Friday, August 1, 2014

Chris Abele's Very Bad, Rotten, No Good Day

Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele spent the day Thursday touting a blog post from OnMilwaukee.com naming him as one of Milwaukee's 12 most important people.  I won't get into the fallacious reasoning behind that finding for now, outside of noting that he is right next to Scott Walker on that list.

The reason that Abele was pushing this was to try to control the damage he suffered the rest of the day.

Despite his best efforts to squash democracy once again, the Milwaukee County overrode three of Abele's vetoes regarding referendum questions that will appear on the ballot in November.  The questions are pertaining to whether the state should raise the minimum wage, whether the state should accept federal funds to expand BadgerCare and whether the state should change state laws to allow Milwaukee County to have a county administrator instead of a county executive.

Even though Abele claimed to support the first two items, he didn't support them enough not to veto them.  Abele has been studiously avoiding discussing the third question even though there is video of him saying he would support this.  

I have long advocated for getting rid of the county executive position.  The last three people who have held that position - Tom Ament, Scott Walker and Abele - have shown that this position is wide open to corruption and to the abuse of office.

Abele stuck to his tired line of it costing too much money to add a few lines of ink to the ballot.  Not many people believe that it would cost nearly as much as Abele is trying to claim.  And even if it did, it is small potatoes compared to the amount of money Abele has squandered all by himself, with nothing to show for it.

But even the triumph of democracy over plutocracy wasn't Abele's biggest problem of the day.

It was the Supreme Court's ruling upholding Act 10.  

One might think that Abele, being as anti-worker and anti-union as he is, would be elated at the ruling.  But the fact is that actually puts him in a hole due to 1,200 Milwaukee County employees suddenly becoming eligible for the Rule of 75, where they can retire once their age and years of service add up to 75.  That could cost as much as $60 million, money which he had earmarked for his rich friends for no bid contracts and sweetheart deals on county assets.

No wonder Abele felt the need to flee the state for a while.  He's had a very bad day and needed to get away for a while.

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