From the inbox comes this missive from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin’s Chairman, Mike Tate:
Thanks for your membership in the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and your work on behalf of Democratic candidates this fall. Even though the midterm elections were hard on Democrats in Wisconsin and around the country, we should all be proud of the work we put in. We fought hard and left it all out on the field.
Now that the dust has settled, I wanted to reach out for your feedback. I’m especially interested in hearing from members and activists like you – the backbone of this Party. Through constructive dialogue and analysis, I believe the Party will come out of this election stronger and more organized than ever before.
A committee has been formed to identify what worked well this campaign cycle and what can be improved for future elections. Our 2nd Vice Chair, Jeff Christensen, will head up this committee comprised of members, activists, county party leaders, and congressional district officers.
Jeff and the Election Review Committee would appreciate receiving feedback from as many people as possible. Please click here to complete a feedback form. All submissions will be sent to the committee for analysis.
Thank you for your continued support and dedication.
Forward,
Mike Tate
Chair, Democratic Party of Wisconsin
Although this letter is addressed to a party member, the questionnaire in the links asks if you are a party member or not…so if you have some CONSTRUCTIVE criticism for the party…please feel free to submit your ideas.
SARCASM
Sure hope Mr. Tate doesn’t support an end to the job-killing-state-government regulations against marijuana. At the same time that ending that prohibition would reduce stress up and down the law enforcement supply chain, it would turn drug cartel profits into local and state TAX revenue. That could help Dems change the perception that they are the party of higher taxes. Legalization would create jobs in urban agriculture…. It would put Wisconsin tourism destinations back on a level playing field with more forward looking states, Colorado, Washington,….
/sarcasm
Colorado grower supply has already cut Mexican cartel grower payments to farmers in that country, in half. Treating the substance as alcohol is treated here, nation-wide would cut prison and other enforcement costs and free up money for mental health, physical health and public education. Veterans could be hired for needed commercial grow-house security.
Listen, face the fact that a bunch of neoliberals protecting the status quo are the leadership of the Democratic Party in WI. A party not worth supporting or encouraging in any manner.
1. Step down while we still have membership left.
2. Drop anything to do with the 2nd amendment. You are just wasting time and money perusing this idea.
I am a strong democrat and union member. This just chases away people that want to be part of the democrats. The heck with the base on this issue. They will still be there because the other social issues are a stronger points to fight over and effect more people. Also don’t give me the line that guns killing people is a social issue. More people die because they don’t have medical treatment for diseases and don’t for get that we have a high infant mortality rate because of the lack of health care.
Gene,
I think you’re exactly right about 2nd Amendment (and about Tate resigning).
I support universal background checks, but a lot of low information voters, who should be voting for labor and Dems, don’t. Abortion and gun ownership are their wedge issues. They cause those folks, along with taxes, to vote Republican.
I won’t drop my vigorous support for abortion rights, in large part because I don’t think the government should be in the business of forcing birth. It’s that same emphasis on individual liberty that should imho cause Dems to tread lightly around the 2nd Amendment.
Forced birth bad. Permitted murder good. I guess you have to pass through the magic vagina, in one piece, to get you some of that life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness stuff.
If you are against abortion, I don’t see where you’ve been promoting affordable women’s health care specifically or affordable health care in general. Don’t see you supporting social safety nets for the ignored and disadvantaged families, or homeless children or where you’ve opposed Obombya’s drone assassination of mothers and children in five different foreign countries at one time recently.
Maybe you’ve adopted a few children to help alleviate the social problems created under our full-blown state of fascist rule. Links to the right-wing sites where you’ve supported Planned Parenthood clinics and the rest I mentioned or stfu on the issue.
And you can speak on the issue why? Had your head crushed by a forceps?
Would explain a lot.
I can speak to the issue because of simple facts. Obviously avoiding my questions proves you can’t. Guess what, I am NOT FOR abortion. Guess what, I understand the facts about how to bring abortions to almost a nil factor in our entire medical and health establishment.
Where are the health links I requested from you, where have you publicly opposed US drone killings of foreign civilians. I knew you’d be unable to address common sense issues, you never do.
I just answered your 7:07pm question, you’ve answered none, understandable, you don’t have a clue, even though I’ve given you several.
Reversing my question is not an answer. So start at my 9:01 am and try to comprehend the non-riddle riddle. A third grader could figure it out, but admitting to your own rank hypocrisy is something you won’t to even if you are smarter than a 3rd grader. Color me NOT surprised.
Not appropriate, Denis.
Out of curiosity Zach, what did you find inappropriate? Was it revealing a disturbing fact about late term abortions or was it tweaking the guy who told me to shut the fuck up? Just trying to understand your unwritten, inconsistently applied rules. By the way, a few comments of mine disappeared from last night. Coincidence? As always, I thank you for allowing me to bring carefully crafted conservative thought to what would otherwise be an echo chamber. Good day.
Denis, your comments ended up in moderation because you misspelled your name in the comment, so my moderation filter thought they were from a new user attempting to post a comment. And since all first-time comments are moderated, there ya go.
I suppose that’s a lesson learned about spelling your name correctly when commenting.
And just so we’re clear, here’s the comments you’re referencing. All three times you misspelled your last name.
http://bloggingblue.com/2014/12/group-forms-to-lobby-for-right-to-work-for-less-legislation-in-wisconsin/comment-page-1/#comment-144698
http://bloggingblue.com/2014/12/old-conservative-white-guys/comment-page-1/#comment-144695
http://bloggingblue.com/2014/12/dpw-chair-mike-tate-wants-to-hear-from-you/comment-page-1/#comment-144693
Denis,
Since you can’t spell, please apologize to Zach.
Thank you Zach. My bad. Still wondering what was inappropriate above so I can better understand the rules as they apply to me.
Denis,
It’s time for you to abandon the “somthing-for-nothing” crowd. As I’ve told you before, BB doesn’t run on air. Servers and software don’t come cheap. Zach’s got a job and a family, but you appear to think he’s got nothing but time to listen to you WHINE about how badly you’re treated here.
Is someone forcing you to comment here?
If not, why are you here?
Did they kick you out of Red-state? http://www.redstate.com/
I’m sending Zach $50 bucks. If you want Zach to read your repeated throwing of the victim-card, commit to sending him $50 or more. IMHO, $50’s a floor, especially considering how frequently you claim to be a capitalist.
I don’t like to toot my own horn, but since you are badgering….. my business relationships with hospitals throughout the midwest have generated in the neighborhood of $500 thousand for those hospitals. Prior to that, I worked at Catholic Charities as a caseworker for some of the children, mostly black, who survived the abortion/progressivism complex. Didn’t vote for President Obama, whom I consider to be a truly awful president, yet I can’t bring myself to employ the lefts favorite rhetorical technique, the ad hominem. No adoptions. Don’t support PP.
Missed your reply through the flurry of posts this morning. I see now, it was in Zach’s list.
Abortion was originally mentioned in the context of post topic, of progressives talking to Mike Tate. YOU are the one who took it, used it to bash all Dems, all progressives, a blanket accusation sometimes termed, “flaming,” another “troll,” tactic/trait, conflating pro-choice with being pro-abortion.
Your short-sighted, derisive, jerk-ass and deliberate, thoughtless sniping off topic was the problem in this thread. Now as you play the pity card, the misunderstood victim card again, in having to ask about, or are pretending not to understand Zach’s admonition, you again clearly illustrate you don’t understand harassment (or refuse to acknowledge it), a claim you’ve made before and have just made again.
Nice to see that you are involved, but you still have not made the connection I alluded to yesterday, @9:01 am. about supporting women’s reproductive health care and strengthening social safety nets as it applies to numbers of abortions. You are promoting abortion if you are against or not actively supporting PP. I’ll go as far to say, catholic ideology toward women is a leading cause of exasperating the problem.
As this is off topic, that’s it from me on this thread and my 10 min coffee break is over.
Denis,
You wrote: “I don’t like to toot my own horn, but since you are badgering….. my business relationships with hospitals throughout the midwest have generated in the neighborhood of $500 thousand for those hospitals.”
You mean you got sick and your insurance paid off $500,000?
1. How many hospitals? 2. What were the names of the hospitals? 3. Who wrote the checks? 4. For what reason did they write them?
Insurance companies pay physicians, hospitals, nurses, allied health professionals, Big Pharma, and medical device makers. Those are the players in the health care supply chain. Nothing you’ve ever written here suggests that you are a “player,” in any way. IMHO if you were, you wouldn’t be commenting here so frequently.
More sarcasm
Hope Mr. Tate supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other “free trade” agreements. Just like with NAFTA, the GOP will give Obama the authority to “fast track” it. When it further eviscerates Wisconsin’s manufacturing base, as NAFTA did, the GOP will blame Obama and the Dimmocrats.
/sarcasm
FAIR trade, not FREE trade.
“China has been invited to join TPP on the condition that is willing to meet the current rules being negotiated. China, among a variety of developing countries, does not think the rules are suitable. To the extent U.S. corporations are being given space to dictate drug patents and mineral rights, China is not too keen about it. It is not like the TPP is the U.S.’ rules. It is the corporate expansive rules that would not work well for most of the people in TPP countries. It would expand the profit margin for corporations in those countries. What is more important than what China thinks about them is what people think in the member countries themselves. We are being told this is the big way to contain China. That is just a false paradigm. We have been told through every trade agreement that, regardless of the trade policy details, it would be good foreign policy. In the case of NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement], it was that immigration would tick up if NAFTA was not approved. As it turns out, we approved NAFTA, and immigration increased. The opposite of what was predicted happened.”
http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/inside-story/articles/2014/11/10/what-does-a-transpacificpartnershipdealmeanforamericans.html
Low wages in foreign countries just mean those folks can’t afford to buy Wisconsin exports.
There are a select few good elected Dems in office. They need your direct support, bypass the party to offer it. The DPW, sweep them off the stage unless this already failed committee organization, content with Republican status quo, content with police repression and racism, content with joblessness, content double the correctional costs of neighboring states and no living wages for so many, immediately breaks all national party connections as their first order of business. DPW hearing from you and listening to you are quite different things.
Focus local, no party needed, join others of like mind and activities are there. Do you know your school board, town and city officials, county supervisors? Have you served on a committee, do you have a clue about the budgets, understand which local electeds stand for what ideals.
Existing environmentalists actually making local progress? Support em, join em. You might be surprised at common issues supported beyond the great (hyped) political divide. Even with crappy rural internet, almost all town and the county agendas are online. Inform yourself, quit going to the party meetings for focus, their interests are seldom yours. True on either side of the faux political spectrum. No War But Class War is a good thought to remember. Take it to the streets in your own way. You won’t find any party leaders there getting in your way.
Wrong link, sorry (though clicking the title bar takes you to quite a selection). For Ferguson, for the HandsUp demonstrators around the nation today, for Obombya, for austerity, for the hundreds killed by our own bloody hand of “government”:
nonquixote, imho, we need a strong DPW to protect voting rights. That starts with the kind of funding to afford really good attorneys. I don’t disagree with the local emphasis, but I don’t think that’s enough.
ACLU, Midwest Environmental Activists, OWN, CMD, WEAC, AFSCME, definitely several more. DPW took whom to court over what lately, screw em?
The sad thing is some decent and hard working teacher is earnestly completing this survey and preparing to mail in a few more bucks as I write this comment. The DPW couldn’t more clearly announce their impotence than if they broadcast it on the digital billboard at Bluemound and Highway 100. Meanwhile, the state GOP is preparing their new legislation.
If you have any issues with Google terms of service through using the Dem’s form, you may want to read that fine print, in lower right-hand of the linked form. Another reason to ignore the Dems request as posted, collecting more personal data while you, “express yourself,” to them to be ignored, and they take a slice of money for providing a third party with updated data.
Filled out the survey and told the DPW I was considering moving to Wisconsin in order to run for governor in 2018.
“What we have here is a failure to communicate.” Cool Hand Luke
Elsewhere on BB I have noted specifics on the failure of our party leadership in Wisconsin.
MIKE TATE: Fight on!!! You rock sir!
MIKE TATE, ignore the racists!
I agree Democrats need to stand for marijuana legalization and become a strong advocate for the 2nd amendment. Just looking at the high incarceration rate in general in Wisconsin more laws that lock people up longer are not a solution to solving the problem.
When we look at appropriating a budget once Democrats ever get elected to the majority in Wisconsin again we will have to cut the excess spending created by the Republicans. Even if some democrats do not support lowering the high incarceration rate/marijuana legalization/bold interpretation of the 2nd amendment in Wisconsin, I just don’t see how being honest about how we can pay for our Democratic platform is a bad idea.
I also think that Democrats need to stop being afraid of losing the cop vote. Cops have a diverse opinion on issues just as the broader electorate does. We have to pay for the cameras somehow.
Ideas for fixing the party include having Caucus similar to the Minnesota DFL. Democrats also need to look at expanding the electorate to New Voters beyond the doors they knock on and send mail to every election. The democratic turnout has not been high enough in any election outside of a Presidential since 2006.