Thursday, June 16, 2011

A Correction: I Was Wrong About Wisconsin Supreme Court

In my last post, I wrote this about the Supreme Court of Wisconsin:
Now word as come out that the "Supreme Court" of Wisconsin has, without apparent deliberation or research of the law, has ruled the open meetings laws to be invalid and that our elected officials (or at least the Republican ones) are above the law and don't need to adhere to the laws that they themselves had passed. Needless to say, WMC spent tons of money in making sure that Annette Ziegler, Michael Gableman and David Prosser were on the bench, just so that they could shred the Constitution and the law books and make irresponsible decisions like this one.
This turned out to be rather shoddy reporting on my part, and for this I apologize.

The truth is, it's much, much worse than what I had reported.

First of all, the corruption was easy to spot, as former Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske points out:
Former Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske said Wednesday that she found Tuesday's high-court decision on the collective bargaining law disconcerting.

The court, which ruled 4-3, to reinstate the collective bargaining law left the perception that the decision was partisan because of the timing, she said.

"They had five hours of oral argument and issued a complicated decision within a week," Geske said in a telephone interview. "They didn't use their usual process."

Geske, a distinguished professor of law at Marquette University's Law School, is also a former justice. She served on the state's high court from 1993-'98.

The court, she said, is always faced with cases that both sides want action on quickly. But the role of the court is to take the case, analyze it thoroughly, review prior case law and render a decision.

"You want to establish the law for the future," Geske said. "Cases always are urgent. But the court always takes its time."

Instead, the court acted on the day the Legislature was prepared to vote again on the collective-bargaining law. The court issued its decision late Tuesday afternoon.
The "coincidences" of the timing of the ruling as well as how the Republicans "knew" that the Supreme Court was going to rule the way it did raised suspicions among more people than just Geske, and thus come amazing and horrifying things were found.

First of all, if the gentle reader would remember, there was a very despicable and irresponsible anti-Joanna Kloppenburg advertisement flooding the air waves. Said advertisement was paid for by a group called "Citizens for a Strong America" which turned out to be just another of the myriad and sordid front groups for the Koch brothers.

But Prosser isn't the only one who received the blessings of the Koch brothers. Michael Gableman received nearly $7,000 from the Koch brothers' PAC:


Likewise, Annette Ziegler received nearly $9,000 in the same manner:


But Prosser's connection to the Koch brothers doesn't just end with a commercial.

Brian Schimming, who used to be Prosser's chief of staff when Prosser was in the state assembly, and was the director of Prosser's recount team, and is first vice chair of WISGOP, also has a history of being a lobbyist for the Koch brothers (along with some other interesting names like Steve Foti and George Petak).

Along with Schimming, Ray Carey, who was a legislative aide to Prosser, is currently a lobbyist for the Kochs.

We can't do anything about Prosser for the the moment. But perhaps it's time to seriously consider recalling Gableman and Ziegler along with Scott Walker in the next round of recalls.  It's time and beyond that we return to our roots and make WisKochsin back into Wisconsin!

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for this even more eye opening article

    ReplyDelete