This has been a long time coming…
Several months ago, Citizens for Responsible Government attempted to smear local lefty blogger Chris “capper” Liebenthal, alleging he had committed some sort of crime (presumably misconduct in office) by blogging while at work as an employee of Milwaukee County. Predictably, conservative bloggers were quick to pass judgment on Liebenthal, only to look like a bunch of asses once some basic research revealed many of the blog entries cited by CRG as proof of their claims were done on holidays, furlough days, and other days Liebenthal wasn’t at work. CRG and the conservative bloggers who were only too eager to parrot CRG’s claims were further made to look like fools when an investigation by the District Attorney’s office (and some follow-up by Liebenthal’s attorney confirmed there was no criminal behavior – and for that matter no blogging – by Liebenthal while on county time.
However, while CRG and their conservative blog backers were quick to pass judgment on Chris Liebenthal, they were curiously (or conveniently) silent when it was revealed Darlene Wink, who served as constituent services coordinator for then-Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, had been actively commenting in support of Walker on blogs while on County time. It’s also been rumored Wink was one of the driving forces behind a pro-Walker blog that went dark shortly after Wink’s malfeasance was revealed, but to this day I have yet to read anything even remotely resembling criticism of Wink’s actions by anyone from CRG or the conservative bloggers that comprise the right-wing outrage brigade/
To add to the intrigue surrounding the allegations involving Darlene Wink, County Housing Administrator Tim Russell, a longtime Walker supporter, also had his work computer and other materials seized from his office by authorities, and he is now the subject of a John Doe investigation probing whether criminal behavior occurred.
Today the story of Darlene Wink and Tim Russell took an interesting twist, as it’s being reported the Walker campaign recently brought in former U.S. Attorney Steve Biskupic, now with Michael Best & Friedrich.
“As (convicted former alderman) Michael McGee said, this is a big amoeba,” said one person familiar with the case. “It keeps growing.”
As I asked in the title of this entry, where’s the outrage?
Where are those principled conservatives who are so fond of railing against government waste and lazy government employees now that one or two, or maybe more of their fellow conservatives have been exposed as having wasted taxpayer dollars by doing work on behalf of Scott Walker’s gubernatorial campaign while on the County’s dime?
“Where are those principled conservatives who are so fond of railing against government waste and lazy government employees…”
Their principle is to grab money and power. Oh, you still clung to the quaint idea that they had some kind of consistent ideology and character? HA! Don’t you now the Number 1 rule for right-wingers is “Our rules don’t apply to our team”?
And that’s a big reason why lots of people like me under 40 will never vote Republican.
Because if it’s Republicans spending how they want and people getting money it’s bootstrappy goodness that will incentive them to …
Aw heck. They’re just hypocrites.
Sykes and McIlheran will get right on this, too.
No doubt!
Because this involves Wink and Russell, one would have to think this is starting to center on the pro-walker campaign blog.
My hope is that this investigation will expose everyone who was involved in the pro-walker campaign blog. If the directive was issued by the Walker campaign to start the blog, then those individuals need to be named too. Names need to be named, and they will be. There are still some nice suprises out there. I believe there were more individuals blogging on state or county time. In one such case, I believe there was a state worker who brought their own laptop to work to do the blogging on state time.
http://www.scottforgov.com is now gone, by the way. When you try going there, it now says, “The blog you were looking for was not found. If you are the owner of this blog, please sign in.”
What about badgerblogger.com? Surely there’s outrage there. I’ll check in with them and get right back to you.
Nope, no outrage. No principled conservatives either. Same old, same old … 🙂
That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone…