Wednesday, June 16, 2010

So When Can We Officially Ignore CRG?

I personally started ignoring Citizens for Responsible Government (CRG) shortly after they were hijacked by partisans that had an almost creepy infatuation with Scott Walker. But it doesn't really matter when I first started disregarding them. The real question is when will the media finally look at the CRG for what they really are? When will the media start disregarding their hyperbolic attempts for publicity, their self serving actions and their blind infatuation with Walker?

Consider just a short list of their willful blindness regarding Walker:

  • When Scott Walker kept and even promoted aides that were very close to Tom Ament why didn't they go on the warpath? Even when two of those aides stood to get the same big-time pension payouts that caused all of the outrage in the first place? [MJS, 4/18/2004]

  • When Scott Walker broke his promise of having "at-will" employees sign waivers to refuse lavish pension benefits, where was CRG to hold his feet to the fire? Walker didn't even make an attempt to get those waivers until after David Riemer filed an open records request for them.

  • What about the 2007 pension scandal that happened five years into Walker's watch? Where was CRG then?

  • Where was CRG when Walker broke a campaign promise by giving himself a $50,000 raise?

  • Where was CRG's fake concern about government spending and tax increases when Walker was proposing budgets that increased both categories by 35% and 18% respectively?

    You get the idea. Being phony (not to mention self serving) seems to be in the DNA of CRG. It seems pretty clear to me that their primary reason for being is to help advance the political career of Scott Walker. So I guess it makes perfect sense that they would seek to silence what is probably his most determined critic.

    CRG filed a complaint with the Milwaukee County DA claiming that our friend Capper, who is a county employee, was doing political blogging while at work. Again with the phony...where was CRG when a longtime Walker staffer was caught doing political stuff on the job? That activity was in support of her boss's political campaign and appears to have taken place directly from his office!

  • We don't even know if their allegations against Capper are true. If you look at the response that Folkbum posted on this topic, it appears that the alleged dates are either furlough days or days that Capper had off. Folkbum was able to determine this by spending 5 minutes on Google. Was CRG so eager to silence a Walker critic that they didn't bother doing the slightest bit of due diligence?

    I don't know exactly what is going on in the DA's office about this but if CRG ends up being proven wrong (as the above item suggests), are they going to publicly apologize? Are they going to do the RESPONSIBLE thing and reimburse taxpayers for the time and resources that were used by the DA's office? Those questions are important but perhaps the most important is what else do they have to do to lose all credibility with the media? When can we collectively and officially start ignoring their mania?

    UPDATE: Also read Illusory Tenant, Brew City Brawler, and Haas 414 on this issue.

    3 comments:

    Anonymous said...

    partisans complaining of partisans...

    Roland Melnick said...

    "Where was CRG when Walker broke a campaign promise by giving himself a $50,000 raise?"

    Complete lie.

    Meanwhile, Tom Barrett (who is paid a higher salary) has volunteered to give back how much exactly????

    Cory Liebmann said...

    anon...thanks for agreeing that CRG is Partisan.

    When Walker first ran for county exec he promised taxpayers that he would return 47% of the salary. he chose to make that promise (one of his many political gimmicks). He never put an end-date on that promise. Then for no reason and while asking everyone else to sacrifice more, he decided to break that promise and take the 47%after all...it was $50,000 more in his pocket...it was a $50,000 raise.

    deal with it.