Thursday, April 11, 2013

The Faces Of AB 85

As our young friend atop the soapbox shared his take on the event, today was the Assembly public hearing for AB 85, the bill that is aimed to destroy Milwaukee County Government.


Despite an overwhelming amount of statements from people from all over the state - many of them Republicans - the Republicans in the legislature are apt to continue their wont of listening to the money being handed to them by the fistfuls rather than the people.

The anti-Plutocracy Power Grab people listed a laundry list of reasons why this was a bad idea ranging from the fact that it's simply not needed to the fact that any reform should be done locally to the fact that they tried something like it in Fond du Lac County and it failed miserably to the destruction of representative government. The list is rather lengthy.

However, the people speaking for it generally broke down into three groups:
  • Anti-government kooks,
  • The people that wrote the bill (Greater Milwaukee Committee), and,
  • The people paid by the people who wrote the bill.
I won't bother with the first group.  We've heard them all before.  We could hear them again at the next week's Tea Party Tax Day Rally - oops, wait, no we won't because there won't be one.  Now it's just a loosely wound group of loosely wound people.

Then there is the plutocrats of the GMC crowd.

Of course, Chris Abele was there because he's already created so many jobs - never mind that that unemployment rate in Milwaukee County is 8.4% and climbing. He's also already resolved the long term funding issue for the transit and parks systems, found appropriate and safe places for all the people he's kicking out of the mental health complex.

Anyway, Abele's sole argument for wanting to be given complete control of the county is simply because he didn't get his way when he wanted to bust the unions even more.

Side note: What really burns my beans is that many of the people who is supporting Abele in his hostile takeover were screaming when Walker tried it. Bloody hypocrites.

Another GMC member who was there to testify was it's Grand Poobah, Julia the worst thing in the world that Lee Holloway fired Tim Russell.  Yes, that Tim Russell.
Taylor. Yes, the Julia Taylor who thought it was

Tayler's rationale for wanting the County Board incapacitated was the same as Abele's - they didn't do what GMC told them to do.

And sitting right next to Taylor in the Rogues' Gallery - because they didn't want to mingle with the commoners, was right wing stud muffin, Orville Seymer. Seymer is one of the two people that make up the totally inappropriately named group, Citizens for Responsible Government (CRG).

Seymer, and his cohort in crime, Chris Kleisment, are neither exactly upstanding citizens nor very responsible themselves.  Where they think they have a right to preach to anyone about anything is unfathomable.

Seymer's reasoning for supporting the power grab was, well, watch it for yourself and see if you can figure it out, because I sure as hell can't:



(Video courtesy of Rebecca Kemble of The Progressive)

I've watched it several times and I still don't know what he was trying to say.  One would think that with all their money, GMC could have hired a better script writer who didn't use so many big words that made Seymer stumble so much.

In short, if this bill is passed, it's only because Abele, Taylor and the other plutocrats were able to buy the votes and not because of its nonexistent merits.  And it's surely not based on the merits of the people pushing it, for those are just as nonexistent.

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