereas your argument is speculation. Voter fraud is not a huge vast problem requiring millions in resources and who pays for it? Who benefits monetarily?

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  4. Anon 11:27 Real conservatives are against voter id, because it's socializing "GOP voter caging" costs onto the taxpayers.

    You have to REGISTER to vote. It has to be a DELIVERABLE address. If someone claiming to be you, votes before you, the folks working at the polls will not let you vote. Then you call the police, and a complaint is started. It NEVER happens. People never report it. Poll workers never report it.

    The GOP sends out post cards to the poor and disabled. If they get "RETURNED," because that person no longer lives there, the GOP checks the voter registration rolls. They are PUBLIC info. If that person voted, they call the police. It NEVER happens.

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