Senate Recall Targets Attract Big Donors

Four Republican senators targeted for recall later this year collectively raised $260,434 in five weeks, thanks mostly to a small band of wealthy special interest donors, including Milwaukee’s chamber of commerce which gave three of them $10,000 each.

The senators were targeted for recall because of their support for a successful plan by GOP Governor Scott Walker that slashed public employee collective bargaining rights and for deep cuts to health care, education and other state programs.

The recall process allows targeted legislative and statewide officeholders to exceed normal campaign contribution limits and collect unlimited amounts from donors until the state verifies recall petitions against them and sets an election date. Individual and political action committee contributions to state Senate candidates are normally limited to $1,000 per donor per candidate in a four-year election cycle.

Topping the list in fundraising between December 11 and January 17 was Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald of Juneau who raised $105,663. More than a quarter of that – $28,000 – came from just six donors, including $10,000 from the Milwaukee chamber of commerce’s PAC; $5,000 each from Waukesha liquor distributor Aldo Madrigrano and Madison real estate developer Joe Alexander; $3,000 from Milwaukee Professional Firefighters Local 215 PAC; and $2,500 each from retired Green Bay paper company executive Paul Schierl and Duane Foulkes, founder of metal fabricator Apache Stainless in Beaver Dam.

Senator Van Wanggaard of Racine accepted $64,206. He also drew a $10,000 donation from the Milwaukee chamber of commerce PAC and $3,000 from the Milwaukee firefighters PAC. Robert Schuemann, a retired Signicast executive from Milwaukee, gave $2,000. Wanggaard also got 14 $1,000 contributions from individuals and PACs, including $5,000 from five out-of-state givers who are longtime backers of Milwaukee’s school voucher program: William and Patricia Hume and William Oberndorf of San Francisco, Arthur Dantchik of Gladwyne, Pennsylvania and Virginia James of Lambertville, New Jersey.

Senator Pam Galloway of Wausau accepted $58,915 between December 11 and January 17. More than half her take – $34,000 – came from six committees and individuals. The Milwaukee chamber of commerce and Wausau plastic surgeon John Butler each doled out $10,000; campaign fundraising committees for Republican Senators Mike Ellis of Neenah and Mary Lazich of New Berlin each gave $5,000; and Schierl and Wausau investment consultant Neil Gulsvig each contributed $2,000.

Senator Terry Moulton of Chippewa Falls accepted $31,650 in contributions over the five week period. His biggest contribution was $2,500 from Schierl. He also received 13 $1,000 contributions from PACs and individuals, including $5,000 from the same five out-of-state school voucher supporters who contributed to Wanggaard.

The Man Behind The Mine

Wisconsin's legislature will soon decide whether to reopen part of the northwoods to iron ore mining. Much has been written and said about the proposed new mine in the Penokee-Gogebic Range, but not much attention has been paid to the man behind the project and the sprawling global conglomerate he is connected to.

The Democracy Campaign first started noticing large campaign contributions from mining interests to Wisconsin politicians just over a year ago, long before the mining bill was introduced. All of the money came from out of state. Roughly a quarter of the donations came from West Virginia mining magnate Chris Cline. The rest came from associates of Cline's. Some of those associates are at Cline Resource and Development. Others are with a company called Foresight, which is majority-owned and led by Cline. Still others are with a law firm Cline does business with. The remainder are other mining executives who've done business with Cline.

Environmentalists claim the mining bill being pushed in Wisconsin was written by the mining industry and would gut existing safeguards. The legislation certainly is Chris Cline's dream. And its approach to permit streamlining and environmental deregulation does bear a striking resemblance to the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council's model legislation known as the "Performance Based Permitting Act" and "Groundwater Protection Act."

Cline's Foresight is part of the global asset management firm Carlyle Group, a highly controversial and politically well connected corporate behemoth with tentacles that reach across the defense, aerospace, automotive, energy, health care, real estate, technology, telecommunications and transportation industries. Carlyle Group first earned a mention on the Democracy Campaign's website in a 2005 report we issued about shady Illinois donors who were funneling money to three candidates for governor in Wisconsin.

The Economist describes Carlyle Group as "deeply embedded in the iron triangle where industry, government and the military converge" and says it "arguably takes to a new level the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower feared might 'endanger our liberties or democratic process.'"

Carlyle Group also is into mining, through Chris Cline's Foresight. Which is itself a danger to our liberties and democratic process here in Wisconsin.

The Age Of Ethical Flexibility

People in politics have a funny idea of right and wrong. If my side does it, it's right. If the other side does it, it's wrong.

In Wisconsin there used to be a bipartisan consensus on – and adherence to – high ethical standards in politics and government. No more. A cancerous form of moral relativism has now taken hold across the political spectrum.

We have a Supreme Court justice who has ignored clearcut ethical standards, first in defending himself (ironically enough) against ethics charges and then in close to a dozen cases that have come before him on the high court. When the Democracy Campaign filed complaints against him alleging judicial misconduct, we were immediately accused by those on his side of the fence of being motivated by partisanship. Never mind the position of Supreme Court justice is officially nonpartisan.

We have filed complaints against Scott Walker. And Jim Doyle, on multiple occasions. And against both major state parties. And against legislators from both parties. And every time, we have been accused by people on one side of acting out of a desire to help the other side.

The other night I ran into a reporter for the state's largest newspaper, and he told me readers rip him a new one every time he reports on death threats received by public officials. When police are alerted to a threat against a Republican, one group of readers howl that it clearly was fake or trumped up or otherwise unworthy of coverage. When a Democrat is threatened, another group of readers say the same thing.

Really? I mean, for real? What a pathetic commentary on what ethics have come to in the political arena. Serious transgressions are readily forgiven or overlooked altogether if it's my side at fault, but if the other side twitches that's another matter. Throw the book at 'em!

Is it too much to ask that all public officials, regardless of political affiliation, be held to a consistent standard when it comes to ethics?

Today, apparently it is.

Disclosure Isn't Enough

This is going to sound funny coming from someone who spends nearly every waking hour tracking political money in Wisconsin and shining light on the legal bribery that is the trademark of today's politics.

The truth that campaign finance disclosure provides won't set us free.

Don't get me wrong. Disclosure is important. Hell, it's more than important. It's absolutely essential. And there should be more of it. Far too much is hidden. Voters deserve to know who's paying who. Far too much about the financial transactions in politics is concealed from public view.

But while disclosure is necessary, it is not sufficient. Not even close.

According to the conservative Rasmussen polling firm, public approval of Congress is down to 5%. The firm claims a margin of error of plus or minus 3% for this poll, so if you buy what Rasmussen is selling it's possible as few as 2% of Americans think Congress is doing an acceptable job. As pathetic as this is, it's hardly surprising when you consider another of the poll's findings, namely that half of Americans now believe most members of Congress are corrupt.

This underscores the limitations of disclosure as a political reform. When so many are convinced that elected officials are bought, knowing exactly who did the buying is cold comfort.

Packed courts across the country, and the U.S. Supreme Court in particular, have in recent years ruled most forms of campaign finance regulation out of bounds, with the exception of disclosure. In the high court's infamous Citizens United decision, a 5-4 court majority ruled from never-neverland that unlimited corporate election spending does "not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption." And since the prevention of corruption is currently the only court-approved rationale for campaign finance regulation, finding no sign of corruption in unlimited corporate electioneering paved the way for opening the floodgates.

Yet even in a case decided in a fashion as intellectually and morally bankrupt as that seen in Citizens United, eight of the nine justices came down squarely in favor of disclosure. What such clueless judges don't seem to get is that more disclosure will most certainly give rise to a more widespread belief that the system is corrupt. Not to mention a heightened public appetite for reform that goes way beyond disclosure.

People want government officials who are not corrupt. Disclosure alone cannot give us that. It can show us what we don't have. But it cannot give us what we want. People also want campaign financing rules that facilitate broad participation and encourage greater electoral competition, that make it possible for more people from more walks of life to enter the political arena. Disclosure can't give us that either.

People want election campaigns paid for in a way that promotes political independence and thoughtful representation. What we have now is a system that sentences us to elected officials who are hopelessly beholden to undeniably powerful and unquestionably narrow interests. Disclosure can reveal just how narrow these interests really are and it can give us a measure of their power. It cannot straighten out the mess, it cannot broaden the reach of the citizenry's influence.

People want election financing that fosters greater confidence in the system and yields a government that is viewed as legitimate and reflects the consent of the governed. What we have now is a system that has led half of Americans to believe most members of Congress are corrupt. It's not that all these people believe members of Congress are taking old-fashioned bribes every day. It's that people understand full well that yesterday's under-the-table bribery has been replaced by a newfangled over-the-table variety. More disclosure will raise awareness of legal bribery. It won't do away with it.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm all for disclosure. I work for more of it every day. But that doesn't mean that's all I'm for. Democracy's survival requires much, much more.

True Conservatives Should Demand Campaign Finance Reform

I can't be the only one who has noticed that those who most vigorously defend and promote the dominance of the One Percent's money in elections also claim to want smaller government.

One of the more perplexing ironies in modern politics, if you ask me. I say that because the system of legal bribery they favor makes the limited government they profess to desire a pipe dream.

Politicians who are constantly in need of deposits into their campaign war chests have a powerful incentive to keep government as big and intrusive as possible. That way, they hold both a carrot and a stick that come in mighty handy for fundraising purposes.

The bigger the government, the more elected officials have at their disposal to reward the generosity of political benefactors. A subsidy here. A no-bid contract for government work there. A juicy slice of political pork today. A hefty tax break tomorrow. That's the carrot. No campaign donations, no political favors. That's the stick.

At the same time, politicians know that many if not most of the biggest campaign donors have an ideological preference for smaller government. Conspiring with their fellow lawmakers to keep government large gives them the ability to go to those donors election after election and promise to get government out of their hair . . . and their wallets. If they actually delivered a smaller government, the sense of urgency to pony up would dissipate and the politicians' leverage would be lost.

When it comes to getting wealthy interests to part company with some of their riches, politicians get 'em coming and going. Sitting at the controls of a big government, they have it in their power to provide donors with a return on investment you can't get on Wall Street in the best bull market. But if public largesse isn't enough of an inducement to cough up a campaign contribution, they can use the implied threat of heavy-handed government intervention to crack open checkbooks. High taxes and burdensome regulation are valuable commodities if you are in the business of shaking the political money tree. They make promises of tax cuts and less red tape possible.

This reality makes it illogical for advocates of limited government to tolerate a campaign finance system featuring privately sponsored candidates for office who inevitably become legally bribed elected officials. If you really believe that government which governs least governs best, you should want anything but the status quo. If you are a libertarian and not allergic to common sense, you should want to remove the irresistible temptation found in the current system for politicians to trade on the size and reach of government to advance their own personal political fortunes.

Blessing The 'Wink And Nod'

Yesterday a federal appeals court struck down a decades-old Wisconsin law limiting what individuals can give in a year to political action committees to $10,000. Reinforcing the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case and extending the high court's money-is-speech doctrine, the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the longstanding $10,000 limit violated the free speech rights of interest groups that sponsor their own political ads.

Writing for the three-judge panel, Judge Diane Sykes wrote that interest group ads "do not pose a threat of actual or apparent quid pro quo corruption, which is the only governmental interest strong enough to justify restrictions on political speech."

It is naive in the extreme to believe that elected officials won't notice several hundred thousand or a few million dollars spent on campaign ads singing their praises. It is even more naive to think they won't appreciate the support of the friendly interest group that sponsored the ads. And it is as certain as the sunrise that such groups will be rewarded for their kindness.

What the court did yesterday was bless wink-and-nod corruption. Limits remain on the donations politicians can directly solicit. But after wealthy donors max out their contributions to candidates, they can give unlimited sums to special interest surrogates who will sponsor additional advertising touting those candidates. The candidates don't even need to ask. Everyone knows how the game is played. With a wink followed by a nod, the money flows to the right places, it's turned into a winning message, the anointed politicians are installed in office, and once handed power they direct all manner of favors back to those who paid for them to be there.

This is what the money-is-speech logic gets us. To call it logic strains the word's true meaning well beyond the breaking point. If logic leads to the conclusion that money equals speech, then the greatest infringement on First Amendment rights is poverty. Logic would demand that the miserable excuses for judges who gave us the Citizens United decision must now outlaw poverty since it violates free speech rights based on their own tortured interpretation of the First Amendment.

They won't do that, of course. They will never acknowledge that by ensuring the rich have unlimited "free speech" they also guarantee that those without much money will be silenced. They can't allow themselves to follow their legal reasoning to its logical conclusion. That would require them to start acting like judges and stop being tools of the 1%.

Playing Games With Clean Government Laws

I was asked in recent weeks to write an assessment of Wisconsin's campaign finance disclosure laws and their enforcement for a six-state review being done by the Midwest Democracy Network. Here's what I had to say about the agency responsible for enforcing our state's election and campaign finance laws:

"The Government Accountability Board has distinguished itself with an even-handed and politically independent approach to election administration and enforcement of campaign finance, lobbying and ethics laws."

I went on to say that the agency's independence "is now coming under attack, however, with legislation enacted this year giving the governor veto power over any rules or regulations approved by the GAB." I also sympathized with the agency's budgetary plight, noting the financial pressures brought on by more or less continuous rounds of cuts have left the GAB "strapped for resources at a time when its workload has increased dramatically with a flurry of recall elections to administer and a new voter ID law to implement."

This is not the first time I have sung the GAB's praises or come to the agency's defense. I share this to show that I am no enemy of the Government Accountability Board.

But I am beginning to wonder if the GAB is intent on making me into one.

On October 11 the Democracy Campaign filed an open records request with the GAB seeking evidence of any enforcement action taken relating to the law requiring disclosure of the financial interests of campaign donors who give more than $100. More than seven weeks later, I received a letter dated November 29 from the GAB's director informing me that the agency "has no records responsive to your request."

The letter also claims the agency responded to our request more than three weeks earlier, on November 7 to be exact. Judge for yourself.

On October 12, Democracy Campaign research director Michael Buelow received an e-mail from GAB public information officer Reid Magney confirming that our open records request had been received and promising to "respond as soon as possible."

About a month later, on November 7, Mike e-mailed Magney to inquire about the status of the request.

Magney replied that same day, shortly before noon: "There is nothing we can report to you at this time." (This, evidently, passed for a formal response to our request in GAB director Kevin Kennedy's mind.)

Buelow, shortly after noon: "Can you tell me when you will have something?"

Magney, five minutes later: "At this point, there's nothing I'm able to tell you. And I can't tell you today when I'll be able to tell you. If/when we are able to say something, we'll be in contact. Sorry."

Just over three weeks later, Kevin Kennedy told us that they already told us, but were telling us again that they had no records to give us. Kennedy also asserts in his letter that the board had received just two complaints since 2008 alleging a failure on the part of candidates to provide required employer and occupation information about their donors. The Democracy Campaign alone filed three separate complaints in June of this year. And we know the advocacy group One Wisconsin Now also filed a complaint in September 2010 alleging more than 650 violations of this particular law.

Kennedy's letter concludes with the claim that the GAB "takes all campaign finance reporting requirements seriously" and tries to explain away the absence of any evidence of enforcement action by saying it is "unlikely that the Board could successfully obtain a forfeiture if a committee was, in fact, making good faith efforts to obtain information."

State law requires campaign committees to file complete reports providing information including, among other things, the occupation and employer of contributors who give over $100. The law does, indeed, require committees to "make a good faith effort to obtain all required information."

The GAB apparently has an odd way of defining good faith. Looking at just one report filed by Scott Walker's campaign more than two years ago covering contributions to Walker from January through June 2009, we found employer information required by law still has not been supplied for 176 of the governor’s contributions totaling $57,159.

Eyeballing that lengthy list of improperly reported donations and I see more than two dozen instances where the Walker campaign could have easily found the omitted information by looking either at our website (because we took it upon ourselves to research the financial interests of these donors) or campaign finance reports filed by other candidates who received contributions from the same donors and disclosed their occupations and places of employment.

So how good is Walker's faith? What kind of effort has been put forth when donations received over two years ago still have not been properly disclosed? It's not that hard to find the required information. I know. It's what we do. Doesn't the Walker campaign have Google?

With some of these donations, it's hard to believe Walker doesn't know the donors personally. For example, he got a $2,000 donation in March 2009 from Keith Burns of the accounting giant Ernst & Young. Walker's campaign still hasn't disclosed his employer. Even in the unlikely event the governor hasn't actually crossed paths with Burns, you'd think his people must be aware of LinkedIn.

Then there's a $500 donation Walker reported receiving in June 2009 from Oconomowoc auto dealer James Tessmer. To this day, Walker's campaign hasn't disclosed Tessmer's employer in its reporting of this contribution. The campaign must know Tessmer. The Better Business Bureau does.

With some of the donors, it's laughable to think Walker doesn't know them personally. Mary Kohler gave Walker $3,000 in March 2009, and yet as of today the Walker campaign still has not disclosed her financial interests. Terry and Mary Kohler are major Republican donors in Wisconsin and nationally and have been for years.

Has the GAB fined the Walker campaign for failing for over two years to comply with the disclosure law in good faith? No, it has not. Has the Walker campaign been required to return any of the improperly reported donations? No, it has not.

Is the GAB taking the open records law as seriously as it should and is the agency rigorously enforcing the law that upholds the public's right to know the financial interests of major campaign donors? No, it is not.

Paying For The First Amendment

The Walker Administration's new Capitol access policy is designed to make people pay to peaceably assemble, petition their government and exercise free speech.

In a word, unconstitutional.

This is the only permit you need to enter the Capitol.

What's A Recallable Offense?

Without coming right out and saying so, Wisconsin State Journal columnist Chris Rickert's column in this morning's paper raises the question of whether restrictions should be placed on the constitutional right to recall public officials in Wisconsin.

Rickert laments that "a man who's done nothing worse than employ conservative principles to balance the state budget is facing recall." This echoes the familar refrain that state officials should not be removed from office over policy differences.

There is even a proposed constitutional amendment that would limit the grounds for recall in Wisconsin, establishing that office holders could be recalled only if they are charged with a serious crime or if there is a finding of probable cause that they violated the state ethics code.

It's worth noting that the presumption that the accused is innocent until proven guilty goes out the window. An official would need only to be criminally charged to be eligible for recall, not convicted. And what exactly constitutes a "serious crime?" The proposal defines it as one "punishable by imprisonment of one year or more."

OK, let's say a legislator is driving to a town hall meeting and crashes into another car and the other driver is killed. An eyewitness tells police that the legislator ran a red light and also appeared to be driving at least 10 miles an hour over the speed limit. The eyewitness also tells officers the legislator appeared to be texting on a cell phone when the crash occurred.

If the eyewitness account is true, the legislator is guilty of a terrible lapse of judgment and quite possibly manslaughter. In his defense, the legislator insists he was driving within the speed limit, entered the intersection when the light was still yellow and only reached for the cell phone to turn it off. Still, he is charged with negligent vehicular homicide. That is a Class G felony in Wisconsin and is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Under the proposed constitutional amendment, he would be eligible to be recalled from office by voters regardless of the outcome of the criminal case.

On the other hand, an elected official who habitually lies could not be recalled. Such an offense does not fit the definition of a serious crime, nor is it a violation of the state ethics code.

Politicians who mislead voters by concealing their true intentions during election campaigns and then springing their plans on everyone only after taking office could not be recalled. Again, no serious crime, no ethics code breach.

Politicians who abuse power by creating laws making it harder to vote and drawing new districts favoring their party and kneecapping opposition groups by limiting their ability to raise campaign money and giving themselves control over a previously independent watchdog agency could not be recalled.

A politician whose actions are so divisive and polarizing that they rip the state in two and paralyze a legislature could not be recalled.

I understand the impulse to place limits on the constitutional right to recall public officials so that only those guilty of some high crime could be removed in such a manner. But where do you draw that line? How do you draw that line?

Which is the higher crime, a tragic traffic accident or abuse of power and violation of public trust?

I say leave it to the people to decide when to exercise this constitutional right. The only needed check on this power the people possess is the incredibly large number of petition signatures the recall law requires citizens to gather. Crossing that threshold is no easy feat, which is why recall elections have been so exceedingly rare over the course of our state's history and why they will remain exceedingly rare. It takes a highly unusual set of circumstances to make the recall of a public official a viable option for citizens to consider.

It just so happens such conditions exist in our state today.

What One Person Can Do

In this age of political disillusionment, the greatest threat to the republic is not rampant corruption itself, but rather the widespread feelings of powerlessness in the face of that corruption.

You hear it time and again from citizens of every stripe. In one manner of speaking or another, they are saying the same thing. What can one person possibly do considering what we're up against? How can people overcome the power of all that money?

You can exercise all five rights granted to all of us by the First Amendment. Those rights aren't worth a thimble full of spit unless they are used. So you can speak up. Enemies of democracy are seeking to commercialize speech and make political participation prohibitively expensive for all but a few, making it more important than ever for us to be creative and find ways to make our voices heard. OK, you can’t afford to buy television air time, but you can text and you can tweet and you can blog.

At the same time, it’s important to remember the First Amendment doesn’t only guarantee the right to free speech. It guarantees freedom of the press. With newspapers dying and other traditional media increasingly falling under the control of a handful of plutocratic masters, it is essential that we create our own means of spreading the word and engaging each other in the conversation of democracy. The right to assemble and petition your government is guaranteed. You can do those things. We’ve seen a lot of that lately here in Wisconsin. Freedom of religion is guaranteed. You can worship as you see fit, or you can reject worship altogether. As the forces of theocracy assert themselves in our government, it is all the more important that we exercise freedom of religion, which includes fighting against any state establishment of religion.

More than anything, you can do what Cesar Chavez advised us all to do: Talk to one person. We’re all taught at a young age not to discuss two things in polite company – religion and politics. We need to talk politics with one another. It is often uncomfortable. So it takes courage. But it is where real change begins.

And We Wait

Six weeks ago today the Democracy Campaign filed an open records request with the state Government Accountability Board seeking documentation of any enforcement action relating to the law requiring disclosure of the occupation and employer of campaign donors who give more than $100. We are still waiting for the information we seek.

The law requiring disclosure of contributors' employment information is the heart and soul of campaign finance disclosure in Wisconsin. It provides voters essential information about the financial interests of donors and some insight into their possible motives for seeking to influence state elected officials with campaign donations.

The Democracy Campaign has called attention many times over the years to the failure of numerous candidates to disclose this required information on the campaign finance reports they submit to the GAB. In fact, we filed a complaint with the board as recently as this June over missing occupational information on the reports of three senators who faced recall elections this summer. We have heard nothing from the GAB in response to our complaint, and there is nothing in the minutes of the board's meetings or other public records to indicate that any enforcement action has been taken.

With our current open records request, we are trying to answer a simple question: Is this key disclosure law being enforced? We suspect the answer is no, but we can't know for sure unless the agency obeys another pivotal law upholding every citizen's right to know what our government is up to.

Justice David Prosser, R - Beyond Wisconsin

Three of every four dollars in individual contributions raised by Supreme Court Justice David Prosser's reelection campaign and another committee created to pay for his recount expenses came from donors outside the state - much of it from a scant seven contributors, a Wisconsin Democracy Campaign review found.

Campaign finance reports show Prosser raised $692,597 from all sources for his 2011 spring reelection, including a $400,000 state public financing grant, $266,000 from the Prosser Victory Recount Fund and $21,588 from individual contributions excluding returned contributions and a $5,000 self contribution to his own campaign.

All told, the two committees raised $294,309 in individual contributions - $70,640, or 24 percent, from Wisconsin donors and $223,669, or 76 percent, from contributors outside Wisconsin.

In addition to the large proportion of out-of-state givers, 24 individual contributions to the recount committee lacked the donor's last name and 50 contributions of more than $100 lacked employer information required by law.

Seven contributors to Prosser's recount committee - all from outside Wisconsin - gave between $5,000 and $50,000 each for a total of $210,000 or 72 percent of the total individual contributions to both committees. State law allows candidates to raise unlimited amounts of money to pay for legal and other expenses involved in a recount. Here's who these big donors are:

Dr. John Templeton Jr. and his wife, Josephine, from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania each contributed $50,000. Templeton runs the Templeton Foundation and is a heavyweight backer of conservative causes nationwide, including Freedom's Watch, the Cato Institute and numerous state efforts to ban same sex marriage.

Richard Uihlein of Lake Forest, Illinois and owner of Uline - a package, shipping, warehouse and janitorial products retailer - who gave $50,000. Uihlein is a longtime backer of conservative Republicans candidates and groups nationwide like Rand Paul, Eric Cantor, Michelle Bachmann and the Club for Growth.

Virginia James of Lambertville, New Jersey who contributed $25,000. James is a retired investor and longtime supporter of conservative political candidates and groups like the Club for Growth, as well as Republican causes like school voucher programs.

David Humphreys of Joplin, Missouri who contributed $25,000. Humphreys and his family own Tamko Building Products which is one of the nation's largest manufacturers of roofing materials, and he is a longtime backer of Republican political candidates and causes nationwide.

Stephen Mosling of Naples, Florida and Frank Baxter of Los Angeles, California who each gave $5,000. Mosling is a retired real estate developer who has contributed to Republican congressional candidates and party committees in Wisconsin and Florida. Baxter is a retired investment banker and former ambassador to Uruguay under President George W. Bush.

The Only Answer

On the cover of the latest edition of Foreign Affairs, the magazine asks "Is America Over?" That question is gnawing at nearly every American these days. The anxiety this pondering produces is what the Tea Party and Occupy movements have in common.

It has dawned on most everyone that for the first time in our nation's history, we have a generation of parents who no longer can find reason to believe their children will be better off than they are. The belief in the next generation's reach exceeding the grasp of the previous generation always has been at the core of the American Dream. The core has rotted.

The impulse of Tea Party types is to look for a rewind button that could return the country to an earlier time when parents could rest assured their kids were going to have it better than they did. Their search is doomed. What is past is past. Change is inevitable. Their yearning for a return to some nostalgized yesteryear is disfiguring the Republican Party and warping the country's future.

Those drawn to the Occupy movement also are seething over the stolen dream. But their response to the anxiety they share with the tea partiers is totally different. They are putting their finger on what George Packer calls the "Broken Contract." Americans used to grow together. Now we are growing apart.

The battle cry of the occupiers is "We are the 99%." This brilliantly reduces to bumper-sticker length the fundamental truth of the broken social contract in America. For the last 30 years, the top 1% has cleaned up and most of the rest of the population has been set adrift. The reason is simple. The top 1% has commandeered our democracy over the past three decades. They've bought the politicians and now own our government. Which permits them to rape and pillage the country while the masses are left with an unsteady present and an even more uncertain future. All 99ers instinctively understand that.

There is only one answer. Recriminalize bribery.

You have to go back more than a century, to the age of the robber barons, to find comparable social and economic conditions in America. The opulence of the Gilded Age led to the Panic of 1893 and a deep economic depression. It is no coincidence that bribing public officials was legal in places like Wisconsin at the time.

Wisconsin became a state in 1848. Bribery was perfectly legal for the first half-century of statehood. It was not outlawed until 1897. That reform was followed in short order by another in 1905 banning corporate campaign contributions and election spending. Congress followed Wisconsin's lead in 1907 with the Tillman Act.

The 1897 and 1905 political reforms in our state paved the way for the remarkable 1911 legislative session. The feature article in this year's Wisconsin Blue Book says this: "The year 2011 marks the centennial of what was almost certainly the greatest legislature in Wisconsin history, quite possibly in any state."

Wisconsin's reputation for progressive policy innovation was established by that legislature. The actions of 1897, 1905 and 1911 made Wisconsin a beacon of clean, open and honest government. All of this was our inheritance. An inheritance we have squandered, largely because we have allowed bribery to become legal again.

Oh, they aren't called bribes anymore. That's a big part of the reason why they are so accepted. Now they're called campaign contributions. Makes this grimy business sound philanthropic. Downright charitable. But the game's exactly the same as it was back in the days of the robber barons.

If we are going to Occupy Democracy again, we have to do in our time the equivalent of what was done back then. Make legal bribery a crime.

The Symbol Of Fear And Loathing

I return from a brief trip to Washington, D.C. with decidedly mixed emotions. The new monument to Martin Luther King Jr. is a beauty and it was a thrill to see it. My wife and I took my son there to visit friends and family, as well as show him around our nation's capital. Overall, we had a nice stay.

Included on our to-do list was a tour of the Capitol building, courtesy of arrangements made by our congresswoman's office. How can I say this? The tour was lame. And as unsettling as it was unsatisfying.

You used to be able to just walk in the Capitol from multiple points of entry. Now everyone is steered through a new visitor center, which has the look and feel of a fortified bunker. The doors must be blastproof because they are so heavy you have to plant your feet and pull with both hands to open them. No kind of vehicle can get close to the place thanks to the pop-up barricades that block every passageway. Armed guards dot the grounds outside, and a substantially larger security force form an imposing gauntlet inside the visitor center.

Once we got through the scanners and then the additional screening done by uniformed officers, we were herded to an information desk to get our tickets for the guided tour. After waiting in line under the watchful eye of still more Capitol personnel, we were ushered into a small theater for a short movie. It was a standard-issue tour film, but one thing I remember. The narrator said Congress is the place "where common ground is found" in our nation. I tried muffling my laughter, with limited success.

Then we filed out into a lobby where we were met by a tour guide, who introduced herself before emphasizing that we should not stray from the group. She took us to the rotunda and told a few stories about the artwork on the ceiling and the statues on the floor before leading us to Statuary Hall which was the original House chamber in the Capitol's early days. It later housed a farmer's market, which is unimaginable today. Now it's just an empty room lined with more statues.

Our guide pointed to the doors to the current House chamber. She noted that's where the president – after the House sergeant at arms bellows "Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States" – enters on his way to deliver his annual State of the Union address. We weren't allowed to take the walk the president makes, though. Or even approach the doors to peek through the crack.

Moments after it began, our tour was over. No visit to the Senate or House chambers. I'd seen them in years past, but my son's experience would be quite different. Not even a look at the ornately decorated Old Senate Chamber, which used to be a staple of the Capitol tours of yesteryear.

We were led back through the rotunda and returned to the visitor center. I could not get Ben Franklin's famous quote out of my mind. You know, the one about those who sacrifice essential liberty for temporary safety deserving neither liberty nor safety.

From the airport to many of its most recognizable sites, Washington is armed to the teeth as it greets visitors. The greeting conveys the impression of a police state. The U.S. Capitol, of all places, is a symbol of our nation. Security there proved to be tighter than at the Treasury Department's Bureau of Engraving, where the nation's currency is printed for crying out loud. That's some symbolism.

I left the visitor center, moved nearly to tears. Not out of inspiration or gratitude. Out of sadness for what we've allowed our Capitol to become. A fortress.

How did we become so hated around the world that it's come to this? Or how did we get so scared of the world around us that we started acting like this?

I hope my son lives to see the day when our nation's capital and our Capitol building are once again symbols befitting a free society. I'm not sure I will.

Do We Have A Democracy?

Among the letters to the editor in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is one that caught my eye titled "Democracy is dead; the wealthy reign." Made me think back to a couple of weeks ago when I was on the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh campus giving a speech very much like the one I gave a few weeks earlier at Fighting Bob Fest.

After finishing my remarks about the growing threats to democracy and the compromised health of our political process, a question came from the audience: "Do we even have a democracy?"

The way I answered it at the time was to say there are degrees of democracy. American democracy is unquestionably in a weaker state and at greater risk than it has been at any time in living memory. But that is not to say it does not exist at all in our country. The fact that I could stand in a public place and harshly criticize our state government and condemn the social injustice inherent in today's politics and not be banned from campus or arrested is itself an indication of democracy's existence.

Upon reflection, I wish I would have answered differently. It's not that I now think my answer was wrong. I just think there's a better one. And it is staring up at me from a postcard sitting on my desk that had been sent to me by Ruth Meyer, the faithful assistant to Doris "Granny D" Haddock, after Granny's passing.

On the card is a photo of Doris standing on the steps of the New Hampshire Capitol with a quote at the bottom: "Democracy is not something we have, it's something we do."

Doris Haddock taught me many things. And she was right about that. Democracy is more a verb than a noun. As long as we practice democracy, we will have a democracy. When we all stop acting as citizens in a democratic society, then and only then will democracy in America be truly dead.

A Bad Road Team

Only eight Major League Baseball teams are good enough during the regular season to make the playoffs. And only one of those teams will win its last game. Every other team's season ends with bitter disappointment. But the fact that this ended up being the Brewers' fate doesn't diminish the team's accomplishments. The Brewers had a helluva year.

The Crew was especially good at Miller Park. The Brewers' home record was 57-24, while they couldn't reach .500 on the road, finishing 39-42 away from home. Not bad actually when you consider the Brewers at one point in the season had the National League's worst road record at 16–29.

Watching the Brewers sparkle at home and struggle mightily on the road got me to thinking about Democrats of all things.

There are two sources of political power – organized people and organized money. When the U.S. Supreme Court declared that money is speech 35 years ago, organized money gained the upper hand. Big time. It is no coincidence that the nation's highest court so ruled just as television was becoming the dominant medium of political communication. It is also no coincidence that national policymakers made sure that the U.S. remained the only major democracy on the planet without some system for providing free television air time to those seeking public office.

When money is speech, speech ceases to be free. And with the exorbitant price of television air time, political speech is prohibitively expensive speech. Getting a message out to voters via the primary means of political communication costs an arm and a leg. Which means that the few who have great wealth get to do most all of the talking in election campaigns, while the many effectively have no voice.

For generations the Democrats have fancied themselves the party of the working class and have sought to brand the Republicans the party of the rich. If you buy their labeling, that makes the Democrats the party of organized people and the Republicans the party of organized money. Which makes it all the more curious that Democrats over the last three decades have so meekly acquiesced to and even enthusiastically embraced organized money's cornering of the political marketplace.

It's as if the Democrats are a team that has willingly chosen to play all its game on the road. And they're willing to play the game by rules that decidedly favor their opponents. Like a National League team agreeing to allow an American League opponent to use a designated hitter while its own pitchers hit. Like an NBA team giving its opponents the three-point shot while all its own shots count for only two.

Now that the rabble are rousing, the Democrats are not at all well-positioned to take advantage of the 99% movement. Author Michael Lind recently listed six reasons why Democrats can't (or won't) go populist in response to corporate greed and Wall Street malfeasance. You don't really need to read beyond the first reason to get the picture. "Reason No. 1: The Democrats depend on Wall Street for campaign donations."

Democrats took up the tin cup three decades ago. Some of them – like Obama nationally and Jim Doyle here in Wisconsin – have flourished politically as corporate Democrats. That's not to say the president and former governor are exceptions to the rule among Democrats, only more electorally successful than many of their brethren. Wisconsin Democrats across the board have been getting six times as much campaign money from business interests as they get from organized labor. And that was before Scott Walker and his allies in the Legislature made it substantially harder for unions to collect dues and even to continue to exist.

Democrats are on a playing field that requires them to forever run uphill while their opponents run downhill. Look, corporate executives and other filthy rich types are much more likely to consider themselves Republicans than Democrats. For every Warren Buffett or George Soros, there's a David Koch . . . and a Charles Koch . . . and the whole Walton family . . . and several dozen other titans of industry who pledge allegiance to the GOP.

The bottom line is that in a system where organized money is king and organized people barely matter, the Republicans possess an enormous competitive advantage.

And for three decades now, the Democrats have been more or less fine with it.

How stupid is that?

'Hello David, Scott Walker Here. Just Wanted You To Know The Sky's The Limit....'

It can't be easy to get Scott Walker to take your phone call. Unless you are David Koch. Or at least someone Walker believes is David Koch.

A little under eight months ago, the idea of getting a personal call from a billionaire kingmaker was so exhilarating to the governor that he let himself get punked by some guy named Ian Murphy who runs an online news service called the Buffalo Beast.

Now that a drive to recall him from office is a certainty, Walker won't very likely be waiting for the phone to ring. He will soon be dialing up his richest supporters and making a pitch he has never been able to make before. Donate, pretty please, and give as much as you want.

Normally individuals can give no more than $10,000 to a candidate for governor. But a quirk in Wisconsin law lifts that limit for a period of time for targets of recall elections. Recall organizers will have 60 days to gather the more than 540,000 signatures needed to trigger an election. From the moment they file the necessary paperwork and begin gathering petition signatures to the time when an election is actually authorized, there will be no limit on what donors to the governor may give.

What just happened during the run-up to this summer's senate recall elections provides some indication of what to expect when Walker becomes the target. Normally individual donations to state senate candidates are limited to $1,000. But thanks to that quirk in state law, targeted senators received 368 contributions of more than $1,000 while petition signatures were being collected. Those donations averaged nearly $2,900 and totaled almost $1.1 million. The donors gave nearly $700,000 more than they would have been allowed to contribute if the normal legal limits had applied.

These above-the-limit donations went to senators in both parties. But because there were six Republican senators who ultimately had to stand before voters in a recall election and only three Democrats, more of the money went to the Republicans. Targeted GOP senators received 319 over-$1,000 donations totaling more than $981,000 while Democratic senators got 49 such contributions totaling just over $81,000.

Some of the donations were substantially higher than the normal limit for senate races. For example, Tamarack Petroleum owner Daniel McKeithan and his wife gave Milwaukee-area Senator Alberta Darling $31,500 and McKeithan also made $1,250 donations to Ripon's Luther Olsen and Dan Kapanke of La Crosse. Oconomowoc businessman Jere Fabick gave Fond du Lac's Randy Hopper $20,000 and gave Darling and Kapanke $15,000 each. Johnsonville Foods CEO Ralph Stayer gave Hopper $15,000. Darling also got $24,500 from Michael and Billie Kubly of the Charles E. Kubly Foundation.

You can bet Governor Walker will be getting a great many donations at least as large or even bigger during the holiday season.

The law that lifts campaign contribution limits for targets of recall elections makes no sense. State law restricts the size of campaign donations in an attempt to limit special interest influence over our government and prevent political corruption. Those purposes are no less important in recall elections than they are in regular elections. Letting recall targets operate outside the law that normally applies to campaign fundraising leaves us with winners of recall elections who are even more beholden to wealthy special interests than other elected officials already are.

The law allowing unlimited fundraising during recall petition drives can and should be changed. Legislation has been introduced as Assembly Bill 296 to do just that.

I'd love to see what odds the bookmakers in Vegas would give on Walker's allies in the Legislature passing this bill and the governor signing it some time in the next month.

Punished For The Sins Of Others

In a recent article for his newspaper's "PolitiFact" feature, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Tom Kertscher declared two claims to be untrue. One was made by the Walker administration. The other by the head of an association representing town governments.

So did Kertscher put the governor on the PolitiFact hot seat? Nope. Did he shine his light on the town official? Nope. He took me to task for telling people what they said.

Kertscher first e-mailed me and then telephoned to question me about four different comments I made in my speech at last month's Fighting Bob Fest. He ultimately determined a remark about government spending on road building was the only one needing scrutiny.

I told him I was citing a statement made on page 14 of a budget document issued by the Walker administration in March that said the spending plan sunk "a total of $5.7 billion in Wisconsin's transportation system, including a $410.5 million (14.7 percent) increase in highway funding over base amounts."

I also told him that another newspaper reported in early September that the Wisconsin Towns Association's executive director "says he knows of several townships with blacktop roads in need of repair that have opted to dig out the blacktop and go back to gravel."

Curiously, neither Kertscher nor any of his colleagues at the Journal Sentinel had ever questioned the assertion made in the budget document. They gave the administration a pass and allowed the claim to go unchallenged for more than six months. It was not until a citizen activist brought it up in a speech that it was deemed worthy of examination. And then after judging it factually inaccurate, he assigned the blame to me.

Kertscher concluded that the budget for highway spending didn't increase by 15 percent, it actually went down.

He did not base his conclusion that the Walker road spending claim was untrue on the word of a private research group like the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance (which, by the way, issued a study this year showing that borrowing for road construction has been increasing at an annual rate averaging 17 percent) or reporting by an independent news organization like the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism run by former Wisconsin State Journal reporter Andy Hall (which reported that Walker's budget as amended by the Legislature ended up increasing state highway spending by 13 percent).

Comically, he cited two administration sources who now insist there is a cut in the budget for road building. That's the very same administration that was responsible for making the original claim of a 15 percent increase. Did Kertscher turn his journalistic wrath on the Walker administration for talking out of both sides of its mouth? No, he did not.

Perhaps now it's clear why he didn't challenge another statement I made in my speech, namely that when millions of Americans are looking for real news and some honest-to-goodness truth telling about what’s going on in the country, they tune in to Comedy Central.

What Kertscher wrote struck me as juuuust a bit unfair. But hey, life's not fair. Serves me right for putting any stock in anything the Walker administration has ever put out there. And shame on me for repeating a direct quote from a local government official who was speaking on the record.

Yes, I regard his reporting in this instance to be unfair. But he also crosses the line that separates unfair and hypocritical by faulting me for doing what he and other reporters do every single day. Reporters cite official government documents all the time and they quote public officials all the time. And then if someone says their reporting is factually incorrect, they say "hey, don't look at me, I'm just reporting matters of public record." But when I pointed out two matters of public record, Tom Kertscher effectively branded me a liar. That is a flagrant double standard.

Kertscher's reporting in this case is either the byproduct of exceedingly sloppy journalism or some very troubling bias.

In any case, this is the kind of thing that gives a noble profession a bad name.

The Will Of The People Vs. Lines On A Map

Ten years ago new congressional and state legislative district lines were drawn to adjust for population changes reflected in the 2000 census. Those lines were very good for office holders and very bad for any voter who didn't feel well represented and longed for a fresh face.

Despite the fact approval ratings for Congress have been steadily declining and this year reached an all-time low of 12 percent, the congressional district lines drawn in 2001 made it virtually impossible for voters to dislodge an incumbent House member. The boundaries were manipulated to make districts safer for both Democratic and Republican members. There were no competitive elections in any of Wisconsin's eight U.S. House districts in 2002, none in 2004, one in 2006, none in 2008 and three in 2010.

Public approval of the Wisconsin Legislature's performance plunged in the aftermath of the political corruption scandal at the Capitol that erupted in 2001 before slightly recovering later in the decade. But public dissatisfaction remains high today, with 60 percent of Wisconsin residents saying they disapprove of the way the Legislature is handling its job. Yet incumbents running in the Assembly and Senate districts drawn in 2001 were reelected 93 percent of the time over the course of the decade, winning 454 elections and losing only 39.

Considering all this, it is very difficult imagining the new political boundaries drawn this year following the 2010 census could make legislative districts any less competitive. But Republicans who currently control the Legislature managed to do just that. And there aren't just a few more uncompetitive districts, there are a lot more.

The Democracy Campaign looked at the last election for the 132 state Assembly and Senate seats (which was held in 2010, except for 16 even-numbered Senate districts which was in 2008). We looked at how votes were cast in the old districts. Then we looked at where those same voters are now under the new boundaries established this year. The results of this analysis are striking, especially for the Assembly.

The districts shown as either strongly Republican or strongly Democratic are those that were won by 20 percentage points or more (in other words, by a margin of 60 percent to 40 percent or greater). Districts are said to be either leaning Republican or Democratic if the elections were decided by between 10 and 20 percentage points. Toss-up districts are those where margins of victory were within 10 points (55 percent to 45 percent or less).

Under the old map, 50 of the 99 Assembly districts were either leaning or strongly Republican. Twenty-seven were either leaning or strongly Democratic, and 21 others were toss ups. Under the new map, Republicans added 10 more districts to their column. But they didn't do it by reducing the number of safe Democratic districts. There were 20 strongly Democratic districts before, there are 20 now. They did it by reducing the number of toss-up districts by a third.

Yes, this is clearly a Republican gerrymander. But the biggest losers are not Democratic office holders. The real losers are the voters. There were precious few districts in the past that produced competitive elections where voters had an authentic ability to change which party would represent them. There are significantly fewer such districts now.

Because Senate districts are larger geographically, it is more difficult to create districts that are either bright red or bright blue. But legislative Republicans still managed to pull it off. Under the old map, 10 districts were strongly Republican and nine were strongly Democratic. Under the new map, 12 districts are strongly Republican and seven are strongly Democratic. The number of leaners and toss-up districts hasn't changed much.

The bottom line is that the job security of current office holders from both parties has been protected. The Republicans' grip on power has been enhanced. The ability of the people to impose their will and get the kind of representation they want has been further eroded.

Which means our democracy has been further weakened. All because of the way lines have been drawn on a map.

A Supreme Version Of The Clean Campaign Pledge

Here's hoping I'm wrong, but the one-sentence collegiality pledge approved by the Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes me as being about as valuable as the countless "clean campaign" pledges candidates for public office have made over the years. Which is to say roughly a thimble full of spit.

Those candidate pledges have come in various forms and sizes, but they all basically boil down to this:

I pledge to run a clean campaign (unless any opponent shows the slightest sign of doing otherwise, or I am running behind in the polls, in which case I will reduce the bastard to rubble).