Special interests that support a legislative proposal to prohibit beer makers from owning distributorships contributed more than $937,000 in the last two years to candidates for statewide office and the legislature but small brewers say it’s meant to hurt their business.
As I've said before, Wisconsin is not a Republican red state or a Democratic blue state. It is purple. Republicans currently hold five of the eight U.S. House seats, but Barack Obama carried seven of the eight in the last presidential election. Only the suburban Milwaukee area's 5th district went for John McCain.
Members of the Legislature's budget writing committee voted yesterday to eliminate any public financing of state elections and use the funds instead for implementation of the new law requiring a photo ID to vote in Wisconsin.
Quoting Senator Luther Olsen:
I've written and spoken often about the fact that less than 1 percent of the population of Wisconsin pays for the election campaigning in state-level contests. It's the same story at the federal level.
If it looks to you like elected officials can't work across party lines to save their lives – or the country – that's because they aren't working across party lines. By design.
Restricted access to the State Capitol is in its third month now. All the doors at six of the eight ground-floor entrances to the building remain locked during normal business hours. The two that are open change periodically. Visitors wandering outside searching for an unlocked door have become a common sight.
We are living through what I have described as the third stage of ownership in American politics, as I've written a time or two before.
Less than a week ago, the Wisconsin State Journal published the latest in a three-year-long string of editorials calling for Wisconsin to stop electing judges. This came just over a week after the newspaper ran an editorial headlined "Wisconsin Supreme Court elections must go."
Talk about bad timing. On Monday Governor Scott Walker announced $25.5 million in state grants for freight rail upgrades in Wisconsin. That same day Wisconsin & Southern Railroad's CEO William Gardner was criminally charged with making illegal campaign donations, many of them to Walker's campaign. Over half of the state grants go to – you guessed it – Wisconsin & Southern Railroad.
After all hell broke loose in Wisconsin in mid-February I wrote that of all the paths our state government could take, the one chosen was the most polarizing and divisive imaginable, a path that leads to "ripping Wisconsin in two."
The second century of the American experiment was just coming to a close and the First Amendment was 185 years old when the U.S. Supreme Court radically reinterpreted the meaning of free speech. In 1976 the court ruled that money is speech.
Hate begets hate. Violence begets violence. Words variously attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. Words inspired by scripture. Gospel of Matthew, verse 26:52. Words thrown into sharp relief by the current race for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Organized boycotts of companies that supported Governor Scott Walker's election are unquestionably giving some businesses around the state a bad case of heartburn. So bad that Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce was moved to condemn the actions, and the state car dealers' association sent their members a script on how to respond to angry customers.
I've never seen people in Wisconsin more divided politically than right now. Our elected officials are hopelessly polarized, but we need to come to terms with the fact that it's because the people they represent are just as polarized.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Next month's state Supreme Court election got a lot more interesting in the last two weeks. On the surface the contest is between sitting Justice David Prosser and Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg and will decide whether the conservative faction on the high court maintains its majority or control of the court swings to the left. But with historic demonstrations erupting over Governor Scott Walker's union-busting "budget repair" bill, this election will be more than anything a referendum on Walker.
Aside from providing much-needed comic relief, the Call Heard Around the World served some useful purposes. It certainly cleared up a few things. Now we know for sure that Scott Walker has been lying through his teeth all along as he's repeatedly insisted that his bill is all about budget balancing. And we know our governor has a Koch habit.
Scott Walker insists there are two choices. Either break the unions in the name of saving money on health insurance and pensions, or massive layoffs. He said last night that unless his union-busting bill passes, some 1,500 public employees will lose their jobs by June with 5,000 to 6,000 more layoffs will be necessary in the next fiscal year. Pick your poison.
In response to congratulations for winning a costly victory over the Romans, King Pyrrhus of Epirus is reported to have said: "One more such victory will undo me!"
The ventriloquist dummies that pass for state policymakers these days are moving at breakneck speed to take away longstanding worker rights in Wisconsin. They say it has to be done right now to patch a hole in the state's budget for the current year, even though the Legislature's own nonpartisan budget analysts say there's no such short-term problem.
Paul Linzmeyer is scratching his head.
In its first day, the Citizen Vigil for the Greater Good succeeded in outing plans to eviscerate collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin. Within hours of exposing what those who've taken charge at the Capitol were cooking up out of public view, their plan was all over the news.
We've reached that point where you are left with a little vomit in your mouth when you hear Scott Walker say for the umpteenth time that Wisconsin is "open for business." But at least we are getting a clearer picture of what he actually means. Wisconsin is open for old business. The state under Walker seems to want little to do with anything resembling a new economy or, god forbid, a green economy. Wisconsin is not open to high-speed rail. Or wind power or biofuels.
A few weeks into Scott Walker's tenure as governor, one thing is becoming clear. He has no ideas. None of his own, anyway.