Does The Bill Of Rights Really Guarantee The Right To Secretly Buy Elections?

The Democracy Campaign recently estimated that special interest groups spent $4.8 million to influence the state Supreme Court race. A spokesman for the top spender, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, insisted our estimate was inaccurate but wouldn’t say why and refused to offer up any numbers to prove it wrong. He repeated for the umpteenth time the company line that groups like WMC have a First Amendment right to keep the public in the dark about how much is spent to sway voters and where that money comes from.

In effect, those who are taking ownership of our courts and our state legislature and our governor are saying that they have a constitutional right not only to wield daggers in the political arena but also to hide under cloaks while they do it.

What they also are effectively saying – over and over and over again until even people who ought to know better accept it as a universal truth – is that we have to choose between judicial independence and free speech. Or choose between open, honest government and the right to speak.

Those are false choices.

No constitutional right is absolute or unconditional. Among other things, the First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press. But ask any of the countless journalists who have been jailed or the judges who put them behind bars if there are limits to that freedom.

Or take the Second Amendment. “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Put aside for a moment that some believe the “well regulated militia” clause means the Second Amendment bestows a collective right to bear arms, not an individual right. Most people, and most courts, believe it protects an individual’s right to possess weapons. But that doesn’t mean that individuals have an unconditional right to keep and bear any and all arms. For instance, no one in their right mind would say the Second Amendment establishes an individual’s right to possess nuclear arms.

Just as an individual’s possession of a weapon of mass destruction would pose an intolerable threat to other community members’ rights to life, liberty and security, the First Amendment right of free speech likewise can be exercised in a way that does violence to citizen rights and the common good.

We have reached that point in Wisconsin politics.

In the Supreme Court election, two lobbying groups and three very shadowy front groups did 90 percent of the television advertising. With five interest groups doing almost all of the talking, the candidates in the race largely became bystanders in their own election. They had the right to speak, but virtually no way to be heard. A lot of good the First Amendment did them.

Voters got even more of a raw deal. Elections are supposed to be dialogues between candidates and voters. This one was a special interest monologue. The First Amendment wasn’t worth the paper it’s written on to ordinary citizens in this election. On top of that, in the name of the First Amendment voters were denied essential information about who paid for the more than 12,000 TV ads that were aired in the Supreme Court race, or even how much they cost.

It’s time we start distinguishing between the exercise of free speech and the abuse of it.

The Brogan 'Smear' And The Rest Of The Story

Green Bay business executive John Brogan says the Democracy Campaign is "smearing" him by pointing out that campaign finance reports filed by candidates for state office show that he made more than the legal limit of $10,000 in campaign contributions in 2007.

And Brogan says the Democracy Campaign also "falsely accused" him in 2003 of exceeding the $10,000 limit, because the Elections Board ruled back then that his use of a joint checking account to make the donations meant that no violation occurred.

Some pertinent facts . . . .

When the Elections Board let Brogan and 16 others off the hook in 2003, the board ignored a 1999 state appeals court ruling that campaign contributions made from joint accounts are made by an individual – not a couple – from his or her portion of those shared funds.

The candidates who received contributions from John Brogan in 2007 reported them as coming from him alone, not as joint contributions from him and his wife. We frequently see candidates report split or joint donations from a married couple, but did not see it in Brogan's case.

Both John Brogan and his wife, Gisela, are active donors. They often give to the same candidates but not always. For example, in 2007 Gisela gave Tom Nelson a $500 contribution on June 4 while John made a $500 donation on the same day to Jim Soletski. Governor Jim Doyle's campaign reported receiving separate $2,500 donations from both John and Gisela Brogan on January 5, 2007.

We did not count any part of Gisela Brogan's $2,500 donation to Doyle among the $12,500 in total campaign contributions John Brogan gave to various candidates in 2007. But John Brogan now says the donations that candidates reported receiving from him alone should be considered as coming from both him and his wife.

Over the years, the Brogans have given to 25 different candidates or campaign committees. Only one candidate reported a donation as coming from them jointly. The other 24 candidates or committees all reported receiving donations from either John or Gisela, but not both of them jointly. Maybe it's a coincidence that two dozen campaigns all considered these individual donations coming from just one of them, but it's a hell of a coincidence.

Looking at Gisela Brogan's giving history, on at least eight different occasions she's made contributions on days when her husband did not make any donations. On other occasions, she made donations on the same day as her husband did, but not always to the same candidate.

When all this evidence is considered, we believe John Brogan's argument that his donations were all jointly made with his wife is very weak. The Elections Board bought this argument in the past (and even encouraged donors to use it to appear to be in compliance), but hopefully the new Government Accountability Board that replaced the Elections Board will not allow the law to be gamed in this way.

We believe Brogan is in violation of the law now and was in violation of the same law when he made more than $10,000 in donations in 2002, but as I made clear in remarks to the GAB at the board's January 28 meeting, the old Elections Board's approach to enforcement of this particular section of Wisconsin's campaign finance laws left a great deal to be desired. We are hopeful that the new board will take a stronger stand and faithfully enforce the law.

Finally, it's worth noting that the other violator we identified, Patricia Kern, can't make the argument that her donations were jointly made because her husband, Robert, maxed out for the year when he gave $10,000 to Annette Ziegler in 2007. So if any portion of Patricia Kern's donations are considered to be from her husband, that would put him over the legal limit.

Now the question is whether there will be a double standard with respect to enforcement of the law in these two cases, with one donor punished because a reallocation of some portion of the excess amount of donations to a spouse is not an option while the other donor is again let off the hook. We obviously hope the new board will not repeat the mistakes of the old board, and will develop a more consistent and defensible approach to enforcement.

Representatives Of The Machine

Read this and weep. No, it only resembles a script from an episode of the Sopranos. It's real life in Wisconsin politics. It's the plea agreement in the Allan Kehl case, which is the latest offshoot of the casino corruption scandal that led to the criminal convictions of Dennis Troha, John Erickson and Achille Infusino.

Mr. County Executive, here's an envelope stuffed with $10,000 in cash. Oh, Mr. Kehl, there's something for you in your car. Hey, a stack of bills. Five grand.

This chapter stings because it's still being written. But with history as our guide, we know how the book will end. Read this and be cheered.

It's A Symbol Alright

State lawmakers were four months late passing a state budget, and the budget they did eventually pass is already badly out of balance. And now they can't come to an agreement on how to patch up the holes. They also couldn't bring themselves to do a thing about the broken health care system. And even after we all had to shower after the most recent Supreme Court election, campaign finance reform seems the furthest thing from their minds.

But, hey, give credit where credit is due, they agreed on something . . . a new state symbol. On Monday, Governor Doyle signed into law legislation approved by both houses that designates an official state tartan.

Meanwhile, there's a new toll-free hotline citizens can use to report waste, fraud and abuse in Wisconsin. The number to call is 877-372-8317. Or you can go here and report what's bugging you via the Internet.

Maybe the first phone or Web tip should be about the Legislature.

Half Remembering Dr. King

Tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. As we all reflect on Dr. King's legacy, it is sure that one part of the man will be celebrated. That's the sanitized, historical King. What is too often glossed over is the subversive, prophetic King.

I ask you to read two things. First, a column by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Cynthia Tucker. Second, a speech Dr. King made one year to the day before his assassination. As "I Have a Dream" stirs the soul, this speech gnaws at the conscience. Now more than ever.

It's important to remember the life of this amazing man. But it's even more important to remember the whole man and his whole life. To do otherwise is to allow enemies of Dr. King's vision of humanity to rob that vision of its true power.

Casualties Of War

A war is being waged for control of our courts. And, as with all wars, there are casualties. It's said that truth is the first casualty, and that certainly was the case in this year's Supreme Court election. The campaigning was ceaselessly deceptive and misleading, often downright untruthful, and with very few exceptions unrelentingly trashy.

Two other casualties also stand out. One is judicial independence. Wisconsin is well on its way to special interest ownership of our courts. A handful of special interest lobbying groups and phony front organizations did over 90% of the campaign advertising in the race. The candidates were for the most part bystanders in this election. The interest groups defined the candidates, decided which issue would be discussed, and controlled what was said about that issue. The issue was crime, even though it has virtually nothing to do with the work of the Supreme Court.

Another casualty is the state's judicial code of ethics, which is no longer worth the paper it's written on. This election was conducted in a way that is not remotely in keeping with the requirements of the ethics code. The code is dead as a doornail unless the state Judicial Commission and ultimately the Supreme Court itself take forceful action to enforce these rules and hold candidates for the high court accountable for obeying them.

The court is in a no-win position. If they vigorously enforce the code, that means punishing one of their own (well, actually, two of their own). That would require them to throw cordiality out the window and let the chips fall where they may. If on the other hand they opt to maintain constructive working relationships (if that's even possible anymore), they sign the ethics code's death certificate. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't.

The Supreme Court is in the midst of a hostile takeover. Many in the legal community and many more in the broader community of Wisconsin citizens have pulled a Switzerland. But as Dante famously said, the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a time of moral crisis, remain neutral.

Why Do New York Financial Interests Like Wisconsin Supreme Court Candidate?

Four employees of a New York hedge firm and one of their spouses have contributed a total of $50,000 to Supreme Court candidate Michael Gableman in the past two weeks.

The question is: Why?

None of these employees or any company employees since 1993 has contributed to any Wisconsin candidates for the legislature or statewide office until Gableman.

The five $10,000 contributions since March 17 came from Paul Singer, Gordon and Jenny Singer, Bonnie Loeb and Jay Newman with Elliot Management Corporation in New York.

Federal campaign contribution records show Paul and Gordon Singer, Loeb and Newman have given several thousand dollars to the campaigns of former GOP presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani and several Republican political party committees and congressional candidates over the years.

Billionaire Paul Singer was the sole donor – of $175,000 – in 2007 to a Missouri-based group called Take Initiative America, which put the money behind an unsuccessful effort to change the way California electoral votes are apportioned. Democrats say the plan was meant to favor Republican presidential candidates.

Oil Sheiks For A Greater Wisconsin

In a recent program aired on the WisconsinEye public affairs TV network, moderator John Powell questioned Wisconsin Right to Life legislative director Susan Armacost about her views on disclosure of election campaign activity. Powell, the former State Capitol reporter for Wisconsin Public Radio, asked hypothetically:

"Some wealthy oil sheik could dump $10 million on a race to influence a Wisconsin election and no one would know where the money came from. Now isn't that possible?"

Armacost's answer was a jaw-dropper.

"So what? If he has a . . . you know, so what? It's like this argument about if you don't live in the district of a legislator you shouldn't be giving them money. Why not?"

Every Kid Deserves A Misleading, Lurid TV Ad

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.

The Hidden Lie

The University of Pennsylvania Annenberg Public Policy Center's latest Political Fact Check on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race focuses not only on Mike Gableman's Willie Horton ad, but also on the most recent ad by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce that mangles the truth in what's been called the "letter from the grave" case.

The Annenberg Center spells out in considerable detail how WMC takes liberties with the facts and hypocritically ridicules Louis Butler for doing what the big business lobby says it wants all judges to do, which is adhere strictly to the constitution. But the critique doesn't touch on the more fundamental lie hidden beneath the surface.

Aside from how the truth is distorted in the letter-from-the-grave ad, the subject of the ad is itself deceptive because it conceals WMC's true motivations for wanting to influence the outcome of this year's high court race. Fighting crime appears nowhere on WMC's legislative agenda and nowhere on the group's agenda for reforming the legal system.

The reason WMC's campaign advertising fans the public's fear of violent crime is that WMC knows it can't very well square with the voters and say they want a court that will favor corporations in product liability cases or tax cases. The kingmakers at WMC know if they air an ad effectively saying "we want judges who won't hold corporations liable for defective products" or "we want a Supreme Court that won't make corporations pay the taxes they owe," the public will reject those messages.

WMC is not alone in keeping the public in the dark about the real reasons for opposing one candidate or supporting another. Not a one of the shadowy front groups has come clean and told voters what is really driving them to try to buy a seat on the Supreme Court. They know if they did they would lose.

So they spend their loot trying to scare the bejesus out of voters instead. In other words, they live a lie.

Part-Timers Get $47K a Year Plus Expenses? Only In The Legislature

The Assembly spent only 27 days in session doing the public's business from the beginning of 2007 through March 13, 2008 because Wisconsin has a part-time legislature, according to Republican Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch.

That's a revelation because being a Wisconsin legislator has been considered a full-time job since the mid-1990s, with a salary to boot.

It seems unlikely most Wisconsin residents think part-timers should get $47,413 plus an average $8,771 in food and lodging expenses a year. And by the way, Huebsch and other legislative leaders - Assembly and Senate Republicans and Democrats - voted 8-1 to increase legislative pay 6.3 percent to $50,438 in 2009.

Legislators make more than most people. The state's average personal income is $34,476 and we're betting most of the people that earn that and less are expected to put in 40 hours a week.

The Legislature worked little and accomplished little because powerful special interests like the insurance industry, big business led by the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the construction industry, realtors and unions like the Wisconsin Education Association Council that gave legislators $7 million in 2005-06 to keep their jobs have told them not to address real solutions that may cost their pay masters.

Voters ought to show their outrage about this whenever they see these so-called policymakers between now and Election Day. Doggedly question why they did so little, why they worked only one month in 15 and why they should earn more than many Wisconsin residents who are real full-time wage earners.

Tell them to get back to work instead of throwing candy at you from a shiny parade car.

Gableman 'Willie Hortons' Butler

Michael Gableman must be desperate. Or else he's as sinisterly cynical as they come. Gableman's smear of Louis Butler – his opening salvo in the ad wars – is offensive on so many levels it's hard to know where to begin. The ad clearly and intentionally misleads viewers, playing fast and loose with the facts and leaning heavily on deceptive insinuations. And its not-so-subtle appeal to racism evokes memories of the infamous Willie Horton ad in the 1988 presidential campaign.

That's not all that's wrong with this ad. It commits the same act of violence against public understanding of the Supreme Court's role in our justice system that the interest group ads are committing. Virtually all of the advertising in this year's race creates the impression that fighting crime is the primary if not sole function of the Supreme Court, as if candidates for the high court were running for sheriff or district attorney. But the Supreme Court is not a sheriff's office or a DA's office. And it is not a trial court that is responsible for conducting trials and sentencing convicted criminals.

The public's knowledge of the third branch of government has long left a great deal to be desired. It surely will be worse after this election is over.

Lying...Er...Vying For Power

Even though state Supreme Court candidate Michael Gableman has been caught in a lie that he curiously will neither confess nor stop repeating, it is the phony front groups and special interest organizations that are doing almost all of the talking in this year's high court race and they are traveling the lowest of low roads.

Some of the ads peddle outright lies. One claims incumbent Louis Butler overturned a murder conviction despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt, but neglects to mention that new DNA evidence seriously undercut a key part of the prosecution's case. Both anti-Butler ads and anti-Gableman ads have gotten the facts wrong or have been found unfair or misleading.

But the dishonesty in the campaign advertising isn't limited to such twisting of the facts. A significant part of the deception is simply the subjects the ads focus on in the first place. By far the most common advertising theme is crime fighting. What these law-and-order ads don't tell viewers is that the Supreme Court deals almost exclusively with civil cases, not criminal ones, and almost all criminal cases are decided in lower courts.

What's more, the groups sponsoring these ads call them "issue advocacy," but more times than not the issues they are advocating on are not even on their agendas. Like most of the TV spots, ads launched by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce focus on crime fighting. Yet if you look at WMC's legislative agenda, fighting crime is nowhere to be found. And if you look specifically at WMC's agenda for reforming the legal system, again there's no mention of making sure our streets and neighborhoods are safe.

Other big advertisers in the Supreme Court race are similarly keeping the public in the dark about their real motivations for backing a particular candidate. Their so-called "issue advocacy" is a hoax. They are trying to buy the court, pure and simple.

When A Supermajority Isn't Enough

The star of the show at today's "Unfinished Business" rally at the Capitol by the People's Legislature surely was former Department of Natural Resources Secretary and Wisconsin Wildlife Federation director George Meyer.

The one-time member of Tommy Thompson's cabinet issued a stinging indictment of the Legislature’s stonewalling of a bipartisan measure restoring independence to the DNR by giving the authority to appoint the agency’s secretary back to the Natural Resources Board. Under Thompson, the authority was taken from the board and given to the governor.

The state Conservation Congress overwhelmingly supports an independent DNR, Meyer said, and not a single citizen testified against the legislation at public hearings. The only opposition came from a handful of business lobby groups.

Meyer saved his most damning remarks for the end, when he said there's a “supermajority” of legislators who have either sponsored the legislation or voted for it, yet Assembly leaders have blocked a final vote. He said legislative leaders have acknowledged to him that the Senate-passed bill would get somewhere between 70 and 75 votes in the Assembly, but it will not be debated because of “business opposition.”

Robin In Boy Wonderland

Yesterday, an Assembly committee shot down a proposed ban on campaign fundraising during the state budget process. Committee chair Sheryl Albers, a co-sponsor of the legislation, voted against her own bill.

Even stranger than that was the reason committee member Robin Vos, a Racine Republican, gave for opposing the bill. Vos urged his colleagues not to "give in" to the "perception" that state lawmakers are corrupt. One of his compatriots, Waukesha Republican Bill Kramer, eagerly seconded that notion.

We've passed through the looking glass here. Politicians engage in the smarmy business of shaking down special interests for campaign donations while they are making budget decisions that directly affect those interests, but are indignant when anyone suggests these transactions are crooked. And then when 2% of state residents tell a conservative pollster that they trust state legislators to do the right thing and 82% say lobbying groups determine what the state spends money on, they say it's imperative not to "give in" to these mere perceptions and they kill a decidedly modest reform plan that takes a baby step toward changing the unseemly game they are playing.

Is it something in the water at the Capitol?

An American Journey

Thirty-some years ago, here's how it was . . . .




Today it's like this . . . .

Assembly GOP Helps Big Contributors At The Expense Of Autistic Children

Assembly Republicans bent on not requiring insurance companies to cover treatments for autistic children have accepted $2.5 million in campaign contributions since 1993 from insurance, business, manufacturing and banking interests that oppose the measure.

Instead, the Assembly GOP caucus supports a corporate welfare proposal that gives insurers a pass by putting $6 million in state taxpayer dollars into a program to help 325 autistic children on the program's waiting list. It doesn't help those who are not on the list or the one in 192 children born in Wisconsin with autism in the future.

The four special interests that oppose expanding insurance coverage for autistic children are among the Assembly Republicans' most generous benefactors. Their $2.5 million in contributions comprise 30 percent of the $8.41 million Assembly Republicans have accepted since 1993 from all 23 major special interest groups.

The most affected group - insurers - has contributed $1.26 million to current legislators since 1993. Assembly Republicans got $474,609, or 38 percent - the biggest cut of the four legislative caucuses.

Keep an eye on how they vote today on their pro-insurance industry change to Senate Bill 178.

Even Jon Stewart And Stephen Colbert Missed This Exclusive

Here it is.

Now you know.

GOP Handler Biting Other Republicans In High Court Race

Supreme Court candidate Michael Gableman's campaign has been firing broadsides on numerous fronts in recent weeks and two longtime Republican Party soldiers are among the hits.

One of the targets of Gableman's Republican campaign manager Darrin Schmitz has been the Wisconsin Judicial Campaign Integrity Committee. The State Bar group was created to police the honesty of the candidates' comments, advertising and other campaign activities.

Schmitz says some comments in a series of emails among committee members in December and January shows the committee is a bunch of liberals who support incumbent Justice Louis Butler in the race. Schmitz says the emails disparage him and other Republican supporters and suggest strategies for pressuring Gableman to sign the committee's clean campaign pledge.

Ironically, the emails Schmitz cites came from the eight-member committee's two Republican members at the time - former GOP state representative and retired appellate court judge David Deininger and Republican campaign strategist Bill Kraus. Deininger has since left the committee, citing his workload as a member of the state Government Accountability Board.

Kraus served in the administration of former Republican Governor Lee Dreyfus between 1979 and 1982 and is a longtime Republican strategist. Before serving as an appeals court judge from 1996 through January 2007, Deininger was a Green County circuit court judge for two years and a Republican member of the state Assembly for eight years.

Swiftboating Our Supreme Court

All signs are indicating that this year's state Supreme Court race is heading somewhere between the low road and the gutter. If it's possible, a turn for the worse appears to be coming. The Democracy Campaign has learned that the PR firm that did a lot of the dirty work for Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in smearing John Kerry's military record is now involved in Wisconsin's Supreme Court race.

CRC Public Relations, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, was paid more than $282,000 by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth for consulting and media work. CRC is now working to arrange media interviews for Wisconsin attorneys Dan Kelly, Rebecca Bradley, David Simon and Don Daugherty to badmouth the Wisconsin Judicial Campaign Integrity Committee and talk up conservative candidate Michael Gableman.

CRC initially was refusing to say who hired them to plant stories favorable to Gableman, but CRC's Jennifer Fedor finally fessed up to Wisconsin Public Radio's Gil Halsted. She says the firm is working at the behest of the Federalist Society.

A Truth Every Bit As Strange As Fiction

John Grisham's latest thriller hits pretty darn close to home for members of Wisconsin's Supreme Court and the rest of our state's legal community, don't you think?

No Other Way To Fix High Court?

The Wisconsin State Journal has started something of a crusade to stop electing state Supreme Court justices and have them appointed instead. A guest commentary the State Journal published this morning echoing the paper's editorial position says the way judges are currently picked is becoming "increasingly dysfunctional" and "destructive of judicial independence and public confidence in the courts." No disagreement so far.

But then the column's author astounds with his conclusion that "(m)erit selection of judges is the only way to repair these problems."

The only way?

The first state Supreme Court election was held in Wisconsin in 1852 and for over 150 years elections produced a high court that enjoyed the citizenry's trust. It was not until last April's election that the public's confidence was profoundly shaken.

Given this history, why would anyone conclude that the "only way" to fix what's gone wrong with our system is to do away with elections? With all due respect to the State Journal's guest columnist, there is another way. Instead of taking away the vote, we could repair what's gone wrong with our judicial elections and restore them to good working order so they once again serve the state the way they did for a century and a half.

Appointing judges under a system like merit selection has its virtues but also conspicuous drawbacks, not the least of which is its elitist premise. And there is both good and bad that comes with electing judges. Wisconsin got a heavy dose of the bad in last year's election.

What the choice between appointing and electing judges comes down to is whether or not Wisconsin will continue to place its faith in its citizens to pick good judges to serve on our state's highest court, as we have for over 150 years.

I say let the people decide. But state Supreme Court elections are being corrupted. They're being taken over by powerful special interests and party bosses. They need to be reformed in a way that gives them back to the people.

All seven current members of the Supreme Court – from the most conservative justice to the most liberal – recently signed a letter calling for publicly financed judicial campaigns. This is incredibly significant. Our Supreme Court is not unanimous about much of anything. But the justices are unanimous about this. They support elections for the high court, but they want those elections cleaned up.

The public agrees. Polling done in Wisconsin by a leading Republican opinion research firm for the national Justice at Stake Campaign showed that 65 percent of state residents support publicly financed Supreme Court elections. When given arguments both for and against such reform, support for it went up to 75 percent.

WMC Takes Aim

The 30-second attack ads will air on TV closer to the election. In the meantime, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce will busy itself softening up their latest victim – state Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler – with a multi-front offensive that includes broadsides like this YouTube video.

Low-Life Politics Catches High-Brow's Eye

A commentary entitled "Wisconsin: A case study in how corporations get the legislation they want" appeared recently on NiemanWatchdog.org, the Web site of the Nieman Watchdog Journalism Project of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. The subject of the article is something we've written about again and again and again and again and again and again. And again. That something is Wisconsin's new cable TV law written by and for AT&T.

Troha Co-conspirator Gave To State Candidates

A third Kenosha businessman charged in a conspiracy that doled out more than $250,000 in illegal campaign contributions to win approval of a Kenosha casino made $9,815 in donations to Democratic and Republican state candidates and committees.

Achille Infusino was accused in a federal complaint with concealing the use of nearly $87,000 in corporate funds to make illegal campaign contributions to reimburse others for making contributions to state and federal candidates and committees from October 2003 until August 2006. He was also accused of accepting $7,500 in automobile lease payments in exchange for making contributions.

Infusino reached a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to one count of participating in a conspiracy to commit campaign finance violations.

Infusino contributed $9,815 from 1998 through the first half of 2007 to state candidates and committees - most of it to Democrats - including $5,000 to the Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee, $1,465 to Assembly Minority Leader Jim Kreuser of Kenosha, $1,250 to Democratic Governor Jim Doyle, $500 to Democratic Assembly candidate Al Foeckler and $250 each to the State Senate Democratic Committee and Democratic Senators Robert Wirch of Kenosha and Jeff Plale of South Milwaukee.

He also contributed a total of $850 to two Republican candidates, including $350 to William McReynolds and $500 to Reince Priebus. McReynolds lost to Democrat John Lehman in 2006 for the 21st Senate District seat in Racine. Priebus, who is now the state Republican Party chairman, lost in 2004 to incumbent Wirch for the 22nd Senate District seat in Kenosha.

A Real Whogaveit

Supreme Court candidate Michael Gableman's latest campaign finance report lists four political action committee contributions totaling $12,750, but it's hard to tell where the money really came from.

The report shows he got a $1,000 contribution November 8, 2007 from the Wisconsin Realtors Association PAC. That's kind of weird because the Realtor's group has endorsed Gableman's opponent, incumbent Justice Louis Butler.

But the confusion doesn't end there. The address of what Gableman identifies as the Realtors PAC is actually the address of the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce PAC. WMC, the state's largest business organization, is expected to put up millions of dollars to pay for negative ads, mailings and other outside electioneering activities to support Gableman.

Maybe Gableman's operatives slapped the wrong PAC name on WMC's contribution. The problem is another contribution, for $3,000, is listed as coming from WMC's PAC - Concerned Business and Industry. The trouble with that entry is the address listed for the WMC PAC is actually the address of Microsoft's PAC in Washington State.

It's anyone's guess what PACs gave these contributions, or if the contributions are even correct.

Not One Word

Governor Jim Doyle's State of the State Address last night was classic Doyle. Exactly what you would expect a by-the-book politician to say.

The speech was peppered with platitudes – "in Wisconsin, we are hardworking people . . . and when challenges arise, we meet them head on" – and was heavy on celebrity introductions. As inspiring as unbuttered toast, painfully few of the governor's nearly 4,500 words could even be generously construed as visionary and none qualified as passionate.

Speaking of none, the governor uttered not a single word on a subject that poll after poll shows is right up at the top of the list of concerns of Wisconsinites – shady government ethics and diseased politics. Concern over political dysfunction is the festering public anxiety lurking underneath the worries about every other problem facing our state, and the governor had nothing to say about it.

Just before the holidays, Governor Doyle called the Legislature into special session to deal with campaign finance reform. He showed last night how invested he is in that special session and how committed he is to reform.

The governor's words about the state of our state were eminently forgettable and will quickly fade from memory. What he left unsaid, however, speaks volumes about the man.

Butler Got Support From Former Opponent

Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler once got some unexpected support that most political candidates don't see - a contribution from a former opponent.

Butler's campaign records show he received a $100 contribution March 25, 2002 from then-Supreme Court Justice Diane Sykes. Butler, a Milwaukee municipal judge at the time, was running for a Milwaukee County Circuit Court judgeship. He won the race.

Interestingly, Sykes, who was appointed to the high court by former Republican Tommy Thompson in 1999 to fill a vacancy caused by a retiring justice, was challenged by Butler when she had to run for election in 2000.

Sykes won the election but left the state Supreme Court in 2004 before finishing her term when President Bush picked her for a federal judgeship. Democratic Governor Jim Doyle then picked Butler to replace Sykes.

That aside, a lot of people would view Sykes and Butler as ideological opposites with Sykes leaning right and Butler leaning left.

Butler faces election to his own term on the court April 1 against Burnett County Circuit Judge Mike Gableman.

A Fast Fall From Grace And A Slow Climb Back To Respectability

The chapter on Wisconsin in the new book, Democratic Renewal: A Call to Action from America's Heartland, begins with this: "Wisconsin was once known for clean, open and progressive government. Those days are gone. This is something state residents know in their hearts."

Wisconsin has been robbed of its unique political culture and any claim of being worthy of the state's proud tradition of honorable government. As cultural change goes, it happened breathtakingly fast, over the course of a single generation. How it happened is chronicled in Democratic Renewal in painstaking detail. Political ills that we used to associate only with states like Illinois or Louisiana or New Jersey are now on prominent display here in Wisconsin.

The introduction of these pathologies has had the effect of homogenizing politics at the state level. Had a book like Democratic Renewal been written 20 or 25 years ago, the chapters on Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin would have been vastly different. Read this book today and you find that Wisconsin's story is virtually indistinguishable from the others.

Wisconsin was once known for clean, open and progressive government. Those days are gone.

Whether or not they can be brought back is up to all of us. Renewing democracy will not be easy and it certainly can't be done quickly. Understanding that up front can sustain us when frustration sets in. So can what Thomas Paine famously said: "We have it in our power to begin the world over again."

Going Nowhere By Design

The few items the Assembly and Senate plan to work on in 2008 is mostly stuff that both houses know is going nowhere.

Republican Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch says the GOP-controlled Assembly will tackle proposals that benefit business and other wealthy campaign contributors, like tax credits, capital gains breaks, providing more money to startup technology businesses and making health savings accounts tax deductible. Even though some of these pro-business items were tossed to them by Democratic Governor Jim Doyle, the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, doesn't seem enthused about anything in that pot.

The Senate Democrats plan on pushing a revision of their universal health care plan that was ditched during the budget because the Republican Assembly and Doyle didn't like it and it doesn't seem they like it any better now.

But working on stuff that goes nowhere has it rewards for both Democratic and Republican legislators.

The host of powerful special interests including business, manufacturing, health care providers, insurance and others that want the tax breaks and more state dollars or oppose broad health care and campaign finance plans contributed $3 million to Assembly Republicans in their last two election cycles, from 2003 through 2006. That's 71 percent of the $4.3 million in large individual and political action committee contributions Assembly Republicans accepted during the four-year period. And that doesn't count the additional millions of dollars spent of their behalf by special interests on independent expenditures and phony issue ads.

For Senate Democrats, labor, which is their biggest contributor at $475,720 from 2003 through 2006, numerous advocacy groups and left-leaning political organizations want universal health care. In addition to the direct contributions, labor and the Greater Wisconsin Committee probably will spend generously on independent expenditures and phony issue ads to help the Senate Dems keep their majority in November.

Little Work, No Results = More Money and Job Security

Only two weeks into the New Year, Republican Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch says there's no time left in 2008 for the Assembly to pass comprehensive health care reform or a statewide smoking ban in public places. He also says he's not sure there's time to bother with campaign finance reform, which would help address the problems behind those other issues.

Dealing with such issues would be a strain for a crew who met only 20 days in 2007 and is scheduled to meet sporadically between now and the end of May and then take off the rest of the year. By the way, legislators are paid $47,413 a year. When they are in Madison on business, those who live outside Dane County also get $88 a day in living expenses; legislators who live in Dane County get $44 a day.

Sadly, the real reason is they don't want to approve any public policy that irritates big business and other well-heeled special interests that will spend millions of dollars on campaign contributions to legislators and nasty advertising and other outside electioneering activities between now and the November 2008 elections.

If you need proof, it's no secret how business, manufacturing and other wealthy special interests feel about major health care reform.

Huebsch also says the proposed statewide smoking ban in public places faces an "uphill battle in this house and in the Senate." No wonder. The 52-member Assembly Republican majority has accepted $132,845, or an average of $2,555 each, from tavern owners from 2003 through 2006.

Only in the political arena do cutting work and accomplishing less get you more money and improve your job security.

Where There's Suds There's Smoke

Senate Democrats have changed a proposed statewide smoking ban in public places to cut a big campaign contributor a break, but some say the compromise still doesn't go far enough for the tavern industry.

The latest version of the bill approved by a Senate committee last week put the ban in effect in 2009, except for taverns and restaurants which would not be included until 2010.

Still not good enough, protests Democratic Senator Roger Breske, a former tavern owner and president of the Tavern League of Wisconsin. "The only way this bill should ever make it to the Governor's desk is with thoughtful compromise so that family businesses across Wisconsin are not wiped out almost overnight."

Between now and 2010 is hardly overnight. Might it be that Breske and others are really concerned about preserving the flow of campaign contributions from a large special interest contributor? After all, no further changes are needed to satisfy the general public. Polls consistently have put public support at about two-thirds for a smoking ban in public places.

The Tavern League, which wants bars exempted from smoking bans, and tavern owners contributed $294,745 to current legislators from 2003 through 2006.

Breske accepted $15,674 from tavern owners from 2003 through 2006, more than any other legislator. Second to Breske for tavern industry contributions among legislative Democrats for the period is Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker at $10,850.

Now Decker hints there may be further compromises, saying the committee's action "may lead us to a final compromise."

Republican Assembly Speaker Michael Huebsch doubts the smoking ban would go anywhere in the Assembly if it makes it out of the Senate. "It has an uphill battle in this house and in the Senate," he said in a recent interview.

Huebsch's 52-member Assembly Republican caucus which controls the Assembly collected $132,845 in contributions from tavern owners from 2003 through 2006 - far more than any of the other three caucuses.

Quote Of The Day

Heard through the grapevine that State Senator Glenn Grothman was on Mitch Henck's radio talk show awhile back and was asked whether he supports full disclosure of sham issue ads. These are the special interest-sponsored electioneering advertisements masquerading as issue advocacy that plainly support the election or defeat of a candidate but stop just short of using words such as "vote for," "vote against," "elect" or "defeat." They've effectively rendered meaningless Wisconsin's campaign finance disclosure requirements and contribution limits, not to mention the state's century-old ban on corporate campaign donations.

Senator Grothman's reply? "No, because some people don't like people to know that they're spending the money."

3 Judges Weigh In On Ziegler

One Versus Ninety-Nine

In an NPR story on new Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and his promised clean-up of that state's politics, it's mentioned that Jindal raised more than $13 million for his campaign.

Not a problem, one longtime Louisiana Capitol watcher told NPR. "You hope that if everyone buys him, no one owns him," he said.

He hopes.

His hope is a false one. In a system that's supposed to be government of the people, by the people and for the people, only a tiny percentage of the people are doing the buying. If you look at every last donor in the Democracy Campaign's searchable computer database of contributors to campaigns in our state, the total number of individuals you'll find represents about 1% of Wisconsin's voting age population. I'm sure it's pretty much the same in Louisiana.

There's the rub with the money in politics. If 1% buy our politicians, then that same 1% own them. And you know where that leaves the other 99%. Taxed, but not represented.

Ding Dong, The Glitch Is Dead!

The Big Glitch, otherwise known as the state of Wisconsin's ill-fated contract with the global outsourcing firm Accenture to create a computerized statewide voter registration system, is history. The state Elections Board announced today it has reached an agreement ending the state's relationship with Accenture on the voter-list project.

A lot of time has been wasted and a whole lot of taxpayer money has gone down this rathole, but this deal does recoup some of the damages and allows the state to begin picking up the pieces and putting them back together so Wisconsin can have a voter registration system that works properly.

This should have happened a long time ago, but better late than never. This is a good day-after-Christmas present.

Cozy With A Capital C

First, Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen decided that the Department of Justice he leads would not appeal the decision reversing Scott Jensen's felony convictions and granting the former Assembly speaker a new trial. Now he's saying that Jensen shouldn't be retried but rather the case should be settled through a plea agreement.

At the bottom of the story in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, it says "Van Hollen conceded that he could indirectly influence Blanchard's decision to retry Jensen by denying the district attorney resources he had during the first trial, including the courtroom help of Assistant Attorney General Roy Korte, one of the Justice Department's most experienced prosecutors. "

Hmmm.

What makes all this more curious is the fact that the second in command at the Justice Department, Van Hollen's hand-picked deputy Ray Taffora, used to represent Jensen. Jensen hired Taffora and his law firm to negotiate with the prosecutor in hopes of ending at least part of the investigation. And Taffora's firm also was paid to negotiate a settlement with the state Ethics Board and Elections Board.

Before that, Jensen hired Taffora and his firm to help him and his fellow Assembly Republicans with legislative redistricting.

Are They Listening? Can They Hear?

State politicians are owned by the lobbyists and the special interest groups, don't give a whit about what average citizens want or need, and generally seem to rank somewhere between used car salesmen and child molesters in the public's estimation, according to the latest polling by the conservative Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.

A measly 2% of Wisconsin residents believe they can trust state government to do what is right almost all the time. Who determines what state government spends? Eighty-two percent say lobbying groups do and only 12% believe it's the voters. When asked whether the standard of ethics of members of the state legislature has changed over the last decade, only 6% think it has changed for the better, while 44% think it has gotten worse.

WPRI also asked state residents whose interests they think their elected officials represent the most – their interests, special interests or the politicians' own interests. A mere 10% think their elected officials represent the voters’ interests, while 43% think they're working for the special interests and 42% think state politicians are just looking out for their own self-interest.

WPRI concludes that "something extraordinary is happening in Wisconsin." Specifically, the group says: "Years of political neglect by their elected officials are beginning to have a serious toll on the confidence of Wisconsin residents in elected officials and their state government. The lack of optimism is seen in all aspects of life in Wisconsin today, whether it is the state’s economy, the ethics of state government and elected officials or the dominance of lobbying in the political process. Wisconsin residents are extremely unhappy and becoming more and more disconnected from their government and the state’s politics. . . . The issues of lobbying, state ethics and the state’s economy has never been more on the mind of Wisconsin residents. It would not be surprising if, in 2008, Wisconsin voters send a message that will be even louder than the one sent in 2006."

Are state lawmakers listening? Do they even care what the public thinks of them?

They'll answer these questions in January when they decide what to make of the special session on campaign reform.

What Tipping The Scales Has Wrought

The state Supreme Court is in big trouble. It can't win for losing.

No matter how the Menasha Corporation tax case is decided, the public will never believe money didn't play a role in the outcome because Justice Annette Ziegler chose to participate even though a group involved in the case spent more than $2 million to get her elected. Justice Louis Butler also revealed he received a campaign donation from one of the attorneys working on the case.

And now the high court can't rule at all on a key economic development and land use case due to the fact Ziegler, who would have been the deciding vote, recused herself because of campaign contributions she received from the builders and the Realtors.

No wonder all seven justices signed a letter the other day begging the Legislature and governor to support publicly financed Supreme Court races.

The End Of The Beginning

The Legislature convened in special session briefly today and passed a joint resolution of both houses adjourning the special session on campaign finance reform until January 15. This was expected and is in keeping with the way the Democracy Campaign and others in the reform community believe the session should proceed.

Between now and January 15 reform plans need to be finalized and drafted for introduction as special session bills, public hearings need to be held and committee work needs to be done to set the stage for the full Legislature to reconvene the special session.

When the governor called the special session for December 11, many mistakenly interpreted that to mean lawmakers would vote on reform legislation today. Not only would that have been impractical but also highly inappropriate because the Legislature would have been voting on measures the public had not had a chance to review and comment on.

Any kind of meaningful overhaul of Wisconsin's broken campaign finance system can't be accomplished in a day. It's been 30 years since the last major reform. Even the most impatient among us can surely wait 30 days so whatever lawmakers do can be done right and done in full view of the public with plenty of citizen input.

Today was the start of the special session. How it began is not important. How it ends is what matters.

Hypocrisy, Spoken In Code

Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch responded to Governor Jim Doyle's call for a special session on campaign finance reform by saying he expects there will be a "thorough and informative debate in the Assembly" and reform ideas will "receive careful consideration in both houses of the Legislature."

Then he tipped everyone off about where he really stands when he said, "I share the concern of many Wisconsinites to the idea of changing the law to force them to pay for these campaigns."

Look for Huebsch and his allies to fiercely defend the ownership of our state government by the lobbyists and their special interest clients. Mind you, they won't come right out and say they have no problem with big donations from wealthy interests who expect lavish favors in return for their political gifts. They'll speak in code, like Huebsch did in his statement about the special session. They'll say they're bound and determined to prevent the general public from being forced to pay for elections.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Wisconsin taxpayers already are forced to pay for state election campaigns. We pay through the nose every time our elected state representatives approve a new tax break, or lace a budget bill with a few more slices of pork, or sign off on a sweetheart deal on a state contract. We pay for every favor, we pay every time our state lawmakers reward one of their big donors.

Saying that campaign finance reform should be resisted because taxpayers shouldn't be forced to pay for elections is not only supremely hypocritical but also is an insult to the intelligence of the people of Wisconsin.

The general public gets it. Average folks understand that their elected representatives are owned by the lobbyists and the big special interest donors. And average folks understand they are paying dearly for this corruption.

The debate that will start in the Legislature on December 11 has absolutely nothing to do with whether the public pays for elections. We will always pay, one way or another. The real issue, whether or not the Legislature chooses to debate it, is ownership. Who will own our state government? The wealthy donors, or the voters?

If Your Car Doesn't Start, Change Your License Plates

It was inevitable. The same day a state audit was released showing Wisconsin's voter registration system has big problems, a renewed call was made to require a photo ID in order to vote.

Two things jump out about this leap of logic. First, backers of a photo ID requirement are crowing about the audit's finding that as many as 84 felons might have voted in the November 2006 election in spite of being ineligible. The auditors couldn't determine if they did vote, but they could have because of flaws in the system. Meanwhile, ID supporters are conveniently overlooking the audit's finding that the system put 1,537 people on the ineligible list who had been convicted of felonies but served their full sentences and should have had their voting rights restored. The auditors could not determine how many of these eligible voters tried to cast a ballot and were denied, but noted they should not have been on the list disqualifying them in the first place.

Second, there is no evidence in this audit or elsewhere that felons who voted illegally tried to pass themselves off as someone else. Requiring a photo ID to vote would not have stopped them from voting. Saying a photo ID requirement will stop felons from voting is like saying if your car's battery is dead, the solution is new license plates.

The thing that could stop ineligible convicted felons from voting is a voter registration system that can compare the statewide voter list to corrections records showing whether someone has a felony conviction and, if so, whether the full sentence has been served. Such cross-checking is required under federal law, and Wisconsin was supposed to be in compliance with that federal law on January 1, 2006. The state Elections Board and the private company the board hired for this project – the global outsourcing firm Accenture – haven't been able to figure out how to do it.

Wisconsin voters are not to blame here. A bumbling state agency and a private computer software developer that can't program its way out of a paper bag are to blame. So making voters jump through another hoop is not the answer. Holding state officials and one incompetent company accountable is.

The Beginning Of Vending Machine Justice

State Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler is fixing to judge a tax case involving Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, which spent an estimated $2.2 million to get her elected, considerably more than the record-setting amount Ziegler spent on her own campaign. Oral arguments on the case are scheduled for tomorrow.

Because of her ethics problems, Ziegler has taken to notifying all sides in cases before the high court of economic ties she has or any campaign support she received from any of the parties involved in a case. Ziegler also has been asking lawyers in the cases for feedback about whether she should recuse herself from the proceedings. She dropped out of one recent case after an attorney raised objections to a campaign contribution she received.

Ziegler is handling this tax case a bit differently. She informed all of the involved parties of the fact that WMC spent heavily on her behalf but did not invite feedback on whether she should remove herself from the case. Instead, she notified the attorneys she intends to participate in hearing and ruling on the dispute over whether companies should have to pay sales tax on computer software they buy.

Here's where it gets interesting. If someone were to ask Ziegler to step aside it would be Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, who represents the state Department of Revenue in this case. It so happens WMC spent $2.5 million to get Van Hollen elected in 2006. If Van Hollen were to ask Ziegler to recuse herself, as he clearly should, that would beg the question of whether Van Hollen should prosecute the case for the state. That question should be asked regardless of what Van Hollen says to Ziegler.

The outcome of this case has huge implications. If the state loses, it could be forced to refund an estimated $350 million in taxes collected from businesses. But the implications for the integrity of our justice system and public confidence in the fairness and impartiality of Wisconsin's highest court are even more serious. This case is providing an initial glimpse into what happens when our courts are politicized by campaigns for Supreme Court that are allowed to degenerate into such tawdry and money-saturated affairs.

Wisconsin's court system has a big problem. This one case is showing just how big.

They Can't Kill Her, Can They?

Of the many head-scratching things that were said at yesterday's hearing on state Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler's judicial misconduct case, the most memorable came from lead judge Ralph Adam Fine, who seemed to sympathize with Ziegler and was moved to say that even the best people sometimes make mistakes, adding that a "cup of hemlock" may not be the proper remedy.

A cup of hemlock? Who knew poisoning was even an option? I had always been under the impression the worst punishment the three-judge panel reviewing the case could recommend is removal from the bench, but maybe Judge Fine knows something the rest of us don't.

Judicial Integrity In The Balance

The three-judge Judicial Conduct Panel that is reviewing the Annette Ziegler ethics case held its planned hearing this morning in West Bend. The panel is reviewing the state Judicial Commission's complaint against the newest member of the state Supreme Court alleging judicial misconduct as well as the commission's recommendation that she be reprimanded. The judges will be forwarding their findings and recommendation to the state Supreme Court, which has the final say in the matter.

The hearing lasted about an hour and a half, and after sitting through it, the first question that springs to mind is why was it even held. Both the Judicial Commission and attorneys for Ziegler said they were content to rest on the legal briefs they already had filed and had nothing new to add. None of the three judges explored any new territory. Most notably, none asked why the Judicial Commission had chosen to focus only on 11 cases that Ziegler handled involving West Bend Savings Bank where Ziegler's husband is a paid member of the board of directors, while ignoring at least three dozen other cases involving companies in which the Zieglers own substantial amounts of stock. No explanations were offered about why these stones were left unturned, and the judges didn't ask for any explanation.

Several times during the hearing, one of the judges or attorneys took pains to stress that the judicial discipline system is not designed to punish judges but rather educate them. The glaring double standard evident in these repeated statements was apparently lost on everyone in the courtroom with a law degree. Can anyone imagine any citizen accused of breaking the law standing before any judge and being told that if the verdict is guilty it is not the court's intention to punish but rather only to educate?

Something Justice Ziegler's lawyer said highlighted what a failure this approach to enforcement has been. At one point, the attorney said the longstanding judicial ethics rule requiring judges with a financial conflict of interest to disclose the conflict and recuse themselves did not cross Ziegler's mind as she handled the West Bend Savings Bank cases. If Ziegler is to be believed when she says she wasn't thinking of the ethics code when she ruled on these cases, then isn't that a pretty damning indictment of the judicial discipline system's "educational" efforts?

Other than articulating a clear preference for education over punishment, the panel of judges also conspicuously dwelled on precedent, namely past disciplinary actions taken against Wisconsin judges. The peculiar thing about the emphasis on precedent is that the Ziegler case is an unprecedented situation. Never before has a sitting member of the state Supreme Court faced possible discipline for judicial misconduct. Question for the judges: How do you apply precedent in an unprecedented case?

Another problem with remaining bound by precedent is that past enforcement of the judicial ethics code clearly has left a great deal to be desired, as evidenced by Ziegler's own admission that she didn't give a passing thought to the rules when she handled cases in which she had a clear financial conflict of interest. Question for the judges: Why do you apply precedent when it represents failure?

What the Judicial Conduct Panel's findings end up being and what the judges recommend in the way of discipline are anybody's guess. But the signals sent at today's hearing were hardly confidence inspiring.

Holding Wisconsin Back

When asked what the biggest problem facing Wisconsin is, more people than ever before are saying it's government ethics and politics. That's according to the latest Wisconsin Survey conducted by St. Norbert College Survey Center for Wisconsin Public Radio.

In fact, on the list of the biggest concerns on the minds of state residents, government ethics ranks ahead of jobs and the economy, health care, education, gas prices, crime and drugs, the environment and immigration. Only tax and budget concerns worry a higher percentage of Wisconsinites than government ethics and politics. Amazing.

The percentage of people identifying government ethics as Wisconsin's biggest problem nearly doubled from the previous poll conducted this spring. St. Norbert's has been doing the Wisconsin Survey since 1994 and the ethics of our state's political leaders didn't register as a concern at all until the spring of 2002.

An Unfair Fight

Last Friday we released an analysis showing state senators who voted for AT&T's cable TV bill have received 12 times more campaign money from interest groups that favor the bill than senators who voted against it.

A telling statistic that's not in the report. . . . Senators who voted for AT&T's bill and received $1.2 million since 1999 from interests that support the bill have gotten less than $90,000 from opponents of the legislation over the same period.

The only remaining obstacle for AT&T and its allies is the governor's veto pen. It sure doesn't sound like the governor is planning to veto the bill, and no wonder. He's received more than $1.5 million from supporters of the cable bill since 1999 and just over $182,000 from opponents.

The Greatest Gift

Of all the questions I'm asked, I get one far more than any other. With the news that Scott Jensen is being granted a new trial on a technicality, I got it again. How do you put up with all the BS?

Different people ask it different ways, but it's the same question. How do you get up in the morning and go to work day after day, knowing you'll run into more brick walls? How do you stay hopeful? Doesn't all the nonsense in politics drive you flipping batty?

My standard answer is birth defect. You see, I am a Chicago Cubs fan, so I'm used to waiting until next year.

My love of the Cubs is not a choice, it's in my DNA, inherited from my parents as sure as my eye color and skin tone were. For those who think I can't possibly be serious, let me ask you this: Would you choose the torment the Cubs have inflicted on their fans all these many years?

OK, OK, enough.

In my book, the real secret of stick-to-it-iveness is defiance.

When we respond to political corruption or some grave social injustice or other outrage by throwing up our hands and turning away from the democratic process, that creates a vacuum that lobbyists and special interests and the politicians they own thrive in. Succumbing to feelings of apathy or cynicism or hopelessness is the greatest gift you can give to those who are abusing our democracy and subverting it and twisting it to their advantage. They feed on those feelings. They need us to say what's the use.

Knowing that, why give them what they hunger for, what they live on? They can take and take and take until they've taken most everything. But don't ever let them take your hope.

Saying The F Word

Fascism is a loaded term. So loaded that it's next to impossible to talk about or even think about in a way that doesn't begin and end with Hitler and concentration camps and gas chambers. If it wasn't so pathetically xenophobic not to mention just plain silly, all the recent blather about Islamofascism would be welcome if for no other reason than it moves the discussion beyond the Nazis.

Our limited field of vision when it comes to fascism leaves us vulnerable to overlooking its emergence in subtle, more unrecognizable forms and early, less cancerous stages. Could we see it if it's not ushered in by a parade of goose-stepping soldiers?

Franklin Roosevelt saw it. Even seemingly innocuous stuff going on in our own backyard – like the game of footsy AT&T and our state government are playing – makes FDR's words of warning echo loudly.

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Sinclair Lewis also tried teaching us what to look for. "When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross," he wrote.

More recently, Laurence Britt offered his 14 characteristics of fascism. Not all fascist regimes have been genocidal, Britt reminds us, but they all have to one degree or another exhibited these common traits:

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.

2. Disdain for the importance of human rights.

3. Identification of enemies or scapegoats as a unifying cause.

4. The supremacy of the military and avid militarism.

5. Rampant sexism.

6. A controlled mass media.

7. Obsession with national security.

8. Religion and ruling elite tied together.

9. Power of corporations protected.

10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.

11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.

12. Obsession with crime and punishment.

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption.

14. Fraudulent elections.

If we are to safeguard democracy, these are the things we need to watch for. Do you see any signs of trouble?

Mother's Milk Indeed

Sometimes others say it so well you just have to step aside and let them do the talking. The following is a letter to the editor that appeared in the small-town Cumberland Advocate on October 17.

Money not the “mother’s milk” in politics

To the Editor:

Last week’s editorial noted money to be the “mother’s milk” of politics. Money is not the “mother’s milk,” but the heroin of politics. As heroin twists all addicts into morally ravaged, brain addled, fully compromised whores to the drug, money corrupts the entire political process. Apart from independently wealthy and self-financed candidates, no one seeking office can ever effectively represent voters’ interests which conflict with corporate profits from the same issue. This is true of military policy controlled by and for Halliburton, AIPAC and General Dynamics, of health care policy determined by and for Aetna and United Healthcare, of agricultural policy determined by and for ConAgra...right on down the line. Campaign finance reform – the removal of all heroin, er, private source bribery from politics – is the essential issue without which none other will be resolved in the best interests of the citizens of the USA. Online, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and the Center for Responsive Politics offer ample documentation of this issue.

Steve Hart
Cumberland

Casualty Of The Backlash

Bill Kraus is a Republican, the kind who used to run the GOP. He's also the kind who's been figuratively if not literally excommunicated from the party. Part of his problem is that he believes politics should be about more than bumper sticker slogans. An even bigger part of Bill's problem is that he actually believes government should work. There was a time – pre-Iraq and pre-Hurricane Katrina, mind you – when Republicans were known for being able to run things.

Some of the insurrectionists – I call 'em rewinders (and explain why here) – who overthrew the likes of Bill Kraus and took over the Republican Party want gays to stay in the closet. Some want women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Others want blacks at the back of the bus. Still others are, in Michael Kinsley's words, "loners . . . convinced that they don't need society." Quite a few are probably all of the above.

Even the health care issue has fallen victim to backlash politics and the money that fuels it. The health insurance crisis is undeniably a top concern of working stiffs. The cry for reform is coming increasingly from corporate boardrooms. Yet any movement on the issue is being stymied. Wonder why? Follow the money. And then follow it some more.

The Healthy Wisconsin reform plan costs about $15 billion. But it would replace a patchwork quilt of a system with a thousand middle men that is costing us more than $17 billion. So let's get this straight . . . we could spend $15 billion and cover everyone instead of paying $17 billion for a system that leaves a half-million people uninsured? And this is a bad idea? No, it's an idea that is being sloganed to death.

Often by the same people responsible for throwing Bill Kraus out of the club.

What A Long Strange Trip It's Been

It's day 109 in the state budget stalemate. A day after the Assembly rejected a revised budget plan in a special session called by Governor Doyle, the Assembly speaker called for an extraordinary session of the Legislature to deal with the budget crisis. Sorry, but it's just impossible at the moment to imagine any session of this Legislature qualifying as special, much less extraordinary.

Over the noon hour today, a corporate-sponsored group called Americans for Prosperity staged an anti-tax rally, presumably to try to put a scare into any legislative Republicans who might be toying with the idea of straying from the no-budget-is-a-good-thing camp. AFP is hardly homegrown. . . . It is on the front lines of a national crusade against health care reform and pretty much any other initiative that might require a tax dollar to support it. Wisconsin just happened to be AFP's battleground of choice for today.

AFP paid to bus in a crowd estimated at between 350 and 500 for the rally, and they were met by about 800 counter-demonstrators. Cameras and microphones and reporters with notebooks were everywhere. Evidently, political paralysis is news.

On the other end of State Street from the Capitol, there was another rally. On the University of Wisconsin's library mall, a dozen students and passersby, maybe two, listened while representatives of the ACLU and Progressive Magazine and student activists tried to raise awareness of the Military Commissions Act and what it's done to the right to habeas corpus. There wasn't a camera crew or tape recorder to be seen. News, suspending civil liberties is not.

Judgeship Follows Gifts To Governor

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Michael Gableman contributed $1,250 to former Republican Governor Scott McCallum two months before McCallum picked him to fill a vacant Burnett County Circuit Court judgeship in 2002.

Gableman's contribution was among $4,073 in campaign contributions he made to candidates for statewide office and the legislature from 1998 through 2002.

Those contributions included $2,500 to McCallum, $600 to former Republican Attorney General candidate Vince Biskupic, $500 to former Democratic Representative Greg Huber, $173 to Republican Assembly candidate Connie Loden, $100 to Republican Assembly candidate Ted Nickel and $100 each to Supreme Court candidates Ed Brunner and Pat Roggensack.

Gableman made two contributions of $1,250 each to McCallum on December 13, 2001 and June 18, 2002. McCallum appointed Gableman August 20, 2002 to serve the remainder of retiring Judge James Taylor's term. Gableman was elected to a full six-year term in 2003.

Charles Schutze, a Sun Prairie attorney who is also vying for incumbent Louis Butler's Supreme Court seat this April has contributed $550 to two candidates. He gave Supreme Court Justice Patrick Crooks two $100 contributions in 1995 and a total of $350 to Republican legislative candidate Hariah Hutkowski in 2002 and 2004.

WDC could find no large individual contributions by Butler to candidates for statewide and legislative offices since 1993 other than the $7,099 he gave his own unsuccessful campaign for the high court in Spring 2000. Butler's wife, Irene, contributed $100 in 2006 to Democratic legislative candidate Cory Mason's campaign.

Butler was appointed to the Supreme Court by the governor in August 2004 to fill a vacancy when Justice Diane Sykes was appointed to the federal bench.

Snarling At Online Court Access

CCAP. It's a foul four-letter word to Wisconsin Rapids Democrat Marlin Schneider. To me and many, many others it spells open government.

CCAP is an an acronym for "Consolidated Court Automation Programs." It's a system that allows the public to gain access to court records via a Wisconsin circuit court Web site.

This invaluable service is now under attack. The threat comes in the form of legislation proposed by Schneider to allow only police, judges, prosecutors and reporters to log on to CCAP. Members of the general public would have to get permission from a district attorney or court clerk, who would have to determine there's a "reasonable need" for disclosure before granting access to the site.

The man known as Snarlin' Marlin says allowing unsupervised public access to criminal records is ruining people's lives. Perhaps a paragraph near the end of an August 2005 article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel sheds light on why CCAP really rankles Schneider so. It says, "CCAP shows that the lawmaker had a $65,000 judgment against him as the result of an auto accident. 'The jury chose to believe the woman who looked frail,' he said about the jury trial."

Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen is no fan of Schneider's bill and calls CCAP “a model for the distribution of public information.” In a letter to the chairman of the committee reviewing the legislation, Van Hollen wrote that he believes "the exclusion of the general public...is not appropriate and frustrates the state’s compelling interest in accessible government."

To which Schneider responded, "Big deal. I should care?"

Yes, you should care.

The Democracy Campaign used CCAP to research cases Annette Ziegler handled as a circuit court judge that led to our formal request to the state Judicial Commission for an ethics investigation of Ziegler's financial conflicts of interest. With CCAP, we were able to identify the problem cases in a single day. Without access to CCAP, we would have had to travel to the Washington County courthouse in West Bend and comb through volumes of case files. It would have involved weeks of tedious inspection of court documents, looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. And there's no guarantee we ever would have found all of what we were looking for.

The public deserved to know that Judge Ziegler was engaging in judicial misconduct. CCAP was instrumental in making that happen.

The public deserves – and the interest of open government demands – continued unfettered access to CCAP.

Your Union. Delivered.

Back in May, we posted an item about state Democratic Party chairman Joe Wineke signing on as a lobbyist for AT&T to push for a cable TV franchising bill the company desires. The firestorm that Wineke's dual roles created eventually forced him to put an end to his lobbying work for the telecommunications giant.

Now we learn that AT&T's stable of lobbyists includes none other than Communications Workers of America Local 4611 President Michael Goebel.

Questions abound. . . . Would Goebel know a conflict of interest if it bit him on the backside? Would he care? How many rank and file members of CWA Local 4611 know that their union president is paid to shill for AT&T? How many will stand for Goebel's divided loyalties when all this becomes widely known?

NEWSFLASH: Governor Returns Tainted Donations

Pennsylvania's governor, that is.

A few days ago, Governor Ed Rendell announced he is returning $7,000 in campaign contributions from two associates of Norman Hsu, the former fugitive now in custody and facing federal fraud charges. That move came some three weeks after Rendell decided to get rid of a larger sum that he got from Hsu himself.

National politicians from one coast to the other have been busy the last month dumping campaign money that has anything resembling Hsu's fingerprints on it.

Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle, on the other hand, took $2000 from Hsu back in July 2005. And he continues to hold on to it. Tight.

Ziegler Plot Thickens

State Judicial Commission chief Jim Alexander was understandably defensive when the three-judge panel that is reviewing the commission's work on the Annette Ziegler ethics case issued an order Wednesday that expands the scope of the Ziegler probe and questions why the Judicial Commission apparently left stones unturned.

"You can rest assured the matter was thoroughly investigated," Alexander told reporters. Reading the order, it doesn't sound like the three judges on the special Judicial Conduct Panel are convinced.

The panel of judges is reviewing the case before making a recommendation to the state Supreme Court, which will have the final say on what, if any, punishment Ziegler receives. The panel has scheduled a public hearing on the case for November 19, and in preparation for that hearing the judges have given the Judicial Commission and attorneys for Ziegler three weeks to provide answers to their many questions about Ziegler's finances, her handling of cases as a circuit court judge, what facts the commission knew about and which facts it relied upon to recommend Ziegler be reprimanded, and the timing of Ziegler's admission that she engaged in judicial misconduct.

While all the questions being raised by the three-judge panel are important ones, it's the question about the timing of her admission that is most critical. While the others largely aim at establishing the facts and determining what Ziegler did or did not do and what the commission did or did not do, the timing question cuts to the issue of Ziegler's forthrightness and whether she deceived voters by being less than forthcoming before the election about the seriousness of her ethical missteps.

Before the April election, Ziegler repeatedly danced around the question of whether she had violated the state judicial ethics code and only insisted there was "no scandal." After the election, she admitted she broke the rules.

It remains to be seen what Ziegler's fate will be. But one thing already is clear. This whole episode does not reflect favorably on the Judicial Commission. The commission operates in obscurity, like a scout teamer on a football squad who never gets on the field during games. The Ziegler ethics probe was the commission's rare chance to perform with the lights on and a big crowd watching.

The commission finally was put in the game and got to carry the ball. It fumbled.

Budget Delay Wastes $17 Million

The Wisconsin Legislature has blown $17.2 million in taxpayer dollars working on the proposed 2007-09 state budget during the past three months - a job they were supposed to complete by July 1.

The figure represents salaries, fringe benefits and other costs to operate the Legislature for a quarter of the year. Its current annual budget is $68.8 million.

Both houses passed differing versions of the budget in late July and then formed a committee of legislative leaders to hammer out a compromise budget the Assembly and Senate could agree on and send to Governor Jim Doyle.

But the committee has yet to agree on a budget at the expense of dozens of other legislative proposals that have been idling. One legislative veteran says the Assembly has only been in session 14 days this year. "It's an absolute outrage that while we fiddle around nothing is getting done," Democratic Representative Marlin Schneider said in a press release.

At the same time, plenty of fundraising has been getting done. Legislative leaders on the conference committee as well as rank and file lawmakers have been holding fundraisers in bulk during the months-long budget delay to milk special interests with a stake in the two-year policy and spending proposal.

Big Donations, Crumbling Levees And Collapsing Bridges

This is food for thought....

Legislators Foul Up WMC's Script

The state's largest business organization recently began airing radio ads commending five Assembly Republicans - four of whom won their 2006 races by the skin of their teeth - for opposing increases in business and other taxes contained in the Senate Democrats' version of the proposed 2007-09 state budget.

The ads are being run on behalf of Representatives Lee Nerison, Terry Moulton, John Murtha, Karl Van Roy and Brett Davis. But it seems these guys fouled up the script that Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce had for them.

The ad scripts are identical for each lawmaker and use two women conversing who say, in part, "none of us can afford higher taxes. But you know what? We're lucky. Why? Our state representative (name) is fighting to keep the Senate tax hikes from becoming law. He says taxes in Wisconsin are already too high. In fact, he's already voted against the tax hikes."

But within days of these radio ads, the five voted on September 18 in favor of a $12.3 billion education spending bill that translates into an $80 increase in property taxes on the average home. The education package they approved contained most of the school aid levels sought by Democratic Governor Jim Doyle and Senate Democrats.

Click here and scroll to September 14 to hear the ads.

What Will Prosser Do?

Annette Ziegler's punishment for judicial misconduct is ultimately up to the state Supreme Court. Before the matter reaches the high court, a three-judge panel will review the state Judicial Commission's findings and recommendation that Ziegler receive a reprimand. The formation of that panel hit a snag late last week when it was discovered one of the judges donated to Ziegler's campaign.

Appeals Court Judge Michael Hoover gave Ziegler $100 last November, and he was hastily removed from the review panel when news of the donation spread last week.

Will the standard that was applied to Hoover apply when Ziegler's case finally makes it to the Supreme Court? Justice David Prosser donated $250 to Ziegler's campaign last November. Will Prosser stand in judgment of Ziegler? How can he if Hoover couldn't?