Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Walkergate: Panicking Pachyderms!

When the news of Cindy Archer's home being raided by the FBI and Dane County Sheriff's first broke, oh so long ago, the Walker apologists and supporters started feeling their first clenches of nervousness.

When Tim Russell, Kevin Kavanaugh and Brian Pierick were first arrested, they were quick to point out that none of it had to do with Scott Walker or his campaign. Their sigh of relief was audible across the state.

But a few weeks later, when Kelly Rindfleisch and Darlene Wink were arrested, their collective sphincters tightened again.

Through the course of the year, the right has done everything they could to try to discredit Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and his staff. They resorted to stalking their houses and combing through their social media pages. They did everything short of digging through their garbage (and for all we know, they just might have done that too!) to find something, anything to smear them with.

It got so bad that some of the most prestigious members of the legal community had to come out and tell them to knock it off.

Not that it mattered to these reprobates. They just continued with their cowardly and false attacks. Anything to discredit the DA and his staff in the public's eye.

But then they found the ground crumbling beneath their feet.

Rindfleisch took a plea deal.

One could almost smell their fear as they tried to figure out if and what Rindfleisch might have told the prosecutors.

When she was finally sentenced, their apoplectic reactions were fun to watch.

At the sentencing hearing, Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf did a 75 page power point presentation which showed not only Rindfleisch's criminal activity, but who her cohorts in crime were, including Scott Walker himself.

Later that week, when the actual power point was made public, it revealed that not only was Walker aware of what was happening, but that he was an active participant in it.

Of course, neither of those new emails were as concrete or as damning at the one we've known about since the beginning of the year, when we first learned that with all things Walker, there's more. There's always more.

Last week, as we learned that Russell was also to take a plea deal, Walker and his acolytes tried to say that this was the end of Walkergate, that there was nothing else to see her folks, so just move along now.

Bu the gentle reader knows better.

As more and more people are learning just how corrupt Walker really is, the right is going into a full blown panic.

Case in point would be Charlie Sykes, mouthpiece for the Teapublicans, who wrote a rather histrionic blogpost Monday morning, again trying to discredit the DA's office.

Not only does he repeat the same old attacks which were easily proven to be false, but comes up with this doozy, complete with misspellings and poor grammar:
"Legal observers," noted Wispolitics, "say Landgraf’s approach to the sentencing hearing was somewhat unusual, but effective in putting into the public eye new allegations on the guv."

Here is why it was unusual. The DA's presentation had only a sketchy relationship to the legal issue at hand (the sentencing). It was however clearly intended to influence public opinion and to damage both Walker his staffers who were not charged and were therefore not in a position to defend themselves.

Put another way: the attack on Walker and his aides was less legal than it was political. Chisolm's office has been smarting from questions about the probe's motives and perhaps even more so from suggestions that it had been much ado about nothing. So the dog and pony show may have been Chisolm's way of justifying himself, while taking the governor down a peg. But in order to do so, he had to use evidence gathered in a "secret" proceeding to make his point.

That raises questions about his political agenda as well as legal ethics.
I don't know, but I would say emails with Walker's name on them is a bit more solid than sketchy. In fact, it's downright concrete proof.

And the gentle reader surely has already noted that Sykes' complaint is dripping in hypocrisy.

This is the man who has repeatedly attacked Chisholm and his office for the past year, giving credence to the incredulous reporting from the likes of Brian Sikma of Media Trackers and the other propagandists in the employment of the Kochs and/or the Bradley Foundation. And he launched these relentless attacks knowing full well that the secrecy of the Walkergate investigations prevent Chisholm from defending himself or his office.

Sykes goes on to offer three opinions of what is going on (emphasis his):
It also leaves legal observers trying to read the tea leaves of Landgraf’s motivations with three theories emerging. One is that after more than two years of conducting the John Doe, this is all prosecutors have on Walker so they decided to drop it all in open court to dirty up the guv a little after failing to pull together anything that will stick. Those in that camp take the document dump as another sign the John Doe is winding down.

A second theory is prosecutors think the guv broke the law, but they are either unsure of being able to win a conviction or afraid to take him on.

The third is that there’s more to come and prosecutors wanted to fire a warning shot across Walker’s bow while also softening up the public to the idea that their guv -- or at least some close to him -- could be in hot water.


"Dirty up the guv"? "Fire a warning shot"? "Softening up the public"?

Either John Chisholm simply does not know how political his probe has become. Or he simply no longer cares.
Actually, the reality of it is that the DA was making his case that Rindfleisch was guilty and giving the court a full report in order to support their arguments. The reason Walker's name was included was because he was involved in it. To omit that fact would be egregious and unprofessional.

It is the right wing's fear and guilt that makes them focus on Walker's name being included instead of the fact that it was the sentencing hearing for Rindfleisch.

And the reason that Walker or others haven't been charged yet has nothing to do with their innocence or a lack of evidence. What it has to deal with is the fact that these types of corruption investigations and prosecutions starts from the ground floor and moves up the food chain.

Furthermore, it also has to deal with the fact that the DA's Office doesn't have an infinite budget. Besides the Walkergate cases, the DA's Office has also has done John Doe investigations in the Milwaukee Police Department and former Supervisor Johnny Thomas. And that's on top of the thousands of cases they handle every year.

You know this. I know this. And they know this. Which is why they are really panicking.

I've already given the gentle reader a plethora of reasons why the investigations will go on. And we have a good idea where the next phase might be focused, thanks to previous court actions. (Hint: Bid rigging and pay for play.)

Another good indication that Walker is indeed in trouble is the fact that one of his most ardent supporters and apologists, Wisconsin Reporter, has turned on him. His own propagandists are reporting that from January through October, Walker took 54 personal days, not including weekends. That is nearly 11 weeks worth of personal time, or more than 25% of the time measured. They even further reported that much of this time was spent out of state, even as he faced a recall and the state economy continued to tank as the rest of the nation's economy improved.

With an increasing number of indicators pointing to the fact that Walker will soon be facing questions he'd rather avoid, preferably sooner than later, it does raise one question in my mind.  No, not who is John Doe?  I think we all know that by now.

My question is this: Has Becky Kleefisch started to pick out the pattern for the drapes of the governor's office yet?

7 comments:

  1. Your description of current things political is very poetic, just what attracted me to your blog. Why be polite with these creeps?
    Poetic justice will be served.
    This whole crowd of Teapublicans has been given a Get Out of Jail free card by the corporate media, and that is just not right.
    They want the whole world for themselves, but that is not what this country is about.
    Your reporting on these problems is most appreciated.

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    1. Just because they are foul-mouthed, ignorant fools doesn't mean I have to stoop to their level.

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    2. In order to get down to their level you would need to crawl.

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  2. To really get down to their level first you would have to dig a hole and then crawl in.

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  3. today's paper has a capsule review of a new cd by "scott walker." it's described as "nightmarish, fractured and mesmerizing." that's about right.

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  4. you so full of shit your head will explode

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  5. Capper, you have done very well analyzing Walkergate, but there is more, so much more. We know there was coordination between the official office and the campaign, but I wonder if there was coordination between the campaign and outside groups? I believe that would be illegal. When I see things like this, I wonder:

    http://wicfg.com/index.cfm/m/10.cfm/page/4.cfm/story/314.cfm

    http://wicfg.com/index.cfm/m/10.cfm/page/4.cfm/story/312.cfm

    ReplyDelete