So by now, you have probably read the article about who I am. I figured I should at least say something before I fold up shop here at the blog. There’s been a lot of speculation about my identity and motives for a while, so I should set some of it straight.

First of all, I wanted to address the whole issue of anonymity. I can completely understand people who are skeptical of writers who write with pseudonyms. They shouldn’t have to use a fake name if they didn’t have anything to hide, right?

It killed me all along not to be able to use my own name – although when I started this thing, I honestly never thought anyone would read it and it wouldn’t even matter. I just started doing it to make myself and a couple of friends laugh. I never expected it to get the attention it did. I can see where people in the capitol would be anxious if a staffer was somehow dishing out gossip or inside secrets, but I never did that. I was just a guy with opinions, and I shared them – hopefully in a way that entertained on occasion.

If people are looking for insider dirt or a “look at me, I work in the Capitol because I can name some Assembly members” attitude, those blogs exist. I wanted to be more than that, because I thought I could actually shed some light on some issues, rather than just taking shots. When I did criticize someone, I always provided substantiation in the form of a link or citation. I always operated on the assumption that I could be outed the very next day, and that I should be proud of what I posted. My position on some of the people I criticized has even shifted, in some cases.

Secondly, people are asking me whether all the stuff on the site is true. Sadly, yes. I never did mention my son, as that would make it so completely obvious who I was. But as you can see, I briefly retired during the period he was born, just to have some time off to get ready. The stress from being chased down by reporters didn’t help, either.

Finally, I wanted to thank all the people that knew who I was and kept it to themselves. You are all truly great friends, and provided me with a lot of feedback, information, and criticism. I especially want to thank the people who kept being accused of being me, who held strong and didn’t give it up. I also want to apologize to the people to whom I had to deny it was me. I hope you all understand. Your check is in the mail.

So I’m on to write for the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. I’m working on some big things for the website, so I hope you’ll all follow me there. It is a great organization – providing commentary, reports, and the Wisconsin Interest Magazine. Hopefully, you all keep checking out the changes that will be going on over at http://www.wpri.org/ in the future. There may not be as many posts about Jim Doyle\’s body waxing, but hopefully I can provide some commentary on issues of the day that entertain.

So that’s it. I’ll miss doing the blog. I can’t believe anyone cared about 90% of what I had to say, but I appreciate it. I can’t tell you how much it meant to me to have people linking to, discussing, and quoting stuff that I wrote. I have pretty much gone two years without getting any sleep, and that makes it all worth it.

-Chris

UPDATE: I just filmed an interview with Channel 27 here in Madison. Fat-apalooza will commence at 6 PM. I think they\’re putting it on the web, too.

Oh, and another thing – I was the one who came up with the term \”Frankenstein Veto.\” That is all.

UPDATE UPDATE: WKOW has the video of my fat melon on their site. I honestly don\’t even know what my quote means – and I keep looking to the left because one of their reporters was walking out of a door on the set.

In the last week of a gubernatorial campaign, the claims and counterclaims between opponents fly so fast it\’s hard to keep up. A casualty of the dizzying pace is the truth, as few media outlets are actually willing to do the work to research the flurry of accusations made against candidates.

This week, the Doyle for Governor campaign released a television ad featuring a rape survivor who claims that Congressman Mark Green would deny her the choice to have an abortion. Unless Green ascends to the post of Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and takes Justice Anthony Kennedy with him, abortion on demand will remain the law of the land, regardless of who inhabits the East Wing of the Wisconsin State Capitol.

Nevertheless, Planned Parenthood today, on cue, followed up with a press release which essentially provides more information on Doyle\’s TV ad. In the release, they cite several pieces of legislation which are supposed to prove that Mark Green wants to deny emergency contraception to rape survivors. Their first citation reads:

(Green) failed to support compassionate care for rape victims and access to emergency contraception to prevent pregnancy after an assault. (2005 HR 2928)

Note that there never was a vote of any kind on 2005 HR 2928 in the U.S. House, where Green served. Unable to cite a specific vote, Planned Parenthood criticizes Green for \”failing to support\” the bill, which means he didn\’t sign on to the bill as a cosponsor. By this standard, Milwaukee Democrat Gwen Moore also \”failed to support\” the bill, as she isn\’t on the bill either. Saying that someone \”failed to support\” a piece of legislation because they didn\’t put their name on it is like saying you\’re failing to support your neighbor if you don\’t mow his lawn for him every weekend.

That\’s not to say that Green theoretically didn\’t oppose the bill, which does something very different than providing \”compassionate care for rape victims.\” The bill summary reads as follows:

Prohibits any federal funds from being provided to a hospital unless the hospital meets certain conditions related to a woman who is a victim of sexual assault, including that the hospital:

(1) provides the woman with accurate and unbiased information about emergency contraception;
(2) offers emergency contraception to the woman;
(3) provides the woman such contraception at the hospital on her request; and
(4) does not deny any such services because of the inability of the woman or her family to pay.

So the bill is really about federal funding, and the ability to withhold that funding unless hospitals and health care centers comply with this heavy-handed federal mandate.

Ironically, the bill attempts to impose the same invasive mandate that Planned Parenthood opposes when pro-life groups attempt to withhold federal funds for abortion-related activities. Doesn\’t Planned Parenthood believe people should be allowed to make their own choices? Aren\’t they opposed to government stepping in and hindering those choices? Silly questions, I know.

Let\’s think about this bill in practice. You run a Catholic health facility that cares for seniors and the disabled, and you rely on hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, to care for these fragile individuals. This bill would require your medical center to provide a certain type of procedure that goes against a fundamental teaching of your faith, or you\’d lose all of your Medicaid and Medicare funding. Additionally, even if you provide the procedure, you must also provide materials that are deemed \”accurate and unbiased\” by a government bureaucrat, and you must provide it at no cost; otherwise, your doors get shut down and all of the people for whom you provide care will be left to fend for their own health care.

In essence, proponents of this bill are prioritizing chemical abortion over all other forms of health care. Pulling federal funding from medical centers who know best about what types of procedures they can offer patients is an unconscionable invasion by federal lawmakers. When those millions in federal dollars go away, I\’m sure that will help address the rising costs of and availability of health insurance.

The next two bullet points in Planned Parenthood\’s release aren\’t any more accurate. They claim that Green:

• Co-authored legislation to allow health care providers to deny women access to birth control and health care. (1997 AB 953)
• Supports allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control. (1997 AB 953)

As you can see from their citations, these two are the same bill – but it\’s a nice effort to try to split the bill into two bullet points.

1997 Assembly Bill 953 was introduced at the time RU-486 was becoming a reality. The bill expanded an existing state law that allowed medical professionals to refuse to participate in medical procedures with which they disagreed on moral, ethical, or religious grounds (such as abortion). Essentially, the bill added dispensing RU-486 to the list of procedures that medical professionals could sit out because of their beliefs, since the pill prevented implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterine wall.

Planned Parenthood keeps hanging on to the falsehood that somehow these conscience clause bills have something to do with \”birth control\” as it is normally understood. None of the bills that have ever been considered deal with \”the pill,\” yet pro-abortion groups keep trying to make women think they do, to scare and confuse them.

In fact, the 2003 \”conscience clause\” bill specifically exempted \”contraceptive articles,\” defined in state law as \”any drug, medicine, mixture, preparation, instrument, article or device of any nature used or intended or represented to be used to prevent a pregnancy\” (Wis. Stat 450.155 (1)(a). When some legislators tried to remove this exemption (thereby allowing pharmacists to refuse to give out birth control pills), their amendment was voted down by a whopping 86-8 vote – a rebuke rarely seen among members of the majority party.

I actually disagree with Green\’s stance on abortion – I believe some exceptions (rape, incest, life of the mother) are appropriate. This post isn\’t meant to sugar coat Green\’s stance on abortion, as if to say that he\’s actually closer to Planned Parenthood than they think. He isn\’t – and good for him. Any position he would take would be opposed by pro-abortion groups.

The purpose of this post is merely to illustrate that if you run as a pro-life candidate, you\’re not necessarily running on your actual record. You\’re running on whatever the pro-abortion groups say your record is, real or imagined, as the media never takes the time to research the veracity of claims in the last week of a busy campaign. But I guess we need campaign finance reform to reduce the amount of political speech during campaigns, rather than asking reporters to actually investigate and report on the accuracy of the speech that occurs. That might actually leave it in the hands of the people to decide who\’s telling the truth, rather than the editorial boards.

Way back in February when the new Taxpayers Protection Amendment was introduced, we all saw a lot of the usual press releases fly back and forth. Tax and business groups supported the new amendment, while groups that actually spend tax money uniformly lined up against it.

But there was one release in particular that caught my eye for its stunning hyperbole. It was written by Kenosha County lobbyist Michael Serpe, and contained some mind-numbing passages such as:

The “hard working families” of Wisconsin are very capably represented by their local units of government, who deliver the services the families want while balancing their budgets under the rules of finance imposed by their rich uncles and aunts in faraway capitals. Now the rich uncles and aunts who have soiled their own balance sheets so shamefully are going to get into their big limousines and drive to see us at our kitchen tables and deliver us from our balanced budgets and efficient ways of life…

With this amendment, its authors and supporters have simply washed their hands of their responsibilities under the law. They have said they are no longer capable of making the tough decisions. They have said they are no longer relevant when it comes to finance. They have said that they\’re not up to the task. Pontius Pilate would be proud.

Michael J. Serpe
Administrative Assistant/Lobbyist
Kenosha County Executive\’s Office
1010 56th Street
Kenosha, WI 53140
Telephone 262-653-2831
Facsimile 262-653-2817
Email mserpe@execpc.com
\”The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires.\”
William James

So we get it. Apparently, enacting TPA is akin to the death of Christ. Very appropriate with Easter coming. And for those counting, that\’s a 10-line signature. He clearly paid more attention to writing his own description than he did in 9th grade creative writing class.

Reasonable people can, and do, disagree about the TPA. But those that don\’t like it often make constructive comments or suggestions, rather than throwing a fit with all the coherence of a junior high breakup letter. So if Kenosha County is having trouble making its budgets, I can think of one place you can start to save money.

But what puzzles me is why the Kenosha County Executive would allow himself to be represented by such foolishness. Here you have someone that is actually doing your cause more harm than good complaining that local governments don\’t have enough money. At the same time, Michael J. Serpe is:

1. Arguing that local governments don\’t have enough money, and;
2. Proving that Kenosha County has enough money to employ a complete buffoon.

Anybody catch the irony there? He truly is living, breathing government waste.

The state keeps a database of what bills lobbyists are interested in and what positions various groups take on those bills. Occasionally, a lobbyist will register a short snippet to explain their position on a bill. So I went to Kenosha County\’s Ethics Board page to see what Michael J. Serpe has been up to. I found a gold mine of smug, self-congratulatory comments that must have just pleased Serpe to no end to register. Among them:

2005 AB 49, 1/27/2005: Would be more likely to look favorably on this usurpation of local control if the minimum wage as set by the state bore some actual resemblence to a living wage.

2005 AB 509, 1/12/2006: Isn\’t it about time that local units of government enjoyed the same treatment as the state?

2005 AB 756, 10/13/2005: What don\’t the authors understand about 2005 Act 40? And in urban counties, guess where the guests in our jails come from?

2005 AB 902, 12/29/2005: Don\’t we have better things to do?

2005 AB 1156, 4/5/2006: Why are the sponsor\’s [sic] so hell bent for leather to restrict local government\’s efforts to take care of their own business?

2005 AJR 77 (TPA) 2/14/2006: A trainwreck.

2005 SB 564, 2/9/2006: The bill gets close to accusing clerks of inappropriate behavior, and that\’s really inappropriate.

The only ones not laughing are the Kenosha taxpayers, who pay the salary of this clown to fight to keep their taxes high. They actually pay this guy to hurt their cause at the State Capitol. Message to the Kenosha County Executive – you\’d do just fine under TPA if you\’d just get rid of dead weight lobbyists that are a little too secure in their jobs.

As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, the Wisconsin State Historical Society is one of my favorite places to hang out.  If I had the time, I could spend full days just combing through microfilm, plucking oddities from hundred year old newspapers.  In fact, when I need to scroll through old papers to do work research, I have to discipline myself to only read the stuff I absolutely need – otherwise, I could be there for hours.

The glory of old newspapers is in the shocking anachronistic language they use; their pages are replete with terms that have long been shelved in the name of political correctness.  Take, for instance, this front page headline from the Milwaukee Sentinel in 1923:

Of course, in 1923, “moron” was an actual psychological term, used to describe someone who was slightly mentally retarded.  So the headline made perfect sense.

But it isn’t just words that are out of place in 2012 America; the subject matter is often fairly shocking, as well.  Take, for example, this 1923 editorial from the Milwaukee Journal, which contests a study that argues Native Americans have no “racial odor:”

1923 was also a year when divorce was a very public act; when everyday couples divorced, it often made the front page of the newspaper, with reasons given for the split.  Here’s a pair of divorce notices from 1923: in one, the husband alleges his wife “used abusive language,” and in the other, the wife alleges the husband married her before the legal one-year waiting period had passed.  (Presumably, if the marriage was going well, she wouldn’t be as quick to seek an annulment – maybe the old wife came back around and caused trouble.)

1923 was also a time when the Klu Klux Klan was still very much a part of American life.  Apparently, many Klan members thought the KKK was missing something:  a feminine touch.

In March of 1923, a new women’s chapter of the KKK began meeting.  They called themselves “Kamelia:”

This editorial was placed on the front page of the Milwaukee Journal, and is funniest how apropos of nothing it really is:

“Try to change a woman’s mind – YOU CAN’T DO IT!  Am I right, fellas?”

Given all the hand-wringing about illegal aliens in 2012, I found this picture from 1926 to be entertaining:

Another example of how certain words have changed meaning over the past 100 years: Somehow, I think this characterization of George Washington would be a little more controversial these days:

Finally, I wrestled with whether to include this one – and I won\’t post the picture here.  But while the other examples serve to show how long ago those words had different meanings, this example demonstrates how recently one specific word was still a part of acceptable American lexicon.  It appeared on the front page of the Milwaukee Sentinel on October 24 of 1926, and involves a talented dog with a curious name.