Seriously Roger, your web guy couldn't find a public domain photo of the U.S. Capitol? For real?
But hey, at least Roger's not claiming that he's actually in front of the Supreme Court in that picture, which is something Terri McCormick would probably do.
State Veterans Affairs Secretary John Scocos was fired Tuesday - just two months after returning from a tour in Iraq - and replaced with an agency official he had recently demoted.
Scocos, secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs since 2003 and a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, returned to work in late September after a year in Iraq, his second tour there.
The Veterans Affairs board has been signaling disapproval of the agency's leadership for months, seeking a wide-ranging legislative audit of its workings and criticizing Scocos for failing to update them on the findings of an inquiry into alleged improper spending at a state veterans home.
And it seems that Terri McCormick may not be able to fathom the distinction.
McCormick has posted a copy of her 1977 certificate from the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation on her campaign website, perhaps in response to my last post or another media inquiry. Conveniently, it's linked to the words "Wisconsin Truman Scholar." An image of the certificate is below.
Notice anything interesting while you were reading that? Yeah, me too. The certificate doesn't say she was a Wisconsin Truman Scholar. It says she was nominated for a Truman Scholarship. That typically means you were put forward for an award, but hardly implies that you were selected.
Wisconsin HAD a Truman Scholar in 1977. It was Sue Quantius. She went to Smith College and is currently a staffer for the House Appropriations Committee. Not surprisingly, you can find Quantius' name on the Truman Scholars website.
Notice the consistency with which the awards were given in 1977 - one winner from each state. Are we to believe that Wisconsin was the only state with two winners, and that somehow the Truman Scholarship Foundation forgot that fact?
If John Doe from Fond du Lac is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and loses, does he become the Wisconsin Nobel Peace Prize Winner? Of course not - and if John tried calling himself that, you'd say he was full of crap. There is no such thing.
It's like a logic puzzle.
Terri McCormick is a candidate. Some candidates are winners. Therefore, Terri McCormick is a winner.
A. True B. False
Perhaps McCormick doesn't understand the difference. Or perhaps it's the other possibility, one that politicians often succumb to - the inability to simply come clean when they're caught misstating their qualifications. Goodness knows it's all too familiar to Wisconsin Republicans - they went through this with Terry Musser in 2007, who for decades wrongly claimed that he was a Green Beret. In Musser's case, it was understanding the distinction between wearing a Green Beret and being a Green Beret.
Oddly enough, it's an inconsistency that McCormick acknowledges in her CV, which states "1977 University of Wisconsin System Candidate for Harry S. Truman Scholar." So somehow between the CV and the narrative, the word "candidate" gets lost. Are you a candidate, or are you a winner? I'm pretty sure that if you were a winner, you would call yourself a winner and not a candidate.
It's like a bad Jim Doyle frankenstein veto. "Hmmm, if I veto 'University of' and 'System Candidate for Harry S.,' I get "Wisconsin Truman Scholar!"
McCormick wants to talk about integrity leaders. Wouldn't someone with real integrity be completely straightforward and unambiguous about their qualifications? Either you are or you aren't. If you are, contact the Truman Scholarship Foundation and get them to acknowledge that they were in error. I'll be happy to eat a heaping plate of crow if that's the case. But don't try to offer some certificate from the wall in your den as legitimate proof of a claim. Nobody's buying it.
First Terry Musser's green beret incident, now Terri McCormick's Truman Scholar debacle. Should I just ask now if Terry Moulton would like to confess anything?
So Terri McCormick is back from the political dead and running for Congress again. We here at the Playground think her entry into the race is among the more curious launches we've ever seen.
As some of you may have heard, Terri apparently used a turnkey publisher (you pay, we print) to print a 344-page book about what Terri McCormick thinks about stuff. At first I thought it might simply be a transcript of her sanctimonious jabber in caucus during her Assembly days, but then I realized you'd need much more than 344 pages to cover all that.
In any case, the book is called something like "How to Sex a Republican" or "What Person Who Isn't Their Spouse Is Your Republican Congressman Having Sex With?" I forget the exact title, but it has something to do with sex and Republicans, so I'm sure Joel Kleefisch is already trying to hang a green license plate on it.
In this sense, McCormick's kind of like Sarah Palin - except nobody will pay her any money up front for her thoughts. Somehow I suspect that this was never about the book, and that the book is simply a vehicle that allows McCormick to pass herself off to people as an author. Hey, I wrote a short story in fourth grade that won a prize in a local writing contest. Does that make me an author?
Then, there's this series of unintentionally hilarious videos that McCormick began posting on YouTube in what appears to be an attempt to promote her book (or her candidacy). First, we have these gems, in which a guy who works with (for?) Terri McCormick's consulting firm is posing as a book reviewer, with about all the sincerity of a late-night infomercial huckster.
Turns out the book "reviewer" has a production company. They've recently finished a musical about Ed Gein, one of Wisconsin's most notorious serial killers.
Where does Terri McCormick stand on serial killer humor? Does she think serial killers are funny? Does she think that associating with people who think serial killing is funny is good for her campaign? And did you notice the "book reviewer" playing the part of Ed Gein?
Then, we have this video, in a Cheers-like setting, in which McCormick has apparently revived Coach from the grave and laments the insider nature of politics. She uses made-up phrases like "integrity leaders," the kind of lame buzzword that's usually a sign you've spent too much time consulting. I also enjoy the veiled shot at John Gard at 2:45, and the thinly-disguised whining about how she was run out of the 2006 Congressional race.
Did you recognize the bartender? He was the sheriff dude who ate the human chili in the Ed Gein video! Small world, isn't it?
But then there's my favorite part of all. Terri likes to talk in her biography about how she's a Truman Scholar. For those who are unfamiliar, the Truman scholarships are awarded by the federal government to "recognize college juniors with exceptional leadership potential who are committed to careers in government, the nonprofit or advocacy sectors, education or elsewhere in the public service."
Small issue, though. If you go to the website and look through the archives of past Truman scholars, Terri's nowhere to be found. But sometimes web programmers make mistakes, so I emailed the Truman Scholarship Foundation today to inquire as to whether there may have been an oversight. Here's the response I received back:
To the best of our knowledge, our listing in "Meet our Scholars" is accurate.
During the time frame you describe, students were awarded our scholarship during their sophomore year. The first awards were given in 1977. We did name individuals as alternates, but we do not keep a record of that distinction. We require schools to nominate students for our award, but we do not keep track of nominees for past years.
Apparently Terri has something to work out with the people who give the awards. For her sake, I hope that they're wrong. After all, it would be a real tragedy if this self-anointed "integrity leader" was somehow misrepresenting herself to the world before her campaign even began.
Thought you'd all enjoy this gem from last week's Assembly Labor Committee hearing. In it, ranking member Mark Honadel proposes that his colleagues entertain a change to current law in which employees would be effectively taxed 5% in order to fund a so-called USA (Unemployment Savings Account). Yeah, that's right. Honadel's answer to the UI shortfall is to increase an employee's financial liability for a circumstance almost always generated by their employer and through no fault of their own.
By the end, Honadel absurdly suggests that his suggestion is optional, at which point Chris Sinicki sarcastically asks why anyone would agree to electively pay a 5% tax into a "savings account."
I'll tell you why, Chris. You'd do it if you were wealthy and had a lot of money and knew you'd never need to touch the money you were putting away. What Honadel has clumsily proposed is nothing short of another tax shelter for wealthy Wisconsinites.
Video link here. (Relevant portions can be cued up at 1:17:00 and then again at 1:46:00.)
A query to the Minority Leader's office, if they're so inclined. I presume that as the ranking member of the committee, Honadel's speaking on behalf of your caucus. So I would naturally assume that this half-baked proposal is part of some grand AssGOP agenda to reclaim the majority. Or can you still not figure out how to get your less intelligent members to stay on the reservation and STFU?
Can the AssGOP come up with any agenda item - anything - that doesn't view some kind of tax-free savings account as a silver bullet to the world's problems? Health care's too expensive? Health Savings Account. Unemployment's costing the state too much? Unemployment Savings Account. What's next, Joel Kleefisch asking individuals to pay up front into an account to fund their green license plate and monitoring bracelet, just in case they molest a kid? What other things would the GOP like average citizens to preemptively fund?
And for the record, my favorite part of the video is watching what appears to be an admirable attempt by the Leg Council attorney to stifle the laughter that should naturally result from hearing a suggestion as idiotic as Honadel's. An excellent show of professionalism.
Look guys, after the great Mark Miller campaign binder debacle of 2006, I would've thought you'd be better at keeping your campaign crap off of state property and out of state buildings. Apparently someone on your team missed the memo, or I wouldn't have gotten this in my email:
It's pretty innocuous, really. But I did find a few things interesting.
1. Have we found the one person on earth who uses the courier font in Word, or was this actually done on a typewriter?
2. Does someone really believe that Phil Garthwaite is capable of explaining prevailing wage and wage claim changes, let alone do so in a way that will convince others that those were intelligent changes to make?
3. Who the hell would want a letter of recommendation from Gary Sherman? It would end up being 17 pages long, just like his windy columns, and nobody would read anything but the first and last paragraphs.
4. "Are u ready for 2010?" Apparently texting will be a huge part of Mike Sheridan's campaign strategy.
Next time you're leaving your campaign crap around a government building, make sure it says something good, like "Doug B. to leave giant bag of AFSCME cash in garbage can of men's room outside finance wing." Thanks in advance.
I was reminded of this by an anonymous commenter a few days ago who left the following message for me:
Is this any worse than the terrible Mike & Kev red meat bills that Republicans served for years? I lost track last session when the GOP tried to outlaw abortion for the tenth time, punish gay people for the sixth time and take away birth control for the fifth time. If only the Assembly REPUBS would have passed a law to dress up sex offenders with loud ties and matching watches to go with their green license plates, then they would be still in charge.
So true. Although Ann Hraychuck doesn't have an official Halloween costume like Joel Kleefisch...
