Not all the turkeys get pardoned on Thanksgiving.

Good riddance to this one.

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.

There's a difference between winning and competing.

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?

Terri McCormick's curious start

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.

Mark Honadel suggests fixing the UI shortfall by taxing employees?

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.

Democrats still can't separate business and pleasure

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.

Republicans write bad bills too

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...


I still liked the AFSCME costume better, though.

Doug Hoffman, blue jeans, and the future of the GOP

Well, the off-year election has concluded. Both sides will try to put their best spin on last night's efforts, but there's one story that is far more captivating than the others.

It's not Virginia, where for the last 30 years, control of the governor's office has fallen comfortably into the arms of whatever party didn't control the White House.

It's not New Jersey, where the governor's office has switched between parties 15 times in the last 100 years.

Republicans will work to find meaning in both races, but history indicates there's not much meaning to find. Gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia are so predictably unstable that it would be foolish to read too much into the results.

However, there's a little hamlet in the northern reaches of New York that will be seeing its first Democratic representative in Congress since not long after the Civil War.

Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman had the vocal (and in some cases, financial) support of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum, Gary Bauer, Fred Thompson, the Club for Growth, and a host of other high-powered, supposedly influential conservatives. He represented the hopes and dreams of conservative activists all across America. His insurgent campaign was to be the clarion call of the right wing, a signal to all that the conservative, teabagging wing of the Republican Party would be the one to lead the GOP out of the political wilderness.

Hoffman was the conservative candidate in New York's 23rd Congressional District, a district that hadn't seen Democratic representation in Congress in seven generations. He was able to run liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava clear out the race with his alleged momentum.

Should be a slam dunk, right?

Nope. All it got Hoffman was a fat four-point loss in a district that hasn't elected a Democrat since before the invention of the radio, the gasoline engine, and blue jeans.

Yes, some of you will carp about Scozzafava and her vile, turncoat ways. But let me pose this question: would you also tell me that Dede Scozzafava was more influential among Republicans in NY-23 than the combined forces of Limbaugh, Hannity, Palin, Levin, and all of the other prominent conservatives who in part staked their own reputation as movers and shakers on this race? Is a woman nobody heard of two months ago stronger than all of those folks put together?

If so, what does that say about your fearless leaders, aside from the fact that they like to cash the checks you hand them by listening to their shows and buying their crappy books?

Doug Hoffman couldn't win as the conservative darling in a seat where voter registration advantage is GOP +12. He couldn't win with the conservative movement's biggest, baddest windbags blowing their copious amounts of hot air firmly into his sails.

You mean there are some Republican-leaning districts that strident conservatives can't win? But here I thought conservatives could win everywhere. Isn't that what Doug Hoffman's self-professed mentor, Glenn Beck, tells us every day?

Those in the Tea Party movement beat their chests and caterwaul a whole lot, but in their first major test of credibility and relevance, they lost a seat that a rational person would've thought near-impossible for the GOP to lose.

Last night will be a huge victory for Republicans if the GOP is smart enough to learn the correct lessons from it. The successes of Chris Christie in New Jersey and Bob McDonnell in Virginia tell us that there is still a place in politics for intelligent, pragmatic, reasonable Republicans. And the defeat of Doug Hoffman in a solidly Republican district provides a clear road map of how not to get back to the majority.

Ann Hraychuck is tough on crime... and corpse transport.

Democrats have clearly finished their big priorities for the year and are now moving on to the housekeeping part of their agenda.

To: All Legislators

From: Representative Ann Hraychuck

RE: LRB 0263/1, relating to seizure and forfeiture of a vehicle used to transport a corpse

Deadline: Tuesday, November 3, 2009


Under current law, if a vehicle is used to transport a weapon used to commit a crime, that vehicle can be seized. However, if a vehicle is used to transport a corpse in an attempt to conceal the crime the vehicle cannot be seized.

In Polk County there was a murder case in which a vehicle was used to transport the body of a victim to a wooded area in an attempt to conceal the body. This was not a clearly forfeitable offense, so law enforcement was unable to seize the vehicle. But if the offender would have used his car to transport the weapon used to commit the crime, then the vehicle could have been seized.

This legislation will close that loophole and ensure that if a vehicle is used to conceal a body it will be a forfeitable offense.

If you would like to co-sponsor this legislation please contact Rep. Hraychuck’s office at (608) 267-2365 or respond to this email by Tuesday, November 3, 2009.

To be clear, seizure could only occur if the transport of the corpse is done with the intent to conceal a crime. Which means Fred Risser can still drive himself to work every day without worrying about Capitol Police trying to impound his car.