Okay, all of you Milwaukee Journal progressive cynics. Monday's paper is again chock full of what I consider to be good old-fashioned journalism - fact-checking and analyzing Walker's actions and words. The big front-page headline is Walker Springs Surprises: Governor says he does what he says, but he hasn't spelled out biggest moves. The article, by Patrick Marley and Jason Stein, describes the major "gotcha actions" that Walker either never mentioned in any of his campaigns or simply lied about.
An article by Tom Kertscher, Walker Admits Change on Amnesty, talks about Walker's flip-flop on immigration reform, as he ditches his support of amnesty to appeal to the far right.
Gotcha legislation? Flip-flopping? I thought Republicans absolutely hated "gotcha" stuff and flip-flopping?
We now move to the editorial page portion of our program. Ernst-Ulrich Franzen, associate editorial page editor, has a piece about State Senator Steve Nass's fear of the First Amendment, entitled Let's Let the Opposition Be Heard. Writing about Nass's move last week to shut down a right-to-work hearing early, Franzen writes:
I'm glad the senator was there to save state government from the dangers posed by people exercising their First Amendment rights.
Nass being my own personal senator (whose office I contact frequently, much to his staff's chagrin), I was pleased he got his 15 minutes of fame.
Gordon Lafer, research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, has written a piece about the Flawed Study, Flawed Conclusions issued by the very conservative Wisconsin Policy Research Institute about right-to-work legislation. In a nutshell, the WPRI thinks RTW is just wonderful. Lafer instead cites what he calls the premier RTW research study done by Heidi Shierholz, now a chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, that shows:
The impact of right-to-work is to lower wages for both union and nonunion workers and make it harder for people to get health insurance or pensions.
Shierholz controlled for 42 factors in her study; the WPRI controlled for just seven, along with other flaws in their research process.
And for you fair-and-balanced fans, there is an opinion piece by Jonah Goldberg entitled, "Is Liberalism Exhausted?" Actually, to some extent I agree with him. I think a lot of people who fought Walker in 2011 are too pooped to protest now. And this statement certainly applies to Democratic Party in Wisconsin:
It certainly could use an exciting, charismatic savior.
Amen, Brother Jonah.
So, here we have it, two days in a row when the Journal had some great articles telling truth to the lies of Fitzwalkerstan.
I would like to conclude by saying that I am sick of calling this paper the Journal Sentinel. Milwaukee once had a conservative-leaning morning paper called the Milwaukee Sentinel and a liberal-leaning afternoon paper called the Milwaukee Journal. When Journal Communications took over the Sentinel, they combined the two papers into one morning paper called the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Okay, that was what - 20 years ago? I don't think anyone would be offended anymore if you just dropped the Sentinel part...