The gang knows him as "Two-Face Doyle"

This is taken from the latest Wisconsin Club for Growth newsletter.

The Many Faces of Governor Doyle

With Governor Doyle proposing $2.2 billion in new taxes over the next two years, it causes one to wonder: Has Doyle ever made a promise he actually intended to keep, or has he simply counted on a deadbeat media and misinformed electorate?

Here are just a few of Doyle's broken promises:

• When running for Governor, Doyle specifically supported eliminating the “Frankenstein Veto,” saying governors shouldn’t be able to write their own laws merely by making the budget into a word puzzle. As governor, Doyle flipped completely and said he believed this authority was a necessary power for the executive.

• As a gubernatorial candidate in 2002, Doyle ripped Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk over her plan to release prisoners early, positioning himself as the “law and order” candidate. As governor, Doyle has proposed essentially what Falk sought to do - release nonviolent prisoners early to save money.

• Facing a budget deficit in 2003, Doyle strongly emphasized how important it was for the government not to raise taxes. His latest budget combined with the recently signed budget “repair” bill, raises taxes by $2.2 billion. Doyle also has repeatedly warned of the dangers of using budget tricks and one time money to balance the budget, then gone on and done exactly what he’s warned against in record numbers.

• As Attorney General, Doyle supported the ability of the Department of Natural Resources Board to pick the secretary of the DNR – now, as governor, he thinks the governor should pick the secretary.

• In past budgets, Doyle has proposed linking the quality of day care centers to the amount of state funds they receive. In this budget, however, he proposes regulating day care centers, but doesn’t include the financial incentives for the centers to improve.

Several of Doyle’s flip-flops have serious consequences. Raising taxes by $2.2 billion in a recession is cyanide for the economy. With unemployment soaring above 7.6% in the state, employers won’t have the funds on hand to continue to employ workers, which almost certainly will keep people out of their jobs for longer periods.

But even worse is Doyle’s proposal to let 2,500 criminals out of prison, a proposal Doyle roundly criticized when trying to with the governorship in 2002.

Last week Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke held a press conference where he discussed the danger inherent in Doyle’s early release plan.

Governor Jim Doyle wants to once again play Russian roulette with the safety and security of our seniors, women and children who are disproportionately the ones most affected by fear, violence and disorder. Statistically the people who will pay the highest price in the form of injury, death and emotional trauma in the form of fear will be Milwaukee’s minority community, because that is where the majority of these criminal perpetrators will return.

For them to propose this dangerous experiment shows how out-of-touch they are with the reality of criminal behavior. For the governor to make policy decisions on public safety, solely for budgetary purposes is reckless, irresponsible and an abdication of his most elementary responsibility--that being to secure the personal safety of citizens. Studies and research show that states with lenient sentencing and corrections policies have higher rates of recidivism. The numbers don’t lie. This budgetary proposal does...

I’m sick and tired of the word game being played by the governor and other criminal sympathizers where they use the term “non-violent” to refer to the prison population that he wants to release early. I’m here to tell you that there are very few “non-violent” people in the state prison system. It’s not where we send all law violators; it’s where we send the worst of the worst. U.S. Department of Justice figures show that well over half of those currently in prison are there for violent crimes, and many are repeat offenders and habitual felons.

Doyle’s budget has a lot not to like. But letting criminals out of prison, while finding $500 million for his buddies in the teachers’ union is simply unconsionable.

Always trust a man with the star

Bruce Murphy of Milwaukee Magazine looks into the great five-star badge controversy (I commented on the issue in this post) and discovers something interesting:

Bloggers have accused Sheriff David Clarke of spending $30,000 to replace the seven-pointed sheriffs’ badges with five-point stars. Why? Because Clarke has a five-point star tattoo. Is this true? I asked Clarke’s media representative, Kim Brooks.

Of course not, she says. Brooks says Clarke is simply replacing a damaged stock of badges and that replacement is cheaper than repair. Brooks, however, wasn’t able to give me the cost of replacing the badges.

And why five points? “Most sheriff departments use a five-point star,” Brooks notes. As for the tattoo story, she added, it was untrue and showed how inaccurate these blog items were.

Uh huh. So does the sheriff have any tattoos? Yes, Brooks answered, a Dallas Cowboys tattoo.

A sheriff in Wisconsin is wearing a tattoo of a hated enemy of the Green Bay Packers? That may be the real scandal here.

But it’s worth noting: The Cowboy logo is a five-point star.

Of course, his taste in football teams can only raise my opinion of him.

However, there is still not a decent explanation why Clarke has chosen to spend $30,000 to replace the current badges with a five-point star. Taxpayers can reasonably wonder if it was merely to suit the vanity of the sheriff.

One commenter at The National Conversation has tried to make the case that it isn't taxpayer money because the badges are paid for by money from drug case forfeitures. I would remind the commenter that money is fungible, and that money allocated for the unnecessary purchase of badges is money that cannot be used for another function of the sheriff's office.

It also raises the questions of just how much money is in that drug seizure slush fund and how that money is being spent. If there's $30,000 just sitting around waiting to be spent on new badges for everybody, what else is tempting the eye of Milwaukee's sheriff?

Find classic movies at Amazon.com

Victims of Crime

Sheriff Clarke takes up the theme where I left off in responding to Governor Doyle's proposed commission to study the incarceration of young black males in Wisconsin:

Wisconsin's criminal justice system does discriminate - against victims of crime, not criminal defendants.

Watered-down sentences in exchange for plea bargains, finding excuses not to prosecute, low or no bail allowing perpetrators to return to impoverished minority neighborhoods to victimize law-abiding black residents once again, is what a governor ought to be outraged about. This has created a system of revolving-door injustice, which results in a criminal justice system that disproportionately discriminates against black residents.

On Dec. 29, I attended another memorial service at a central city church for all of the people violently killed in the Milwaukee area in 2006. Only one other elected official attended. The rest must have been busy framing their position statement of "concern" over the report from the crime council.

The surviving family members who were in attendance also were disproportionately black. They are the ones deserving of our concern, but they don't fit the race-baiting agenda.

Buy Wisconsin Stuff Now!