Where Campaign Cash Really Comes From

In the hours before political candidates file their campaign finance reports, their campaigns issue ritual statements showcasing their numbers and generally boasting about their fundraising prowess, complete with a stock claim that most of the donors gave small amounts of money. What they don't tell you is that most of the funds raised came from a few who gave exceedingly large sums.

Mark Neumann's campaign for governor didn't deviate from the standard boilerplate in summarizing its fundraising over the first half of the year. The statement issued a few days ago says the campaign raised $1.96 million in the six-month period, adding that 96% of the donors are from Wisconsin and 85% gave $99 or less.

There's a lot in the Neumann camp's statement that leaves you scratching your head. The actual report his campaign filed with the state Government Accountability Board lists $2,844,282 in contributions, not $1.96 million. And if you look at who gave the slightly more than $2.8 million the campaign reported, you find that $2,525,170 came from Neumann's own pocket.

Scott Walker and Tom Barrett also closely followed the well-worn script in describing their fundraising. Both claim a substantial majority of their supporters donate small amounts. Like Neumann, neither Walker nor Barrett says anything about where most of their money comes from.

We will be filling in that blank in the weeks to come. I'm betting that what we find will look an awful lot like what we found in the last race for governor in 2006.

Our findings mirror those of the national Campaign Finance Institute, which monitors election financing at the state and national levels. As the bar chart below illustrates, CFI's analysis of fundraising by candidates for state office in Wisconsin the last time we had a race for governor in 2006 shows that less than one-seventh of campaign money came from individuals giving $100 or less, while the lion's share of funds were donated by far more generous donors.

It could be worse. Like Illinois.

On the other hand, Wisconsin could do much better. Like Minnesota.


There's a reason why Minnesota candidates have come to rely so much more heavily on donors who give smaller amounts of money. For years, Minnesota has had a program that provided rebates of up to $50 to state residents who make small donations to political candidates.

Wisconsin could adopt such a program and join our neighbor to the west in encouraging citizen participation in state elections and weaning candidates from their reliance on big-money donors. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that Wisconsin could trade places with Minnesota. Our neighbor to the west just suspended its small-donor incentive program.

Hold Your Nose And Vote Already

You can hardly blame people for having a tough time telling the difference between the two major parties, what with their slavish devotion and ceaseless pandering to big-money interests. On the other hand, there are obvious distinctions. For starters one party is scary, the other scared.

Some other distinguishing features are caricatures. One is the party of government, the other the party of free markets. To the extent there is truth in that exaggerated simplification, both parties have their work cut out for them.

The latest poll by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center shows most state residents don't have much use for public officials. Two-thirds of respondents said they trust state officials "only some of the time." Two-thirds also said public officials "don't care much what people like me think."

Well over half of those polled believe that government is "run by a few big interests" looking out for themselves and agree with the statement, "People like me don't have any say about what the government does." When asked how many people running the state are crooked, only 7% said "none" and 28% answered "only a few," while 42% said "some" and almost one in five said "most" or "nearly all."

As disillusioned as Wisconsinites clearly are with politics and politicians, the UW poll shows even deeper misgivings with the suits in the corporate boardrooms. Asked where they place their faith when it comes to fixing the economy, 52% of respondents said they trust a "strong government" while 40% said "the free market."

Given the low regard people have for government and public officials these days, that's like saying if there has to be either a child molester or an ax murderer living next door, they'll take the child molester.

In Search Of Better Redistricting

Milwaukee Mayor and Democratic candidate for governor Tom Barrett yesterday put forward a plan for changing the way legislative and congressional redistricting is handled. May he not be the last public official in the state to tackle this issue.

Lord knows the current system needs improving. The way it's worked is that legislators get to draw new district lines every 10 years after each census, and the lines they draw are tailor-made for their reelection. Democrats find ways to pack as many Democratic voters as possible in their districts, and Republicans load their districts with GOP voters.

In the vast majority of congressional and state legislative contests, the outcome is a foregone conclusion because of the lopsided political makeup of the districts. Much is made of how Wisconsin is a purple state, evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. But individual districts are bright red or dark blue.

At present Wisconsin arguably has only one competitive congressional district, the Green Bay area's 8th district. In fact, since 2000 only two U.S. House races have been competitive (with a margin of victory within 10 points), the 2000 election in the 2nd district and the 2006 election in the 8th.

Depending on the election year, either 116 or 117 state legislative seats are up for grabs. Over the last 10 years, the number of competitive elections has ranged from a low of 10 to a high of 29.

While this is a raw deal for voters, it's great for incumbent office holders. Since 2000, state legislative incumbents have been reelected 95% of the time. In 2000, incumbents won 102 times and lost three. In 2002, they went 89-6. In 2004, 91-4. In 2006, 97-9. And in 2008, 99-3.

State politicians go to great lengths to achieve these results. They spent somewhere between $2.6 million and $2.9 million of our money on consultants, personnel and legal expenses for the 2000 redistricting. And sometimes they had to draw weirdly shaped districts to enhance the job security of incumbents. The 64th Assembly district (pictured at right - click on image to enlarge) in the Kenosha area was named one of the 10 ugliest districts in America in a state-by-state analysis released this April by the Rose Institute.

High Court Sinks To New Low

Yesterday a divided Wisconsin Supreme Court quietly finalized new rules allowing state judges to decide cases involving their biggest campaign supporters. This new ethical standard was proposed by two of the state's most powerful lobbying groups, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association.

The rules stand in direct contradiction with the U.S. Supreme Court's 2009 ruling in Caperton v. Massey that a West Virginia Supreme Court justice had a duty to withdraw from a case involving a major campaign supporter and his failure to do so violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment that protects the right to a fair trial.

Four of the state Supreme Court's seven justices - Patience Roggensack, David Prosser, Annette Ziegler and Michael Gableman - ignored the Caperton decision and sided with WMC and the Realtors on the amendment to Wisconsin's judicial ethics code.

This move came on the heels of Prosser, Ziegler and Roggensack blocking disciplinary action against Gableman for authorizing an untruthful campaign ad. Gableman stood accused of judicial misconduct for violating the part of the ethics code prohibiting judges from making false statements about an election opponent. Gableman's ad claimed Louis Butler "found a loophole" and implied a child molester got off on a technicality of Butler's making and "went on to molest another child." Trouble is, the man Butler was representing as a public defender didn't get off. He was never released until he had served his entire sentence. Only after that did he commit another crime. The ad was a lie. And an obvious violation of the judicial ethics code.

Prosser, Ziegler and Roggensack overlooked the plain facts in Gableman's misconduct case and ignored the plain meaning of the judicial ethics code. They refused to conclude that Gableman's ad was untruthful. It was just "distasteful," they ruled. And protected speech under the First Amendment.

The justices don't have a leg to stand on between the three of them on the truthfulness of the ad. It was way beyond distasteful. It was a lie. Invoking free speech was a far more clever maneuver. It made letting Gableman off appear somehow principled.

There is no disputing that Gableman had the right to say what he said about Butler. But that doesn't mean he shouldn't be held accountable for violating the judicial ethics code. Employees have the right to publicly say their bosses are total losers. But they shouldn't be at all surprised if that free speech gets them fired. General Stanley McCrystal and his aides had every right to say what they said to Rolling Stone magazine. President Obama also was entirely within his rights when he relieved McCrystal of his duties.

The right to speak is constitutionally protected. But that doesn't mean speech has no consequences under any circumstances. Justices Prosser, Ziegler and Roggensack waived application of that common sense to their colleague and ideological soulmate Michael Gableman. Some might even be tempted to say they found a loophole in the state judicial ethics code.

Columnist Joel McNally said it best: "This time a lowlife really did get off on a technicality."

Elect The U.S. Supreme Court

A strong case for electing members of the U.S. Supreme Court is being made in Washington, by the unlikeliest of advocates, namely the latest nominee to the nation's highest court and the senators charged with evaluating her qualifications and ultimately deciding her fate.

The selection process for Supreme Court justices has become a very bad joke. Nominations are nakedly political. The confirmation hearings are cynical, thoroughly political exercises. Senators make complete fools of themselves, like Alabama's Jeff Sessions when he compared corporations to black children suffering discrimination. Nominees either answer questions with empty blather or they lie through their teeth so as not to put in jeopardy their chance for a lifetime appointment.

If testifying under oath meant much of anything and if Congress had an ounce of nerve, there would be articles of impeachment pending against John Roberts for lying to Congress. The chief justice roundly condemned judicial activism and swore he'd be like an umpire calling balls and strikes, then proceeded down a path ensuring he will go down as one of the most radical judicial activists in the history of the Supreme Court. Roberts pledged allegiance to stare decisis, Latin for "stand by the decision," meaning courts are bound by previous decisions and what Roberts himself called "settled law." Once confirmed, he's been hellbent on overturning longstanding legal precedents that don't pass his ideological litmus tests.

Now Elena Kagan is telling senators that the ruling of the Roberts court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission giving corporations a free rein to spend as much as they want to influence elections is "settled law" (there's that term again) and should not be disrupted.

She can't possibly believe that. The federal Tillman Act of 1907 banned the use of corporate treasure in national elections, two years after Wisconsin prohibited corporate electioneering in state elections. These laws withstood legal challenges and attempts to repeal them for over 100 years. As recently as 1990 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of prohibiting the use of corporate treasury funds in elections in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce.

Now that is settled law.

Yet the Roberts court saw fit to throw century-old laws and decades-old court precedents on the trash heap, installing a radical new order in American politics. The five strict destructionists on the Roberts court even managed to overlook the fact that the Supreme Court had already reviewed the federal McCain-Feingold campaign finance law in 2003 and again in 2007. They refused to see the matter as settled and did not hesitate to be disruptive, barely waiting for the ink to dry on the court's ruling in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission upholding the law's constitutionality before overturning it.

Nothing about this case changed between 2003 and 2010 except the court's composition. And now we are supposed to believe that Elena Kagan, who once said the Roberts court wrongly decided Citizens United, is of a mind to let that ruling stand for evermore.

Either Kagan is calculating and dissembling and willing to say or do anything to realize her life's ambition, or she is spineless and unprincipled and will make a most lackluster justice.

What we are getting with Elena Kagan is a mystery, just as it was with John Roberts. And Samuel Alito. And. . . .

For those who believe electing judges would introduce politics into the judiciary, I ask this: How exactly could the selection of Supreme Court justices get more political if we let the people decide instead of letting the politicians choose? Could the court's members be any more ideological if they were elected? Would lesser legal minds with thinner professional resumes be chosen by the voters? Could decisions of an elected court possibly be less based on fact, less grounded in the law and more partial to the rich and powerful than the rulings churned out in recent weeks, months and years by the appointed-for-life court we have now?

Naming A Disaster

No doubt remains that we are reliving the Gilded Age. The only question is what name the historians will finally settle on for this latest era of rampant materialism and blatant corruption.

A couple of nominations:

1. Stilted Age. The name fits a time when a comfortable few rest easily above the floodwaters while an afflicted many watch jobs and homes and savings and ways of life wash away. And notice how today's industrial and political elites talk of the "small people" and "the unwashed back home." Even that is stilted.

2. Jaded Age. So named for a society overindulged, exhausted by overwork, dulled by excess. So named for a time when truth competes so poorly in the marketplace of ideas, when opinion is exalted over fact, when ugly propaganda becomes innocent spin, rendering nearly a whole people increasingly ignorant and cynical.

Your turn. I'm sure you can do better.

Supreme Lies

By brazenly interfering in a state election while it is going on, the radically reactionary majority on the U.S. Supreme Court has once again exposed the deceit in all the high-minded talk from self-proclaimed "judicial conservatives" over the years about the perils of "activist judges" who "legislate from the bench."

They've always claimed an allegiance to stare decisis, the principle that judges are obliged to respect the precedents established by prior decisions and not disturb settled legal matters. As the five justices who make up the current court majority demonstrated in their ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, they are perfectly willing to throw a century of settled law and decades-old court precedents on the trash heap if it suits their ideological purposes, in this case to allow corporations to spend freely on elections.

In seeking to distinguish themselves from what they consider abhorrent judicial activism by liberals, they've also long proclaimed the importance of judicial deference, the doctrine that judges should avoid frustrating the will of the legislature when deciding cases. By blocking the distribution of public matching funds to candidates who signed up to run under Arizona's 12-year-old campaign finance law and are actively campaigning under the system's rules, the five who control the high court at present put the full extent of their hypocrisy on display.

All in the interest of keeping politics safe for the rich and powerful.

BP's Chief Engineer

The Fairytale Of A New Jensen Trial

Not that it matters, but I found myself standing pretty much alone in condemning the Wisconsin Supreme Court's decision to allow the Scott Jensen case to move to his home county. Jensen's attorneys, of course, were of the opinion that the matter was very well decided by the high court. The prosecutor who handled Jensen's first trial was circumspect, but then he would have been rid of the whole business in any case as he's soon to become an appeals court judge. Others, from newspaper editorialists to good government advocates, are resting assured that a new trial in Waukesha County will turn out exactly the same as the first one in Dane County.

Not to worry, they say. Jensen essentially admitted to stealing from the taxpayers and hinged his defense on the claim that everyone else in the Legislature was doing it too. Nothing has changed about the facts in the case. The new prosecutor will have all the evidence and all the transcripts of Jensen's testimony and that of the numerous witnesses. Surely jurors from Waukesha will judge those facts no differently than their counterparts from Dane County.

There's a big problem with this package of assumptions, and it has nothing to do with any possible differences between the jury pools in Waukesha and Dane counties. The problem is assuming there will be a new trial. The chance of that happening is waaaay far south of slim.

Think about it. If you are Scott Jensen, do you want a new trial? Hell no. You were convicted once, and do you really want to roll the dice with your everybody-was-doing-it defense one more time? Come on, if you are Scott Jensen you have two goals and only two goals. To avoid another felony conviction and to avoid time behind bars.

Now think about it some more. The Waukesha County district attorney already has said publicly that this case will overwhelm his office and even comically remarked that he's not even sure his office has the space to house all the boxes of documents contained in the court file. You don't have to read between those lines much to see that he wants no part of going to trial.

This is a plea deal waiting to happen. The only question is whether the new prosecutor will hold out for a felony conviction and meaningful punishment. You can bet Jensen will be angling to plead down to a misdemeanor and nothing more than, oh say, a few weeks of home confinement and maybe a fine.

Scott Jensen and his stable of attorneys have gamed the legal system brilliantly. They took a shot at acquittal and lost. After being convicted and sentenced to 15 months in prison, Jensen had his legal team scour the trial record in search of a technicality and they found one in the form of a jury instruction that was deemed faulty by an appeals court that overturned the former speaker's conviction.

Now after more than seven and a half years of legal maneuvering, Jensen is headed back to his home turf, where he will encounter a prosecutor who by his own admission will need months to come up to speed on this soap opera and who has made no secret of the fact that he'd rather not have any additions to his already-too-heavy caseload. Jensen has to like his bargaining position.

The state Supreme Court treated Scott Jensen in a way that no citizen of Wisconsin who is not a well-connected politician could hope to be treated. And in so doing, the court has put him in the driver's seat.

Supreme Court Rewards Jensen For Gaming The Legal System

The state Supreme Court ruled this morning that former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen should be re-tried for criminal misconduct in public office in his home county of Waukesha, not in Dane County where the offenses are alleged to have occurred.

Disagreeing with a circuit court and a state appeals court that both denied Jensen's request for a change of venue for his retrial, the high court retroactively applied a state law creating a home court advantage for Wisconsin politicians that was not on the books when Jensen was criminally charged over seven and a half years ago or when he was convicted in 2006 and sentenced to 15 months in prison and banned from the Capitol for five years.

After his conviction, Jensen's lawyers were able to find a loophole and get his conviction overturned on a technicality. And Jensen's friends in the Legislature wrote a new law in 2007 giving state politicians a privilege no other citizen in Wisconsin possesses, namely the ability to be tried in your home county instead of where crimes are alleged to have been committed. The circuit court and the appeals court both saw through this. The Supreme Court fell for it.

In ruling as they did, the members of the high court have rewarded the former speaker for gaming the criminal justice system for over seven and a half years and have sent the general public a powerful message. Wisconsin has two systems of justice, one for well-connected and powerful people like Scott Jensen and another for everyone else. All but a handful of citizens in this state cannot under any circumstances expect to be treated as Jensen is being treated if they are accused of breaking the law.

The circuit court got it right. The appeals court got it right. The Supreme Court got it horribly wrong. Regardless of whatever fine points of law members of the high court felt they were upholding, the end result is a continuing miscarriage of justice. And the reduction of the high-minded principle of equal justice under the law to a laughable farce.

Another Week, Another Outside Group In The Governor's Race

A week after a Democratic smear group launched ads slamming the two GOP candidates for governor, an out-of-state pro-business group is sponsoring two television ads lauding Republican candidate Scott Walker.

The 30-second ads by the Michigan-based American Justice Partnership mostly show film clips of Walker saying he will create jobs by lowering taxes and easing regulations on business.

American Justice Partnership is a coalition of corporations, foundations and business trade organizations affiliated with the National Association of Manufacturers which spends millions of dollars to support mostly Republican candidates in federal campaigns. American Justice Partnership's website says it was created by Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus and former Michigan Republican Governor John Engler to promote state level efforts to control damage awards and make it more difficult to sue businesses in court.

The group's ads come a week before the Republican Party state convention in Milwaukee where delegates will vote on whether to endorse the contested primary between Walker and Mark Neumann, who has said he will not seek the party's endorsement.

The group claims its state partner is Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and counts among its state successes the elections of Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices Annette Ziegler in 2007 and Michael Gableman in 2008 and state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen in 2006.

The Democracy Campaign has estimated WMC spent about $6.5 million on nasty broadcast advertising, mailings and other outside electioneering activities to support Ziegler, Gableman and Van Hollen.

Shadow Group Launches First Nasty TV Ad In 2010 Governor's Race

A secretive Democratic electioneering group launched the first television ad of the 2010 Wisconsin governor's race criticizing Republican candidates Scott Walker and Mark Neumann for their positions on state tax policy.

The Greater Wisconsin Political Fund, which is connected with the Greater Wisconsin Committee, refuses to say how much it is spending on its phony issue ad and where the ad is running. The unregulated group, which has spent an estimated $8.2 million to back mostly Democratic candidates in general election and spring races since 2006, is among several so-called issue ad groups that support Democratic and Republican candidates with negative mailings, broadcast ads and other activities at election time.

The ad criticizes Neumann and Walker for saying they would repeal recent tax policy changes that increased income taxes for people earning $300,000 or more a year and a corporate tax known as combined reporting which increases taxes on large businesses by taking into account their out-of-state operations.

The ad shows pictures of Neumann and Walker along with a picture of former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney and tells listeners "not to make the same mistake again."

Repealing the income and corporate tax changes would put bigger financial burdens on the middle class and working families, the ad says.

They Love Us, They Really Really Love Us

Numerous candidates for statewide office and the legislature in every election try to hoodwink the public into believing the exorbitant amount of special interest cash they accept shows they are popular among voters.

There have already been claims like that by the two Republican candidates for governor - Scott Walker and Mark Neumann - about their fundraising for the last six months of 2009.

Walker's campaign raised $1.8 million in the last half of 2009, including $1.74 million in individual contributions. Walker says 74 percent of the donations were $50 or less.

Neumann's campaign raised $1.32 million, nearly all of it in individual contributions. Neumann says 93 percent of the donations were $250 or less.

But that's not an accurate description of where they got most of their money. While a large amount of their donations were relatively small, most of their campaign cash came from big contributions.

Walker's campaign received $811,898 in contributions ranging from $500 to $10,000. It represents 47 percent of his $1.74 million in individual contributions in the last six months of 2009.

Excluding Neumann's $1.09 million contribution to his own campaign, he really raised $234,461 from individual donors. Of that $178,850, or 76 percent, came from $500-plus contributions.

Democratic candidate for governor Tom Barrett boasted about how quickly he raised $811,867 in the last few months of 2009. Even though he didn't try to characterize most of it as coming from small donors, he fares the worst of the three. The campaign raised $655,788 in individual contributions and 78 percent, or $514,460, came from $500-plus contributions.

The Legislature's Invisible Hand

Longer ago than seems possible, I served in the Peace Corps. I returned to the U.S. in 1991 after two years in the West African country of Mali realizing what pretty much every Peace Corps volunteer I've ever met realized. That you get far more from the experience than you give. That's not what surprised me most about my time overseas, though. Living in a different culture revealed how thoroughly American I am. That's the thing that blindsided me.

I was astonished by how much of my own culture was invisible to me. That is, until I went to a place where none of my culture's unwritten rules applied. Only in a foreign land did the countless ways American culture guides my actions and shapes my behavior and my outlook on life become visibly apparent.

My western ways determined what I found most trying about living in one of the most physically harsh and materially impoverished places on Earth. It wasn't the extreme heat (up to 120 degrees in the hot season, low 100s and humid in the rainy season and high 80s and low 90s in the day with overnight lows in the 60s in the "cold season"). Not the language, which was a bear for me to learn because the same word had multiple meanings depending on subtle changes in tone my ear could not discern. It wasn't the absence of electricity, running water or flush toilets that was most difficult to cope with. Eating exclusively with my hands took some getting used to, but it ended up feeling like second nature. So did living without TV. Periodic bouts with malaria were no picnic and dysentery was a drag. All the boils from chronic staph infections seemed alarming at first. After awhile tending them became part of the routine.

Nope, the hardest thing by a longshot was the utter lack of privacy and personal space. I always thought a desire for some privacy was human nature. In Mali, I discovered it is cultural. A Malian friend of mine told me that people who want to be left alone are either mean or crazy. Or American, I thought but never told him.

Reading the editorial in Sunday's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about Wisconsin's political culture caused me to reflect back on my time in Mali. The newspaper described a "culture in which politics takes precedence over policy, money is king, leadership too centralized and re-election is everything." Such an assessment stands in sharp contrast to what you hear when our state's politicians take inventory of themselves. They congratulate each other for their high-minded devotion to public service. Most of them don't see what the Journal Sentinel sees. Once assimilated into the culture, they grow blind to how the hand steers them.

A few short years ago, six of the most powerful state legislators in Wisconsin were paraded into courtrooms and were convicted of one form or other of criminal misconduct in public office. Charges ranged from bid rigging and accepting kickbacks to extortion and what the state's attorneys characterized as "theft from the public." That theft involved the systematic use of state offices, state equipment and state employees for personal political gain.

One of the legislators went to prison. Others did some jail time. One got a guilty verdict and 15-month prison sentence overturned on a technicality and awaits a new trial. The thing that never ceased to amaze me was how none of the six could seem to see that they had done anything wrong. Neither could an astonishly large percentage of their colleagues in the Legislature. To this day, most of them don't see what prosecutors and judges saw. They are blind to the hand that steers them.

My how Wisconsin has changed. Back in 1978, the face of scandal here was a state senator by the name of Henry Dorman, criminally charged with making a few personal calls on a state telephone. The charge was eventually dismissed in court, but not by the voters. Dorman was defeated in a primary election that fall, ending his 14-year career. News accounts at the time emphasized that Dorman had been tainted by the "scandal." His unauthorized phone calls were more than the citizenry could bear, an unacceptable raid on the public treasury. The hand steered them to throw the "bum" out.

The tale of Henry Dorman is a measure of what Wisconsin's political culture once was. The standards imposed by that culture have slowly but surely been lowered over the years. We now have a culture in which politics trumps policy, money is king, leaders are all-powerful and re-election is everything. Some of our modern lawmakers have become lawbreakers, but the real scandal in our state is what is perfectly legal and totally within today's cultural norms.

When Breaking The Law Is No Longer News

For years, we have been using our searchable database of campaign money to identify donors who exceed the legal limit on contributions. We issued another such report yesterday. No news organization in the state wrote so much as a word about our findings, save one college newspaper.

The phone used to ring off the hook when we called attention to these violations in the past. Maybe the change has to do with the decline of newspapers and the general shrinkage of the Capitol news corps. Or maybe it's something else. But I couldn't help but notice that the media started treating this as a non-story a couple of years ago when one of the wealthy donors we flagged screamed bloody murder, accusing me of "smearing" him and his wife with a "tar brush." Only the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel made mention of our findings, and that was limited to a blog posting. Other media organizations wouldn't touch it.

After investigating our charge the state Government Accountability Board found that the donor, John Brogan of Green Bay, did indeed violate the law and the board fined him and his wife Gisela $1,350 each. The GAB's action wasn't made public until almost a year and a half after we issued our report and Brogan threw his hissy fit. To my knowledge, there were no news accounts of the board's handling of the matter.

This past year, we called attention to a bunch more donors that appeared to have given more than state law allows. This time, the investigative turnaround was just over five months and the GAB handed out stiff fines to seven individuals we flagged. That wasn't news either.

The New American Colonies

In the beginning, there were 13. Now there are hundreds of millions. American colonies, that is.

The original 13 declared their independence. More than 230 years later, it remains an open question when or even whether the new colonies will declare theirs.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste, as the famous ad slogan tells us. It also seems a terrifyingly easy thing to colonize. Some can be quickly entertained into a stupor. More than a few are easily driven to distraction by busy work or the gazillionth commercial for that-thing-you-simply-cannot-do-without. Countless others are slowly but surely propagandized into a robotic trance. Democracy requires us to think, and a thousand things are perpetually dangled in front of us that are easier or more fun or more lucrative.

When citizenship calls, more often than not there's no one home in the colonies. Poll after poll after poll after poll showed most of us wanted nothing to do with bailing out Wall Street and the banks and the auto industry. Our own elected representatives bailed 'em out anyway. The colonies mustered no resistance. Poll after poll after poll after frickin' poll showed most of us wanted a public insurance option in our health care system. Those who purportedly represent us in Congress ignored our wishes, took the public option off the table early on in the discussions and never allowed it to be seriously considered. They had millions of reasons. There was no revolt in the colonies.

We offer up our best defense. We're too busy making a living. (But not too busy to spend over 150 hours a month watching television.) Life's too this and too that. Politicians are too this and too that. The system's too this and too that. Without coming right out and admitting it, what we're saying is that there's no room on our plate for democracy.

The popular diagnosis of what ails us is apathy. I don't see it. I see plenty of people who care and who despair over what is happening in this country. I see no lack of passion. What I see is powerlessness, which is a totally different animal than apathy. Apathy is when you don't care. With powerlessness, you can care deeply about something but remain convinced there's not a damn thing you can do about it. I see and hear a lot of that.

This colonized state of mind is a curious thing, especially here in Wisconsin of all places. We have to ignore our own history to think the way we do. We live in a place where our ancestors faced social and political challenges a century and some years ago that parallel in so many ways those we encounter today.

As they struggled, they had so much less going for them than we do. Far less education. Way less money. None of our modern means of communication. Yet they rose up against the same kind of unbridled corporate power and corrupt politics that have visited us again. And they beat them. And in so doing, they gave us a great inheritance. They made this special place, known from coast to coast for the better part of a century as a beacon of clean, open and honest government.

We have managed to squander much of our inheritance. But what is done is done. We now have a choice to make. We can let this be the final chapter in our story, or we can write a new one. To those who say it can't be done, I say this: It already has been done. We don't have to make history. We only need to repeat it.

We face nothing today that hasn't been faced and conquered before, right on the very soil we stand on. Nothing, with the possible exception of thoroughly colonized minds.

This blog has moved

This blog is now located at http://blog.wisdc.org/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://blog.wisdc.org/feeds/posts/default.

Citizens United For Poetic Justice

Note to Citizens United: It's generally wise to be careful what you wish for.

You didn't much like it when we started a protest of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on election financing in the case known as Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and called it "Citizens United Against Citizens United." You considered our effort trademark infringement and sent us a letter demanding that we cease and desist immediately. Not wanting to encourage frivolous litigation, we happily changed the name of our protest to United Citizens Against Citizens United.

You would have been better off if you'd left well enough alone. The stink you raised inspired hundreds more to join our Facebook group and sign our online petition. And then not long after we dropped the phrase we coined in favor of another that says the same darn thing and is a palindrome to boot, another group snatched up the original.

Part of me wants to say "serves you right." Another part needs to say "thanks."

AT&T Pushing More Deregulation

Proposals to sharply reduce state regulation of telephone companies so they would no longer have to receive approval to raise their rates, among other things, could be considered by the legislature before it adjourns the 2009-10 floor session later this month.

Backers of the bills include telecom giant AT&T - which reportedly helped write the legislation - and the cable industry, while opponents include smaller telecommunications companies, grocers, municipal electric utilities, the AFL-CIO, Citizens Utility Board and the Communications Workers of America.

AT&T and the cable industry have contributed $506,974 to candidates for statewide office and the legislature since 2003. Opponents of the measures contributed $643,193 to state candidates from 2003 through 2009.

Business interests, which are split on the measures, contributed $7.25 million candidates during the seven-year period.

The proposals, Assembly Bill 696 and Senate Bill 469, would give AT&T and other telephone companies the option of no longer being classified as telecommunications utilities. That means they would no longer have to receive approval from the state Public Service Commission to change their rates and they would not have to report profit and expense information to the agency. The measures also would strip the PSC's authority over consumer complaints about telephone service and telecoms also would not be required to provide land line service to all parts of the state.

Supporters of the measures argue they would create more options and improve prices through increased competition. The bill was sponsored by Democratic Senator Jeff Plale and Democratic Representative Josh Zepnick, both of Milwaukee.

Plale has received more campaign contributions from AT&T and the cable industry than any other legislative Democrat and ranks third among all of the 132 legislators for contributions by cable providers and the telecom giant. AT&T contributed $4,000 and the cable industry $6,446 to Plale from 2003 through 2009. Zepnick received $1,400 from cable providers and AT&T during the period.

The latest proposals come shortly after AT&T tapped Plale for a 2008 law that deregulated the cable industry and helped make it cheaper, easier and faster for AT&T to provide video products.

The law's supporters argued deregulation would lower costs and increase competition but a legislative audit released last December showed basic cable rates rose an average 21 percent in 2008 and 2009.

WDC Response To Cease-And-Desist Letter

After the letter we received from the Washington, D.C.-based interest group Citizens United was made public, we have heard from a number of attorneys with expertise in trademark law and have reviewed numerous cases including Bosley Medical v. Kremer, TMI v. Maxwell, Taubman v. WebFeats, Lamparello v. Falwell, Utah Lighthouse Ministry v. Foundation for Apologetic Information, and Citizens United v. Citizens United Not Timid.

We are convinced that Citizens United does not have a legitimate claim of trademark infringement against our protest of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that we called "Citizens United Against Citizens United." We use the phrase in a generic, descriptive sense and both our online petition and the campaign's Facebook page clearly state that the protest was organized by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

We did not appropriate Citizens United's logo. The logo we created for the campaign is a play on the Democracy Campaign's logo, not Citizens United's mark. Nor did we seek to trade on the group's name. We are not doing the equivalent of selling "MacDonald's" hamburgers under a yellowish arch or using something resembling the Nike swoosh to sell shoes. We aren't selling anything. No t-shirts, no bumper stickers, no buttons. We are not using this effort to solicit contributions to our cause. We are simply seeking to mobilize public opposition to the Supreme Court's assault on our democracy and mobilize public support for legislative actions to repair some of the damage done by the court's decision in Citizens United.

It is clear we were singled out because we do not share Citizens United's view that the Supreme Court ruling was a great victory for the First Amendment and for free speech. After all, there are a great many groups that should have received the same letter we got a long time ago but have not . . . Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy, Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants, Citizens United Resisting Euthanasia, Citizens United for Animals, Citizens United for Democracy. The list goes on and on.

It is preposterous to claim, as Citizens United's attorney has, that the name we gave our protest might confuse people and leave the impression that it was organized or approved by the group Citizens United. Nevertheless, it is in our interest to remove any possibility of confusion, however remote, and it is in our interest to make sure our effort is not associated in any way with the unsavory tactics employed by Citizens United or the dubious body of work that group has produced. So we are changing the name of our protest to United Citizens Against Citizens United, effective immediately.

We believe the claim of trademark infringement made by Citizens United was silly and stupid and more than a little ironic. The temptation is great to get all macho about these kinds of things and strike a belligerent pose. But we see nothing to be gained by responding to this sophomoric act with more silliness and stupidity. Surely our federal courts have more important disputes to consider.

In any case, our quarrel is not with Citizens United, it is with the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United. In the end, we had to decide whether we wanted to spend our time in court in a legal squabble with this interest group, or spend it organizing public opposition to the court's decision and working for reform. We choose the latter.

Changing the name of our campaign to United Citizens Against Citizens United does not diminish it in any way. We are still citizens. We are still united in opposition to the outrageous judicial activism of the current court majority, whose behavior was summed up by Justice John Paul Stevens this way: "Essentially, five justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law."

They legislated from the bench, and in so doing gave a great gift to the wealthiest and most powerful interests in our country and dealt a horrible blow to ordinary citizens. We will continue to do everything in our power to see that this ruling does not stand for long.

Making Free Speech Expensive

The public square has always been as much a metaphor as a real place, but in either case it's on the endangered list. Shopping malls pretty much led to the extinction of the traditional town or village square in most American communities. The money-is-speech doctrine is doing the same to the metaphoric version.

Those who wish to control speech in this country don't have to engage in censorship or book burning to achieve their aims. All they have to do is commercialize speech and then make it prohibitively expensive. Turn the proverbial public square into a gated neighborhood with an entry fee so high that most people are priced out. The right to speak is an empty one if entering the public square involves paying a small fortune for air time or otherwise compensating those who get to decide whether yours will be among the voices heard.

I've made this point before - in an Earth Day speech back in 2003 and at Fighting Bob Fest in 2007 and probably a thousand other times - but a letter that arrived by certified mail today put this issue in a whole new light. The letter was from a law firm in Virginia representing the group Citizens United claiming that the Democracy Campaign's protest of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on election financing (that we called "Citizens United Against Citizens United") is a trademark infringement.

I'm having a hard time deciding whether the letter is more remarkable for its stupidity or its irony or the utter audacity of its premise. It claims we've created the impression that our protest was "somehow originated by, affiliated or associated with, connected to and/or approved by Citizens United - which it is not." That's the stupid part. Anyone looking at the online petition or the Facebook page can clearly see that this effort was organized by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and is protesting the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, not the special interest group itself.

The ironic part is that this group described the outcome of the case as a great victory for the First Amendment and free speech, but now seeks to stifle the speech of others who have a different view of the ruling's implications for political speech and the health of our democracy.

The audacious part is the presumption that some private interest can claim ownership of words like "citizens" and "united."

It's apparently not enough for those who wish to control political speech to own the place where public discourse occurs. It seems they also are intent on owning the terms of the debate.

"Get The Job Done Or Go Home!"

Doris "Granny D" Haddock was tiny by any measure of physical stature but a giant in civic terms. Her passing at the age of 100 has made international news, I suppose mostly because of the amazing story of her walk across America a decade or so ago. But Granny was so much more than the sum total of that remarkable trek. She was a great many things, foremost among them an unforgettably powerful example of the difference one person can make.

Granny made at least four trips to Wisconsin that I know of after her legendary journey across the country, to give speeches and network and campaign. In between her visits, I would get an occasional e-mail from Doris and an even more occasional phone call, although her faithful assistant Ruth was in much more regular contact. Considering how well Granny D was known and how much in demand she was across the nation and indeed throughout the world, especially after a movie about her life reached an international audience, my mind always reeled at the thought of how many reform advocates like me she must have been keeping in touch with in places scattered across the globe. Her boundless energy in her 10th decade of life was both inspiring and humbling, to say the least.

Most every time I talked to Doris she apologized to me about something, usually her inability to plan too far into the future or commit too far in advance to participate in this event or that. More than once she joked that "at my age, I don't even buy green bananas at the grocery store."

One thing she never apologized for was her contempt for corrupt politicians and the wealthy interests that own them. She could never be accused of failing to speak her mind. She had lived too long to bite her tongue. Her words had a bite to them, though. I'll never forget back in 2006 when she came and spoke at the "public telling" we decided to hold when state lawmakers here were refusing to hold public hearings on proposed reforms. In her signature New Hampshire accent, she said "If you are reformers, get the job done or go home."



Her remarks were ostensibly aimed at Wisconsin legislators, but I couldn't help but take her words to heart too. Granny D lit a fire under people. I felt that flame every time she was near.

The last time I asked Doris to come to Wisconsin was last September. She initially contacted me to say she appreciated the invitation and was excited to make another visit to our state, but called back several weeks later to apologize. She just didn't feel up to making the trip.

It goes without saying that no apology was necessary. We owed her a lot more than she owed us.

Thank you, Granny

I first met Doris Haddock in February 2003, at a forum on campaign finance reform at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. The woman affectionately known as Granny D already was known far and wide by then, having completed her 3,200-mile trek across America to demonstrate her concern for the health of our democracy and dramatize the need for campaign finance reform. I was privileged to be able to see Doris once or twice a year since that first time our paths crossed.

News came this morning of Granny's death at the age of 100. She was . . . no, make that is . . . a true American hero and an endless source of inspiration. I know I join a multitude of admirers in mourning her passing, but also in celebrating a life exceptionally well lived.

I'm glad I met you, Doris.

How To Smear Without Leaving A Smudge

The U.S. Supreme Court's display of judicial activism on steroids in the area of election financing has Americans across the political spectrum united in revulsion. The court's legislating from the bench even is creating nervousness around the water coolers at Fortune Magazine and the Wall Street Journal.

Ordinary citizens are right to be outraged. But it's doubtful the fretting by business-sector types will last. Even though the nation's highest court legislated into existence the right of corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections, don't expect the likes of Wal-Mart or Microsoft or Goldman Sachs to be sponsoring their own campaign ads any time soon. Most will be too afraid of alienating customers to do that.

That doesn't mean mega-corporations won't be dumping huge sums of money into efforts to sway voters and control election outcomes. In fact, one of Washington's lobbying titans (which also happens to among the 10 largest law firms in America and one of the 20 largest in the world) is already busy advising corporate clients on how to sling mud without actually getting their hands dirty.

Look for trade associations and phony front groups to be even more loaded than they've been up to this point.

Unless major improvements are made to state and federal disclosure laws, corporations will be able to take center stage in elections, imposing their will and turning most candidates into mere bystanders. And they'll be able to do it without much of any fear of a public backlash because their money will be laundered to remove any trace of its true origins and the public will be left without a clue about who is really behind the blizzard of advertisements we all will have to endure.

(Image courtesy of Lisa Larson.)

Our Trip From Bedford Falls To Pottersville

Anyone with a little gray hair who has known Wisconsin for a lifetime can't help but feel that we're being taken on some Clarence Oddbody alternate reality tour. This can't be Wisconsin. Must have gotten some bad liquor.

That feeling swept over me again yesterday when we issued a report showing donations from so-called "payday lenders" to four campaign fundraising committees controlled by legislative leaders. It was hard not to notice both the size and timing of the donations. Three-quarters of the money given to the Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee, for example, was delivered either the day before or a few weeks after Assembly Speaker Mike Sheridan announced he no longer thought it was a good idea to limit the interest rates on cash advances and other forms of payday loans. A 36% rate cap goes "too far," the speaker informed us.

This in a state that for years and years had usury laws that limited the interest any financial institution could charge to 18%. In 1996 this law was passed by the legislature and signed by the governor repealing the limit. Not coincidentally, the number of payday lending establishments has skyrocketed, growing from just a handful in 1996 to well over 500 today. Not coincidentally, these outfits now charge interest rates routinely exceeding 500%.

Wisconsin used to have meaningful consumer protections and a vibrant financial sector with countless locally owned lending institutions. Now we have legalized loan sharking and financial institutions mostly controlled by out-of-state interests.

Get us back, Clarence. Get us back.

Speaking For The Masses

When hundreds of us marched yesterday to protest the U.S. Supreme Court's assault on our democracy with its ruling on election financing in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, we were giving voice to anger and frustration that is felt by an overwhelming majority of Americans. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that opposition to the court's decision runs very deep and is very broad, cutting sharply across party lines.

Two other polls we mentioned in one of our recent E-Lerts showed the same thing.

Shame On U

The Wisconsin Idea sure has fallen on hard times. Long forgotten is how intertwined this signature principle of our great state university system was with the Progressive movement. The UW Extension, one of the earliest manifestations of the Wisconsin Idea and one of the chief ways the university was extended to the boundaries of the state, is itself a Progressive Era reform.

Oh, how the UW has strayed from its roots. Today it is as owned as our politicians.

Nowhere is that more apparent than with those who teach about government. Wisconsin used to be known from coast to coast for clean, open and honest government. We can no longer lay claim to such a reputation, at least not with a straight face. But instead of challenging the status quo and engineering new reforms and working with public officials to make those reforms a reality, most of the political scientists on campus are missing in action. Some of the most prominent among them are apologists for the way things are and throw their weight around on behalf of the very forces that have corrupted our politics and sullied Wisconsin's once-proud reputation.

Professor Ken Goldstein, for example, is fond of calling negative political TV ads a "multivitamin for democracy." Then just recently he sold the UW's soul, climbing in bed with a corporate-funded rightwing think tank and even cooking how polling numbers were reported at the group's request.

Today Professor John Coleman was in the newspaper arguing against a campaign finance disclosure bill that was recently passed by the state Senate, claiming that "more spending and more communication produce better informed voters." Never mind that all the spending addressed by the legislation is done by an incredibly small number of extremely wealthy interest groups. And never mind that the source of money used to pay for the spending is kept a secret, leaving voters entirely in the dark about who is really behind all those multivitamins, er. . . ads. Yep, sounds like a recipe for happy, well-informed voters to Dr. Coleman.

There was a time when real giants at the University of Wisconsin played a major role in making Wisconsin a beacon of honorable politics and good government. The reforms they thought up lasted for the better part of a century. Unfortunately for us, their place has been taken by far smaller figures who at best look the other way at the corruption of our times and at worst are tools used to dismantle the inspired work of their predecessors.

Supremes Doing The 'Twist And Shape'

In 1819 Thomas Jefferson wrote: "The Constitution . . . is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please."

Seems what Jefferson meant as a warning to America, the current majority on the U.S. Supreme Court took as a job description.

Adding Journalistic Injury To Judicial Insult

In yesterday's post, I said first impressions of Supreme Court rulings often create false impressions. A commentary by a nationally syndicated Chicago Tribune columnist is a good example. It spreads two misconceptions. First, that Thursday's decision somehow grants corporations a long-denied ability to speak. And second, that many if not most corporations will not exercise this supposed newfound freedom for fear of alienating customers.

The first misconception shows a profound lack of understanding of both the decision in Citizens United v. FEC as well as practical reality. You need look no further than the national health care debate or recent Wisconsin Supreme Court elections to see how ridiculous it is to suggest that corporations have not had a voice in national or state political affairs. What the court did is give corporations an even louder and more dominant voice. That five out of nine members of our nation's highest court concluded that corporations were not being adequately heard in the marketplace of ideas in this country is truly jawdropping.

The second misconception is based on a terribly naive notion of how corporations will react to the Citizens United decision. It is highly doubtful that the likes of Goldman Sachs or WalMart or Microsoft will sponsor their own campaign ads. But that doesn't mean they will sit on the sidelines. They will send their money to associations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which will do the electioneering for them. Currently, neither federal nor state disclosure laws are sufficient to allow voters to know which corporations will be bankrollling all the election ads. Unless changes are made to those disclosure laws, companies need not worry about angering their customers or even their shareholders.

As I continue to reflect on what will rank right there with the Dred Scott decision as one of the darkest moments in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court, I can't help but wonder if all this is giving any pause to fans of appointed judges who would like to do away with state judicial elections. It will be hard for them to look honestly at this current court and not see how blatantly political it is and how the Citizens United decision was the handiwork of hard-line ideologues who are so obviously tools of wealthy special interests.

Not that we learned anything new Thursday about Chief Justice John Roberts, for example, but he certainly confirmed suspicions that he is a conniving liar who was willing to bear false witness to Congress to secure an appointment for life. After all, Roberts pledged allegiance in his confirmation hearings to the principle of stare decisis, latin for "stand by the decision," meaning courts are bound by previous decisions and what Roberts himself called "settled" law. It is hard to imagine more well-established precedents or more settled laws than those Roberts and his allies just overturned in Citizens United. By this brazen act of judicial hypocrisy, the chief justice further cemented his growing reputation as one of the most radical activists ever to sit on the high court. What will law professors tell their students? How will they teach stare decisis with a straight face?

Anthony Kennedy showed himself to be intellectually double-jointed. He wrote in Caperton v. Massey that huge sums of money spent in election campaigns can violate the Due Process Clause in the Constitution and deny a fair trial to those who face big campaign spenders in court. Then he turned around in Citizens United and wrote this:

"(W)e now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption."

And this:

"The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy."

Kennedy offers no evidence and points to nothing in the case record to support these conclusions. He's just sure.

Next

Read it and weep for American democracy. An unfathomably and unspeakably bad ruling. But the temptation to say "game over" is exactly the wrong reaction to the horrible damage the U.S. Supreme Court has done to our democracy. The game is never over.

There is a large menu of possible courses of action. Public financing of elections. Greater disclosure. Shareholder approval of corporate political spending. A constitutional amendment clarifying that money is not speech and corporations are not people. Boycotts of companies that exploit this brazen act of judicial activism to attempt a hostile takeover of elections.

An important first step is to understand what the Supreme Court did and what it did not do. Whenever a high court ruling comes down, there is a flurry of reaction even before the decision can be digested. First impressions inevitably create some false impressions. This case was no exception.

There were media accounts claiming Wisconsin's century-old law banning corporate contributions was struck down. Not true. The case didn't deal at all with corporate donations, nor did the court's decision. It dealt with corporate election spending. Thursday's ruling may end up inspiring an attempted legal challenge to the law, but for now Wisconsin's law still stands, as does the comparable federal law.

Other stories suggested that the bill the state Senate approved on Tuesday is now dead. Also not true. As we noted in the statement we issued the day of the ruling, a supermajority of justices upheld disclosure of election spending, including any done by corporations. The state legislation we've been working for may need to be changed somewhat, but it certainly can move forward. There are even ways it may be able to be strengthened.

Publicly financed elections remain constitutionally sound. Nothing the Supreme Court had to say Thursday has any effect on public financing programs in general or Wisconsin's new Impartial Justice Act specifically. A perfectly appropriate response to the outrageous ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission would be prompt and aggressive action by both Congress and the Wisconsin Legislature on further public financing legislation.

And then there's this heads-up to state lawmakers from Justice John Paul Stevens in his dissenting opinion: "Legislatures remain free...to condition the types of activity in which corporations may engage, including electioneering activity, on specific disclosure requirements or on prior express approval by shareholders or members."

Let the counteroffensive begin.

Same Song, Different Vocalist

On Thursday the Wisconsin Supreme Court is again going to consider whether to finalize new rules allowing judges to rule on cases involving their biggest campaign supporters. Last fall, four of the court's seven members approved recusal rules written by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association. About six weeks later Justice David Prosser withdrew his support, causing the new rules to be temporarily suspended.

Prosser said at the time he still supported the thrust of the rules but believed the language needed some revision. I said at the time that it looked like he was trying to figure out a way to remove the lobbying groups' fingerprints and make it look like the court did its own writing.

Justice Prosser has now submitted his proposed changes. There is no practical difference between Prosser's rules and those written by WMC and the Realtors. Both clearly allow all state judges to rule on cases even when their biggest campaign supporters are involved.

Not only is what the court majority appears poised to do Thursday wrong on its face, but it also runs contrary to a recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. In that case, the nation's high court ruled that a member of the West Virginia Supreme Court violated the constitutionally protected right to due process and denied one side a fair trial by judging the case despite having received $3 million in campaign support from the other side.

Justice Prosser and his three allies on the court on this issue (Michael Gableman, Annette Ziegler and Patience Roggensack) appear to be fixing to ignore that ruling, ignore due process concerns and cement in place an ethics rule proclaiming that judges are free to rule on disputes no matter how much campaign help one side has given them.

If that happens, it will be a sad, sad day for our state court system and a telling commentary on just how compromised the majority of our state's highest ranking judges really are.

Say It Ain't So, UW

Polling done by the University of Wisconsin's political science department shows statewide opposition to the use of public money to send students to private schools. Right-wing think tank that helped pay for the polling doesn't like results. Asks UW to alter presentation of the data. UW agrees to do it.

Holy crap.

Are Supremes Getting Cold Feet?

Just heard that no decision was issued by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Citizens United case today. There had been intense speculation that the ruling would come down yesterday. Didn't happen. Then a new flurry of media alerts from court watchers warned that today could very well be the day. Wrong again. For that matter, there was similar speculation late last fall that a decision was imminent.

Oral arguments in this case were originally heard last March, with a decision expected by summer. Then in June the court's majority decided to significantly expand the scope of its review, ordering a new round of oral arguments in September on whether precedents established in 1990 and 2003 restricting the use of corporate funds to influence elections should be overturned. Most observers took this as an ominous sign and expected a ruling before Christmas radically altering the political landscape.

All anyone can do is examine tea leaves, but my reading is the longer it takes for a ruling to come, the better. I'm not saying that when the ruling finally comes, it won't be bad. But it might not be as bad as many feared. With each passing day a broad, precedent-reversing decision becomes less likely because the delays hint that the extremists on the court are having a hard time finding a fifth vote to throw past Supreme Court rulings and longstanding federal and state laws on the scrap heap.

When Sandra Day O'Connor was on the high court, she was the fifth vote in a court majority that upheld campaign finance restrictions on more than one occasion. Conventional wisdom holds that when O'Connor retired and was replaced by Samuel Alito, a new majority hostile to campaign finance reform was formed.

The court's indecision on Citizens United makes you wonder if Justice Anthony Kennedy, who routinely was on the opposite side of O'Connor and the rest of the old majority in campaign finance cases, has decided against a wholesale dismantling of court precedents in this area. Or maybe all the commentaries published from coast to coast about how hypocritical it would be for Chief Justice John Roberts to overturn previous rulings willy-nilly after preaching judicial restraint in his confirmation hearings have given Roberts pause.

Whatever is going on, it's been months and the court hasn't been able to make a move on Citizens United. I would love to be a fly on the wall in those chambers.

You'll Have To Do Better Than That, Mark Neumann

Mark Neumann became the first 2010 candidate for governor to respond to public discontent with politics and politicians and put forward some government reform ideas, including a couple of good ones. Namely banning campaign donations from employees of companies bidding for state contracts and not allowing government employees appointed by the governor to engage in any kind of fundraising for the governor. Both should have been done a long time ago.

Others on Neumann's list are not so hot. Such as term limits for state legislators and constitutional officers. This is neither a new idea nor a particularly promising one. Something like 36 states have them for governor and 15 have them for legislators. Enacting term limit laws was all the rage in the early 1990s, but after nearly two decades the experiment has been a distinct disappointment.

In California, some label the state's term limits a failure. The Guvernator himself was once a big fan of term limits but has since changed his mind. Others, like the highly respected Center for Governmental Studies, aren't willing to give up on them but acknowledge that changes in the law need to be made.

Likewise, an analysis by the Public Policy Institute of California notes term limits have had some positive effects, like accelerating female and minority representation, but concludes that the law has not fundamentally changed the type of legislator who comes to Sacramento. "Rather than representing a new breed of 'citizen legislator,' however, new members after term limits behave a great deal like their precursors," the report says. It goes on to say "the Legislature is less likely to alter the Governor's Budget, and its own budget process neither encourages fiscal discipline nor links legislators' requests to overall spending goals. In addition, legislative oversight of the executive branch has declined significantly."

Closer to home, Michigan is another state that jumped on the term limit bandwagon. The law didn't bring the institutional change that was hoped for. A Wayne State University professor who wrote a book on the subject concludes that the main effect of term limits in Michigan was to make the legislative branch weaker and the executive branch stronger. She even places a good share of the blame for the state's budget mess on term limits.

One-time supporters of term limits have grown disillusioned with them in places like Colorado and Arizona too.

Mark Neumann is to be applauded for talking about how to make government more responsive to the average citizen. Hopefully other candidates for governor will follow suit. But Neumann and the others will have to offer up much more meaningful change than term limits if they are to have any hope of winning over a citizenry soured on politics as usual.

Scraping The Bottom Of The Barrel

When Governor Jim Doyle signed the Impartial Justice bill into law on December 1, a Virginia group called the Center for Competitive Politics all but promised to sue to block the law. CCP's president left no doubt his outfit was shopping for a litigant in Wisconsin even before it got the governor's signature.

CCP is indeed behind a lawsuit filed in federal court last Tuesday challenging the constitutionality of Wisconsin's Supreme Court election reform law. But it seems the litigant shopping didn't go all that well. Turns out the only Wisconsinite they could find willing to be the public face of the lawsuit is someone who was for publicly financed Supreme Court elections before he was evidently talked into being against them.

As Wisconsin Public Radio reported last week:

Former candidate sues over public financing law for high court races

Former Supreme Court candidate and Jefferson County Judge Randy Koschnick has filed a lawsuit challenging Wisconsin's new public financing law for Supreme Court races. That's despite comments he made on the campaign trail in support of public financing.

Koschnick did not take public financing in his unsuccessful race for the state Supreme Court. Any money his campaign spent came either from himself or private donors, and not the state.

But at the press conference where Koschnick announced his candidacy back in November of 2008, he was asked directly how he felt about public financing.

Koschnick responded, "I think that's a great idea."

Koschnick went on to say he wasn't rich, and that he hoped to raise enough money from individuals to run a serious campaign. But, he added that he thought public financing would enable legitimate
candidates to run without necessarily having to be independently wealthy and might also reduce the influence of third-party groups who "obviously wield a lot of power and money."

Despite that praise for public financing on the campaign trail, Koschnick is now trying to overturn the entirety of Wisconsin's new public financing law.

As a candidate, Judge Koschnick made a compelling case that public financing of elections enhances free speech by giving more candidates the means to run competitively. In his lawsuit, he now claims public financing of Supreme Court elections "violates the Speech Clause of the First Amendment" by "suppressing the speech of candidates for the Office of Justice."

Care to explain the flip flop, judge?

Your Lawsuit's A Foul One, Right To Life

Most every voter
In the whole state of Wisconsin
Likes Impartial Justice a lot . . .

But Right to Life,
A powerful big old lobbying group,
Does NOT!

Right to Life hates Impartial Justice! The whole darn law!
Now please don't ask why. Who knows what they saw.
It could be their heads aren't screwed on quite right.
It could be, perhaps, that their shorts are too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason . . . ahem,
May be that they want judges to belong just to them.

But whatever the reason,
Their heads or their shorts,
Just days before Christmas, they're hating impartial courts.
Glaring from on high with a sour, Grinchy frown,
Every lawmaker who voted for it had to be wrong.
For they imagine every voter from Peshtigo to Paoli,
Really wants the best court money can buy.

"They might rule based on facts!" they snarl with a sneer.
"The next high court election is 2011! It's practically here!"
Then they growl, with their fingers nervously drumming,
"We MUST find a way to stop Impartial Justice from coming!"

A Warped View From The Bench

On October 28, four members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court approved rules written by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association allowing judges in our state to rule on cases involving their biggest campaign supporters. A little more than a month later, one of the four - Justice Patience Roggensack - wrote a newspaper commentary defending the action.

Judging from reader reaction, it fooled no one.

In a letter to the editor that appeared in the Wisconsin State Journal on December 11, Norm Littlejohn of Madison asks "Is Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Pat Roggensack naive? Or does she think we are?" The rest of his letter makes his answers to those questions very clear.

Peter Beatty of Middleton pointed out in a letter published in today's State Journal that Roggensack overlooks the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of due process and the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling in a West Virginia case, Caperton v. Massey, that huge campaign contributions by one side in the case denied the other side a fair trial. Beatty concludes that it is "embarrassing to live in a state in which the highest justices are political hacks of monied interest groups. It makes a mockery of our high court."

This same sentiment was voiced by The Capital Times in an editorial posted last Friday. The newspaper called her attempt to "portray the Oct. 28 action as an embrace of democracy" a "tortured defense of legalized bribery."

The fate of the rules Roggensack so enthusiastically defends is now up in the air. It appears to have dawned on Justice David Prosser that it looks bad for the court to take what WMC and the Realtors wrote and approve it verbatim. So he has withdrawn his support, causing the new rules to be rescinded at least temporarily. Prosser says he still supports the thrust of the rules but believes the language needs to be fine-tuned. It looks like what he's really trying to do is figure out a way to remove the lobbying groups' fingerprints and make it look like the court did its own writing.

Talk about your tortured defenses of legalized bribery.

Been There, Seen That

We could have told Tiger Woods this was coming. Living up to contracts isn't Accenture's strong suit.

Jumpin' Justices

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association said jump and the majority of Wisconsin Supreme Court justices (namely Prosser, Gableman, Ziegler and Roggensack) jumped. WMC and the Realtors said jump again, and the high court held an "open administrative conference" yesterday to ask how high.

Amazing spectacle. The Flexible Four allowed two of the most powerful lobbying groups in Wisconsin to write rules for them allowing judges to rule on cases involving their biggest campaign supporters. Then the groups decide they are not completely happy with what they wrote and want some changes. The new rules promptly are retracted and Justice Prosser says he'll come back with some kind of proposal in about a week.

So we wait. To see how the court will degrade itself next.

Campaign Donations And The Cable Con

Democratic Governor Jim Doyle and 74 legislators who approved a controversial bill in 2007 to deregulate the cable industry have received more than $493,000 in campaign contributions since then from special interests that supported the measure.

The cable deregulation law, which supporters boasted would increase competition and lower customer bills, was the subject of a Legislative Audit Bureau report this week that found basic cable rates rose an average 21 percent over the past two years. Expanded basic rates increased 11.5 percent between July 2007 and July 2009, the audit said.

Business interests, the telephone industry and two unions - the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers - backed the bill led by AT&T. The telephone giant employed 15 lobbyists to push the bill because it wanted to break into the video provider market with offerings like U-Verse faster and cheaper than under the old cable franchising system. The new law set up a state licensing system that no longer required video providers to negotiate cable contracts with individual communities.

Between January 2008 and June 2009 - the first 18 months after the new law was in place - contributions by special interest backers totaled $493,109 to Doyle, 74 legislators who voted for the bill and are still in the legislature and four legislative fundraising committees.

Doyle has gotten $182,671 followed by the four Democratic and Republican legislative campaign committees, which are mega-fundraising committees used by legislative leaders to milk special interests for campaign cash. The committees accepted between $13,000 and $39,000 from cable deregulation supporters.

For additional information about campaign contributions by AT&T and the others while the bill was being developed and debated in the legislature check out this and this about the bill's authors, Republican Representative Phil Montgomery of Ashwaubenon and Democratic Senator Jeff Plale of South Milwaukee, and this about the 23-9 Senate vote in favor of the bill.

Doyle blamed the economy for souring cable competition - though the pay-to-play economy seemed to treat his campaign just fine. And Montgomery, who has received $6,825 from special interest backers since the bill was approved, told the Associated Press that he was disappointed cable rates haven't dropped.

So are we all.

Fix The Blessed Problem - UPDATE

Amended campaign finance reports for two mega-fundraising committees were filed on the Government Accountability Board's electronic filing system shortly after the Democracy Campaign posted a blog Monday saying the original year-end 2008 reports known to be erroneous had been on the GAB site for 10 months.