TonyPalmeri.Com Update For August 4, 2004
1. Introducing the Time For Tony Green Machine: A few weeks ago I met local artist Hillary Borchardt-Quella at the monthly Oshkosh Art Gallery walk. (Her husband, Eric Quella, was a UW Oshkosh student in 1995 when he traveled with about a dozen other students and me as the "faculty advisor" to Decatur, Illinois to show solidarity with striking A.E. Staley workers. Decatur was called the "War Zone" back then due to the thuggish manner in which the strikers were handled by the police, yet in hindsight the dissent crushing tactics were nothing compared to what happens at any kind of protest post-9/11. What's frightening to me, both as a citizen and as a teacher of First Amendment and free speech, is the extent to which the average American now accepts police power to stifle dissent as normal and appropriate. Such acceptance is the first step toward outright fascism.). But I digress. Hillary painted my 1995 Pontiac Sunfire and turned it into a magnificent campaign vehicle as shown in these photos:
http://www.tonypalmeri.com/greenmachine3.htm
http://www.tonypalmeri.com/greenmachine2.htm
http://www.tonypalmeri.com/greenmachine4.htm
http://www.tonypalmeri.com/greenmachine5.htm
2. 54th Fundraising: All candidates for office recently turned in reports of their campaign finances through June 30th. Here's the Palmeri report (all of this is public record). As you can see, we had about $1,760 on hand as of June 30th: http://www.tonypalmeri.com/palmerireportJuly.pdf
Incumbent Gregg Underheim reported $3,618 on hand as of June 30th. But the cash king for this reporting period was Democrat Gordon Hintz, who reported a June 30th balance of $9,703, including a substantial amount of money from outside of Wisconsin: http://www.wisdc.org/pro04_104278.html . Meanwhile Mr. Underheim, who has filled out these kinds of reports for at least 8 election cycles, still does not name the employers of contributors who gave at least $100: http://www.wisdc.org/pro04_102235.html
Note that the Time For Tony campaign is able to do more with less. Such is the nature of a grassroots campaign. I suppose I could hit up my friends in New York and Michigan for money, but is that somehow supposed to impress voters in the 54th district?
3. Palmeri Writes August Cover Story For Valley Scene: If you are in northeast Wisconsin, look for a copy of the August Valley Scene: http://www.valleyscene.com/where.html Publisher Jim Moran asked me to write a 3,000 word cover story on the Gannett Corporation's media monopoly in northeast Wisconsin. The story essentially chronicles former Green Bay News Chronicle publisher Frank Wood's quarter-century battle with Gannett thugs. The piece is not online yet. I will forward it in the next update.
4. Palmeri Represents Progressive Agenda: Justin "Jut" Mitchell had a letter in the Gannett Northwestern about the Time For Tony campaign (scroll down to the last letter): http://www.wisinfo.com/northwestern/news/opinion/stories/opinion_17027374.shtml
5. The Legislature's Shameful Week: The Wisconsin legislature has had so many shameful weeks in the last 17 years that it is difficult to say that last week's imbroglio over the "Taxpayer Bill of Rights" was the MOST shameful. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel explained the pathetic politics at the root of the problem:http://www.jsonline.com/news/editorials/jul04/246523.asp
My opponent Mr. Underheim chose, as usual, to heed the wishes of the party leadership rather than take the lead in exposing the shame, as I revealed in this press release: http://www.tonypalmeri.com/tabor.htm
6. We Need A Part-Time Legislature: A major plank in the Time For Tony platform is that it's time to return the Wisconsin legislature to part-time status. We have now had thirty years of this so-called "professional" government, and the results have been disastrous. There are virtually no mavericks left in the legislature, there is an obsession with raising money and getting reelected, and half the seats are not even contested. Worse, the only legitimate reason for having a full-time legislature--so that the people have full time representatives in Madison to contest the power of full-time lobbyists and power brokers--in Wisconsin is totally reversed. Here, the full time lobbyists and power brokers have full-time ALLIES in the state legislature.
Anyway, the Appleton Post Crescent agrees that it's time for a part-time legislature: http://www.wisinfo.com/postcrescent/news/archive/opinion_17094963.shtml
7. More Legislative Idiocy: But wait, it gets better. The legislature has been stalling and obstructing for years an attempt to get cameras installed in the capital so that Wisconsin residents could actually watch themselves getting screwed. So now the legislature has decided that they will only allow the broadcasts under certain "conditions," among them the prohibition on any shot that could be considered "embarrassing." http://www.channel3000.com/news/3606889/detail.html?treets=c3k&tml=c3k_7am&ts=T&tmi=c3k_7am_1_07000108032004
See, when I get elected I plan to engage in quite a bit of "roll calling," That is, as legislation that would benefit the people is discarded with no debate, or as harmful legislation gets on the "fast track," I plan to stand up on the floor of the assembly and literally read aloud the campaign finance reports of the legislators responsible for the discarding and the fast tracking. Now, would that be considered "embarrassing"?
8. Green Congressional Candidate Arrested for Nonviolent Action: These days, when Wisconsin's Democrats and Republicans get arrested, it's for corruption. When a Green Party candidate gets arrested, as happened to my friend Mike Miles recently, it's for standing up for peace. Here's the story from the state Green website:
Mike Miles, 51, Green Party candidate for the 7th Congressional District
in Northern Wisconsin, was arrested last week at Alliant Techsystems
(ATK) in Edina,Minnesota. ATK is at the center of controversy for their production
of depleted uranium (DU) munitions. ATK is the largest
producer of DU weapons in the world.Opponents argue that the use of DU shells
blurs the line between conventional and nuclear war.
Miles and three others walked up the driveway to ATK corporate headquarters to ask for a meeting with executives about producing munitions that may be in violation of international law regarding poisonous weapons. Other attempts to arrange meetings by phone were ignored by officials at ATK so the group went to ask for a meeting in person.
They were stopped by the visitor's parking area by ATK security staff Toni Morrison.Morrison told the group that none of the people they wanted to meet with were available and that it would not be possible to schedule a meeting with anyone at their corporate headquarters. When asked if she would deliver documents to executives on behalf of the group, Morrison said she could not guarantee that officials would see any of the materials they had brought with them.
Miles said he had video footage with him that he had filmed at a pediatric hospital in Iraq showing severe birth abnormalities in Iraqi children that he wanted ATK executives to see.He also had photographs of deformed children that he tried to show her, at which point Morrison directed two Edina police officers who had been standing quietly by to arrest the group.
The four residents of rural PolkCounty were taken to the Edina police station where they were booked, given citations for trespass, and assigned a court date of August 25 before being released.
Miles is undeterred by those who say getting arrested is not going to help him get elected. "Everyone is talking about supporting the troops and yet neither the Democrats nor Republicans are talking about DU contamination as the number one health risk to US troops," said Miles. "This issue must be put on the national agenda whatever it takes."
He advised that anyone going to Iraq for prolonged periods use every
precaution to protect themselves against the hundreds of tons of DU dust blowing
around in the vicinity of tank battles. "I don't know what to tell women,
but men who are hoping to have healthy families when they return should think
about banking sperm before being deployed to Iraq," said Miles.
9. The Democrats' Mr. Softee Convention: I gotta tell ya', watching that Democratic Convention this week reminded me of the experience of the Mr. Softee truck when we were kids. Remember? We would have big smiles when we heard the familiar jingle, our mouths would water at the anticipation of the sweets, but then after we had our popsicle the repetitive jingle started to get extremely irritating. Meanwhile we always sensed that the older folks, in Dick Cheneyesque fashion, were just wishing that the truck would get that horrible jingle the fuck out of town.
I think Jim Kunstler captures what many of us were thinking: "Writing as a registered Democrat, I'm sorry to say that a worse maunder of platitudes than John Kerry's acceptance speech has not been uttered by another presidential candidate in my lifetime. The emptiness of it was actually thrilling after the opening inanity of the 'reporting for duty' line -- you began to wonder with each sentence whether he could top the previous one for vapidity and banality.
"My dad did the things that a boy remembers. He gave me my first model airplane, my first baseball mitt and my first bicycle.
"To dissect it further as oratory would only be cruel -- and depressing! -- except to make these two points. First, the narcissism it displayed was impressive: Kerry's lavish thanking of the crowd and his family, as though he had won an academy award rather than a daunting nomination in a dark time; the shameless grandiosity of his self-conscious annointment to greatness. Second, perhaps a quibble, that his vocal rhythms eerily resemble Richard Nixon's, for instance the tendency to speak through his applause lines. Mostly, though, I was dogged throughout the speech by the dismaying thought that George W. Bush will wipe up the floor with this guy.
"The party that wants to stand for everything and everybody ends up standing for nothing. The internal contradictions of the Democratic party today are so gross that it may not survive beyond this election. It pretends to be liberal, but it's thoroughly corporatist. It trumpets 'diversity' but squashes independent thinking (the essence of political correctness). It's anti-war but pro-military."
Before the convention I was almost convinced that John Kerry would be the next president of the United States. Now I'm not sure. I mean, "Help is on the Way"? Huh? (the always irreverent Maureen Down on MSNBC said that that particular slogan sounded like a viagra commercial).
My friend Stephanie McMillan captured the mood the convention put many of us in: http://www.tonypalmeri.com/kerry.htm
10. Oshkosh Common Council Workshop, Town Hall Meeting Set: http://www.tonypalmeri.com/esslinger2.htm