anchored down in Anchorage

Milwaukee 36°

Michelle Shocked , a real working class musician, sings in Wisconsin for the workers' rights rallies...God I love this! she flies from LA to Wisconsin to sing in the street in freezing weather for the working man and woman..how pure and cool is that? and while Michelle does her thing, Wisconsin Gov/sorority boy Scott Walker does his thing, giving high paying jobs to his friends' kids!!

Just in his mid-20s, Brian Deschane has no college degree, very little management experience and two drunken-driving convictions. Yet he has landed an $81,500-per-year job in Gov. Scott Walker's administration overseeing environmental and regulatory matters and dozens of employees at the Department of Commerce. Even though Walker says the state is broke and public employees are overpaid, Deschane already has earned a promotion and a 26% pay raise in just two months with the state. How did Deschane score his plum assignment with the Walker team? It's all in the family. His father is Jerry Deschane, executive vice president and longtime lobbyist for the Madison-based Wisconsin Builders Association, which bet big on Walker during last year's governor's race. The group's political action committee gave $29,000 to Walker and his running mate, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, last year, making it one of the top five PAC donors to the governor's successful campaign. Even more impressive, members of the trade group funneled more than $92,000 through its conduit to Walker's campaign over the past two years. Total donations: $121,652. State Rep. Brett Hulsey called Deschane's appointment another case of the new administration using state jobs to repay various industries. Hulsey said he was unimpressed with the younger Deschane's résumé, including his lack of environmental or management experience "It doesn't look like he's ever had a real job," the Madison Democrat said.

Economics 101 ... speaking of never having had a real job....here's an update on Lanny Ebenstein's grow house issues..you know Lanny, the economics professor spouting off in the News-Press editorials regularly about economic issues....looks like Lanny's got some economic problems of his own in this uneconomical economy....maybe he'll write about the economics of buying too many properties and then defaulting on them!! A Eureka landlord who lost a small claims lawsuit in October brought by neighbors of one of his rental properties is appealing the ruling and is ready for another trial in the case slated to start Tuesday. A total of 14 neighbors living in the area surrounding the 200 block of Hillsdale Street in Eureka sued Alan Oliver Ebenstein, of Santa Barbara, each seeking $7,500 and claiming that a marijuana growing operation in one of Ebenstein's rental properties posed a nuisance that he failed to abate. According to court documents, the neighbors argued that the pungent smell of growing marijuana plants filled the residential neighborhood, that neighbors lived in constant fear of fires from faulty wiring at the property and that armed robbers might mistakenly enter their homes instead of the grow house they claimed everyone knew to be on the block. Property values in the neighborhood decreased due to an increased police presence because of the grow house, they claimed, and neighbors stopped letting their children play in their front yards due to safety concerns. Meanwhile, records at the Humboldt County Clerk's Office indicate that Ebenstein -- a visiting economics professor at University of California Santa Barbara, an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and a former member of the Santa Barbara Board of Education -- may be in some financial trouble. The records indicate that Ebenstein owns at least five properties in the county -- all purchased between 2005 and 2007 -- and that notices of default have been entered on properties he owns in Eureka, Arcata and Manila, including the Victorian on Hillsdale Street that is at the center of the civil case. One of the properties -- located in the 1300 block of Gibson Street in Eureka -- is scheduled to go up for a trustee's sale Monday. Plaintiffs in the civil case brought against Ebenstein contend in court documents that they had long been concerned about grow operations on the property before filing suit and had notified Ebenstein of their concerns in March 2009 with an anonymous phone call. Evidence in the case indicates Ebenstein spoke with his attorney about the phone call and was advised to inspect the property. Reinholtsen's ruling indicates that inspection never took place, but Ebenstein told the Times-Standard that he did, in fact, inspect the property on the advice of his attorney and found no indication of any grow operation on the premises.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_17767770?nclick_check=1 maybe Wendy will bail Lanny out?? start a non-profit for him? do a story on him??