Pentagon explains why they keep going to the poisoned well...

Josh Marshall at TPM discovered that Laurie Mylroie, wacko conspiracy theorist who connected Saddam Heussein to virtually every terrorist attack against since the '93 World Traded Center bombing, has been writing analytic pieces for the Department of Defense, as late as Oct., 2007.

....about the selection process for ONA researchers, a DOD spokesperson said in a statement:
"All aspects of researchers and research institutions are considered, with an 
emphasis on obtaining the widest range of possible intellectual approaches in order to provide a fully balanced approach to the analysis of future developments."

And how did the Pentagon use Mylroie's Iraq reports? Says DOD: "These reports were part of a multi-scope research effort to identify the widest possible range of analysts whose expertise was likely to generate insights and concepts which would contribute to Net Assessments on-going work to develop and refine trends, risks, and opportunities which will shape future (2020) national security environments."

Don't ya just love that special brand of rarefied Pentagon bafflegab bullshit?

It is time to begin cost cutting in the Pentagon. Re-assign thousands of careerist wimps whose reason for existence is to get serial desk jockey promotions leading to retirement gigs in the right wing think tanks and with weapons contractors.

Makes you wonder what Judy Miller is up to these days. Probably the same kind of honest work her pal, Laurie, is doing.

Amidst all the inaugural talk about how things are gonna change...

...Mr. Obama deserves credit for a lot of things, but perhaps most amazingly his ability to see "hope" in a public so demoralized by their own bad choices that the USA scene has devolved to a non-stop Special Olympics of everyday life, where absolutely everybody is debilitated, deluded, challenged, or needs a leg up, or an extra buck, or a pallet on the floor, or a gastric bypass, or a week in detox, or a head-start, or a fourth strike, or a $150-billion bailout.

There 's a lot of raw material from sea to shining sea, admittedly, but how do you re-shape it into a population guided by a sense of earnest purpose, with reality-based expectations, with habits of delayed gratification and impulse control, and a sense of their own history?

Jim Kunstler, CFN

The least-known and least-quoted speech of Dr. King...

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence

By Rev. Martin Luther King
4 April 1967

Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City. On the same date, one year later, he was dead of an assassin's bullet.

"A time comes when silence is betrayal."

---

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The rest here

Freeman columnist 'splains it all.

Some show Courage; others are into Betrayal

Mark Belling, this AM in Waukesha:

.... Two local politicians are currently sticking their necks out. The stance of one is principled and correct while the other is again proving herself to be a political moonbat.

...Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker is saying he doesn’t want the money. How out of sync is Walker? He’s the lone hog in the back of the barn while all the other pigs are battling for position at the feeding trough.

It is terribly obvious the Obama plan will put fortunes in the hands of poverty pimps, political hustlers, grubby contractors and anybody else with a political pal.... But Walker realizes the federal money is a one-time thing.... Walker is saying he’ll only take money that requires no local match and no local operating costs. I haven’t found a single other politician in Wisconsin recognizing that the federal stimulus money will create massive new local spending.

In the meantime, Milwaukee Congresswoman Gwen Moore was on the losing side of a 390-5 vote in the U.S. House affirming Israel’s right to defend itself in Gaza. How far out in crackpot field is Moore? Consider the other four “no” votes: Ron Paul, the token Republican terror sympathizer, Maxine Waters, the Californian who oozes niceties about Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, Dennis Kucinich, the Democratic peacenik even lefties are embarrassed by and somebody named Rahall.

The non-binding resolution passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate with even ultra-liberals like Ted Kennedy and Russ Feingold voting for it. Moore is way out on the fringe on this one. Aside from Moore’s apparent belief that Israelis should have to suffer through daily bombings from Palestinians who think all Jews should die, her position is a betrayal of the many prominent Milwaukee Jews who have contributed heavily to her political fund. [emphasis added]

The jury is out on how Obama will respond to the Islamist terror threat but it’s fairly apparent that the jihadists have a dear friend in Gwen Moore.

This guy isn't just wrong...He's bent.

A Generational Anthem for Change

o The poet will read the poem of the day to millions of blank stares.

o The preacher (I'm hoping he'll reveal how--just the day before-- he was struck down on the Road to Damascus, the scales fell from his eyes, and he regrets that nasty bigoted stuff he said about gay marriage) will preach while millions put their fingers in their ears and intone: "Lalalalalalalalal....I'm not listening....lalalalalalalalal....I can't hear you".

o The President-elect will oath and promise to preserve and protect, getting the multitude all teary-eyed and lump-in-the-throat-ish.

And as we all prepare to listen to the inaugural address, we'll need a musical interlude to set the tone for the new President's program.
Though I heard a little piece of it sampled in some otherwise forgettable hip-hop a while back, It's likely many Obamaniacs have never listened to the greatest protest song of the 60s,

Compared to What.

It is--to our enduring shame--still up-to-the-minute. It had been in Les McCann's repertoire for six years. But the 1969 Montreux version with Eddie Harris, was released as a single and became a generational anthem for change.

Sixty years ago today....

The fledgling United Nations boldly stated

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

I call for a recommitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which recognizes that "the inherent dignity and... the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world."

I accept and respect the principles outlined in the Declaration and call on my government and the newly elected President of the United States to recommit to the Declaration and lead the world by example.

Just when millions are losing their health insurance...

At just the moment all Americans are staring in the face of an economic outlook that ranges from stressful to disastrous, comes this snapshot of current health status. Researchers found that "85% of Americans rated their own health as "excellent," "very good," or "good" in the on-going assessment of status of Americans over the age of 18.

But, the details of their own reports of indicators of ill-health, specific diagnosed conditions and unhealthy-but-not-disabling (yet) vulnerabilities reveals that they might be a great deal less healthy than they think.

Greta Kilmer, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control, and the lead author of the the report detailing status for 2006 says: "It may be that people are engaging in risky behaviors that will come back to hurt them. Most chronic diseases take time to affect your health."

Logistics

And ye shall beat your swords into plowshares and your spears into pruning hooks; neither shall you study war any more. Variously attributed to the prophet Isaiah, the prophet Micah and numerous non-religious wise men through the ages.

And the last thing we'd want to do is leave all those swords and spears laying around on the erstwhile battlefield after the soldiers have headed home, some horizontal, some addled and broken, others hooting about "Mission Accomplished".

Is anyone gonna clean up this mess?



Yes, of course. That's called Logistics.
I became an expert in questions of movement of armies and Bonaparte's dictum that armies travel on their stomachs by referring often to the astonishingly tragic and heart-breaking story told in this graphic by Charles Joseph Minard. The subject: Napoleon's Moscow campaign of 1812.
They were no match for the vicissitudes of weather, terrain and fleas. Typhus-ridden fleas which Grand Armee bedded down with in the countryside as they foraged their way into Russia that summer. Fleas probably killed more of Napoleon's men than the Cossacks did. And each new day brought the choice: ride that horse or eat it.
The Czar's crafty military strategy was to stay fifty miles ahead of Napoleon's column, slaughtering and burning everything edible, a day or two before the enemy planned to capture and eat it.
Fast forward 200 years.
Merely looking at the map of Iraq suggests the difficulties in removing hundreds of thousands of men and women and $$$Tens, probably hundreds, of Billions $$$ of materiel and equipment from that place. Iraq's bordering states: Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia present a simple fact: everything has to leave by way of the single port on the Persian Gulf, on ships that must travel practically within hollering distance of the Iranian coast, then make a hairpin turn while wriggling through the 30-mile-wide Straits of Hormuz.

With the shortages of enlisted troops, my guess is that the Armed Forces of the US have been paying scant attention to training for the coordinated withdrawal of all those people and all that gear.

It's "physically impossible," says "a top officer involved in briefing the President-elect on U.S. operations in Iraq," according to Time Magazine.

In a nutshell, the Pentagon's argument couldn't be simpler or more red-bloodedly American: We have too much stuff to leave Iraq any time soon. In war, as in peace, we're trapped by our own profligacy. We are the Neiman Marcus and the Wal-Mart of combat. Where we go, our "stuff" goes with us - in such prodigious quantities that removing it is going to prove more daunting than invading in the first place....

Some have estimated, however, that simply getting each of the 14 combat brigades still stationed in Iraq on January 20, 2009, out with all their equipment might take up to 75 days per brigade. (If you do the math, that's 36 months, and even that wouldn't suffice if you wanted to remove everything else we now have in that California-sized country.)

Read the whole story by Tom Engelhardt here at Truthout.

Studs Terkel 1912 - 2008

Studs talking with Amy Goodman on the radio last year
on his 95th birthday.


Amy Goodman:  Last words for young people today?

Studs Terkel:  My epitaph is Curiosity did not kill this cat.


And ya ain't done nothing
if ya ain't been called a Red.
If you marched or agitated,
then you're bound to hear it said.
So you might as well ignore it
or love the word instead.
Cuz ya ain't been doing nothing
if ya ain't been called a Red.  Faith Petric

I did a little research today...

It's easy in the City of Waukesha to research information on the ownership, price-paid, tax valuation, estimated full market value, as well as details on year-built, lot size, amenities, square footage of any residential property. All you need to know is the address. When a "sold" sign goes up on the real estate agent's sign, you can quickly learn what it just sold for.

Try it yourself: go to this link and plug in your own address.

I did it with a piece of information printed in some of the sludge-on-newsprint bundled with the daily Waukesha Freeman (disclaimer: I do not buy the Freeman: I can't use it; I have very little fish to wrap. I found it on the counter in the coffee shop this morning).

In a listing of recent sales/closings of real estate in City of Waukesha was this notation:

October 24, 2008 -- 2701 Sandra Lane -- $190,000.

The details were all there in the link (above) when I plugged in that address. It is a Condo:

Year built -- 1999
Last Sale -- May, 2003 -- $205,900
"Valid" sale -- means that it was an arm's-length (willing selller/willing buyer) transaction, not an "I sold it to my son for a buck" exchange.
Assessed Value -- $235,400. This was its valuation on the 2008 tax bill.
Total estimated Fair Market Value -- $257,700. This is an informal update to assessed valuation, hinting at what the owner would likely pay taxes on in a year in which all property is re-assessed. It goes w/o saying that it isn't in actually touch with present reality.
Recent Sale -- October 24, 2008, what was reported in the Freeman this morning: $190,000.

There is likely a very sad, if not painful, story here. The recent sellers' names are in the information, and they have my sympathy. It is public information. Just five years ago they paid Sixteen Thousand dollars more than they realized from the sale this week. Add in $8 or $10 thousand in selling expenses and it looks like economic slaughter. It is not unlikely they had to bring money to the closing.

What does this mean for thee and me?

If this keeps up (even though only a small minority of owners are selling their homes) the assessment process will use this and similar current sales information to gauge the value of all similar homes in the city at the time of the next re-assessment. That is likely to be scheduled within a year or two. The net effect of lots of properties currently languishing unsold or changing hands for severely depressed prices, will drive down everyone else's valuation. And the City of Waukesha's total tax base will shrink. For decades it has grown, every year, year-after-year. Now, it is beginning to contract.

And the cost of government: Municipal, County, Schools, VTAE will be spread over fewer-than expected households, less tax base

In the past, homeowners met higher valuations of their property with mixed emotions. They typically enjoyed the notion of their property being worth more (on the assumption that the assessor's valuation was correct and that one could realistically expect to sell the property for the assessed amount or more). And they knew from experience that when the tax base is expandinging (that's what sprawl is all about) tax rates do not usually go up very much since there are more properties/taxpayers on whom the costs are spread.

There is every reason to believe that--with a huge number of houses in Waukesha for sale-- that other sellers are hearing their own personal real estate bubble POP as they take whatever offer comes their way.

A very nice house on the block where I live has been vacant for ten months, the owners-- now living in Menominee Falls--are paying on two mortgages. They came down a dime, will probably have to come down another quarter before it sells. I see them regularly, as they come back to the neighborhood to keep the landscape in ship-shape.

The anxiety is palpable.

Beware...

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
Henry David Thoreau

A small, obscure report and a bit of history on delinquent taxes in Waukesha County...

I asked Waukesha City Treasurer, Thomas Neill two weeks ago about how tax collections were holding up.

He wrote back:

Amount of real estate billed for 2007 (all taxing districts) $111,506,208. Amount turned over to the County on 7/31/08 was $773,879 (they make us whole and collect from that point on).
I do not have data readily available from prior years, but the County Treasurer might. I believe the amount uncollected from year to year is pretty consistent!

Background: The City of Waukesha sends out a tax bill that bundles together the bills for all the local taxing authorities--County Govt., WCTC, School District and Municipality. Same procedure for each city, town and village in Waukesha County.

Anyone who has not paid in full by July 31 is delinquent. The practice, embedded in State Law (see Wisconsin Statutes 74.57) is that the County Treasurer receives all the money collected by the end of July and disburses the amounts to each taxing authority. The County sends the full amount of the budgeted and assessed taxes to the City of Waukesha and all the others, even though some taxes are delinquent. That's what Neil meant by "...they make us whole....".

Tax collections on the late payers becomes the task of the County Treasurer. Because the penalties and interest on unpaid taxes are stiff, a lot of delinquent taxes get paid fairly quickly--to avoid further financial loss. And the Treasurer keeps the penalty money to finance the debt-collection work.

Our elected County Treasurer, Pam Reeves, provided some more information: once all the tax-supported entities had been "made whole" out of county funds (that is, they received monies equal to the amount levied by each taxing authority) she computes how much still has to be wrung out of the tax deadbeats. The amount of unpaid taxes for 2008 budget year is $9,762,678.34. And that's reported to the County Board, as displayed above.

So far, everything seems to be proceeding as expected. What Reeves showed me that I didn't expect is the large increase both in the number of delinquencies and in the aggregate total of taxes that are delinquent. Reeves, thoughtfully, penciled in the percent increase for 2007 over 2006. That's a big jump, almost 30 percent. And 2006 was 16 percent higher than the previous year, which was 13 percent higher than the year before that.

Looks like a trend. Relax, gentle reader; it isn't ugly...yet. But if the trend continues it will, indeed, be ugly.

As foreclosures increase, there will be more delinquencies...
As houses get sold for a fraction of their assessed value in foreclosure actions, the tax assessor's valuations will--by law--decrease...
As the aggregate assessed value of real estate in any given municipality decreases, the tax burden will fall on diminishing tax base...
As the tax base diminishes, the tax rate per thousand of assessed value will increase...

The key word is exponential.

And the last word on "exponential" is the ineffable wisdom of Dr Albert Bartlett of the University of Colorado at Boulder:

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."

This one is gonna vote for...

That One.

I deny that I had any hand in the (s)election of George W. Bush eight years ago, merely because I voted for Ralph Nader (and went to jail over my right to assert my position). And I continue to assert that no other Nader voter has any culpability for the rise of GWB.

Nevertheless, I call attention to the Obama/Biden political sign on my front lawn.

Note that it appears on the "gospel" side of the lawn. The bride controls the gospel side; and it is she who initially asserted support for Barack Obama. But, I have no Nader sign on the epistle side, nor will I plant one.

I'm gonna vote for the Democrat.

The victory may go to the Republican candidate and running mate. It is possible, though, today it does not seem likely.

The victory--no matter who wins--is likely to be on a close vote.

I still prefer Nader, for reasons I stated earlier this year, before either major party had chosen their nominee. But, in the present surreal world of American politics, wrapped in economic chaos, stewing in racial hysteria, inches from complete breakdown, which

...Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

I'll take that one.

Rowen's take on Water politics in Waukesha--with a kicker from Water Blogged....

What is likely to be quite troublesome for the Waukesha Water Utility over the next few years is that it has been virtually run by one guy for most of the past 21 years. A guy whose judgment seems to be increasingly--exponentially--faulty.

Daniel Warren, Water Utility President, runs what he believes is a tight ship.

o Over the past four years, there has been virtually absolute unanimity on the key decisions. Warren makes up an agenda that calls for a Closed (secret) meeting, and there's never a dissent, never a peep questioning the necessity/propriety of making still more faulty, in secret, decisions-- like those Jim Rowen recounted in this recent Political Environment blog post.

o He was investigated and found in violation of the Wisconsin Open Meetings Law twenty seven months ago. Lackluster lightweight DA, Paul Bucher, (who has, mercifully, moved on) let him off the hook with a "give-a-hundred-bucks-to-charity" non-penalty.

o He has a key role in an evolving mess of financial jiggery-pokery at the Waukesha School Board (where he was recently installed as president). In 2006, as chairman of the School District Finance Committee, he made the case to the others on the School Board for borrowing money to invest in wildly speculative investments in CDOs--those once-nifty-now-worthless turds in the Wall Street punchbowl that underlie the current world-wide economic cataclysm.

o He is one the key actors in the development of Pabst Farms (evincing yet more faulty judgment).

o Twenty months ago he demonstrated astonishingly bad judgment and an unexpected recklessness by lurching into his SUV, and attempting to weave his way home on Hwy 16, late on a Saturday night with a BAC of 0.138, otherwise known as "shitfaced" and fallingdowndrunk.

It's time for Dan Warren to accept the thanks of this community for decades of work (a great deal of it quite competent and certainly useful) on the Waukesha Water Utility Commission and leave the remaining work of finding solutions to pressing problems to a diverse and broadly-experienced group of citizens. He should decline any nomination to a continued role as president during the last year of his current term.

It is also time for the Waukesha Common Council to see to expanding (and term-limiting) the membership of the Water Utility Commission. Warren has been able to dominate Commission decision making because it is packed (40%) with ex-officio members from the mayor's office and the Common Council and two other citizen-members, neither of whom shows much potential for leadership.

If Waukesha is to come to some resolution of its water supply and water quality problems, it will best be done by a new group of citizens and municipal leaders with common sense and a concern about living in the real world, citizens who are skeptical of development pipe dreams, consultant-driven schemes, and customer-be-damned secrecy in finding the right path to a solution to this community's water supply and water quality problems.

Down deep....

Down deep, where they connect with other Americans....

Down deep, where we try to connect with them as fellow human beings....

Down deep, where we listen for the indicators that they really understand what America is about....


Down Deep? They're shallow.


Vote Nader.

Local water politics, with regional implications.

The Waukesha Water Utility has been the private fiefdom of Daniel Warren and Gerald Couri for decades. These two are (or, until recently, were) the private citizen members who, between them, have held the seats (and the elected officer posts of President and Secretary) for approximately thirty-five years.

Couri's three year term is up on Wednesday and Mayor Larry Nelson has replaced Couri with an unknown naif, who--as Nelson put it: "...volunteered to serve".

The new member showed up at the Thursday, Sept. 25 meeting and hesitated to sit at the table because he seemed to be unsure about whether his appointment had been ratified by the Waukesha Common Council.

Asked to respond to the welcome by the assembled Commissioners, Allen Roeker described himself simply as a mechanical engineer who "...has some experience with fluid mechanics...". That little resume tidbit is right up there with a candidate's claim to foreign policy experience a la: "On a clear day you can see all the way to Russia from Alaska".

It was pretty clear that he is a complete-blank-slate newcomer to the issues that face the Commission. He's never been seen at a commission meeting in the three years Water Blogged has followed water politics in Waukesha. He has no publicly-stated position on any issue that faces the commission. He's a prime candidate to be a new water-carrier for Daniel Warren.

I offer my sincere wish that he serve a useful term representing the interests of Waukesha rate-payers and citizens as he assumes the responsibilities of Water Utility Commissioner.

[Full disclosure: I offered my services to Mayor Larry two years ago; Mayor Larry declined. And, who could blame him? I told him that I thought the Commission needed some "loyal opposition;" Mayor Larry told me--in so many words--that he didn't need any opposition; he needed heavy duty conformity.]

Larry seemed, then, to need someone who would follow the Water Utility's custom: never dissent; always vote in the affirmative when a roll call vote is called. Ask no serious questions. Do everything Daniel Warren (Commissioner for the past 21 years, Commission President for most of those years) proposes. Meet in secret session whenever Warren says he wants a secret session.

Most of all: Maintain the Water Utility's virtually unbroken record of unanimous approval of every matter requiring a roll call vote for over three years. (I say virtually unbroken because once--just once-- a Commissioner did cast a lone dissenting vote over a non-issue, approximately a year and a half ago. Before the next meeting, that commissioner had been replaced by Mayor Nelson).

Commissioner Roeker may, perhaps, have a source of advice on how to be a good and useful citizen volunteer. His wife, is Chair of the Waukesha Department of Parks, Recreation and Forestry Board and a member of the City Planning Commission.

Dynastic politics?

Roeker's first highly visible challenge will be to assess whether the coming (probably December or January) whopping rate increase is crafted in a way that serves the citizens or the outrageous development-forever-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see interests of Mayor Larry and Commission President Daniel Warren.

Stay tuned....

Useful word to add to the "rescue" vocabulary....

Verschlimmbesserung.

Improvements that make things worse.

Pete Seeger's new CD reviewed in NYT

On this the day that we lower upon the shoulders of our children and grandchildren the cost of the mistakes of feckless, free-market, unregulated bucaneros, here's something by a guy who is 89 years old, and a lot smarter than Phil Gramm.

The lyrics of “If It Can’t Be Reduced” are taken verbatim from a resolution passed last year by the city council of Berkeley, Calif.

Its verse goes: “If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production.”

I merely pass this on in hopes that the double whammy of Pete and Berkeley induce purple-faced apoplexy in all the Wiggys out there.

Helen Waite now working for Senator Kohl....

Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold

On the Proposed $700 Billion Bailout

September 22, 2008

“I want to get answers to the serious questions about the bailout plan before I decide whether or not to support it. I want to know how the taxpayers’ interests will be protected, what the real cost of the plan could be, if the plan will be funded or just piled on top of our already mountainous debt, if it will include protections to prevent something like this in the future, and if the executives of the companies that are rescued by taxpayers will continue to receive multimillion dollar compensation packages. I recognize that Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke have a tough job, but the administration is asking Congress to provide nearly one-third of the total federal budget to the Treasury Department for this rescue plan. These and other questions need to be answered before we decide whether or not to approve it.”

###

Statement of Senator Herb Kohl on the same issue:




....Still waiting, Herb.



....Still waiting, Senator.



Senator Kohl regrets he's unable to speak today.

We can wait 'til hell freezes. Herb, "Nobody's Senator but yours" Kohl is hiding in the weeds. That slogan of his implies that nobody with a bunch of money can control his thinking, his voting, what he supports and what he condemns.

The only problem with that bold statement of principle and independence is that Herb is totally controlled by a single individual with a whole bunch of money: Himself. And he's a scared little rabbit, hiding in the bushes, quivering, frozen by fear and waiting for hand signals from his accountant.


There used to be a sign on the wall of the place my dad took his clunkers for repair.

If you'd like to discuss delaying payment 'til a more opportune time,
you'll need to see our credit manager, Helen Waite.
Need credit? GO TO HELEN WAITE.

The garage closed, Steve the mechanic retired....And Helen Waite went to work for a Senator.

Oconomowoc Mayor letting us in on the good news he thinks he overheard...

Maury Sullivan, mayor of Oconomowoc, has made comments that are headline news at the Waukesha Freeman:

Target, Kohl’s, among potential Pabst Farms retailers? Sullivan says ‘grapevine’ IDs them; developer claims no tenants signed
By JEFF RUMAGE - GM Today Staff	September 13, 2008

OCONOMOWOC - Mayor Maury Sullivan announced Thursday the names of four potential Pabst Farms Town Centre tenants that he said he heard “through the grapevine.”

At his annual “state of the city” address before Oconomowoc Area Chamber of Commerce members, Sullivan said he has heard Target, Kohl’s, PetSmart and OfficeMax are rumored as potential mall tenants, although Pabst Farms Developments and the town center developer, Developers Diversified Realtors, are keeping the tenants’ identities secret until negotiations are finalized.

Pabst Farms spokesman Thad Nation insists no tenants have signed on to the project.

Cool.

• "...through the grapevine...."
  
  
• "Rumored as potential mall tenants...."
  
  
• "Pabst Farms Development and the town center developer, Developers Diversified Realtors, are keeping the tenants' identities secret...."
  

• "...Pabst Farms and DDR have said the mall will draw a regional base of customers. With Target, Kohl's and Office Max store locations already nearby in Delafield, Sullivan's announcement was not warmly received by Chamber of commerce members".

Meanwhile, in the real world other retailers and mall denizens are making big news, and they're not keeping identities secret:
(as of May, 2008; highly probable that many more have been added to this list in past quarter)

• Ann Taylor is closing 117 stores nationwide.
• Eddie Bauer to close more stores.
• Cache is closing 20 to 23 stores this year.
• Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, and Catherines are closing 150 stores nationwide.
• Talbots, and J. Jill are closing all 78 of its kids and men’s stores. Now the company says it will close another 22 underperforming stores. The 22 stores will be a mix of Talbots women’s and J.Jill.
• Gap Inc. will be closing 85 stores.
• Foot Locker to close 140 stores.
• Wickes Furniture is going out of business and closing all of its stores.
• Levitz, the furniture retailer, is going out of business and closing all 76 of its stores in December.
• Zales, Piercing Pagoda plans to close 82 stores by July 31. It has also announced that it is closing another 23 underperforming stores.
• The Walt Disney Company subsidiary Children’s Place filed for bankruptcy protection in late March. Walt Disney, in a news release, said it has also obtained the right to close about 98 Disney Stores in the U.S.
• Home Depot has 15 store closings.
• CompUSA clarifies details on its store closings. Any extended warranties purchased for products through CompUSA will be honored by a third-party provider, Assurant Solutions.
• Macy’s is closing 9 stores.
• Movie Gallery is closing 160 stores as part of reorganization plan to exit. They plan to close 400 of 3,500 Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video stores in addition to the 520 locations the video rental chain closed last fall.
• Pacific Sunwear is closing 153 Demostores.
• Pep Boys is closing 33 stores.
• Sprint Nextel is closing 125 retail locations.
• J. C. Penney, Lowe’s, and OfficeDepot are scaling back.
• Ethan Allen Interiors announced plans to close 12 of 300+ stores in an effort to cutcosts.
• Wilsons the Leather Experts is closing 158 stores.
• Sharper Image: The company recently filed for bankruptcy protection and announced that 90 of its 184 stores are closing.
• Bombay Company: The company unveiled plans to close all 384 U.S.-based Bombay Company stores.
• KB Toys posted a list of 356 stores that it is closing around the United States as part of its bankruptcy reorganization.
• Dillard’s plans to close more stores.
• Steve and Barry’s Clothing, which has 240 stores filed for bankruptcy.
• Starbucks is in the process of closing 600 stores.

Sources:

Barbaro, Michael. "Big Retailers Scaling Back Expansion Plans and Shutting Stores."

The New York Times. 2 May 2008.

Kingsbury, Kevin. "Restructuring Charges, Economic Environment Hurt AnnTaylor's Net."

The Wall Street Journal. 22 May 2008.

O'Donnell, Jayne. "Disney to Shutter 98 Stores; Home Depot Closing 15."

USA Today. 1 May 2008.

Associated Press. "Wilsons Leather Closing Stores."

Green Bay Press-Gazette. 16 February 2008.

Dow Jones Newswires. "Foot Locker 1Q Net Falls 82%; Backs Year Forecast."

CNNMoney.com. 22 May 2008.

WHAS-TV [ Louisville]. "Many Stores Closing Due to Retail Slump."