Lots of Class…All Tourist

Jim “Pol Pot” Doyle has a lot of class. Unfortunately, it’s all tourist.

From WisPolitics:

“It’s clear that after watching Senator Obama lay out very clearly the choice in this election, Senator McCain felt he needed a game-changer. Unfortunately, his panic pick of Governor Palin neither changes the game, nor represents the change America needs. Sarah Palin is perfectly in step with John McCain on pushing Big Oil’s agenda and continuing George Bush’s failed economic policies. More disturbingly, his political Hail Mary threatens to put a first term governor, who just two years ago was mayor of a town of 8,000, a heartbeat away from being Commander in Chief. This decision clearly had nothing to do with being prepared to govern and everything to do with the McCain campaign’s dim political outlook,” said Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle.

Pol Pot…let me clue you in a few things since you’re too fucking stupid to understand something as basic as the sun rises in the East and that Wisconsin is a tax hell.

1. George Bush isn’t running for anything.
2. Sarah Palin is far more qualified to run the country than Barry who IS running for Commander-In-Chief. Here’s a little hint, Pol Pot. What has Barry ever run?
3. Sarah Palin has a 90% approval rating as governor. What do YOU have Pol Pot, besides the approval of Madistan and vote fraud in Milwaukee?
4. It’s obvious from your quote you hate women and must be a misogynist.
5. You are living proof that Harvard Law School is over-rated and not difficult.
6. But, the real reason you’re so bitter is……When McCain wins, no AG post for you. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.
7. Jimbo, let me clue you in on something. You’re still just a diptard and that will never change.

When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Play Golf

Belling reported today that yesterday, during the height of the flood crisis, I-94 closing, Hwy. 83 in trouble, Doyle played golf at University Ridge for a Doyle fund raiser. $1,250 per head.

Can you imagine if a Republican governor did this? Naturally, no mention of this in the drive-by media. The hypocricy never ceases to amaze.

UPDATE: Looks like the political reporter in Madistan, a certain Steve Walters got roused off his bar stool long enough to print the following.

Madison – Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle spent part of Tuesday at his annual campaign golf outing, while also coordinating state government’s efforts to fight flooding and get federal aid to help pay for damages, a spokesman said today.

Doyle spokesman Lee Sensenbrenner said the governor attended “part of” his campaign’s sixth annual golf outing at University Ridge Golf Course in Verona, which had a suggested contribution of $1,250 per golfer. Doyle has said he will decide later this year whether to seek a third term.

Sensenbrenner said Doyle arrived at the golf outing in the morning and left before 2 p.m. Later that day, he conducted a briefing for reporters on flooding problems resulting from severe storms and downpours that soaked the state over the weekend and caused a rupture that emptied Lake Delton. The governor returned to the golf outing later in the day, the spokesman added.

But Sensenbrenner said no response to the flooding was hampered by Doyle’s stop to visit his campaign supporters, since the governor was also talking to National Guard officers, representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Administration and cabinet secretaries, including Natural Resources Secretary Matt Frank, about flooding-related problems on Tuesday.

“I think it’s important to put it into context,” Sensenbrenner said.

He said Doyle flew around the state on Monday, seeing Lake Delton and other flooding damage and meeting with families who had lost their homes and other property.

At 6:30 this morning, Doyle was briefed by phone on flooding and related emergency problems by National Guard Gen. Donald Dunbar, Sensenbrenner said. And Doyle met this afternoon with local government officials and emergency workers concerned about the Phantom Lake dam near Mukwonago, he said.

State Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus criticized Doyle for taking time to raise campaign cash after the flooding.

“With (Democratic presidential candidate) Barack Obama in the state tomorrow, Obama’s top campaign staffer, Jim Doyle, gave voters a glimpse of the Democrats’ priorities this year – politics over Wisconsin families,” Priebus said in a statement.

Walter may have gotten off the bar stool but he hasn’t removed his “Democratic Kneepads” if you know what I mean.

Wisconsin Budget Fiasco

From an email received from my Assemblyman, Rich Zipperer.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 14, 2008

CONTACT: Rich Zipperer
OFFICE: (608) 266-5120

HEADLINE: Rep. Zipperer Statement on Budget ‘Repair’ Bill
SUBHEADLINE: Bill contains raid on Transportation Fund, steals REAL ID
money, and Increases Taxes and Spending.

Madison-The state Assembly approved legislation today that is intended
to fix a $652 budget shortfall. The state is facing a budget deficit
because the budget signed into law last year is spending money faster
than tax revenues are coming into the state. Rep. Rich Zipperer
(R-Pewaukee) made the following statement after voting against today’s
so-called budget repair bill:

“The bill approved today is an attempt to hide the truth of our state
budget from the taxpayers of Wisconsin, and only makes a bad situation
worse. We are facing the current $652 million shortfall because of
irresponsible budgeting in the past, and continuing that trend will only
inflate the problem in the future.

The solution to the current mess is simple. Control spending. Instead,
the bill passed today raids from the Transportation Fund even while
consumers are facing $4 per gallon gasoline, uses accounting gimmick on
top of accounting gimmick, contains a new tax on businesses, actually
manages to increase spending by millions of dollars, and only pushes the
problem off to the next fiscal year.

With the state facing a $1.7 billion structural deficit, we can ill
afford to knowingly make the problem worse. Further, this bill contains
no veto guarantees from Governor Doyle, meaning that, despite the clear
will of the voters this past April that the Governor should not rewrite
budget documents with his veto pen, he will likely use vetoes to
increase the Transportation Fund raid and increase spending.

Also especially troubling to me is the irresponsible and dangerous raid
of REAL ID money. By failing to use this user fee money for
implementing REAL ID, we are turning our backs on safety measures called
for by the 9/11 Commission, approved by Congress, and approved by the
state Legislature in past sessions. For our safety and security, we
need to move forward with REAL ID now, and not back away from our
promise to Wisconsin drivers.”

###

Jim Doyle Funding Organized Crime? Or Worse?

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you know that Wisconsin, thanks to Jim “Pol Pot” Doyle, increased the cigarette taxes to $1.00 per pack “for our own good”. At what point does it become a Prohibition-like price point for smugglers?

Check out this article in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Last month, New York law enforcement authorities announced the arrest of Queens resident Rafea al-Nablisi for smuggling 12,000 cartons of cigarettes a week. It was not the first such arrest, and thanks to New York’s latest cigarette tax hike, it will not be the last.

On April 23, less than two weeks after Mr. Nablisi’s arrest was made public, Gov. David Paterson signed into law a $1.25 per-pack tax hike on top of the state’s $1.50 per-pack tax. That’s in addition to New York City’s own $1.50 per-pack tax. Come July 1, New York City’s smokers will be paying on average $9 a pack for legal cigarettes.

But if history is any guide, most cigarettes sold will actually be trucked up from Virginia, or shipped in from China, by “butt-leggers” who can make over $1 million on each tractor-trailer load of smuggled smokes. The blunt fact, which politicians of both political parties are determined to ignore, is that high cigarette taxes in New York have led to a bloody, decades-long smuggling epidemic.[...]

As you may recall, the first bust of Henry Hill in “Goodfellas” (the bio of Henry Hill, a mobster in New York) was for selling untaxed (smuggled or hijacked) cigarettes. How long will it be before the smugglers invade Wisconsin? I’m assuming they’re already here but have yet to establish an efficient sales network. Well so what? you say. Well, here’s what.

[...]As the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said in September 2002 of New York’s cigarette smuggling, “Traditional organized crime is involved, terrorist groups are involved, and street gangs are involved.” Rivalry among these groups has resulted in numerous shootings and homicides.

The connection to terrorism is no exaggeration. When New York police cracked another smuggling ring in 2005, they uncovered a multimillion dollar flow of funds from New York City to unknown individuals in the Middle East. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly gave voice to the obvious conclusion: Terrorists probably got the money.

Just a few weeks before that 2005 bust, Buffalo-area businessman Aref Ahmed had been sentenced to three years and a month for cigarette smuggling. The feds said he’d used the racket to fund “scholarships” at terrorist training camps in Afghanistan during the spring of 2001. Going back to 1993, counterfeit cigarette stamps were found in the apartment of the first World Trade Center bombers.[...]

Naturally, none of the above will stop Pol Pot from taxing smokes. After all, it’s for our own good.

Politicians continue to use the health of smokers as their excuse for higher cigarette taxes. This view is myopic. As Gov. Wilson argued three decades ago, high cigarette taxes are bad public policy because of their effect on the rest of us. In the 1960s and ’70s, organized crime exploited high cigarette taxes at our expense. Today we face an even deadlier adversary.