Fix The Blessed Problem

I couldn't resist paraphrasing Democratic Representative David Obey's recent reaction to the wildly erroneous information on a federal government website about the jobs created by the federal stimulus program because it reflects our sentiments about the Government Accountability Board's new electronic filing system.

Some grossly erroneous campaign finance reports on the board's Campaign Finance Information System haven't been corrected 10 months after they were publicly identified by the Democracy Campaign.

The reports filed February 2 by two mega-fundraising committees called the State Senate Democratic Committee and the Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee contain more than $300,000 worth of duplicate and misidentified campaign contributions and expenses. The reports show many thousands of dollars in contributions and expenses attributed to the Government Accountability Board.

At a November 21 legislative hearing, the board's ethics division administrator Jonathan Becker told legislators the board would press the two committees that week to file corrected reports but as of this posting two weeks later - nothing.

Said Becker: "Even though we have the right information they haven't officially filed it yet. We've had it for a long time."

If that's the case then why haven't the committees filed correct reports after nearly 10 months? If the committees are refusing to file then bring them up on charges and fine them. Why hasn't there been any enforcement action in 10 months?

The board has fined dozens of other filers since January 2008 for lobbying, ethics and campaign finance law violations ranging from late-filed reports to making illegal campaign contributions. The board has tagged violators with fines ranging from $10 to $1,350.

Board staff has defended the problem-ridden CFIS since it debuted in fall 2008 as a project that increases public disclosure and access to information that shows where political candidates and committees get and spend their money.

But it is not public disclosure when GAB or any other government agency provides information to the public that is wrong and worse yet lets it sit out there for 10 months after finding out it is wrong.

As Obey went on to say about the stimulus program's website debacle: "Credibility counts in government and stupid mistakes like this undermine it."

Approaching Average

A couple of things in the newspapers caught my eye recently. One was a news story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about how taxes in Wisconsin compare to other states. The other was a commentary by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman on what has to happen to prevent America's decline.

The headline over the Journal Sentinel story was "Wisconsin improves its ranking on taxes." Revealing choice of words. The assumption - and bias - here is that lowering taxes is always an improvement. When we're told Wisconsin is "approaching average," it is taken for granted that such a condition is a good thing.

Meanwhile, Friedman is lamenting how America is becoming less exceptional. Approaching average, one might say. He says better leaders won't be nearly enough to right the ship. We need better citizens "who will convey to their leaders that they are ready to sacrifice, even pay higher taxes, and will not punish politicians who ask them to do hard things."

Hmmm. . . .

Wisconsin improving. Tax ranking falling.

America declining. Must. Do. Hard. Things. Sacrifice. Even pay higher taxes.

Cognitive dissonance, it's good to see you again. It's been awhile.

Once my head stopped spinning, another thing caught my eye in Friedman's column. Six things, actually. Six things that are paralyzing America and preventing us from confronting and conquering the huge problems plaguing our country. First among them is money in politics, which has "become so pervasive that lawmakers have to spend most of their time raising it or defending themselves from the smallest interest groups with deep pockets that can trump the national interest."

Next is gerrymandering of political districts so "politicians of each party can now choose their own voters and never have to appeal to the center."

Two related problems are the cable TV culture that "encourages shouting" and segregates people into "their own political echo chambers" and the Internet culture that, at its worst, "provides a home for every extreme view and spawns digital lynch mods from across the political spectrum that attack anyone who departs from their orthodoxy."

Friedman also points to the "permanent presidential campaign" that leaves little time for governing. And finally, he calls out American businesses that have become so globalized that they no longer can see beyond their own narrow interests and meaningfully contribute to a national dialogue on how to keep this country strong and prosperous.

He concludes by saying a "great power that can only produce suboptimal responses to its biggest challenges will, in time, fade from being a great power - no matter how much imagination it generates." Or, one might add, no matter how much it cuts taxes.

Puppets On The Potomac

Stunningly outrageous though it was, the state Supreme Court's approval of new judicial ethics rules written by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association allowing judges to rule on cases involving their biggest campaign contributors was hardly an isolated instance of ghostwriting by powerful interests for obedient public officials.

This from The New York Times:

"In the official record of the historic House debate on health care overhaul, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities. Often, that was no accident.

Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world's largest biotechnology companies.

E-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that the lobbyists drafted one statement for Democrats and another for Republicans. The lobbyists, employed by Genentech and by two Washington law firms, were remarkably successful in getting the statements printed in the Congressional Record under the names of different members of Congress.

Genentech, a subsidiary of the Swiss drug giant Roche, estimates that 42 House members picked up some of its talking points - 22 Republicans and 20 Democrats, an unusual bipartisan coup for lobbyists."

Gableman Found Loophole, Is Free To Molest Another Opponent

A headline in this morning's print edition of the Wisconsin State Journal says "Judges: Gableman TV ads OK."

It's hard to reach that conclusion if you actually read the "Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and Recommendation" issued yesterday by the three-judge Judicial Conduct Panel that reviewed the judicial misconduct complaint against state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman.

Two of the three judges said the ad in question was plainly misleading with one calling it "deserving of condemnation" but both concluded Gableman could not be punished for it under the state Judicial Code of Conduct because none of the statements in the ad taken alone was objectively false. The third judge disagreed, arguing the whole ad did amount to an outright lie, but nevertheless agreed that the complaint against Gableman should be dismissed because, in his view, the section of the judicial ethics code under which Gableman was charged with judicial misconduct is unconstitutional.

While arguing that a "strict and narrow construction of the reach of the first sentence of SCR 60.06(3)(c)" required the three-judge panel to recommend that the state Judicial Commission's complaint against Gableman be dismissed, Reserve Judge David Deininger wrote: "It is more than a bit ironic that Justice Gableman has been represented in this matter by an able lawyer who, it might be argued, 'found a loophole.'"

Ironic because Gableman's ad said "Louis Butler worked to put criminals on the street. Like Reuben Lee Mitchell, who raped an 11-year-old girl with learning disabilities. Butler found a loophole. Mitchell went on to molest another child."

Did Reformers Get Help From Above?

Mike Wittenwyler is an exceptionally bright guy. I'd have no trouble saying Mike is smarter than me, but it would be most unfair to damn him with such faint praise.

Several publications have recognized him as a "top lawyer" and "rising star" in his area of expertise, which is political law. He teaches the subject at UW Law School. The highest of the high and mighty in this state turn to him for counsel. In campaign finance and election law matters, his clients include the Association of Wisconsin Lobbyists, Wisconsin Bankers Association, Wisconsin Builders Association, Wisconsin Education Association Council, Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, Wisconsin Realtors Association and Wisconsin Right to Life.

When Mike Wittenwyler talks, powerful people listen. Which makes something he said last December all the more memorable and intriguing. He told a Wisconsin State Journal reporter, "If anyone is able to get public financing through this Legislature I would call them Moses."

This is not a man prone to idle gossip or flights of fancy, mind you. So when legislation establishing publicly financed state Supreme Court elections got through both houses of the Legislature last week, inquiring minds had to be wondering. . . . Did he know something? Was this a Nostradamus moment? Was the Impartial Justice bill heaven sent? Did legislative backers and the likes of the Democracy Campaign, Common Cause and the League of Women Voters have a secret weapon?

Someone should be asking Mike Wittenwyler why those waters parted last Thursday. Seems like it might be one of the greatest stories ever told.

Sisyphus Pushes It Over The Top

I've long since lost count of the number of times the cause of campaign finance reform has been compared to the Myth of Sisyphus. Until yesterday, the storyline aptly applied to the effort to pass the Impartial Justice bill.

The legislation had been introduced every session since 1999. On a couple of occasions, it was passed in one house but never both.

Yesterday the Legislature approved what easily qualifies as the most significant campaign reform in Wisconsin in more than 30 years. The governor has said he will sign it. Not since 1977 has anything of this magnitude been enacted in this state.

Wisconsin became the first state to enact public financing legislation this year and only the third to ever adopt judicial public financing. North Carolina and New Mexico being the others.

Thank you to all who telephoned, e-mailed and personally met with their legislators to urge them to support this historic reform. And thank you to all the state lawmakers who took a stand for a nonpartisan, independent Supreme Court and fair and impartial justices.

You made history.

. . . So Help Us God

The Associated Press summed it all up:

"The Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted rules Wednesday allowing judges to hear
cases involving their biggest campaign contributors, siding with business interests and rejecting calls for changes.

Voting 4-3, the court approved rules saying donations by groups and individuals to judges and independent spending to help them get elected do not by themselves require judges to step aside from cases.

The additions to the judicial code of conduct were proposed by two powerful Wisconsin business groups, the Wisconsin Realtors Association and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, and adopted without a single change."

No one who was in the chamber yesterday could have been surprised by the outcome, as the majority of justices wore their preconceived notions on their sleeves.

I certainly expected a good grilling about the Democracy Campaign's view that there should mandatory disqualification of judges in cases involving their biggest campaign supporters. But after watching the League of Women Voters and two national fair courts advocates endure something right out of Salem, Massachusetts circa 1692, I suppose I should be grateful that I got questions like these. . . .

Quoting Justice David Prosser:

"Haven't you called me a thief?"

"It seems to me that there probably is some concern about the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and a lot of it is tied directly to you."

"Did you kind of suggest humorously that people might consider poisoning Justice Ziegler?"

OK, that's two questions and a declaration that the messenger should be shot, but not before I am assigned far more influence than I actually have.

On the last question, if Justice Prosser had been willing to read the offending passage in its entirety, it would have been clear that I did not suggest, jokingly or otherwise, that Justice Ziegler be poisoned. I was commenting on a remark made by state Appeals Court Judge Ralph Adam Fine.

As for the thief question, here is the item Prosser evidently was referring to. And here is more on the subject. If Prosser had allowed an airing of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help us God, and not just the fragment of truth that reinforces his already-made-up mind, this would have been known to all in the room: First, it was Scott Jensen's lawyers who filed a brief asserting that Justice Prosser agreed to testify that when he was Assembly speaker he had engaged in the same conduct that yielded felony charges against top legislative leaders including Jensen. Second, it was the state's attorneys who called the conduct "theft from the public" (go here and see page six) and a trial judge who called it "secretive but highly organized theft" as well as "common thievery elevated to a higher plane."

For the record, I stand by everything I have written concerning Justice Prosser and I rest easy in the knowledge that anyone who reads what I've written will judge for themselves whether I have shown the "reckless disregard for the truth" that Prosser claims I have exhibited.

Is Stealing Brett Favre Not Enough?

Minnesota. So close and yet so far. Both Wisconsin and Minnesota have sitting governors who are not running for reelection. Amazingly few here are pondering a bid for the opening and even fewer have actually jumped in the race, while just across the border dozens in both parties as well as a couple of independents are jockeying for a shot at the state's top office, and nearly 20 candidates already have thrown their hats into the ring.

What's Minnesota got that we ain't got?

Well, for starters, Minnesota has enforceable spending limits that come along with a functioning system of publicly financed state elections. Candidates there who qualify for public financing have to limit their campaign spending to just over $2 million and get nearly half of that in public funds.

In Wisconsin, on the other hand, we endured a $32 million race the last time around. The winning candidate spent over $10 million. Because we do not have a working public financing system, all of that money had to be raised privately. Creating a field day for special interests. And a huge deterrent to any prospective candidates who are not independently wealthy or willing to take out a second mortgage on their soul.

Aside from Brett Favre, what's Minnesota got that we ain't got? A race for governor that does not have a multi-million dollar entry fee.

Throwing In The Towel On Civics

I got to be a fly on the wall at a discussion of Supreme Court elections last night. Two groups of about 10 or 12. One men, the other women.

In a scene right out of one of Leno's "Jaywalking" segments, none of the men could name a single member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. One spoke of "that short lady" (presumably Shirley Abrahamson) in an unsuccessful attempt to jog the memories of his fellows. Another mentioned "the woman who works for the banks." (Ouch.) Nobody came up with Annette Ziegler's name either.

The women were better, but not much. Several talked about how horrible the last Supreme Court election was. When asked what was bad about it, one mentioned the "Loophole Louie" ad but couldn't remember much more. Another mentioned "that ad Gableman did." No one pointed out that the election in question was held in 2008. No one seemed to have a clue that there was a more recent election for Supreme Court held earlier this year.

In a speech I gave at this year's Fighting Bob Fest that was later turned into a newspaper commentary, I listed 12 essential nutrients every democracy needs. On my list, #7 is citizenship and #8 is civic education. Judging from what I saw last night, #7 is on thin ice. And judging from a recent column written by a journalist-turned-schoolteacher, so is #8. Among her observations is this:

"For a while, we skipped social studies every Monday while students took standardized tests. It got cut when school let out early for teachers' professional development. Then one day, after a school assembly ran long and I had to administer a math skills assessment, our social studies class was whittled down to just 15 minutes. I threw in the towel."

As I said a month ago on stage and in print, there can be a ruling class or there can be democracy, but there cannot be both. If we are partial to democracy, then preparing our nation's youth to be citizens needs to be as front and center as preparing them to be economically productive.

Any thoughts on the subject Tony Evers?

Old Glory Is So Yesterday

The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide a case - Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission - that started as a narrow dispute over whether federal election laws should have applied to a pay-per-view cable TV documentary savaging Hillary Clinton that was to air during the 2008 presidential primary elections.

As previously noted, Chief Justice John Roberts expanded the court's review to include two earlier Supreme Court rulings upholding restrictions on corporate spending in elections. Many court observers believe five of the nine justices favor reversing those precedents.

So at a time of corporate excess and irresponsibility not seen in our land since the Gilded Age, the court appears poised to rule that corporations do not have enough political clout and should be allowed to spend even more freely in elections. And rule thusly in the name of the First Amendment.

Never mind the word "corporation" does not appear in the First Amendment. Nor does the word appear even once in the entire U.S. Constitution for that matter. These justices who call themselves "strict constructionists" and claim to be faithful to the original text of the Constitution are getting ready to sweep away century-old laws banning corporate election spending.

Roberts and his ideological soulmates will not be able to base such a decision on what the Constitution actually says. Nor will they be able to find any predecessor on the nation's highest court who wrote a decision proclaiming that corporations are people and possess the same rights as flesh-and-blood citizens, including those rights spelled out under the First Amendment. Instead, the Roberts court will have to take this guy's word for it.

Bancroft Davis. Former president of a railroad company. As the court reporter for the U.S. Supreme Court, he gave railroad companies a great gift in 1886 when he added a comment to the high court's ruling in a case involving the taxation of railroad properties. And in so doing, this one man gave all corporations a great gift by inventing the pseudolegal doctrine of corporate personhood. Out of thin air.

If the current Supreme Court rules in Citizens United the way many legal experts expect, the handiwork of Bancroft Davis will be affirmed and further cemented in place.

If the Roberts court does this, it will not just be naked judicial activism. It will not simply be the very thing they claim to abhor - legislating from the bench. These "strict constructionists" will be effectively rewriting the Constitution.

What next? Redesign the flag? To capture the essence of the Roberts court's mindset, it will need to look this one.

What? There Are Two Parties?

As we continue to wait for the Democrats who control both Washington and Madison to actually do something about money's paralyzing grip on our politics, my thoughts stray to my father.

To dad, politics was simple. He never worked on a political campaign. He belonged to no civic groups. He was a dairy farmer, which occupied him from sunup to sundown seven days a week. He had an eighth-grade education. All he knew about politics came from religiously reading the newspaper. To his dying day, he never once so much as turned on a computer.

Republicans were for the rich, Democrats were for the poor. Republicans favored business. Democrats sided with labor. Democrats made war, Republicans brought on depression. Economically speaking, that is.

He never said so at the supper table, but for most of his life Dixie was home to the Democratic Party. After standing for slavery, Democrats were stalwarts for segregation. Republicans were abolitionists. The party of Lincoln.

Because dad didn't speak of it and because children were to be seen and not heard, no one in our family talked about the political realignment brought on by LBJ signing all the civil rights legislation. Nixon's southern strategy was never a topic of table talk.

Maybe such shifts in the tectonic plates of politics were unwelcome complexity. Republicans are for the rich, Democrats are for the poor. Republicans favor business. Democrats support labor. Democrats make war, Republicans depression. Republicans are tight with a buck. Democrats spend like drunken sailors.

It's hard to say what dad would make of politics today. Republicans are still for the rich, but so are the Democrats. Both are money parties and both now get most of their loot from business. Unions still prefer Democrats, but the Democrats get five times as much money from business and are reluctant as hell to ever cross the guys holding the capital.

No one talks much about the poor. The most Democrats are willing to say is they are for "working families," whatever that means. Wisconsin used to have usury laws. No lender could charge more than 18% interest. Today loan sharks charge the poor over 500%, and the Assembly's top Democrat says capping interest rates at 36% "goes too far." Especially because "there's a lot of jobs that are impacted if you just eliminate the industry." One of his lieutenants who chairs the financial institutions committee justified inaction by pointing out that loan sharks "did not create poverty. It was there before they got there." This from the party of the poor.

Both parties are fond of war. But the Democrats clearly have surrendered the mantle of war party. Prominent Democratic hawks, like Scoop Jackson and Sam Nunn, are long gone. If anything, it's the Republicans who are today's masters of the military-might-equals-national-security mantra.

Neither party is fiscally responsible. Any Republican claim of being better stewards of taxpayer money is demolished by the history of federal deficits since Eisenhower's day. Democrats haven't been bashful about running up debt, but Republicans have done it with even more reckless abandon. Obama is well on his way to evening the score, though.

The political calculus on race has been turned upside down. Today it's the Republicans who most overtly and zealously court the white vote. And it's the Democrats who are friendlier to racial minorities that are fast becoming majorities. Given this emerging demographic reality, it's hard to see how this is a sustainable posture for the GOP.

Circling back to money's influence in politics, it's long since been forgotten that great populist reformers like Teddy Roosevelt and Fighting Bob La Follette were Republicans. The Republican Party is now squarely in money's camp. But so, unquestionably, are the Democrats.

Which leads to the question: What would TR and Fighting Bob do today?

They'd probably do what they did then. Ruthlessly battle their partisan enemies. And fight those on their own side just as fiercely. And then maybe try starting a new party.

Clock Keeps Ticking, Justice Keeps Waiting In Jensen Case

On the right side of our blog's main page above the links, you'll find a clock keeping the time that has passed since former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen was charged with criminal misconduct in public office for his role in the Capitol caucus scandal. We'll keep it there until the Jensen case is finally brought to closure one way or the other. It will serve as an ongoing reminder of the vast difference between the treatment of ordinary citizens and a prominent political figure in our criminal justice system.

The Increasingly Impersonal Nature Of Being A Person

Other than house-elves, politicians are about the only ones you'll ever hear refer to themselves in the third person. It's an annoying but fairly uncommon habit, even among the political class. There's even a word for it - illeism - but it's hardly a must-have in one's vocabulary.

More common in political-speak is the majestic plural. Nearly every politician nowadays is guilty of this one. Individual persons turning themselves into groups is weird, but that weirdness takes on greater currency now that there's renewed attention being paid to the U.S. Supreme Court's created-out-of-thin-air doctrine that corporations are people.

With the Supremes now seriously thinking of taking this pseudolegal dogma to ridiculous new extremes by letting corporations spend freely in elections, the New York Times asked today in an editorial where the judicial invention of corporate personhood will end. Will they get the right to vote? To hold office? To bear arms?

Good questions. But the sign to really watch for is when they start speaking of themselves in the first person.

How A Court Reporter Made History

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission - Jeffrey Toobin
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Protests

The Word From Colbert Nation

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Let Freedom Ka-Ching
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Protests

Indiana Lawyer Defending Gableman

As state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman set out to fight off charges of judicial misconduct, either he felt there was not suitable legal representation to be found in Wisconsin or he couldn't find an attorney in the state who would represent him.

The technically nonpartisan Gableman has gone into battle with James Bopp of the Terre Haute, Indiana law firm Bopp, Coleson and Bostrom as his counsel. Bopp is best known as an anti-abortion lawyer as well as the lead attorney in all the legal challenges to the federal McCain-Feingold campaign reform law. But Bopp also is a member of the Republican National Committee who was part of a small band from the committee's far-right flank that sought to rig the selection process for RNC chair. He then showed his dissatisfaction with the party's choice as he sharply criticized new chair Michael Steele in April for refusing to call President Barack Obama a "socialist."

What's In The Water In Lake Geneva?

When Washington and Madison politics threatens to drive you insane, there's a need for some comic relief. Leave it to Lake Geneva.

The posh resort community is in a state of anarchy after the mayor attempted a banana republic-style coup, suspending four political opponents from the City Council and attempting to replace them with allies who happened to have been defeated in the last election by - you guessed it - none other than the four aldermen the mayor aims to oust.

The overthrow hit at least a temporary snag when the remaining council members balked at meeting to consider the appointed replacements. Leaving Lake Geneva without a functioning government, at least for the time being.

OK, so this is no laughing matter if you're in Lake Geneva. But with Congress and the Legislature returning to work after summer recess, there is both amusement and comfort in the knowledge that madness is not necessarily confined to capitals.

12 Things Every Democracy Needs

The following is excerpted from the text of the speech I gave at Saturday's Fighting Bob Fest entitled "A Democracy Worthy of the Name."

There are some things no true democracy can do without. Think of these as 12 minimum daily requirements, a basic subsistence diet:

1. Free speech

2. A free and independent press

3. Legitimate elections

4. Equal justice under the law

5. An ability to distinguish between democracy and commerce

6. An appreciation for and devotion to the commons

7. Citizenship

8. Civic education

9. A distribution of wealth sufficient to sustain a middle class

10. Religious freedom and a separation of church and state

11. Economic freedom and a separation of corporation and state

12. Dissent

Changes To Records Proposal Hides Information From Public

Wisconsin judges and district attorneys would no longer have to provide information to the public about the property they own under changes made by Democratic legislators to a bill actually meant to increase public access to certain government documents.

The legislative measure was intended to increase public access to Statement of Economic Interest documents filed each year by about 2,100 public officials and others who serve on state boards and commissions. These forms (here and here, for example) describe their economic holdings - like land, buildings, stocks, bonds, business activities and other investments and income. The form also requires them to vaguely disclose the value of each holding.

The legislation would require the Government Accountability Board to post the documents on the Internet. For decades, people who want to see the documents have had to submit a written request, and their names are given to the public officials whose statement are viewed. That practice would stop.

But Democratic Representative Fred Kessler of Milwaukee, a former judge, convinced the committee to change the bill to prohibit the board from releasing information online or in any other form about property owned by judges and district attorneys.

Kessler said he wants the property information for judges and prosecutors kept secret because they are regularly harassed or threatened by people who have been in their courts.

Now no one wants to see judges, prosecutors or any other law enforcement officers put in peril, but the logic for excluding them is hard to pin down.

First, how routinely are judges and prosecutors statewide harassed?

Second, are judges and prosecutors who know the ins and outs of the law better than most of us just letting this pass, and if there is no current remedy, shouldn't there be one regardless of the public access issue raised here?

Third, how would limiting public access to these documents address that problem if the harassment and threats are already occurring?

And finally, some other public officials like state legislators have no doubt experienced harassment and threats so why single out judges and prosecutors for this special treatment?

An Open Letter To John Roberts

Dear Chief Justice,

As you and your colleagues on the Supreme Court deliberate in the Citizens United case, I have two questions for you. Do corporations, labor unions and other organized special interest groups have too little say in the halls of government? Are their voices not adequately heard in election campaigns?

Nearly all Americans would answer "no." Most of the rest would say "hell no!"

The way you and your eight fellow justices answer these questions will decide this case. No pressure, but your answers also will set democracy's course in 21st Century America.

Sincerely,

Worried in Wisconsin