Run for the Parks: In case you missed it, there’s a great family focused fun/walk run being put on by the Park People tonight in Humboldt Park. The proceeds are going to pay for repairs on the bathrooms at the Humboldt Park band shell. You can still sign up tonight at the event, but the number of tshirts we have are limited so get there early!

Carter & his racing sausages

How about them Brewers! Not to jinx the whole thing, but the Brewers are playing good baseball since the All Star break as I predicted they would. Taking this series against the Reds would also be a huge boost to our post-season chances and give the team the confidence they need to know they can play (and win) against the best teams in baseball. To all the Rickie Weeks haters out there, how’s your crow tasting? On a positive note, here’s a fun picture of Carter at last Saturdays game:

Audience Member: Today I am very, very worried about this country, where it is going. As I study history and look at the historical thing I see right now a liar, a cheat, a criminal, a dishonest person who lied his way into the White House; and we are sitting with a Marxist anti-American, American-hater sitting in the White House, who seems bound and determined to destroy this nation.

Different Audience Member: Rich is that your question?

Audience Member: Yes. Do you agree? Let me finish. My point, I guess what I’m saying it is so important for people like Mr. Johnson who understands this [inaudible] to be elected. It’s important for the people who are out there who don’t understand what this whole thing was about, that they begin to understand so that a Reagocrat[?] like Feingold, ah…Dumocrats like Kagen and others out there are removed from office so that this country gets back on a…gets back on its path. Do you kind of agree with that? (Laughter)

Ron Johnson:: I’m not…I’m not going to argue with…arm wrestle you about it.

And laughs all around! This kind of ridiculous rhetoric may play well with the anti-everything-since-january-2009 tea party crowd, but Ron Johnson is running to be a SENATOR of Wisconsin for crying out loud and all he can do to someone who calling the President a “criminal determined to destroy this nation” is laugh and shrug it off? Seriously, read it again:

“a liar, a cheat, a criminal, a dishonest person who lied his way into the White House; and we are sitting with a Marxist anti-American, American-hater sitting in the White House, who seems bound and determined to destroy this nation.”

Not to go into Obama vs. Bush mode again here, but I’m so old I remember when talk like that about the President had conservative’s calling it treason. Now it’s just accepted. It’s one thing for some fringe extremist to believe this kind of crap, but it’s quite another for a candidate for the United States Senate to go along with it.

So what’s a bigger threat to the “freedom” of America and saddling of future generations with debt that so many conservative candidates can’t talk enough about lately? Again, if you only listened to them, Fox News, and the local talk radio shows, you’d be under the impression that it’s “ALL OBAMA’S FAULT!”. The reality?

The Bush tax cuts for America’s richest residents and the Iraq/Afghanistan wars have a much bigger impact on the deficit than the stimulus. Period.

If you’re one of those TEA Party folks who is concerned about the “freedom” of America via our deficit, do you see that things like tax cuts for the richest of the rich are the problem, and not the stimulus? Why haven’t you been waving the red flag about the things that are actually impacting our nation’s credit instead of those, like the stimulus, which aren’t in the long term? You’re outraged at $800 million in one time stimulus money (a large portion of which went to.. wait for it… TAX CUTS!) but not at the $1 trillion a year we’re soaking up to provide tax cuts to the richest of the rich?

People ask me all the time why I think a lot of the “outrage” being generated by conservatives and the tea party crowd is bogus. Data like that represented above are my answer.

You want America to stop spending money on the credit of future generations? Then take away the charge card for the richest of the rich and the wars in the Middle East. It’s that simple.

One county supervisor says times is running out to start work on a much-needed expansion to the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center’s parking lot – a proposal that’s drawn objections from parks groups that say the facility is attempting to infringe on public  land. Meanwhile, the state DNR as weighed in to oppose the expansion.

Sanfelippo argues the parking lot must be expanded because people attending events at the Center routinely park on the grass to the north of the existing lots. “We’re talking about events that attract a lot of elderly people,” Sanfelippo says.

To his credit, Sup. Sanfelippo is very cleverly trying to confuse the actual facts about the plans from the WMC. The Park People and Preserve our Parks are completely supportive of the WMC building a new parking lot on their land. What we’re against is them paving over park land that they’re currently squatting on to increase the bottom line of a private non-profit.

In the article, he also tries to muddle the waters when talking about how the War Memorial Center is owned by the County, then goes on to talk about how because of that the War Memorial Corporation isn’t a private corporation, which is untrue. The Corporation operates out of the Center building.  It’s no different than the private corporation Coast Restaurant leasing a public building from the County or the Zoological society leasing out public space at the Zoo or a hundred other similar cases.

The fact is – as the article correctly points out in it’s headline – time is in fact running out for the War Memorial Corporation. It would be in their best interests and the interests of the taxpaying, park enjoying public for them to give up on this misguided land grab and go ahead with their plans to develop and improve a parking lot on their existing land.

(Full disclosure, I’m one of the people who signed the Notice of Claim against the County regarding this issue.)

Milwaukee County executive Scott Walker pledged Thursday to save an estimated $284 million a year by cutting 4,000 unfilled jobs in state government if he’s elected governor. – jsonline.com

In the spirit of candidate Walker, I’d also like to make the bold announcement that I am going to save several hundred gazillion thousand dollars a year by not signing any of the blank checks I have in my checkbook. While I may not have that much money in my bank account, it never hurts to pretend to save it. Logical, right?

I had also budgeted four hundred gazillion dollars for toys for the kids this year, but have decided to be a “budget hawk” and save that money for my own campaign for Governor.

• As I mentioned the other night on the Twitter tube, Carter and I were at the Brewers game on Friday night which in itself isn’t something I’d write about. But with a tie game in the 4th inning, Carlos Gomez hit a towering home run to left field that bounced off the stands and back onto the field. Milton Bradley of the Mariners tossed the ball over to the security guy and he motioned for Carter to come down and then gave him the home run ball. You can watch the video of the homer here. Classy move by the security guy. Needless to say Carter is thrilled although a bit overwhelmed as you can see in this picture as everyone around us was cheering for him. That makes two home run balls we’ve gotten so far this year and I don’t know how many foul balls. The problem now is he and Emerson expect to go to games and get a ball having no idea how big a deal it is to be lucky enough to get one.
• Back in the hood, I’m now serving on the Board of my neighborhood association, the Washington Heights Neighborhood Association. We’re lucky enough to live in one of the best neighborhoods in Milwaukee and I’m looking forward to helping out to make it better!
• On a sad note, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia passed away over night. While most of his 50+ year history is unfamiliar to me and many others, he really made a name for himself to my generation with his vocal opposition to the Iraq War. He accurately predicted that winning the war wouldn’t be the problem, but that “winning the peace” would. I was lucky enough to have a copy of his book “Losing America: Confronting A Reckless and Arrogant Presidency” signed by the Senator himself back in 2004.

• Tragedy at O’Donnell Park yesterday. Thoughts and prayers to all those involved in this horrific accident. It put a very somber note on an otherwise great day in Milwaukee.
• While now is not the time to get into the blame game about what happened yesterday and why, it still needs to be addressed. We live in a place where sinkholes abound, concrete is falling off the County Courthouse, and the Hoan bridge is literally falling apart. If you need to put nets under the bridge to catch falling concrete, there might be a problem outside of getting a big net!! This constant punting of putting serious money into our infrastructure is sickening and starting to impact the safety of residents. Elected officials of every party need to get off their butts, stop worrying about how it will play in the next election, and get something done. Now.
• We filed “Notice of Claim” against the Milwaukee County Board on Wednesday and held a press conference to alert the media and public about the War Memorial Corporations plans to pave over park land on Milwaukee’s lakefront. Thankfully, litigation has been averted (for now) as the County Board wisely decided against taking the matter up at their monthly meeting yesterday by a vote of 10-9. The fight is probably not over, but I’m very pleased with the outcome thus far. Thank you to all of you out there who contacted your County Supervisor to ask them to vote no against this important issue.

On a lighter note, this is one of those weekends where Milwaukee really is one of the greatest cities in the Country to live in. First weekend of Summerfest, Greek Fest, Brewers home series, Bradford Beach, etc… Enjoy it!

You may recall that several months ago, I outlined a plan being put forth by the War Memorial Corporation that would take over additional park land on Milwaukee’s lake front to put in a new parking lot.

Since then a lot has happened.

The War Memorial Corporation (WMC), a private, non-profit corporation,  is advancing a plan to expand the parking lot on the north side of the building (directly south of Veterans Park) to raise revenue from  special event parking at the expense of the County Parks Department’s O’Donnell parking garage located right across the street, and to the detriment of public parkland.

At a recent meeting of the Lakefront Development Advisory Commission  (LDAC) several weeks ago, the WMC plan was put on hold as park supporters turned out in force to express their concerns. Not only was this action wrong, it was also illegal. It recently came to our attention that the WMC plans to bypass all public input into this plan by having certain Milwaukee County Supervisors do an end run of existing procedures and public scrutiny and bring the plan up for a vote at their monthly meeting on Thursday (tomorrow).

The County Board is doing this through a parliamentary procedure known as “suspension of the rules,” and it does exactly what it sounds like: bypassing the existing and proper rules to ram this proposal through the County Board.

This morning Preserve our Parks and The Park People of Milwaukee County filed a “notice of claim” with the Milwaukee County Clerk which not only outlines the reason this  is illegal, but lays out very clearly that Preserve Our Parks and The Park  People are prepared to litigate this matter with the County if the WMC chooses to move forward with paving lakefront park land to expand a parking lot.

To avoid that costly and resource consuming litigation, we’re urging Supervisors to vote against suspending the rules and have issued a press release today outlining our opposition and held a press conference this morning to alert the media – and the public – to this high handed land grab.

The last thing we should be doing is paving over any lakefront park land to provide more parking for a private group whose tenants include for-profit businesses!

Please spend 5 minutes by joining us in calling your Supervisor to ask that they vote AGAINST this  parliamentary procedure, they vote AGAINST this land grab on our lakefront, and they vote FOR our parks!

For information on how to contact your Supervisor, visit: http://county.milwaukee.gov/FindDistrictSupervisor or call the County Board switchboard at: 414-278-4222

Please join me in this important fight to halt the constant “nibbling away” at public park land for the benefit of private businesses!

I should note that about half of the County Board is already on record as being against the “suspension of the rules” being proposed by the other half who are in favor. I’ll get a list as soon as I know it of who is against this land grab and who’s in favor of it.

Our press conference this morning was attended by the three major networks in Milwaukee and I’ll post video of the conference as it comes in.

If you’d like more information about him personally, where he stands on the issues or how to get involved in his campaign, the website for his campaign is now live at : http://www.larsonforsenate.com

I’m sure it will be expanded in the next few weeks, but it’s a good place to get started for now!

While I think there is an obvious need to debate the amount of money paid by workers for health insurance (none at this point for teachers, and we personally don’t use it), how about talking about the inappropriate amount of money being sucked up by the central office “administration”? There are literally thousands of people who work for the MPS administration located about a half block from my house on 52nd & Vliet, and I’ve heard nothing about any cuts taking place with them.

Just look at the top. You have Superintendent Andrekopoulos who makes $260,000+ a year and for what? Some of the worst reading rates in the Country and a graduation rate of around 50%? That hardly seems like the kind of performance that would demand a salary of over a quarter million dollars per year.

Why not start the cuts with him and his staff? Why not trim the fat in MPS administration?

And let me tell you, if the number of Cadillac’s and Lexus’ that roll out of MPS administration at 4:30pm on the dot is any indication of the amount of fat being spared in MPS administration, there’s plenty of fat to be cut. Apparently, cutting first and second year teachers is more important that interrupting the luxury car payments of the folks in the administration building, or heaven forbid, cutting the salary of the people at the top!

For what it’s worth, Jenny has been a school counselor for the past two years and works in a very challenging high school on the north side of town. She’s given two years of her life for those kids and that school and has been promptly rewarded by MPS with a swift kick to the rear.