Manufacturing, business and utility interests that oppose federal rules to slash carbon emissions standards have contributed about $7.6 million to Governor Scott Walker who now says he wants Wisconsin to sue the federal government over the matter.
"I don't need people from outside of this state. This is about me and the people of the state of Wisconsin."— comments by Governor Scott Walker reported by WisPolitics.com during a campaign stop in Pewaukee this week.
With few exceptions the news reports and editorials about the proposed constitutional amendment voters are being asked to approve on next Tuesday's ballot don't get into where it came from and why it got there.
Our nation's founders wrote the Federalist Papers to articulate their vision for a new independent nation and justify their proposed design for a new government. They wrote using pseudonyms due to fear for the authors' liberty and life if the crown discovered their true identities.
Wisconsin contributors gave $3.8 million in three months to political groups that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of cash on outside electioneering activities, and most of the contributions went to groups that have been sponsoring negative mailings and broadcast ads in the state's November 4 elections.
Americans clearly are sour on politics. According the latest Gallup public opinion polling, the number one problem in the U.S. is “dissatisfaction with government, Congress and politicians” along with “poor leadership, corruption and abuse of power.”
On what planet does anyone think there is not enough money in politics, not enough special interest influence, and too much public awareness of the buying and selling of our government?
Beer, billboards, sick days, soda, shooting at stuff, mining and manure.
Governor Scott Walker’s campaign finance report shows 56,530 itemized individual contributions totaling $7.83 million during the first six months of 2014 – a statistic his campaign claims is indicative of “overwhelming grassroots support for Governor Walker’s campaign to continue moving Wisconsin forward.”
The company led by a generous contributor to Republican Governor Scott Walker has proposed building a road and maintenance facility in a state park that would serve a new high-end golf course on company-owned land adjacent to the park.
Three companies cited in a recent WKOW-TV investigative report that dealt with outsourcing jobs in Wisconsin to foreign countries after they accepted millions of dollars in tax breaks from the state contributed more than $6,500 to state and legislative candidates from 2011 through 2013.
For the better part of 20 years, we've been told by shadowy interest groups and their spin doctors and hired guns that the campaign ads they run aren't political ads at all. They are merely discussing issues. Never mind that most of the groups never say a word about these issues when they are actually being debated at the Capitol. They only feel the urge to discuss in the weeks before elections. And never mind that the groups that are lobbying at the Capitol choose to discuss entirely different issues when election season rolls around.
John Doe is the name given to unknown or anonymous targets of a criminal investigation or similarly unidentified defendants or plaintiffs in legal proceedings. Wisconsin has come to know John Doe well. A little more than a decade ago, "John Doe" was actually five of the state's most powerful legislators as well as several of their aides. Criminal charges for misconduct in public office were filed against all of them, and ultimately political careers were ended in what has come to be known as Wisconsin's "caucus scandal."
Thinly veiled. That's what the billionaire Koch brothers have in common with the pop star Rihanna.
That the billionaire Koch brothers are spending upwards of $1 million to launch an election-year advertising campaign in Wisconsin to sing the praises of Governor Scott Walker's policies comes as no surprise. What might not be readily apparent to casual observers is that taxpayers are subsidizing this electioneering.
Imagine two kajillionaires, one a pioneer of Internet commerce and the other a spectacularly successful investment fund manager. One lives on the east coast, the other on the west coast. They are known to be partial to liberal causes. They are losing sleep, awakened repeatedly by recurring nightmares. Always the same dream . . . Scott Walker sitting behind the big desk in the Oval Office.
Yesterday a federal appeals court in Chicago struck down Wisconsin rules requiring disclosure of election-season "issue ads" sponsored by interest groups. The court said state election authorities exceeded their legal authority in establishing the rules.
In 2010 the U.S. Supreme Court dropped a bomb on the American political landscape with its decision in Citizens United v. FEC allowing unlimited election spending by corporations, unions and other interest groups. The impact of the blast was felt across the nation. Here in Wisconsin, we already had a full-blown campaign arms race on our hands before Citizens United, but in the ruling's wake we've seen election spending more than triple.
To reach the conclusion that wealthy interests should be able to spend as much as they want to influence our elections, five of the nine justices married two legal doctrines that do not owe their origins to the plain words of the Constitution or the First Amendment but rather are judicial inventions.
The first is the idea that corporations are people. Ages ago the Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v. Sanford that people could be property, giving the judiciary's blessing to the institution of slavery. Now the court is holding that property can be a person.
The second doctrine that was joined in court-ordered matrimony to produce the Citizens United ruling is the notion that money equals speech. If you share the justices' belief that money is speech, then you will have to get comfortable with the idea of your employer compensating you for your labor with a pep talk instead of a paycheck. And good luck with the electric company when you send a voice recording to pay your utility bill.
In 2012, 32 donors to federal SuperPACs, the offspring of Citizens United and a related case called SpeechNow v. FEC, gave as much to influence elections as 3.7 million Americans gave to the Obama and Romney campaigns combined. If money equals speech, then each of those 32 SuperPAC donors spoke at 115,000 times the volume of each of the people who gave much smaller amounts to Romney and Obama. More than 300 million Americans gave nothing at all. The mute button was on for them.
A few weeks ago the same slim five-member majority doubled down on Citizens United in a new case called McCutcheon v. FEC and dropped another bomb on American democracy. While Citizens United gave the green light to interest groups to write a blank check for election advertising they sponsor themselves, McCutcheon lifts the lid on what wealthy donors can give directly to candidates, political parties and political action committees.
In McCutcheon, the court struck down the federal aggregate limit on campaign contributions. That limit was about $123,000. In a country of well over 300 million people, a mere 1,219 donors reached that limit in 2012. One of them whose style was cramped was Alabama businessman Shaun McCutcheon. He wants to give more. The same five justices who gave us Citizens United obliged him. Now a single wealthy donor will be able to give $3.6 million to federal candidates and committees.
Wisconsin is one of several states that have laws similar to the federal aggregate limit that was just tossed by the Supreme Court. Ours is an annual limit of $10,000 on total contributions to state and local candidates, parties and political committees. In 2010 and 2012 combined, only 299 donors – including 173 who don't live in Wisconsin – reached the $10,000 limit. These donors' numbers are equal to five one-thousandths of 1% of the state's population, although most of them are not Wisconsin residents.
One of the mega-donors who is chafing under the $10,000 limit is Racine businessman Fred Young, who is challenging the state law in court. If he succeeds, a tiny group of millionaires and billionaires will see their ability to influence state and local elections expanded exponentially. If Wisconsin's $10,000 aggregate limit on donations had not been in place in 2012, a single donor would have been give candidates and parties at least $6.8 million to influence state and local elections in our state.
The First Amendment is only 45 words long. The word "money" is not among those 45 words. And you can read the entire Constitution from the first word ("We") to the very last word of the 27th Amendment and you will not find the word "corporation" a single time. Five members of the Supreme Court have tortured the plain meaning of these founding documents to effectively remove the "r" from free speech and further empower the wealthiest and most privileged among us.
When judges issue rulings so at odds with bedrock principles of democracy and core American values like equality, liberty and justice for all, it is up to the people to overturn them. It is up to us to secure passage of a 28th Amendment clarifying that money is not speech, corporations are not people, elections are not auctions and public offices are not commodities to be sold to the highest bidder.
A tax-exempt nonprofit group used by the Republican Governors Association to collect unlimited contributions to spend on elections received the largest single contribution ever from Wisconsin – $1 million from a Milwaukee-area couple.
While I believe is time both for me personally and for the organization to transition to new leadership at the Democracy Campaign, I want no one to mistakenly conclude that I am retiring or stepping away from civic life and the fight for democracy. My movement building is going to take a new form after the end of this year, but I will most definitely be in the construction business.
A recent Gallup poll that shows older Americans dramatically shifted their political support from Democrats to Republicans supports a trend the Democracy Campaign has seen involving campaign contributions by retirees.
A wealthy Wisconsin donor contributed $6,250 to an outside electioneering group that supports Republican Governor Scott Walker around the time the contributor contacted the governor and sought to change the state's child support laws in his favor.
Elected officials are supposed to be faithful to the people.
Governor Scott Walker insisted for the longest time that he had zero tolerance for government employees doing campaign work while on the job, before the court-ordered release of more than 27,000 emails proved that claim false. The governor also repeatedly said he had no idea there was a secret email system in his county executive's office, until the emails showed he was prevaricating about that too.
Republican Governor Scott Walker accepted more than half of his $8.38 million in individual contributions in 2013 from well-heeled donors who gave $1,000 or more, a Wisconsin Democracy Campaign review found.
Talk about history repeating itself....
A legal opinion on whether the state's 127-year-old restriction on foreign land ownership can still be enforced poses a conflict of interest for Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen and could reward one of his largest special interest supporters depending on his decision.
I was honored to be asked to be the keynote speaker for Saturday night's dinner banquet at the Wisconsin Farmers Union convention in Wisconsin Rapids. After sharing some stories about my upbringing on the farm, I really only had two points I wanted to make to my audience.
Sometimes political corruption comes right up and slaps you on the face.
Voters are divided on many issues. But there is at least one thing that unites voters of every political stripe. There is tripartisan agreement among voters – Democrats, Republicans and independents alike – that the money in elections needs to be reined in.
The word "lobbyist" has become so tainted in the public eye that the American League of Lobbyists decided last month to change its name to the Association of Government Relations Professionals.
Political committees and outside electioneering groups named in various media reports as possible targets of a second John Doe investigation into suspected political wrongdoing in Wisconsin accounted for more than half of all the campaign spending in the 2011 and 2012 recall elections and two-thirds of the spending in last year's election for governor.
Coaches in every sport have raised the tactic to something of an art form. Get in the ear of the referees or umpires and keep chirping about every call that goes against your team. Give them a good chewing out on the small stuff. Wave your arms, jump up and down, and howl in protest over the big calls that don't go your way. All in hopes of getting them to swallow their whistle later in the game or maybe even give you a make-up call, one that really shouldn't go your way but does.
Governor Scott Walker recently amended his campaign finance report for the first six months of 2013 to lower contributions made by some of his high-end donors in order to protect them from being found in violation of campaign finance law.
"Since when do we not care about minorities?"
Having witnessed yesterday's public hearing on the sand mining bill, I fail to see why lawmakers are allowed to get away with calling them public hearings. The last thing they do is hear the public.
A Wisconsin Indian tribe that opposes another tribe’s $800 million Kenosha casino project contributed another $35,000 last month to an outside electioneering group that has spent more than $2 million since 2010 to help elect Republican legislators.
Republican legislators are drumming up support for a proposal that would strip the authority of local governments to site, regulate and even monitor controversial frac sand mines and the public health, safety, property damage and other concerns that come with them.
A Washington D.C. special interest group that wants school voucher programs expanded in Wisconsin has already vastly outspent all of the dozen candidates combined before next week’s primaries in two Assembly special elections.
On the surface, the 1% appear to be riding high, economically and politically speaking. Riding roughshod might be a more apt description. They have been positively cleaning up in very recent times.
At this moment when it has dawned on many if not most Americans that we have a bought Congress, it's worth reflecting on the fact that in the Federalist Papers, one of the founding fathers (widely thought to be James Madison in this instance) writing under the pseudonym "Publius" said that Congress "ought to be dependent on the People alone” and "Not the rich, more than the poor."
On Tuesday the U.S. Supreme Court took up a case that could end up exploding on the terrain of American democracy with a force every bit as devastating as the bomb the court dropped with its infamous 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC. The Democracy Campaign and 34 other citizen groups gathered on the steps of the State Capitol to sound alarms about McCutcheon v. FEC and what it could do to our political system. We weren't alone. Coalitions like ours did the same all across the country.
In a recent letter to the editor of Wisconsin's second largest newspaper, Representative Steve Nass claimed those wanting performance report cards for private schools receiving public funds under Wisconsin's school voucher program are under the spell of the money and power of the "education bureaucracy."
Quirky factoid: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has raised $48 million to get a 48% approval rating.
Fundraising by legislative and statewide candidates has become a nonstop chore with no break even in non-election years.
Governor Scott Walker’s plan to require unanimous approval of the Menominee Indian Tribe’s proposed Kenosha casino by all of Wisconsin’s 11 tribes likely means the project is doomed – an outcome that benefits a couple of huge GOP campaign supporters.
At the heart of the crooked dark money game and the hijacking of elections by phony front groups is the abuse of the federal tax code.
Senator Mary Lazich insists there is no need for redistricting reform. This is noteworthy because she chairs the committee that is sitting on legislation to overhaul the redistricting process in Wisconsin that closely mirrors the system in place in Iowa.
There is a conspicuous and growing disconnect between the public and the elected officials who are supposed to be representing the citizenry. Nowhere are the representatives and the represented more disconnected than on the subject of money in politics.
Today the Wisconsin State Journalendorsed a one-term limit for state Supreme Court despite having this to say about the proposal floated recently by the state bar association: "Voters would lose influence.... They would no longer be able to vote out justices for making unpopular decisions.... Candidates for state Supreme Court would still have to shill for votes and campaign donations to get through an initial election. Moreover, special interest groups might increase their spending on high court campaigns, knowing they'll have fewer opportunities to affect the makeup of the court."
Scott Walker and his legislative allies must really love Wisconsin. Because they seem determined to create two of them.
In the middle of the night a key committee of Wisconsin's Legislature did something petty, vindictive and un-American.
Luther Olsen has always struck me as a good guy. I have known the Ripon-area senator for about 20 years. I dealt with him extensively on school issues when he was in the state Assembly and chaired the education committee. I always found him to be a straight shooter.
I couldn't help but notice how former Governor Jim Doyle made Mike Tate's case for another term as the state Democratic Party's chairman.
A representative democracy is built on a simple premise: Those who govern need the consent of the governed. Win the most votes, get power. Earn public approval of your actions, stay in power.
An eye-opening article in New Yorker magazine tells the story of how public television backed away from its commitment to fund a new documentary film titled "Citizen Koch." Readers learn that the politically meddlesome billionaire David Koch has given public television $23 million, and don't have to read between many lines to come to the understanding that public television cooled on the project in hopes of appeasing Koch.
Wisconsin's campaign finance disclosure system once was the envy of the nation but now leaves a great deal to be desired. That sad reality came into sharp focus with the recent revelation that a private school voucher advocacy group, the American Federation for Children, told its members and funders that it spent close to $2.4 million last year to influence elections in Wisconsin after reporting less than $345,000 in campaign spending to state election authorities.
More than three years ago, the retired judges who serve on the state Government Accountability Board acted unanimously to close a gaping loophole in Wisconsin's disclosure rules for election campaigning – putting a stop to the phony "issue ad" gambit employed by interest groups that involves careful avoidance of what have come to be known as the "magic words" of election advocacy in order to sidestep disclosure requirements.
Yesterday I argued that Democrats had better grow a pair before even thinking about beating Scott Walker. Today let's turn our attention to why so many Democrats have no balls to begin with.
Monday, April 29, 2013
Anywhere you go in Wisconsin, if you run into someone from the Democratic Party's rank and file, you get the same question: Who's going to run against Walker?
A legislative committee has decided to ignore advice from one of its nonpartisan policy experts and keep Republican Governor Scott Walker's plan to create up to nine school voucher programs in the proposed 2013-15 state budget.
Governor Scott Walker and the GOP-controlled legislature say they will block efforts to enhance background checks on gun sales in Wisconsin because it's unnecessary, burdensome and doesn't have enough legislative support.
The Wisconsin Legislature used to be full of Dale Schultzes. Now he is a rare bird, hunted by a mob of his political genus if not his species. If he seeks reelection, he will face a primary challenge. His sin? Being what almost all Wisconsin Republicans were in the not-so-distant past.
Some years ago, sunset clauses were all the rage. Politicians on the prowl for waste, fraud and abuse in government wanted every law and every program to have one, to guard against laws that outlive their usefulness and get rid of government programs that do not work.
Republican Senator Ron Johnson's unsuccessful threat to prevent gun regulation legislation from being considered in the U.S. Senate this week shouldn't be much of a surprise.
It's said there are stages of grief. Could be five. Or seven. Or 10. The point being, in any case, that there are identifiable phases of the grieving process. Experts more or less agree it's some variation on the following theme: Denial. Anger. Guilt or blame. (This stage is full of "what ifs" and "if onlys" and some call it "bargaining," as in "I'll never do such and such ever again if I'm spared this miserable fate.) Then comes depression. Followed by acceptance.
The Wisconsin Realtors Association plans to spend more than $200,000 to reelect a state Supreme Court justice who voted to approve court rules the group helped write that say justices don't have to remove themselves from cases involving parties who helped get them elected.
The ALEC model for influencing state lawmaking is spreading, especially in the insurance industry. We're now seeing evidence on campaign finance reports that Wisconsin legislators are essentially being paid to be lobbied on insurance issues...getting "scholarships" to attend insurance industry conferences where they are educated on insurance-related legislation and regulation and given model bills to pass.
Get a load of the name of one of these outfits that has made payments to at least one Wisconsin lawmaker.... The Insurance Legislators Foundation is an arm of the National Conference of Insurance Legislators. A New York address is listed for ILF on the campaign reports we've examined. Also showing up on campaign finance reports are Griffith Foundation scholarships. This outfit sponsored an "Insurance 101" program for state legislators in conjunction with the NCOIL annual meeting in Alabama last November and is doing another one in Oklahoma later this month. Griffith is affiliated with another group called the American Institute for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters, which lists a Pennsylvania address and is described as "the leader in delivering proven knowledge solutions that drive powerful business results for the risk management and property-casualty insurance industry."Good grief.
Posted by Mike McCabe at 10:56 AM
In the ubiquitous TV ads for State Farm, Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers complains about insurance agents stealing his signature move and turning it into their own "Discount Double Check."
With apologies to Simon and Garfunkel, there must be 50 ways to rig an election.
Although Wisconsin was known from coast to coast for a century or more as a bastion of clean, open and honest government, our state was no stranger to political corruption before that. In the 1850s a crusading newspaperman named Stephen Decatur Carpenter exposed and condemned the open bribery of legislators by lobbyists seeking favors for a railroad company.
Ask any Capitol watcher what tops the agenda for the 2013-2014 legislative session, and it doesn't take long for mining to come up. A mining bill is coming any day now and is expected to be acted on early in the session.
George Will used to be fond of saying that conservatives are happy because the world is just as it should be. Indeed, if you look at Webster's definition of conservative, it speaks to the impulse to keep things the way they are.
Just before Christmas I did an interview with WisconsinEye, our state's version of C-SPAN, about the dizzying amounts of money spent on state and federal elections in Wisconsin since the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in the Citizens United case. More than $376 million can already be accounted for, and the meter is still running. Fundraising and spending reports due in late January will add considerably to the tally.
Democrats chalked up their defeats in the recall elections held earlier this year to one thing . . . money. But with Barack Obama safely returned to the White House, Democrats are warming up to the money game in a big way as they look ahead to the 2014 elections. No longer do they see Super PACs and dark money as necessarily bad things.
...the more they stay the same.
I was invited to speak to a local Rotary Club the other day about money in politics, and with the election right around the corner I ended up talking mostly about election spending in general and all the repugnant campaign advertising in particular. I told them I could think of no other industry that would risk advertising this way.
Another time for nose holding is nearly upon us, another time when "none of the above" would win more than a few elections in America if such a ballot option existed. Twice before such widespread alienation and dissatisfaction brought about a major resculpting of the political landscape, and both times Wisconsin was on center stage in these dramas.
Monday I suggested that maybe the time has come for a new political brand. Then I got to wondering how the donkey ever became the symbol of the Democrats and the elephant the emblem of the Republicans. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, the answer came in no time.
Clearly the current political landscape is stomach turning for most if not nearly all citizens. That’s why the ranks of the politically homeless have grown so. Pew Research Center findings show that the number of Americans who refuse to align with either major party is at its highest level in 70 years. That speaks volumes about the disillusionment so many feel about politics and those in power.
Ever get the feeling we're a nation of mice ruled by cats?
Over the weekend I went with my family to a science fair on the University of Wisconsin campus. There was everything from a way-over-my-head display on stem cell research to a crash-dummy demonstration of how much force is behind those highlight-reel hits by football players, which not coincidentally was next to a multimedia presentation on concussion research. Among the highlights of the fair was a Bill Nye the Science Guy type of show put on by Lebanese-born chemistry professor Bassam Shakhashiri featuring lots of explosions and other neat tricks.
Most regular people are feeling helpless if not hopeless when it comes to the commanding influence of money in politics. Different people call what we have now different things, but mostly agree it's not much of a democracy so long as power is concentrated in so few hands. At least as far as election financing goes, our system qualifies as a plutocracy (government of, by and for the rich). Some might say we have a kakistocracy (government by the worst and most unprincipled people). Or maybe a kleptocracy (government run by thieves).
You can likely count on one hand, with fingers to spare, the number of Supreme Court rulings that your average American can name, much less explain. Citizens United is one of the few. An unusually large number of people know of the case and have formed an opinion about the court's decision. The words "Citizens United" have become part of our political vocabulary, shorthand for democracy for sale.
I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said that expecting each new generation to forever live by the customs and laws of past generations is like expecting adults to wear the same clothes that fit them as children.
Even before the smoking guns were found, it was obvious that Wisconsin Republicans took full advantage of the redistricting process last year and drew new district maps designed to tilt the electoral scales in their favor.
When everything is important to do, nothing that really matters gets done.
First you are surprised. Then you get mad. Then you shrug. Then you are numb.
This week the Democracy Campaign issued a report showing that candidates, interest groups and political committees spent $81 million on the recall election for governor. Reflect on that a moment . . . $81 million was just spent in the pursuit of political power, with the aim of convincing voters that Scott Walker is a scandal-plagued, promise-breaking, "right-wing rock star" and that Tom Barrett has singlehandedly thrown Milwaukee's finances into disarray, put most everyone there out of work and rubbed salt in their wounds by repeatedly raising their taxes.
A fund created by Governor Scott Walker to pay legal expenses associated with a John Doe probe doled out nearly $10,000 for a public relations bill in the closing weeks of his June 5 recall election, a report filed with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service shows.
No doubt remains that there is a profound disconnect between the people of this state and nation and their elected representatives.
The political class is full of people who believe that perception is reality, and who are committed to spinning people dizzy so their distorted perception becomes a disfigured reality that favors the spinners and the benefactors on whose behalf they do their voodoo.
The ranks of America's politically homeless are larger than at any time in 70 years. This is no accident. Nor is it sustainable.
A recent state audit couldn't figure out how many jobs were created or retained from the hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars the state gave away through nearly 200 economic development programs since 2007.
Democrats have had plenty of look-in-the-mirror moments these last 30 years or so. And they never seem to take a real good look. Last week's recall election in Wisconsin was another. And from the sounds of it, there's a lot of excuse making but not much reflection going on.
Some Democrats will blame President Obama for their party's defeat in Wisconsin, gnashing their teeth over his refusal to come in and campaign with Tom Barrett. Some will blame the DNC for not jumping in the race with all its might. Some will blame the unions for wasting millions of dollars trying to anoint Scott Walker's opponent in a primary fight. Some will blame Russ Feingold for not accepting a role as savior. Some will blame young people for not going to the polls in droves the way they did in 2008.
Wisconsin isn't Wisconsin anymore. Our politics are not in keeping with our state's culture. We are a mild-mannered, polite people. Ask most anyone visiting for the first time to describe us, and chances are the word "nice" will cross their lips. But there's nothing nice or polite or mild-mannered about our politics these days. The New York Times was moved the other day to call Wisconsin the "land of cheese and rancor" and the "most politically divisive place in America."
Sunday's Wisconsin State Journal featured a front-page story based on the newspaper's analysis of political fundraising in Wisconsin from the beginning of 2011 through late April of this year. After poring over close to $87 million in contributions to candidates and political committees that have been reported to state election authorities, the State Journal concluded that "despite rhetoric, the parties' mountains of money are about even."