4th Street Forum With host RAUL VASQUEZ: WISCONSIN’S SUPREME COURT — ELECT OR APPOINT?

Big money, outside money, tacky TV ads: even Supreme Court elections have become a battleground of nasty politics. Should the Supreme Court be appointed instead?  Would that restore its dignity and raise the quality of Wisconsin justice?

And with guests in order of appearance – JAY HECK, Executive Director, Common Cause Wisconsin; TERRI McCORMICK, Author of How to Run for Office on a Liberty Platform and What Sex Is a Republican? Stories from the Front lines of American Politic; Former Three-Term Wisconsin State Legislator; THOMAS MITCHELL, Editor, Milwaukee Community Journal; and WALT KELLY, JD, 1997 Candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice and Civil Rights and Employment Attorney

4th Street Forum is one of the first programs available by click-to-view in the Milwaukee County Federated Library System.  It also runs all week on Time Warner’s, “Wisconsin on Demand,” (WIOD) starting Monday – check the listing for times.

Popularity: 5% [?]

What is the truth about politics in the United States? What can you do to make it better? Read this book and find out.

Terri McCormick did what few politicians do. She wrote this a book to tell the truth and offer positive fixes for a broken system. There are many politician-written books on the market. Hers is different. She does not glorify her service, make excuses for mistakes, or promote a one-sided ideology. She gives you the true inside picture of state and federal legislative politics. This book will speak to Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and true independents. Terri shares the unadorned truth with her readers.

Her writing is fair and balanced, but her most significant contribution is that she takes you from ‘ain’t it awful’ to telling you what you can do to fix the system. Terri’s subtitle is an excellent and honest summary of the contents of her book. It is; Stories from the Front Lines in American Politics and How You Can Change the Way Things Are. Terri’s credentials, experience, and track record makes her writing resonate with the truths she spells out.

She went into state and federal elected politics with a pure heart and didn’t sell out. This book is not an investigative reporter’s viewpoint, but is based on her deep immersion in the heart of the American political system. Most clear thinkers recognize our system is suffering from corruption, narcissism, selling out to special interests, ideology-at-all-costs, and loss of integrity that is rampant.

Yet Terri maintained her integrity, honesty, and shares the truth with us in What Sex Is A Republican? This book is a rare, important, and valuable addition to the national conversation about saving the United States—or losing it as we know it.

Here is what she wrote in her introductory Purpose:

“Do not be bamboozled into thinking that there is any difference between the elites in one political party and the elites in the other; they are all a part of the same club.

What Sex is a Republican? takes on the political class and provides
us with the tools to change the way things are. Just when you thought
it was all about elephants and donkeys, in walks the political class. Will
the political class continue to con America? Or won’t they?
It is all up to you!”

This book is different. There are many books about politics and by politicians. Bur, few are as honest and hard-hitting. Fewer yet that offer answers to fixing the problem.
Terri is a Republican, but she takes on all comers…no matter what party. She is not your typical politician; Terri is an American first. She tells you what is wrong with the system, what happens to most politicians when they are immersed in the system, and she tells you why.

Terri tells her story in three parts. In “Part One: A Call to Service for Each of Us,” she tells of the personal events in her life that led her to public service. She shares stories from her life that lead to supporting quality candidates, becoming an informed citizen, and getting involved in public service.

As a state legislator, she learned quickly, became successful, and faced hostility from her own political party leaders. Machiavellian antics lead to tensions between her and the GOP leadership. She saw how out of touch party bosses were with the people they were sent to serve. She confirms what you probably suspect.

To make sense of the political system, she takes readers beyond political party and ideology and reveals a political Ponzi scheme. She exposes the culture of the needy and the greedy in politics for what they are—an eco-system filled with political animals. If you are an insider and are willing to pay, you are allowed to play. She shows how the elite in both political parties act against their own back rows.
Terry moves beyond the stereotypes of ethnicity and gender and defines dysfunctional leadership in a flawed pay-for-play system. She exposes cronyism and political favors that monopolize the legislative agenda of the people’s house. You’ll learn that the only way out of institutional corruption is to start over. She proposes a new “We the People” that calls for new leadership willing put the people’s house right again. Changing political parties only changes the team’s jerseys. Without real change the same institutional games will go on.

In “Part Two: The Art of Political Power Games in a Vertical Silo,” she takes us inside the belly of the political beast. You get a front row seat that few get to see. You learn how seating assignments are used to control behavior by front-row elites. Then she shows how political reform can be done. Did you know the phrase “tipping the front row” was coined to show how to put front-row politicians into the backseat at the will of the people? It’s a powerful tool we can use. Terri used the Veterans Property Tax Bill to create a competitive prescription cost pool to prove her point. The “We the People” tool doesn’t sit in the front row of state and federal legislatures. Their power is used when they walk into the voting booths back home.

Terri shows you what public service for the people versus political self-service look like when you compare them with modern-day politics and medieval Machiavellian fear techniques.
She asks, “What are today’s results and impact of the do-nothing Congress that has prevailed over the last ten years?”

Her answer, “An economy in distress, needing a trillion-dollar bailout; Wall Street greed and corruption fueled by an ineffective Federal Election Commission; and job loss that rivals the Great Depression.”

She teaches you techniques that address the answers and they are just the start of fixing the system. Her answers show citizen leaders and legislators alike what an effective government office should look like.
Terri tells of the dark side of politics with a humorous twist in an unrelenting unveiling of dirty tricks and election engineering schemes. She tells of negative campaign smears to elitist tricks for controlling the vote. You’ll see the tricks of the trade in American politics.

She compares old-style politics to change leaders’ tools for you so you can make a more informed choice in the voting booth. She explains how to become an active citizen leader.
The power and difference in Terri’s book is in “Part Three: Changing the Way Things Are.” She explains how the greatest measure of how a public servant will act in office is shown in how he or she runs a political campaign. She tells you how much money a candidate may need in public office and relates that to the strategies and techniques used to run a political campaign.

As her reader, you get the tools you need to assist in building a framework for supporting a political candidate—or being one. No matter what your political or governmental desires are, she teaches that as an active citizen and educated voter, you can be an essential part of fixing our republican form of government. You can become a critical voice with influence.

Terri gives you public policy outlines that offer voters and candidates with integrity a reliable map to chart your course in public service. She’ll show you successful strategies have proven to be effective.
She makes the case that anyone can serve in public office, if only he or she has a plan and the heart to do so.

This book concludes with the “mask of virtue.” It is Senate Bill 1—and it promises a more effective and ethical government. It has stalled once more with immediate tragic consequences. Terri appeals to her readers, the American voter, and citizen leaders who, collectively, have the power to do so to bring political virtue through active citizenship. She encourages voters, as campaign volunteers and educated consumers of good government, to realize that there is no other option.

Active involvement in the political process is our only path to integrity, principled representation, and honest self-government.

Terri concludes with these admonitions: Integrity in leadership requires that the American public awakes up and gets involved. Deception and corruption occurs in political parties so courageous leaders need courageous individuals to stand with them.

She asks us all to get involved in our local political process and government. The current crowd is made up mostly of those who mastered dirty tricks and retail politics. It is up to all of us to change the way things are.
Terri sums it up with a founding father’s quote:

The Danger that political factions and political interests pose to the American people is so grave that it requires the passage of the United States Constitution to protect them.
—James Madison, The Federalist Papers: No. 10

If you care about the future of the United States of America you will buy this book, learn from Terri, and act on what you learn.

Review by Vern Westgate

Popularity: 1% [?]

One wonders what the loony left in this country would have thought of the American Revolutionaries in the 1700”s.  Are the Tea Party Patriots looney, racists, “hang them from a tree”, “go to hell”? Would the left have called the the same thing?  Truth is a lot different than the fiction peddled by Joe Biden, Chris Mathews, Maxine Waters.  Truth is that the Tea Party Patriots and the Reagan Democrats are staging an uprising against the spending, debt, anti-American left in this country.

They are tired of seeing public employees with huge salaries and benefits they don’t have. They have to pay for it, by seeing their property taxes go up tenfold in the last decades..

They do not want to see their kids in debt up to their eyeballs. Spending money in this country on things like the “Stimulus bill” doesn’t solve any problems.

They are not rioting, they are assembling to protest these things. Now, they are working quietly to elect people, that agree with them, to office, just as the Clintons and the anti-American left worked to elect their kind of people in the 1990’s.

Barak Obama and his ilk backed people like Bill Ayers and his blood soaked wife, Bernadine Dohrn, Van Jones and other weirdos in his presidency.

Now the truth.  The Tea Party Patriots, is a very patriotic group. I consider myself one, that strongly backs our Constitution, is opposed to big deficits, grandiose debt, unfunded wars, high taxes, and overbearing government.

They are the people that have defended this country, by serving in the military, and do not want to see the country lower it’s guard, by cutting our forces.  There are lots of people out there that want to wipe us out.  Listen to the rhetoric of the crazies in the world.

They are people that populate our churches, PTA’s service clubs, Little leagues. They love the outdoors, hunt and fish.  They love the Packers, Brewers and Wisconsin. They put signs in their yard for their favorite candidates and actually might donate a little money.

The Tea Party Patriots are fiercely independent and are tired of seeing their money wasted on ridiculous things like $16 muffins and after school snacks for kids.  They feed their own kids.

• They see an education system dominated by unions who care for themselves and not the kids and families.  Kids in some school systems get to tenth grade and can’t read.
• They are all sizes, shapes, religions, colors and sexes.  I think that some of the women are more adamant than the men.
• They are your neighbors, who want a better life for their families and kids and see it all going down the drain the last few years.
• They are you and, as the man said, they see the future and they are really peed off.
• They will be working for candidates that represent those views and for legislation that puts those views into effect.  You will not see them disrupt our daily lives but attempt to improve it.
• They are us we should al join them.

Time to Solve Immigration problem

We have wars, deficits, debt, taxes and the economy to take care of. Let’s solve this problem in the next couple of years.  At the future Wisconsin conference three years ago, we had a debate between leaders of the Left and leaders of the Right.  At the end, it seemed to me that the 200 plus  people there thought we were not that far apart.  Sensible Conservatives and our leaders can come to a resolution of this problem soon.  Let’s just do it.
After those debates some things came out that show the base for a solution.

First we need to close the border using a combination of walls in populated areas, satellites, border guards, sensors, ATV’s and anything else that makes sense.  Walling the border throughout the huge unpopulated deserts does not make sense.  Next, throw out the criminal element and keep them out.  Crack down on people that hire illegals especially ones that pay them off the books and ill use them.
The obvious debatable areas are schooling for kids.  Courts have said that we must school the kids that live here.

In Texas , about ten years ago they almost unanimously adopted a program that kids that have been in the country for more than three years, have graduated from Texas high schools and are on the path to becoming citizens qualify for in state tuition.  Hardly that big of a deal as it is just in Texas and no one is proposing it for the rest of the country.  Texans know that educated kids produce jobs and good employees.

As for the rest of the illegals .  No one wants to round them up and put them in concentration camps like we did the Japanese in WWII or shoot them, so if we work on this the next ten years a lot of it will work itself out without any major problems.

Within that framework there is a solution.  Let’s all work on it.

Bob and Jean Dohnal. Publishers/Editors

Popularity: 1% [?]

“Money Madness vs. Democracy” taped by the Public Broadcast System

DEMOCRACY vs. MONEY MADNESS Big money – mysterious money – fuels expensive election campaigns.

Do you like what you’ve been seeing and hearing? Who is behind the flood of cash and what does it mean for Wisconsin?

With host ENRIQUE FIGUEROA, PhD, Director, Roberto Hernández Center, UW-Milwaukee. And with guests, in order of appearance: MIKE McCABE, Executive Director of Wisconsin Democracy Campaign; JULIA AZARI, PhD, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Marquette University; SPENCER COGGS, Wisconsin State Senator; and TERRI McCORMICK, former Wisconsin State Representative.

Watch the video here:  http://www.mptv.org/video/watch/?id=532

Popularity: 100% [?]

“Why do we fall?… So that we may learn how to pick ourselves up and stand on our own two feet.”  – Jessie Boyle, 1944, Irish American businesswoman

“Power is distancing … Politicians must know two languages and cultures-here and home. However, home soon becomes lost, forgotten by those who reach the seats of power.” Wall Street Journal contributing editor Peggy Noonan writes that the GOP is losing confidence because of what she calls “detachment from the ground.” It is clear to Noonan, a former President Reagan speech writer and confidant, that career politicians soon forget who sent them into office and why they are there.

Noonan points to what is obvious to me: that the theatre of public office, seldom resembles the reality of public office. Despite the talk of decreasing spending, it’s skyrocketed under Republican rule. Promises of smaller government have long been forgotten, just as securing our nation’s borders is a spoken priority, with little action backing it up.

The Democrats offer little more. Democrats are tagged as big spenders-big on ideas, short on delivery. Noonan contends-and I agree-that both parties are missing the boat. Party leadership has led both parties into dark, shadowy places with no light to see by.

The stories of American politics told in this book are based on fact. It is with the painstaking research and support of my former chief of staff, Jared Guzman, that specific dates and testimony have been cited. My home state will surprisingly resemble most states across this nation. The need for leadership and government reform is not a vacuous one. I have used personality types, rather than individuals in most of the stories from the front lines of politics, so that you may recognize the characters as your own.

Direct observations and empirical research was conducted for upwards of six years, so that the facts, actual events and testimony could provide a factual basis for this book. It is my aim to make an appeal to all Americans to become active and engaged in the political process, so that we may change the way things are.

The audience for this book is the American people-citizen, candidate and media alike-who represent the foundational trilogy needed to put our country right. I will take you behind the curtain of elective office into the belly of the best of American politics for one purpose: to give you the tools to recognize the games of the political class. With this knowledge, it is possible to finally peel off the masks of virtuous deception and become better citizens and leaders. To the courageous idealists among us, it is time for a new “we the people” to step forward and change the way things are.

The political gender referred to in What Sex Is a Republican? has no biological or anatomical designation. Rather, it refers to a silent coup-a class warfare unlike any others. We may be familiar with the notion of class warfare between the upper class and the middle/lower class, Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals. I can assure you that there is a class that transcends all of these boundaries in American politics. It is the political class made up of young and old, men and women, who believe they are entitled to their positions and endowed with an elite arrogance of self-service at the expense of the American people.

What Sex Is a Republican? could just as easily be written as What Sex Is a Democrat? Both major political parties have in them a political animus endemic to the political class. So embedded and institutionalized are these political animals that they have built around them political silos (extreme partisanship), paid for by unwitting fat cats fed on the emotional sound bites of well-trained political lackeys. So entrenched is the political class in the pursuit of self-preservation in public office that they would strangle the dreams and hopes of American ingenuity and innovation in its crib.

The political class’ stronghold on my grassroots race for the United States Congress brought the revolution of class warfare to my door and to the doors of my constituents in northeast Wisconsin. It was during my primary race in 2006, within my own political party, that all of us-voters and candidates alike-realized that our free elections were not as free as we had once thought.

[i] Noonan, Peggy. 2006. “Baseless Confidence,” Wall Street Journal [www.wsj.com], May 11.

Popularity: 19% [?]