Two Years and Four Convictions Later Doyle Still Holding Troha Contributions

Governor Jim Doyle has yet to return any of the more than $100,000 federal prosecutors say was contributed to his campaign in a conspiracy that has seen three businessmen and a county executive convicted and sentenced for giving or getting bribes in connection with landing a proposed Indian casino in Kenosha.

The ringleader, Dennis Troha, was indicted nearly two years ago on charges he funneled nearly $250,000 in corporate funds through family members and business acquaintances to the campaigns of more than 20 state and federal politicians and the Democratic and Republican parties.

Troha got six months probation, his business associates Achille Infusino and John Erickson each got 18 months probation and former Kenosha County Executive Allan Kehl was sentenced to two years in prison.

After Troha was charged in early March 2007, Doyle said, “My campaign was aware of nothing to suggest that the contributions received from Mr. Troha were in any way inappropriate or unlawful.” And later when prosecutors agreed to drop the charge involving laundered Troha family contributions to Doyle as part of a plea bargain, a campaign spokesman said Doyle wouldn’t return any Troha contributions.

Hanging your hat on one charge being dropped in a plea deal is pretty flimsy cover. Federal investigators found the contributions were made with corporate funds, which is illegal, and on behalf of Troha by others, which is also illegal.

Republican U.S. Representative Paul Ryan and Democratic U.S. Representative Jim Oberstar of Minnesota either returned or gave to charity more than $78,000 of Troha-related contributions well before Troha or any of his cohorts were even convicted.

Doyle’s resistance to giving back the Troha conspiracy contributions is curious given other contributions he has returned to donors in the past.

In May 2006 Doyle returned $10,000 to 10 New York lawyers whose firm and two partners were federally indicted. He also returned a $5,000 contribution from an Illinois businessman in 2005 after he found out the contribution was made at the time the state was negotiating an out-of-court settlement involving complaints about the donor’s business practices.

Doyle also returned a 2003 contribution in 2006 from a former associate of a convicted Washington D.C. lobbyist even though the donor was never charged with any wrongdoing. At the time, a Doyle campaign spokesman said the cash was returned because the lobbyist’s actions were “so out of whack.”

Sounds like a good description of Doyle’s standard for returning questionable campaign contributions.

Gallows Humor

A good laugh from south of the border. . . .

The Enemy Within

With the shape our country is in, I can't help but think we've been pretty lousy stewards of the rich inheritance we were given by those who came before us. What we are fixing to pass on to my 9-year-old son's generation is not the America I want him to inherit. It is damaged goods.

We all should have known better. It's been 30 years, but I still remember sitting in economics classes in college and on more than one occasion listening to professors say with a straight face that America's economy was depression-proof because of monetary and fiscal policy tools and regulatory protections that didn't exist when the country descended into the Great Depression.

Seemed to make sense at the time. But now their instruction seems flimsier with each passing day.

Those professors failed to account for the possibility that bought-and-paid-for politicians might one day tear down the post-Depression-era walls between banking, investment and insurance companies. And they seriously erred in placing such faith in the infallibility of the Fed and the public-spiritedness of the Congress and White House.

College professors aren't the only ones who should have known better. That goes for all of us.

We should have gotten to know Charles Ponzi better so we could recognize him when he came our way again. We didn't. He did return, this time by the name of Bernard Madoff. Despite 10 years' worth of warnings, Ponzi wasn't noticed until after Madoff made off with tens of billions of dollars of our money.

Hollywood warned us 20-some years ago with Gordon Gekko. Real life warned us with the likes of Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. The warnings went unheeded.

We should have learned the lessons of Vietnam. Instead we idly watched most all the same mistakes repeated in Iraq. And then some.

Even the best and brightest among us – from college professors and high-ranking public officials to captains of industry and the media intelligentsia – are living proof of what a comic strip told us about ourselves over 35 years ago.

Extremely difficult days lie ahead. Yes, to a sometimes substantial degree we are victims of forces beyond our control. But we also are largely to blame for our fate.

Will Doyle Give The Money Back Now?

Embattled Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's top campaign fundraiser, adviser and close friend Christopher Kelly made a $10,000 donation to Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle back in June 2006. It was well known at the time that Kelly was under federal investigation. Still, Doyle accepted the contribution. Even after Kelly was indicted last December on tax fraud charges, Doyle kept the money. When it was reported in February that Kelly received a loan from an Iraqi billionaire who had been convicted of fraud in France, Doyle still held on tight to Kelly's donation.

It was reported yesterday that a court filing shows Kelly is set to plead guilty in his federal corruption case.

Now that Kelly will be convicted of a federal crime, will Governor Doyle finally part company with this tainted cash?

The Real Scandal

Wisconsin has been frequently visited by political scandal in recent years, and that's one good reason to take the advice the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel gave the other day and not get too smug about what's happening in Illinois.

Besides, the political crime ring that brought federal prosecutors to Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's doorstep has tentacles that reach into Wisconsin. Nick Hurtgen, a former top aide to Tommy Thompson, is a central figure in the Illinois drama. He was indicted for his alleged role in a kickback scheme, then a judge dropped him from the case before he was reindicted late last year. Hurtgen has remained active in Wisconsin, making sizable donations to Mark Green's failed bid to become governor and maintaining close ties to another Republican known to covet the governor's office, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker. But Hurtgen played both sides in Wisconsin, having helped organize a 2002 fundraiser in Chicago for Jim Doyle.

A check of the Democracy Campaign's database of campaign donors shows that another lead actor in the Illinois corruption scandal and indicted Friend of Rod, Blagojevich's close adviser and top fundraiser Christopher Kelly, gave Doyle $10,000 in June 2006. It was public knowledge that Kelly was under federal investigation at the time he made the donation. Even after he was indicted, Doyle kept the money. For more on Kelly, go here, here and here.

Such links alone ought to be enough to keep in check any superiority complex Wisconsin might have. But the biggest reason we cannot afford to be smug is that the real scandal is so much more vast than what the U.S. Attorney's office has on Rod Blagojevich.

The real scandal is what's perfectly legal in our political system.

It was perfectly legal for the investment bankers and insurance execs and real estate tycoons to spend over $430 million buying federal office holders in the 2008 election cycle alone. These interests have spent well over $2 billion to sew up Washington since 1990. What they bought was lax oversight and the freedom to roll the dice with other people's life savings. And a bailout when it all went sour. Even as tanking companies like AIG and Freddie Mac and Ford Motor Company were fixing to ask the feds to rescue them from themselves, they were showering money on both major parties to pick up the tab for the national conventions.

The same thing is perfectly legal at the state level in Wisconsin, albeit on a proportionately smaller scale.

That's why we cannot afford to be complacent. And why we cannot allow reform to be a scandal-driven undertaking.

A No-Tax Pledge That Costs Too Much

Politicians are fond of saying that taxpayers don't want their money used to pay for political campaigns. Actually, they do.

A national bipartisan poll done by two top D.C.-area political polling firms – one that caters almost exclusively to Republicans and corporate interests and the other that works primarily for Democrats, labor unions and progressive advocacy groups – shows strong public support for publicly financed elections. Support for taxpayer-funded elections is high in every region of the country, and actually is slightly higher in the conservative South than it is in the more liberal Northeast and Midwest. Support cuts across gender and age lines, not to mention political party affiliation. More than two-thirds of Democrats back public financing, but an even higher percentage of Republicans do too.

Over two-thirds of voters (69%) believe we need changes to the way elections are financed, and the polling provides a strong clue as to why. An overwhelming majority of voters make the connection between large campaign donations and the lack of progress in dealing with the nation's most pressing problems. A supermajority (77%) of those surveyed agreed with the statement “I am worried that large political contributions will prevent Congress from tackling the important issues facing America today, like the economic crisis, rising energy costs, reforming health care, and global warming.”

And a large majority see big campaign contributions as a major cause of the economic meltdown. Over two-thirds (70%) of voters agree with the statement “Large campaign contributions from the banking industry to members of Congress have resulted in lax oversight and have been a major factor in causing the current financial crisis on Wall Street.”

In the weeks and months to come, we'll undoubtedly hear politicians of just about every stripe claim that we can't afford public financing of election campaigns in these tough economic times. The people these politicians are supposed to be representing have a distinctly different view, as this latest poll shows. From coast to coast, from young to old, from left to right, Americans have reached the conclusion that we cannot afford the way political campaigns are financed today. The cost to our country is far too high.

Gladstonewalling Justice

Former state Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen was originally charged with felony misconduct in public office on October 18, 2002. More than six years now have passed – 2,234 days to be exact – and Jensen's legal fate still has not been decided.

Jensen went on trial once already and was convicted. That was back in March 2006. He appealed his conviction and was granted a new trial on a legal technicality. That was in November 2007. A date for the new trial still has not been set.

One-time British prime minister William Gladstone died in 1898, but nevertheless knew all you need to know about the Jensen case.

Reader's Digest Version Of Law School Forum

Last Friday, we posted a 56-minute video of the discussion at last week's Justice, Money and Politics forum at the UW Law School. If you don't have an hour to spare to watch the whole thing, you can watch this 7-minute version.

Justice, Money and Politics on YouTube

Tuesday night's forum at the UW Law School featured state Supreme Court Justices Ann Walsh Bradley and Patrick Crooks, Wisconsin State Journal editorial page editor Scott Milfred and yours truly.

Spitting Out The Multivitamin

UW Professor Ken Goldstein is fond of telling anyone who will listen that negative political ads are good for you, going so far as to call them a "multivitamin for the democratic process."

If there's even a whiff of aptness in that analogy, then recent elections like Wisconsin's last two state Supreme Court races proved one thing conclusively. It's possible to overdose on vitamins.

In this fall's elections, a bunch of phony front groups and party satellites held voters' noses and tried pilling us again, but the public wasn't swallowing what they were trying to force down our throats. One of the big stories of the 2008 election was the public's repudiation of gutter politics. Smear campaigns failed, as the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram pointed out, from the national stage to the local scene.

Now that's something worth celebrating.

The Change We Need?

If Barack Obama's going to change Washington, this was a strange way to start.

A Gentler, Bipartisan WMC? Hmmmmmm.

Some have wondered whether Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce might change its negative electioneering activities after the public drubbing it has taken for its nasty political ads, particularly in the 2007 and 2008 Wisconsin Supreme Court races.

Well here's an interesting item. The state's largest business group has sponsored mailings in support of two incumbent Democratic senators who rarely support WMC. Senators Dave Hansen of Green Bay and Robert Wirch of Kenosha each received a 21 percent rating - on a scale of zero to 100 percent - on WMC's legislative report card in September. The report card rated legislators on how they voted on proposals WMC supported and opposed in 2007-08.

Hansen and Wirch got the low ratings because the pair voted the way WMC liked on only three of 14 bills on WMC's agenda.

But maybe this has less to do with turning over a new leaf and more to do with reading the political tea leaves. Wirch and Hansen are safe, token endorsements in two ways. Both Democratic incumbents appear likely to win in November and the Democrats do not appear likely to lose control of the state Senate.

What It Means To Be Nonpartisan

"Nonpartisan, my ass."

If I had a nickel for every time I've heard those words over the last 10 years, I'd be a rich man.

Who says it depends on whose ox we've gored most recently. As Jason Stein of the Wisconsin State Journal observed back in 2006, it's amazing how partisan operatives can call the Democracy Campaign nothing but a political puppet one minute and then a respected nonpartisan watchdog the next.

To partisans, we're nonpartisan only when it benefits their side.

Ah, politics.

To anyone outside of the political class, though, nonpartisanship means a little bit more. Let me start with what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean you're agnostic on public policy or, in the Democracy Campaign's case, neutral on what's best for the health of the democratic process in Wisconsin. We have an agenda. It's just that putting politicians of a particular stripe in power is not part of that agenda.

Being nonpartisan means not endorsing candidates. It means not having a political action committee for making donations in partisan races. It means not sponsoring phony "issue ads" to get favored candidates elected, or engaging in any form of campaigning aimed at influencing the outcome of elections. It means not having any favorite candidates.

For us, nonpartisanship means blowing the whistle when we see wrongdoing, no matter what party the offender belongs to. That doesn't mean the whistle has to be blown half the time on one side and half the time on the other. It means it has to be blown whenever there is serious wrongdoing. If it happens all those being flagged are Republicans, so be it. Or all Democrats. The chips will fall where they may. As it turns out, plenty of chips have fallen on both sides of the fence.

Democracy is party politics, but it also is much more than that. It is a living thing, and like all living things, it will die if not cared for. Whether the Democracy Campaign has been faithful in aspiring to be that caretaker – and faithful in its nonpartisanship – is for many to debate, and many already have decided.

What I am certain of is that there is a place for nonpartisanship in politics. And it is possible and indeed essential that some practice it.

Democracy Or Republic?

A letter I received today from a Lake Mills resident touched on a subject that has been debated since the founding of our country and expressed a view I often hear from people who are not fond of the Democracy Campaign's work. The letter started on a positive note, saying "I like what I see and hear of your doing to get big, often crooked, money out of politics. Badly needed."

The writer continued: "But I am of the belief that we are a republic, NOT a democracy." He went on to say I seem to worship "the many" and voiced worry about what he called the "crowd culture."

Personally, I don't believe a republic and a democracy are mutually exclusive. Put another way, it is possible to be both a republic and a democracy, and I believe that is what America was intended to be.

It's worth remembering that when Benjamin Franklin emerged from Independence Hall at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, he was famously asked: "Well, what have we got – a republic or a monarchy?" He was not asked: "Well, what have we got – a republic or a democracy?" A republic is the opposite of a monarchy, not the opposite of a democracy.

After reading the letter, I checked a few dictionaries. One defined a republic as "a state or country that is not led by a hereditary monarch but in which the people have impact on its government.” The word comes from the Latin res publica, which translates as "public thing" or "public matter." Another dictionary defines a republic as "a state in which the sovereign power resides in the whole body of the people, and is exercised by representatives elected by them; a commonwealth." Yet another defines it as "a political system in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who can elect people to represent them."

The term "democracy," on the other hand, is alternatively defined as "government by the people" and "rule of the majority" and "a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections." Under these definitions, it is obvious that what the founders chose to create could be described as either a republic or a representative democracy or both.

It's particularly important to remember that at the time of our nation's creation, the whole idea of a "democracy" and a "republic" was radical and frightening and hard to imagine actually working, which explains why the Federalist Papers were published anonymously. The Federalist Papers made it quite clear that most of the founders wanted America to be a democracy. But many also feared the possibility that the American experiment could turn into mob rule. Some founders, such as Alexander Hamilton, advocated for a strong central government and even a monarch, with George Washington as king (something Washington resisted with great passion).

It is both safe and fair to say that in the end the consensus was that America should not become a direct democracy, but rather should have a representative form of government.

The Founding Fathers were revolutionaries and were taking a great leap of faith with no direct experience to confirm their faith that a democratic government could be established on a large scale. They had seen democracy work well in small populations, like the Greek city-states, but had no idea whether such a model could be extended to a new institution governing what was at the time a massive population.

The genius of the founders' creation was how they balanced the idea that the will of the people shall be the law of the land with strong protections for individual rights. Clearly, there are certain rights and laws that should not be disregarded at the whim of the majority. The system of checks and balances that is central to the design of American democracy was created not only to prevent any individual or any branch of government from gaining excessive power, but also to prevent a tyranny of the majority and to protect the rights of those in the minority.

I stand accused of worshipping "the many," as if democracy is a dirty word. Actually, I worship the delicate balancing act that the Founding Fathers performed to give us a system that is both a republic and a democracy. I do believe people should matter more than money in politics, and I am deeply wary of privilege – especially the political privilege that accompanies great wealth. I am concerned that too much power has been concentrated in too few hands in recent years.

That's why the Democracy Campaign and I are working to make our system more truly democratic. And more authentically republican.

The Swiss Banks Of Wisconsin Politics

Swiss banks are known the world over as the place to stash ill-gotten gains, keep questionable finances one step ahead of the law or otherwise stockpile riches with no questions asked.

So-called "issue ad" groups are their political equivalent.

We've been updating the Hijacking Election 2008 section of our web site pretty much daily as we learn of new under-the-radar smear campaigns in state legislative races being run by groups like All Children Matter and Building a Stronger Wisconsin. They are creating a traffic jam on the low road, stuffing mailboxes and in some cases filling the airwaves in key battleground districts with paint-by-numbers attacks. All Children Matter assails Democratic candidates, claiming they all support health care benefits for illegal aliens. Building a Stronger Wisconsin attacks Republicans on the grounds that they don't care about school kids and rape victims.

The money raised to fund these smears is not disclosed to the public. Voters have been kept entirely in the dark about who's paying for this gutter campaigning.

Four groups – Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, Greater Wisconsin Committee, Club for Growth and the Coalition for America's Families – raised and spent two out of every three dollars in the last two state Supreme Court elections and accounted for nearly 90 percent of the television advertising in this year's race.

Voters have been given no clue about where the money came from to pay for all those ads either.

Electioneering by trade associations, lobbying organizations and party front groups abounds in state elections now, and who pays the bills is a secret.

It's secret because of a gaping loophole allowing special interest groups to operate outside the laws requiring disclosure and limiting political contributions. To operate like Swiss banks. And in so doing, to effectively take the "r" out of free speech.

Too Close To Be Legal?

State law says independent expenditure groups cannot cooperate or coordinate with political campaigns or candidates they support on outside electioneering activities like mailings, broadcast or newspaper ads and automated phone calls.

So is it possible to abide by that law when the candidate is on the board of directors of the organization doing the campaigning on his behalf?

That's the scenario involving the Fond du Lac Association of Commerce's political action committee which filed documents September 29 saying it intends to make independent expenditures on behalf of 18th Senate District Republican candidate Randy Hopper who is also on the group's board of directors, according to its website and Hopper's campaign website.

In addition to that cozy relationship, the Young Professionals of Fond du Lac, a division of the chamber of commerce, is hosting an October 16 forum featuring Hopper and Democratic challenger Jessica King to air their views.

Bailout Vote Followed The Money

Lost amidst all of the post-game punditry and Monday-morning quarterbacking following yesterday's vote in the House of Representatives on the financial bailout plan was any mention of the fact that House members from both parties who voted for the bailout have received a lot more money from the finance, insurance and real estate industries than those who voted against it.

So, was yesterday's rejection of the rescue plan evidence that House members heard loud and clear from rank-and-file voters that any bailout should be a good deal for average working folks and not just a sweet deal for Wall Street? Or was it just a fundraising ploy, a pointed message to the industries at the center of the financial collapse that they had better be a little more – OK, a lot more – generous to those House members who got less help with their elections in the past?

Much remains to be seen. But one thing is clear. It's hard to imagine yesterday's vote being the final word on the bailout. The high rollers at the heart of this mess have pumped $340 million into federal campaigns for the 2008 election alone and $2 billion since 1990. The big question is not whether they will get something approximating the $700 billion return on their "investment" that they are begging for, but rather what if any strings will be attached.

It's all about the strings now, if you ask me.

One Or The Other

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." – Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court Justice from 1916 to 1939

Who Owns Whom In The Ownership Society

What's happening on Wall Street and what's about to happen to all of us taxpayers is more than the latest dramatic failure of our government to carry out its proper responsibilities. The extent of the negligence dwarfs even the before and after of Hurricane Katrina, which is really saying something. But this is more than another case of people in high places sleeping at the switch.

The turmoil in U.S. financial markets is more than an indictment of the criminal theology of deregulation and more deregulation. Yes, we have the economic anarchists to thank for all the collapsing financial institutions and the growing panic in the stock market. Who is more to blame, the majority in our society who bought unbridled greed as a governing philosophy, or those who made the sale? Does it really matter? There's been plenty of stupidity to go around.

And the reservoir is far from dry. The very people who peddled the snake oil now want a government bailout. The no-government-is-good-government crowd is allergic to paying taxes, but expects the taxpayer to rush to the rescue when things fall apart. Privatized profits and socialized losses. Sweet deal. What blows the mind is how quickly and easily such deals are consummated in Washington.

It is here the root of the crisis is found. What we have is not just an excess of greed or a lack of oversight. We have an absence of democracy.

The reason Wall Street was never reined in and now will be bailed out is that the officials who decide things in Washington are owned by those they are supposed to regulate. Need persuading? Follow the money.

The finance, insurance and real estate industries that are at the heart of the scandal have given nearly $340 million in campaign contributions at the national level in the 2008 election cycle alone. Half of it to Democrats and half to Republicans.

Washington insiders are fond of saying insurance giant AIG is "too big to fail" when justifying the company's bailout. Actually, its campaign donations are too large to ignore.

Look at the list of top all-time donors to federal campaigns. Weighing in at number four is none other than Goldman Sachs, one of Wall Street's most prestigious investment banks. Look at the so-called "bundlers" who raise the really big money for both presidential campaigns. The lists for both major party candidates are littered with investment bankers and bigwigs from the insurance and real estate industries.

And don't forget Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They've got millions invested in Washington's elite.

So this is what is meant when we're told they're building an "ownership society."

Our Very Own Katherine Harris

J.B. Van Hollen seems intent on becoming Katherine Harris. Unlike Harris's Florida, Wisconsin does not allow partisan officials to run our elections. We entrust that task to a politically independent agency under the direction of a nonpartisan board of retired judges.

That arrangement is obviously not to the liking of Van Hollen, who is the highest ranking elected Republican in the state and co-chairman of John McCain's presidential campaign in Wisconsin. He is suing the agency and the former judges who head it in an effort to get people kicked off the voter rolls. He insists it's necessary to protect us against voter fraud. He is undeterred by the fact that voter fraud is more rare than a financially stable investment bank. He is even less sensitive to the considerable collateral damage his crusade will do.

In his apparent zeal to emulate Katherine the Great, Van Hollen hardly waited for the ink on his lawsuit to dry before announcing that he is forming an "election fraud task force." It's hard to believe many voters will put much trust in a task force headed by someone so heavily invested in making sure John McCain is the next president.

Maybe Van Hollen doesn't care about that. Or maybe he's green with envy that Katherine Harris's deeds were the stuff of a made-for-HBO movie.

Who would play J.B. Van Hollen? I nominate Will Farrell.