Quite a few observers of Wisconsin politics were wondering where the state's largest teachers union was in this year's Supreme Court race. All the questions were answered with this ad sponsored by the Wisconsin Education Association Council. WEAC, the voters and the condition of our state's democracy all would have been better off if the union had kept everyone wondering.
What WEAC chose to put on the air is one of the trashiest political ads I've ever seen. Pure sleaze.
If you look at the issues WEAC works on, there's no mention of street crime. No mention of sexual predators. But yet that's what the union thought needed to be addressed in the Supreme Court race. And WEAC raised it in the most distorting, misleading and tawdry way possible.
The only thing that sets WEAC's smear campaign apart from the smear campaigns of the other interest groups trying to take ownership of our Supreme Court is that the teachers union has registered with the state and is filing reports fully disclosing its spending.
That's important, but it hardly makes this political drive-by shooting appear any less ugly.
4 comments:
Thank you for this denunciation. Tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to the media to run this horrid junk...
I agree. We don't need this crap from either side on the isle. WMC is just as bad.
The WEAC ad does appear, as you say, "sleazy" and "ugly". But, in contrast to the ads run FOR and BY Gableman, it may be factual. And that is an important distinction between the WEAC ad, and the pro-Gableman, anti-Butler ads which were misleading, at least, and unadulterated lies, at worst.
WISC-TV posted a Reality Check on March 7 regarding an ad paid for by the state branch of the national (anti-regulation, free-trade advocate, partisan front group) “Club for Growth”. It depicted Gableman as “a former prosecutor who has gone toe-to-toe with the arsonists, sex predators, domestic abusers, and white collar criminals who belong in jail.” Ready for a reality check? In three years in Ashland County, Gableman prosecuted exactly one arson case, and that case was ordered an acquittal. In 19 felony child abuse cases prosecuted by Gableman, 3 were dismissed, and 13 were allowed to plead to misdemeanors. Only three went to trial, and two of those three were found not guilty.
The Reality Check also tabulated Gableman's record on cases involving felony sexual assault of children. In half of those cases of rape of children, those accused were allowed to plead down to a misdemeanor. There goes Gableman, "toe-to-toe with criminals".
It was Gableman himself, and the secretive phony issue ad groups supporting him, who injected the "criminal coddling" issue into this Supreme Court campaign, with lies and false implications about Justice Butler. Is it not at least fair to then examine Judge Gableman's record as a prosecutor and judge?
www.channel3000.com/politics/15519820/detail.html
clydewinter.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/louis-butler-v-michael-gableman/
Free speech has run it's course.
All elections are about who can afford the most expensive ad time on TV.
The TV stations, set rates higher for prime spots, just before elections to make that extra money.
And many station owners, refuse o see the damage they cause....they answer to stockholders, yet jump behind the 'third estate' facade every chance they get.
We need to elect people who will regulate air time, and refuse to allow the ads to run, in the first place.
Maybe a citizen based group, that oversees what ads can run, and what can't in a viewing area.
Use the 'pruient interests' claim when WMC's ads are refused, and the rest of the insulting PAC ads from groups only identified as 527s.
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