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.

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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.