Special Law to benefit Miller Brewery Workers
Passage Expected Tuesday
It’s Miller Time
By Michael HorneAttention third shift workers at
Miller Brewing Company! Thanks to you, co-workers can buy fresh, tasty, delicious Miller products – closed packages only – at the brewery until 11 p.m. – two hours later than now permitted by law for sales to anybody else in the city.
That’s the way Common Council File 051389 reads. The council will vote on the measure Tuesday February 28th at its regular meeting.
As the law now states, no holder of a class “A” Fermented Malt Beverage Retailer’s License may sell fermented malt beverages between the hours of 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. The law will create the following very limited exception for any “brewery that operates a bonafide 3rd shift for at least 9 months of a previous year.”
A brewery that qualifies –- and Miller is the only one to come to mind - – “may sell fermented malt beverages to its employees in a designated employee shopping area on brewery premises between the hours of 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.,” if the Mayor and Common Council of the City of Milwaukee do so ordain. The measure was introduced by council president
Willie Hines, Jr. The brewery is located in his district.
There is no evidence of any person or firm lobbying for or against this bill at this time, but those reports aren’t due until July, anyway.
ECONOMIC INTEREST STATEMENTS DUE
By Michael HorneFebruary 28th is the due date for the “Statement of Economic Interests” required of all City of Milwaukee elected officials, and many of the city’s employees. A review of past documents shows that our representatives and higher-ranking bureaucrats tend to be people of modest means.
Mayor
Tom Barrett, for example, did not own a single investment worth more than $50,000 in the calendar year 2004, according to the report he filed on February 28
th 2005. As of that date, he did have 15 investments worth less than $50,000, but more than $5,000. (Principal residence is excluded.) The mayor did get some gifts in 2004. The
Mayor of Galway, Connaught, Ireland gave his Milwaukee counterpart a silver desk clock and a Galway lead crystal bowl, and the Governor-elect of Puebla, Mexico gave the man who lost a primary race to become Wisconsin governor a ceramic bowl.
Beth Nicols of the Downtown BID gave the mayor a framed black and white photograph of the Honorable Thomas M. Barrett. (You can never go wrong giving a politician a photograph of himself. Unless he’s naked). Joe Pecoraro gave Barrett a “metal artwork depicting mayor” (this I’ve gotta see!) and the Bank of America in Chicago paid for the mayor’s dinner with Barack Obama at a Chicago Economic Club function.
Still more art, for the poor guy, this time a framed artwork entitled
Milwaukee as a Kaleidoscope donated by
Lloyd Levin.
Bev Greenberg of Time Warner bought the mayor dinner at Scott Shully’s Chef’s Table. (By the way, the Mayor’s people misspelled “Nicols” and “Shully” on the form. They managed to crank out “Barack Obama” with no hitches.)
The
Greater Milwaukee Visitors and Convention Bureau (spelled right, wrong name) sprung $582.56 for a flight to and a hotel in Philadelphia where Barrett participated in the NAACP convention there, and gave frequent flyer Barrett another $629.24 hotel / flight package deal to Austin where he participated in the
Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Convention. [Both organizations held major events in Milwaukee in 2005.] The
Democratic National Committee gave our mayor a $500 flight and hotel to somewhere for a “meeting with other Mayors and participation in news conference,” and the
Greater Milwaukee Committee paid a $189.59 hotel bill so that the mayor could participate in “CEOs for Cities in Chicago,” that toddling town.
Comptroller W. Martin “Wally” Morics, CPA, filed his report on deadline last year. The man who watches our money put his into the Vanguard 500 Index Fund, the FMI Focus Fund and the Mainstay 500 Index Fund, very conservative investments for a very conservative individual. Morics has a balance of over $50,000 in each of those funds.
Wayne F. Whittow, our city treasurer, includes his social security income on his statement of Economic Interests, which probably tells you enough right there. He also receives money from the Employee Trust Funds of Madison, Wisconsin for “Legislative Service” back before you were born.
City Attorney Grant F. Langley, who likewise filed his 2004 numbers at the very last moment, has got a family member who works at Blockbuster Video, and owns a 1/3 interest in a residential property on Harmony Point Lane in Boulder Junction, up dere in Vilas county. He’s listed as owning $50,000 or less in stock in McDonald’s Corp.; Prax Air, Inc.; Dow Chemical and Exxon Mobil. The State Bar of Wisconsin, where he served as a member of the Board of Governors, paid him $750 in 2004 as expenses to attend meetings.
Thank God these men have great big pensions awaiting them, since they certainly have been lightweights about investing over the years.
This brings us to Stuart S. Mukamal, an assistant city attorney who appears to be loaded. He shows 35 separate investments of between $5,000 and $50,000, including stakes in such firms as Associated Bancorp, Merck & Co., Exxon Mobil Corp. (just like his boss!), General Electric, J.P. Morgan Chase, Tootsie Roll Industries, Washington Mutual, Anheuser Busch, Citigroup, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Procter & Gamble, Target Corp., Wal-Mart Stores, Walgreen Co., Wells Fargo & Co. and a number of municipal bond funds (closed-end, of course.) Mukamal’s report is for the year 2005; he filed in with plenty of time to spare on January 26, 2006.
CATHOLIC LAWYER LIST EXPLOITED FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES
By Michael Horne
It started innocently enough as a reminder that the annual
Red Mass was to be held on February 26
th at the
Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, with a reception to follow at the
Milwaukee Athletic Club. The notice circulated among the e-mail membership list of the
St. Thomas More Lawyers Society, which counts among its members many of the bigshots in Milwaukee’s legal community, beginning with
District Attorney E. Michael McCann and working its way down the ranks. The Red Mass originated in Europe in the 14
th century, and marked the beginning of court season (the legal, not the royal, kind.)
The innocent announcement soon wound up as a bulletin board on legislative proposals when republican Rep. Mark Gundrum emailed everybody on the list with a political suggestion. Gundrum chose the catholic attorney’s organization to lobby for passage of a proposed constitutional amendment to make gay marriage doubly illegal in Wisconsin.
“This Tuesday the Wisconsin state constitutional amendment to preserve one man – one woman marriage in this state will be up for a vote in the Assembly,” he wrote. “This is the final hurdle before it (hopefully) goes to a vote of the people on a statewide referendum ballot this November. If you are interested in voicing your opinion on this, I encourage you to go to the Wisconsin Legislatures website … [Gundrum then gives instructions on how to contact one’s legislator and to encourage the legislator to “vote in favor of SJR 53.”] … “Prayers are also appreciated,” he finishes.
This message caused the following tart comment from fellow Catholic attorney and legislator, democrat Rep. Pedro Colon who wrote: “I will not be supporting this as you all know that Wisconsin Law already clearly bans gay marriage. I did not know that I had access to this e-mail list for political purposes. However, please advise me of the policy in order to take advantage of this tool in the future, especially as it relates to the persecution of immigrants under current legislative proposals.” Ouch!
LOUDER, FASTER, HARDER
Madison's JJO Hits Mke via Web
By Michael Horne
WJJO, a rocking FM station in Madison, Wisconsin, has landed on computers throughout Milwaukee -- and the world. Dubbed "JJO Milwaukee dot com," the internet radio station is not simply a streaming version of the Madison broadcasts, but is designed, management says, exclusively for the listeners of Milwaukee, who apparently have beseiged management by the thousands asking for the station to set up shop here.
The station does not broadcast any '80s music, because I guess that's what our big brothers and sisters were listening to when we were little kids and like does it suck, but management promises "Milwaukee will hear new rock first and only on JJO Milwaukee.com," according to Randy Hawke, the manager of the cyberstation. For more information, click on this link.
