Federal Judge Tosses Frivolous John Doe Lawsuit

As the gentle reader might remember, Scott Walker was investigated twice for political corruption. The first investigation netted six arrests and convictions.

The second investigation found that prosecutors believed Walker to be the center of a "criminal scheme."

The investigators must have been getting close because the right wing,m dark money groups which were in collusion with Walker started throwing everything they could to hinder and even kill the investigation. These efforts included a myriad of frivolous lawsuits to slow prosecutors down enough for the bought and paid for Wisconsin Supreme (Kangaroo) Court to declare the corruption to be legal and closed the case.

One of these front groups for the dark money special interests that filed a lawsuit to stop the investigation was the misnamed MacIver Institute. The MacIver Institute is a collection of who's who of Wisconsin's dirtiest Republicans and is funded by the Koch Brothers and the Bradley Foundation. In other words, they are the Injustice League of Wisconsin.

MacIver claimed that prosecutors violated the law by illegally seizing evidence by not notifying the subjects that their emails were being confiscated.

On Wednesday, this lawsuit, like all the others filed in a real court of law, was summarily tossed out like the garbage it is.:

A federal judge Wednesday threw out a lawsuit that a conservative group brought against prosecutors over how they conducted their investigation of Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign.

The MacIver Institute alleged in its lawsuit that Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and others violated a federal law by seizing records without alerting their owners that they had taken them.

But U.S. District Judge William Conley ruled that prosecutors had acted properly because they took the records after getting a warrant. What's more, the prosecutors and investigators are immune from litigation, Conley ruled.

MacIver has vowed to appeal the ruling. Why not? It's not like they're wasting taxpayer dollars on these frivolous lawsuits.

Meanwhile, Walker must be less than thrilled. The last thing he wants as he gears up for yet another reelection campaign are his fellow cohorts in this criminal syndicate reminding the voters just how corrupt he really is.

David Clarke: Outrageous Wingnut Or Hypocritical Sellout?

The Interwebs are abuzz with Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke's latest outrageous tweet:

It makes one wonder why Milwaukee County's top cop is trying to incite a riot. If he wasn't the sheriff and if Wisconsin's governor and attorney general as corrupt as they are, he might have been investigated for misconduct in office.

But, as the gentle reader might have guessed, there's more. There's always more.

As if Clarke's tweet trying to incite an open riot wasn't bad enough and only serves to highlight his outlandishness, it also shines a light on his hypocrisy.

Clarke, as it turns out, is even more corrupt as those he would have us riot against:

This "America's Sheriff" gig is certainly paying off for David A. Clarke Jr.

The Milwaukee County sheriff burst on the national scene not quite two years ago with his mix of pro-cop rhetoric and searing blasts at Black Lives Matter and President Barack Obama. Clarke's sudden rise to national prominence, earning him the nickname America's Sheriff, has been accompanied by an equally dramatic jump in his outside income.

Clarke's ethics disclosures show that he brought in slightly more than $150,000 in speaking fees, travel reimbursements, gifts and other items during 2015 — more than what he made as Milwaukee County sheriff, a job that pays $132,290 annually.

Notably, Clarke received a $40,000 trip to Israel and Russia funded largely by the National Rifle Association, earned $26,000 in speaking fees, locked up $22,500 in car services to shuttle to his various media appearances, took a plane flight valued at $9,000 to speak at an Idaho conference and scored playoff basketball tickets from the Milwaukee Bucks' GM.

[...]

During 2015, private groups or individuals paid $51,840 in airfare for Clarke to fly to 25 events, meetings or speaking engagements. That included $9,110 in airfare for Clarke, donning cowboy hat and uniform, to speak at the 33rd annual Allen & Co. conference — a four-day retreat for moguls and media figures — in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 10, 2015. Overall, he had 11 flights that cost more than $1,000.

Among other items given to the sheriff in 2015 were:

• $26,000 in honorariums for speeches he gave to seven groups. His biggest was a $10,000 payment from the National Shooting Sports Foundation — the trade association for the firearms industry — for a talk at the group's annual trade show on Jan. 19, 2015. He was also given a $1,159 firearm.
• Two $175 tickets to a Milwaukee Bucks playoff game against the Chicago Bulls from general manager John Hammond on April 23, 2015. He also received four $58 tickets to a Milwaukee Brewers game on Aug. 14, 2015, against the Philadelphia Phillies.
• $22,500 in car services for media interviews. Clarke's form says this expense occurred in 2016, even though the report was supposed to cover only 2015 and was signed in January 2016.
• $600 annual membership to the exclusive National Republican Club of Capitol Hill. Clarke, who runs as a Democrat but lines up politically with Republicans, likes to say he belongs to neither political party.
• A black powder muzzleloader valued at $350 for winning the Charlton Heston Courage Under Fire Award in 2015 at the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of thousands of GOP activists. Clarke's campaign reimbursed CPAC a little more than $3,000 for his expenses for this event.

If the gentle reader is thinking, "There oughta be a law!" against this sort of stuff, well, there is:

A former attorney for Milwaukee County says Clarke may have trouble justifying all of his gifts and expenses from last year.

"County ethics code is confusing, contradictory, frustrating," said the former official, who asked not to be named. "(But) Clarke’s fees, trips, meals, etc., seem a clear violation."

The ex-county attorney said it appears that Clarke is being given gifts and being paid fees to give speeches because of his position as sheriff.

The trips, in particular, do not seem to have any benefit to the county, the ex-county attorney said. They are not generating grant money for Milwaukee County or bringing support for positions taken by the County Board or the executive.

"Most of his trips are not publicized, or not until after the fact," the former county attorney said. "They are not publicized or promoted in any fashion beneficial to the county, only to himself."

Like I said at the beginning of this, if the governor and attorney general weren't as corrupt as they are, Clarke would be investigated and charged.

Walker Might Still Face Charges From John Doe Investigation

When The Guardian released previously unseen emails stemming from the John Doe investigation into Scott Walker, it revealed just how corrupted the system in Wisconsin really is.

While it looked like Walker might have gotten off the hook, thanks to the flood of money coming in from his dark money masters, he might still be facing charges.

Via our friends at the Center for Media and Democracy's PR Watch, we learn that Wisconsin Democrats have sent a seven-page letter to Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne, asking him to investigate Walker again for possible charges such as soliciting and accepting corporate monies, ethics laws and misconduct in public office.

While this is enough to cause one to hope against all hope that Walker might finally be held accountable for some of his egregious misdeeds and crimes, I am concerned that the Democrats made a serious miscalculation.

Even if Ozanne finds sufficient cause to file charges and even if Walker and company are found guilty, Walker and his dark money masters would only continue to appeal the case all the way to the state supreme court, which we already know to be as corrupt as corporately-controlled as Walker and the other Republicans. This kangaroo court would only summarily overturn the case without even a most rudimentary glance at the mountain of evidence, as they have doe before.

The Democrats would be smart to hedge their bets by sending another letter to the US Attorney's office, asking them to also investigate Walker for violations of federal laws. After all, the feds were the ones that finally indicted and convicted Blago for similar crimes.

But either way, Walker might just want to set up another legal defense, err, legal cooperation fund before he goes even deeper in debt.

And who knows, we might still get to see the image many Wisconsinites have been waiting many long years for...Walker in handcuff:

Happy Anniversary, Scott Walker!

Happy Anniversary to Scott Walker!

It was one year ago today that Scott Walker's presidential aspirations were officially declared dead.

When he ended his 70-day campaign, he was a hot mess.  His campaign owed over a million dollars and he was underwater in the pools, with less than a 40% approval rating. When he dropped out, he encouraged other Republican hopefuls to follow his lead so that there could be a focus on keeping Donald Trump from being the Republican nominee.

One year later and we find that Walker isn't faring any better than he was then - and in some ways, even worse off.

His campaign still owes hundreds of thousands of dollars and he is becoming more and more desperate in trying to raise any money to pay off his massive debt.

His approval rating is still underwater, as evidenced by a Marquette University poll that came out today:

Gov. Scott Walker's job approval was 43%, with 52% disapproving of his performance.

And now we find Walker touting Trump and encouraging people to vote for him.

And as the icing on his anniversary of failure cake, The Guardian recently reported on new Walkergate emails which really show just how corrupt Walker is and how he ran the state on a strictly pay-for-play basis.

So Happy Anniversary to Scott Walker! Now let's all raise our glasses in a toast that Walker will still get the one gift that he so richly deserves - an indictment.

Walker Answers Every Which Way But Honestly To Walkergate Release

On Wednesday, the Guardian reported about previously unreleased emails from the John Doe investigation into Scott Walker. The emails confirmed and expanded the news that Walker was illegally collaborating with dark money groups and that he and the Republicans were running an expansive pay-for-play operation in the State of Wisconsin.

On Thursday, the press finally got a chance to question Walker on this news (as much as the corporate media ever questions Walker anyway).

True to form, Walker responded every which way - but honestly - to the questions:

In a stop in Dane County Thursday, Walker initially avoided a question about whether he had raised money for the club but at a second stop in Fox Crossing he said he isn't doing it now.

"I don't right now," Walker said. "And the bottom line with the story that came out yesterday is you’ve got folks who have apparently failed in the court of law multiple times trying to put out selected information in the court of public opinion."

But then the Republicans finally settled on one strategy.

Some of the top, and most corrupt, Republicans in the legislature sent a letter to Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, asking him to start an investigation into this. Schimel, who already showed himself to be a good and faithful servant to his corporate overlords, eagerly started looking into it.

Oh, of course not the pay for play or illegal campaigning, of which almost every Republican is guilty of, but into who leaked the John Doe documents, which were ordered sealed and locked away by the Wisconsin's Supreme(ly corporate) Court.

Walker jumped all over that, stating that he was no in favor of letting justice take its course (see video).

Speaking at another event in Plover, Walker said he wouldn't weigh in on whether there should be an investigation.

"I’ll leave that up to the legal authorities. But it’s clear that somebody violated the law," the governor said.

That alone is so hypocritical that it is mind-blowing. Walker and his dark money overlords have spent millions and millions of dollars to thwart justice and interfere with the John Doe investigation into them. Now that the judicial system has been just as corrupted, he is perfectly fine with letting it work its course.

On Friday, Democratic State Representative Peter Barca is to have a press conference calling for an investigation into the crimes indicated in the emails. However, unless that investigation is conducted by the feds, it is a moot point. The Republicans in Wisconsin are so corrupt that they would never investigate one of their own, much less hold them responsible. And if they did do an investigation, you just know that it would be so tainted as to be worthless.

John Doe Lives!

As the gentle reader surely remembers, Scott Walker was the subject of not just one, but two, John Doe investigations.

The first investigation was into illegal campaign donations and illegal campaigning while Walker was running for governor the first time. It resulted in six felony convictions of Walker's closest friends, allies and staffers.

The second investigation, which was born of the first one, delved into the illegal collaboration between Walker's campaign and various dark money groups.

The Walker, the other state Republicans and the dark money group, led by the Wisconsin Club for Growth (WCfG) have tried anything and everything they could to kill the John Doe investigation, including a coordinated series of lawsuits against the prosecutors. Eventually, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, being as corrupt and beholden to the dark money groups as Walker, ruled against John Doe. They ordered the investigation stopped and that the prosecutors should turn over all their evidence and destroy all the copies thereof.

But one thing that the right wing dark money groups didn't count on was their own greed and overreach.

In another case, former top Walker aide Cindy Archer filed a frivolous lawsuit in federal court against Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and the other prosecutors, claiming they violated her civil rights by investigation the commission of a crime to which she was a party. In what was surely pure coincidence, the lawsuit was funded by WCfG and had the same lawyers as the other anti-John Doe suits.

It was obvious early on that the lawsuit was bogus. Not only were the facts in the case incorrect, but an audio tape of the actual investigation showed that almost every claim she made in her lawsuit was a flat out lie.

On Thursday, The Honorable Lynn Adelman ruled against Archer and her dark money supporters, as he should have:

In his decision, Adelman struck down several charges of Archer and her attorney, including that the warrant executed in her home was improper. He outlined a timeline for the development of both John Doe investigations and noted how conservative advocacy groups launched a "full blown campaign against the investigations and against the defendants," led by Eric O'Keefe at the Wisconsin Club for Growth.

“The plaintiff’s allegation of a lack of probable cause for the search of her home is contradicted by the warrant,” Adelman wrote.

He said the warrant was properly executed and issued by Judge Neal Nettesheim, who concluded investigators had probable cause to search Archer’s home.

Good news indeed. But there's more. There's always more.

Adelman went a step further and really foiled the dark money groups by reversing the Wisconsin Supreme Court in regards to destroying the evidence:

On Thursday, Adelman rejected those claims, and allowed for some of the evidence in the John Doe probes to be preserved with his court. Archer's attorneys had asked for the court to bar Chisholm's investigators from having access to evidence in the John Doe probes. Adelman rejected that request in part, allowing the investigators to file evidence from the second John Doe probe with his court clerk, but said the evidence will remain under seal and not be docketed.

He noted that the order does not violate Wisconsin's Supreme Court order calling for the evidence to be collected and destroyed.

"My order does no more than permit the defendants to provide copies of the relevant materials to the clerk of this court. It does not address the issue of access to the materials or whether the state Supreme Court or this court should decide that issue. Thus, the order does not in any way weaken the state court’s determination that the records should remain secret."

That odor you smell is Walker and his buddies soiling themselves.

Then it just keeps getting better when the reporter, Katelyn Ferral of The Cap Times, listed some of the things Adelman cited in his ruling, which shows just how corrupt things have gotten:

The evidence included:

– emails from Walker’s staff advising him to “[s]tress that donations to WiCFG are not disclosed” and to tell donors “that you can accept corporate donations and it is not reported;”

– a $1 million deposit into WiCFG from Stephen Cohen, founder of SAC Capital Advisers, shortly after Walker was scheduled to meet with an SAC representative;

– a March 2012 email from Walker to his fundraiser stating that “Bruce and Susie Kovner said that they want to give more” and 10 days later a $50,000 check from Bruce Kovner arrived in WiCFG’s account. The check’s memo line read “501c4-Walker;” and

– a 2012 email from Walker’s fundraiser to Walker regarding “meetings to make happen while in Sea Island . . . Paul Singer: Grab him.” A few months later, $250,000 was deposited into WiCFG’s account from Singer.

In the meantime, we are still waiting to see if the Supreme Court of the United States will hear a petition filed by Chisholm, asking them to vacate the state's supreme court's decision. They should since at least two of the justices had benefited greatly from WCfG in their own races.

Folks, make sure you keep a lot of popcorn in stock. This could get real interesting.

Happy Deanna Alexander Day!

Deanna Alexander is the Milwaukee County Supervisor representing the 18th District.   She is also very conservative.

Being conservative, she holds many of the same values as her other conservatives - bigotry, racism and the love of money, whether it comes from the Koch Brothers or from her buddy, Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele.

Being conservative, Alexander also likes to portray herself as being fiscally conservative and oh so ethical.  Her hypocrisy regarding this has been exemplified by her using tax dollars to commit voter suppression.

She also showed her hypocrisy when she used her office to help raise funds for her father's funeral, even as she voted to deny funding for indigent burials.

As it turns out, Alexander seems to be in the habit of using her office for personal gain.

It was five years ago today that Alexander got fired by the State of Wisconsin when she used her position as an Income Maintenance Worker to try to help her get daycare benefits.

As the gentle reader might remember, due to Scott Walker's refusal to properly administer the Economic Support Program, the state had to take it over to avoid a class action lawsuit.  In a most unusual arrangement, the workers remained county employees but worked under the supervision of the state.

It was during this time that Alexander worked for the program. Not only did she work there, she was a client, utilizing the daycare subsidies.  However, she tried to use her position as an Income Maintenance Worker to gain benefits that were not available to the public.  There was no fighting the accusation since they had the emails to prove it.

In other words, Alexander is a typical, run of the mill conservative Republican.

If the voters in the 18th District have the desire for clean government and good government, that their tax money is being used appropriately and that their interests - as opposed to those of the 1% - are being represented, they need to vote for Martha De La Rosa.

Right Wingers Do Love Their Corruption

From my dear friend Anomaly (the bestest blogger evah!) at Freak Out Nation, we see Texans take their love of corruption very seriously:

A Texas judge is in a local hospital after being shot overnight outside her Austin home, according to police.

Travis County District Judge Julie Kocurek has been involved in many cases, including high-profile political cases involving former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay.

In addition, Kocurek has also been active in the local community, including serving as a local co-chair in the National Campaign to Stop Violence, a past board member of the Mothers’ Milk Bank at Austin and a supporter of the West Austin Youth Association, according to CNN.

However, the police have not determined what the motivation was for the shooting.

Kocurek, who has been the presiding judge of the 290th District Court since 1999, was struck around 10:15 p.m. (11:15 p.m. ET) Friday near her house in the Texas capital’s Tarrytown neighborhood, said Austin police Lt. Lee Rogers.

The judge was last listed in stable condition at a nearby hospital.

Geez, here in Wisconsin, the Republicans only legalize corruption and buy the judges. Although, to be honest, they probably undid the gun laws we had in case the first plans didn't work.

Walker Begs As Wisconsin Burns

Last week was another bad week for Wisconsin, with news coming that thousands of jobs would be leaving the state. To make things worse, Scott Walker and his Republican cronies were too busy shaming the poor to do anything to stop the downward spiral in which they put the state.

So Walker does what he would normally do after such a bad week - he sends out a fundraising email asking for people to bail out his campaign. Even though his campaign barely made it to 10 weeks, he still managed to end it a million dollars in the red.

Here is the email that Walker sent out sans links (a screencap of it is at the bottom of this article):

Friend,

Our race for president didn't turn out the way we wanted. While we are disappointed, there are always new ways to serve others and plenty of conservative reforms to enact in Wisconsin.

Our "Scott Walker for America" campaign may have ended, but we attracted a tremendous grassroots team of supporters. Together we share a deep and enduring commitment to getting things done, putting things right, and moving America forward.

For a kid who grew up in small-town America, whose family didn't have a lot of money, the opportunity to run for President of the United States is an experience beyond my wildest dreams and an experience I will never forget.

There are three things I want to tell you, Friend.

First, thank you for believing in me and our campaign for President.

Second, I am back in my office in the state Capitol working on our next round of big, bold, conservative reforms. We have made incredible strides in Wisconsin, but we are not done yet. Our proven reforms have been a model for other states to follow and we will continue to build upon those reforms in the months and years to come.

Third, as things changed dramatically in the presidential race, "Walker for America" incurred a campaign debt and it is my hope that you and all of our supporters will chip in and make an online contribution of $10, $35, $50, $100, $250, or more so we can end this campaign in the black. It is a lot to ask, I know, but we feel personally obligated to make sure that every small business that extended us their good faith and credit is repaid. And we are hoping we can count on you to help.

When God closes one door, another one opens. While I don't know exactly what the future holds, trust me, we will continue leading the fight for big, bold, conservative change in Wisconsin and across America.

Thanks for believing in me -- and in our cause.

Scott Walker

P.S. Every good thing in my life has come about through teamwork. Tonette, Matt, Alex, and I are so proud to have you on our team. With your good help, we will end our presidential race on a positive note with all of the bills paid. It is your contribution of $25 or $250, $50 or $500, or $100 or $1,000 that will erase every penny of outstanding debt from our campaign together. Thanks in advance for helping out. I sure appreciate it.

I love the way he says he feels personally obliged to pay off his debts with everyone else's money. Then again, that is the perfect description of how he runs the state as well, paying off his campaign donors with taxpayer money.

And is it me, or is that last line about God opening doors a not-too-subtle plea for someone to give him a new job?

What is the most egregious thing about this email is that, in what I'm sure is just pure coincidence, the Republican state senators held a special session Friday, going into the wee hours of Saturday morning, to pass laws opening the floodgates for dark money to come pouring in and to kill off the watchdog organizations that could have done something about all of the corruption. But like I said, I'm sure it's pure coincidence.

And if you believe that, Walker has got some other stuff to sell you too.

Click on image to embiggen

GOP Pass Their Corruption Agenda

Allowing unlimited corporate dollars in elections while dismantling nonpartisan GAB watchdog shows GOP agenda

 

MADISON – After hours of debate yesterday on AB 387, a bill that will allow unlimited corporations and billionaires to collude with candidates and spend unlimited amounts in state and local elections, Rep. Chris Taylor (D-Madison) released the following statement:

 

“At a time when Wisconsin citizens want the state legislature to focus on creating family supporting jobs and revitalizing our lagging economy,  Governor Walker and his legislative allies decided to use their power to line their campaign accounts, exclude themselves from corruption investigations and dismantle our ethics and elections watchdog, the GAB.   

 

“Unless special interest groups, corporations and billionaires say specific words including “vote for” or “vote against” and make this type of communication their major purpose, they can keep their donors secret and not make any disclosures to the public.  And for the first time in Wisconsin history, candidates can form, coordinate with and run entities that take secret corporate and billionaire money.  Wisconsin candidates now have a legal tool, with which they can effectively circumvent any limits on candidate campaign contributions, a previously unlawful tactic Governor Walker allegedly employed during his recall campaign.

    

“AB 387 creates a conflict of interest for every legislator in the Capitol, and Republicans had no business bringing it forward and voting on it.  How can we pass bills that allow policymakers to collude with corporations and billionaires to basically money launder and evade candidate campaign limits?  Last night, after Republicans rejected our attempts to eliminate these conflict of interest provisions, I was proud to stand with my 34 Democratic colleagues in recusing ourselves from voting on this bill.  The people of our state deserve legislators who are looking out for the people’s interests, not their own political futures.”  

 Representative Chris Taylor

Wisconsin, I hardly recognize you!

At the turn of the 20th century, Wisconsin government was rife with corruption. Big business and wealthy plutocrats controlled the politicians and thus controlled the government. They had their puppet politicians pass laws that benefited them regardless of who might be hurt by them.

This high level of corruption gave way to a progressive movement led by Fighting Bob LaFollette. LaFollette, who was a Republican, led the way to clean up the government, enacting laws that returned the government to the control of the people. He led the way to busting trusts, enacting election reforms and creating the Wisconsin Idea. The changes brought on by LaFollette and other progressives have well served the people of Wisconsin for over a 100 years.

Ironically, LaFollette was a Republican.

It's ironic because this week, modern day Republicans are in the process of removing the last remnants of LaFollette's legacy of good government.

This week, Scott Walker and his fellow Republicans have started pushing through three bills that would end good government.

The first bill would change campaign finance laws, opening the flood gates for dark money to come pouring in:

The legislation would double the amount of contributions that state and local candidates could receive from individuals, and would adjust that limit for inflation every five years.

[...]

Under the bill, political parties and legislative campaign committees could make unlimited donations to a candidate committee.

The bill would allow legislative campaign committees and political parties to receive unlimited contributions, with the exception of a $12,000 per year limit on PAC contributions to those committees and parties.

The legislation would allow unlimited contributions to be made to and transferred between political action committees. Recall committees and referendum committees could also receive unlimited funds, and unlimited funds could be donated to pay expenses related to a recall or recount. Candidates could also make unlimited personal contributions to their own committee.

The proposal would ban candidates from coordinating with outside groups on express advocacy — calls to vote "for or against" a candidate — but would place no restrictions on coordination on issue advocacy.

In an interesting twist and a brilliant maneuver, each and every Democrat recused themselves from the vote, pointing out that they have a conflict of interest because it would directly affect their own campaign committees. The Republicans were at a loss at having their blatant corruption and greed exposed like that, but not enough so to keep them from passing the bill anyway.

Now, obviously, by opening the flood gates for dark money like that, it also opens the door to even more corruption and ethics violations.

To deal with that, the Republicans are also set to dismantle the Government Accountability Board (GAB), a nonpartisan panel of former judges that investigate campaign finance and ethics violations. The Republicans want to replace the GAB with two partisan panels - one for campaign finance violations and one for ethics violations - each consisting of three Republicans and three Democrats. This will leave the committees at stalemates on almost every issue.

On top of that, each committee is given a very small budget to use to conduct their investigations. If the committee would need more money, they must ask the Joint Finance Committee for that extra funding. Of course, the Joint Finance Committee has a huge Republican majority, making it highly unlikely that they would approve any funding to investigate themselves.

It was this kind of set up that allowed the caucus scandals of fifteen years ago to happen. In that scandal, both parties were using their government offices as campaign machines, having government staff spending most of their time fundraising and performing other political operations.

As the gentle reader might have guessed, many of the people caught up in that scandal are also behind the legalization of corruption now.

The only and very small ray of hope is that it appears that some Republicans in the state senate haven't had their moral compasses totally destroyed and are balking at this measure.

Just in case the Republicans might have missed something that still might allow one of them to get caught with their hands in the dark money cookie jar, they added one another safeguard for their crimes - the killing of John Doe probes for political crimes. Walker, who was the subject of not one, but two, such probes, is very eager to get that on his desk before he gets subjected to a third investigation.

Now, there are probably lots of folks that are thinking what Wisconsin needs is another Fighting Bob LaFollette to come and restore good government. In a way they are right.

But what we really need here in Wisconsin is for us to realize that we are the next Bob LaFollettes and reclaim our state.

Meanwhile, if you happen to be in Wisconsin, listen real carefully and you'll hear a whirring sound. That's Fighting Bob spinning in his grave.

Confirmed: Scott Walker Is John Doe!

Wisconsinites knew for years that Scott Walker was John Doe - or to be more precise, that he was the subject of the John Doe investigations.

We knew that, despite of his protestations to the contrary, for of a number of reasons.

One, the emails showed that Walker was in the thick of things. Two, he was caught stonewalling the investigation. Three, Walker created a legal defense cooperation fund, which he could only have done if he was under investigation.

Investigators had a number of options that they could pursue with Walker. There was the illegal politicking of having his county staff coordinating with his campaign staff. There was using county time, equipment and personnel for campaigning and fundraising. Then there were allegations that Walker and others, including his then campaign finance director, John Hiller, doing bid rigging for a lease to house county staff.

It was the last crime that prosecutors were pursuing when they executed search warrants on the homes of his aides, including Cindy Archer. We know this because of the search warrant request the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office filed in response to Archer's frivolous lawsuit.

From the Wisconsin State Journal:

Prosecutors, including Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, a Democrat, and assistant district attorneys Bruce Landgraf and David Robles, were looking into signs of misconduct and bid-rigging regarding competition to house the Department of Aging in private office space.
Hiller, a real estate broker who at the time was Walker’s longtime campaign treasurer, was quietly working for one of three bidders seeking to provide office space and purchase an aging building known as City Campus owned by Milwaukee County.

Stelter argued in the warrant request that Walker committed a felony when in June of 2010 he used a personal email account to ask Hiller for a letter that rejected Department of Transportation and Public Works director Jack Takarian’s request for a six-month extension for the county’s Department on Aging office lease in the Ruess Federal Plaza in Milwaukee. That rejection set up the need for a later deal “against the interests of Milwaukee County,” the warrant said.

Hiller then forwarded the email to Jensen, according to the search warrant request, who then with Hiller wrote the letter rejecting the extension.
The State Journal reported in 2014 that Hiller got detailed financial information from Archer when she was county director of the Department of Administration around the time he was bidding on the deal, according to emails released in the John Doe investigation. The probe, which began when Walker was Milwaukee County executive, showed Hiller lobbied for the county to sell its City Campus building and then got information around the time bids were being evaluated to provide office space for workers to be displaced by the sale.
The county never followed through with the deal for the building and no charges were filed.

Hiller, in one email to Archer on Aug. 20, 2010, said he thought officials involved with the request for proposals were unaware of his involvement. “I am very sensitive to the situation and I work pretty hard not to leave finger prints,” wrote Hiller, who resigned as Walker’s campaign treasurer in May 2011.

Now, as the media has never failed to report, Walker was never charged for these crimes.

What the media never fails not to report is that this is because Walker had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on high-priced private attorneys that specialize in corruption cases like this. Walker also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in defense of his campaign. And this does not include the money he spent out of pocket before he established his legal defense cooperation fund or the money he spent to buy the silence of his former aides like Archer and Kelly Rindfleisch.

Nearly a million dollars can buy a lot of "innocence", I guess.

Scott Walker's Selective Memory

Trying to build excitement - any excitement at all - about is soon to be official presidential bid, Scott Walker launched the above video*. Unable to tout his record on job creation, a healthy business environment, lower taxes or much of anything else, Walker decided to make shit up, like how he "stood his ground" and was "unintimidated" by his own constituents and the workers of Wisconsin. Walker also bragged about winning the recall election (look for this to be a common theme from him).

Of course, by standing his ground, he means scurrying around in the tunnels below the state Capitol, like the rat he is:

My brother-in-blog, Jeff Simpson, also recalled something else about the recalls - how Walker got a lot of help from the dark money group Coalition for American Values, which spent $400,000 in ads to help Walker win.

Jeff's post made me recall another thing about the recall. It was Walker's illegal politicking during the recalls that put him the middle of another John Doe investigation, one in which prosecutors said that Walker was at the center of a "criminal scheme":

Prosecutors allege that Gov. Scott Walker was at the center of an effort to illegally coordinate fundraising among conservative groups to help his campaign and those of Republican senators fend off recall elections during 2011 and '12, according to documents unsealed Thursday.

In the documents, prosecutors lay out what they call a "criminal scheme" to bypass state election laws by Walker, his campaign and two top deputies — R.J. Johnson and Deborah Jordahl.

The governor and his close confidants helped raise money and control spending through 12 conservative groups during the recall elections, according to the prosecutors' filings.

The documents include an email in which Walker tells Karl Rove, former top adviser to President George W. Bush, that Johnson would lead the coordination campaign. Johnson is also chief adviser to Wisconsin Club for Growth, a conservative group active in the recall elections.

"Bottom-line: R.J. helps keep in place a team that is wildly successful in Wisconsin. We are running 9 recall elections and it will be like 9 congressional markets in every market in the state (and Twin Cities)," Walker wrote to Rove on May 4, 2011.

I reckon that Walker is telling us to recall that the only way he can win is by cheating, as if that was something we'd forget.

*Gotta love the CGI snowflakes at the beginning of the video.  I think he picked that up from Faux News.

Republicans Give Abele Carte Blanche With Taxpayers' Money

Even without the full effect of Act 14, which consolidated an unprecedented amount of power in the hands of Milwaukee County Emperor Chris Abele, we have seen the problems that have arisen and the potential for a level of corruption which would leave Scott Walker drooling.

But that wasn't enough for the boy prince, who wanted even more power.  And in return for agreeing to be the MPS Privatization Czar and the for sacrificing Milwaukee County's poorest of the poor at the altar of corporate welfare, the state Republicans have agreed to reward him by increasing his power even more and taking away almost any resemblance of checks and balances in Milwaukee County.

From Lisa Kaiser at the Shepherd Express:

Now, you may wonder why anyone should care. The board is dysfunctional, right?

Well, let’s think about this for a second.

The executive branch crafts its proposals in secret. The executive is not required to hold public hearings on, say, requests for proposal. That happens in the legislative branch, where policies are debated in public.

What will the public ever know about land sales, "transfers," leases and contracts? This is merely inviting corruption.

Next, think about this sort of concentration of power in one person’s hands.

It’s not a good thing. I don’t care who the county executive is.

Already, Abele is planning to hand off the Marcus Center building to the state-run Wisconsin Center District. The county owns it, county taxpayers poured millions of dollars into it. For insurance purposes, the building is valued at $77 million, according to data provided to me by Supervisor Gerry Broderick.

Yet Abele would hand off this $77 million asset to the Wisconsin Center District and stick the county with the center's debt.

No wonder why the suburban Republicans love him.

This billionaire’s son is destroying the county in ways that Walker could only dream of.

Along with the unconscionable shredding of the state's open records laws in the same budget provision, Wisconsin isn't just open for business. It's open to corruption.

Sadly, that's not the worst of it.

After reading the section that deals with the Milwaukee County Emperor's section in the Republicans' omnibus amendment, (on pages 23 and 24), I saw this passage:

"...Authorize the county executive in a county with a population of 750,000 or more to have sole authority over the following administrative actions and specify that that the actions may take effect without any review or approval of the county board: (1) procurement, including requests for proposals or information, negotiation, approval, amendment, execution, administration, and payment; (2) contracting, including negotiation, requests for proposals or information, approval, amendment, execution, administration, and payment; (3) administrative review of appeals of the denial in whole or in part of a contract award, an initial permit, license, right, privilege, or authority, except an alcohol beverage license, for which a person applies through the county; and (4) actions taken under the administrative manual of operating procedures related to the authority and powers granted to a county executive under state law and under county ordinances, and specify that the county executive's action shall prevail over the county board's action to the extent that the county executive's action and the county board's action conflict.  ...Prohibit the county board from enacting an ordinance or adopting a resolution or policy that conflicts or interferes in form or function with the statutory authority of a county executive."

In English, this means that Abele can do whatever the hell he wants without worrying about whether the county board would approve it and that the county board cannot even pass an ordinance that he doesn't like by just claiming it's in conflict with his whims.

And it is more than just county assets. This is about everything in the county.

For example, last year, Abele wanted to hand over the county's transit system to an out of state, for profit company that had a very poor reputation and was in fiscal trouble themselves.  Fortunately, the system worked and two other companies that had also bid on the contract were able to appeal the decision and showed that Abele had rigged the bidding process to favor the first company.  The board found in favor of the other companies and nixed the backdoor deal Abele had made, saving taxpayers a lot of money.

Under these new provisions, Abele could give the contract to whomever he wanted, with no transparency in the bidding process - if there is even a bidding process (something that Abele tends to skip with alarming frequency).  And if other companies want to appeal the decision, Abele makes the decision whether or not he was being fair.  I think we all can guess how Abele would go on any such review.

Look for Abele to put everything up for sale and/or privatization before the ink from Scott Walker's signature is even dry.

And regardless of how bad the deal is or how corrupt the process was, there is not a damn thing that the county board - or the people - could do about it.  At least until spring when we have the chance to oust this petty tyrant from his ivory tower - presuming he doesn't pay off the state Republicans to outlaw elections in Milwaukee County.

Across the country, people are celebrating our country gaining independence from imperial rule.  In Milwaukee County, this day will mark the loss of our independence.

More Fallout From Walker's Failed Job Creation Agency

Recently, another damning audit of Scott Walker's job creation agency, Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), came out. The most alarming part of the audit was the way Walker's staff was pushing WEDC to give large amounts of money to campaign contributors:

In the most recent audit, it was learned that Walker's top aides were leaning heavily on WEDC to give a construction company a $4.3 million loan. The loan ended up being $500,000 but the company created no jobs, went under and never repaid the loan.

It was further revealed that Walker was aware of the progress on securing the loan. You see, Walker had a personal interest in this loan going through since the company owner had given Walker's campaign a $10,000 campaign donation.

Walker went into damage control mode and called for his agency to stop all loans, basically admitting to the failure and corruption of WEDC, which he oversaw.

Days later, it was revealed that Walker had tried to slip into his budget a rule that WEDC would be exempt from FOIA requests.

Ironically, Walker was fired as the chair of WEDC. The question was whether the firing was due to Walker's incompetence ans corruption or just to remove him from what could be another damaging scandal.

It turned out to be the latter.

Another bombshell regarding how Walker ran the agency just went off. It has been discovered that Walker was just handing out these tens of millions of dollars, whether or not the receiving businesses - many of whom were just coincidentally campaign donors - even received the most basic scrutiny:

In a 2013 audit report, the Legislative Audit Bureau reviewed 36 awards and found two in which WEDC underwriters “did not perform staff reviews” to determine “if an applicant’s proposed project was eligible for a grant or loan.”

State Auditor Joe Chrisman confirmed to the State Journal on Tuesday that Building Committee Inc. was one of those two cases. He declined further comment.

After the State Journal’s report was published, Sen. Julie Lassa, D-Stevens Point, and Rep. Peter Barca, D-Kenosha, called for a federal investigation into the Building Committee loan, citing the missing WEDC underwriting documents as one of three key reasons why further investigation is warranted.

“This information only confirms the need for an independent investigation to find out whether this loan to a major Walker campaign donor was given special treatment at the expense of taxpayers,” Lassa said Tuesday of the audit bureau confirmation.

Sen. Rick Gudex, of Fond du Lac, and Rep. Rob Hutton, of Brookfield, the two Republican legislators on the WEDC board, declined to comment until the WEDC board meets to discuss the loan next month.

The audit bureau also released to the State Journal a copy of a “contract routing slip” for the BCI loan that had not previously been released by WEDC in response to an open records request.

The routing slip is a checklist that also was used by the former Commerce Department to ensure taxpayer-backed awards went through a thorough review process.

The checklist shows Steven Sabatke, the manager of WEDC’s underwriting department, signed off on a draft of the loan contract on Sept. 16, 2011. He also noted that WEDC staff attorney Hannah Renfro reviewed the contract on the same day. The final contract was signed three days later.

Several boxes on the form aren’t checked, including in a section for a database/compliance analyst to “validate collateral filings” and “verify circuit court records.”

When the company sought additional funding from the state in January 2012, a WEDC underwriter noted the loan was not secured with collateral, which the 2013 LAB audit said was required by agency policies.

Hmmm, now I can see why Walker wanted to exempt WEDC documents from FOIA requests. As most things Walker, if people found out the truth, it would hurt his quest for the White House.

My advice to the gentle reader would be to go out to the market and stock up on popcorn. I have a feeling the firework show of Walker's implosion will be quite a sight to see.

Scott Walker Fired From His Own Job Creation Agency

The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) was going to be the feather in Scott Walker's cap as he prepared to run for president. It was with this quasi public/private entity that Walker was going to create the 250,000 jobs that he had promised while campaigning for governor. Even though this type of program has failed everywhere else, Walker knew better.

Walker was so assured of its success that he made himself chairman of the board for WEDC.

But instead of a feather in his cap, WEDC has become an albatross around his neck.

The official numbers are in and Walker barely made it to half of the promised jobs, gaining only 121,000 jobs. And if you take out the jobs that were created through the policies and budget of his predecessor, Jim Doyle, Walker didn't even break 100,000 jobs in his first term.

Not only did Walker and WEDC fail miserably to perform as promised, but the agency has been plagued with corruption and ineptitude. Audit after audit showed that the agency lost track of tens of millions of dollars, didn't follow its own rules regarding giving loans and spent money on things like iTunes and Badger football tickets.

In the most recent audit, it was learned that Walker's top aides were leaning heavily on WEDC to give a construction company a $4.3 million loan. The loan ended up being $500,000 but the company created no jobs, went under and never repaid the loan.

It was further revealed that Walker was aware of the progress on securing the loan. You see, Walker had a personal interest in this loan going through since the company owner had given Walker's campaign a $10,000 campaign donation.

Walker went into damage control mode and called for his agency to stop all loans, basically admitting to the failure and corruption of WEDC, which he oversaw.

Days later, it was revealed that Walker had tried to slip into his budget a rule that WEDC would be exempt from FOIA requests.

Finally, the Republicans in the legislature had had enough. Well, either that or they wanted to try to distance Walker from his failure in WEDC. Either way, they ended up firing Walker as chair of the group he created:

The state’s Republican-led budget committee Thursday retained legislative oversight of Gov. Scott Walker’s troubled job-creation agency, removed the governor from its board and pledged further changes later this fall in the wake of a recent critical audit and a State Journal investigation.

The Legislature’s powerful Joint Finance Committee voted along party lines for the changes to the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., but only after rejecting a series of Democratic ideas to reform the agency and more than an hour of debate during which even Republicans conceded that the agency needs fixing.

“We know that it’s time to reform this,” said Rep. Dean Knudson, R-Hudson. “We can’t do it in the middle of the budget.”

Knudson even made the sobering admission that he didn’t believe in the mission of the agency — to leverage state tax dollars to help create jobs.

Imagine that. Walker and WEDC failed so miserably that his fellow Republicans had to pull his butt out of the fire he created.

But Walker's WEDC woes doesn't end here.

State Democrats have finally woken up and started acting like Democrats by calling for a federal investigation into Walker's blatant pay for play stunt. Whether the feds actually do anything is yet to be seen.

Sadly, taking Walker out of his position as chair of WEDC won't help the state much. The only real solution to the WEDC debacle is to end it.

Walker's Crown Jewel Is Flawed

As Scott Walker has abdicated his role as governor in order to become a professional campaigner, he has traveled around the country bragging about his Act 10, the right to work legislation that he launched almost immediately in 2011. Walker likes to tell folks that he was big and bold as he took on those eeeeeeeeevvvvvvvvviiiiiilllll unions and saved taxpayers over $3 billion.

Well, he didn't really take on the unions. He boldly ran away and refused to even talk to the unions, like a cowardly bully that finds himself outnumbered and outmaneuvered.

One would be hard pressed to find anything near the tax savings that Walker has claimed. Over the four years Walker has been in office, he's saved taxpayers only a few bucks. This false claim is made worse when one considers that many Wisconsinites saw a hefty drop in their property values, some as high as What Walker did do was take $3 billion out of the economy and gave it to his wealth campaign donors.

But there is another unintended consequence from Walker's Act 10 that hasn't been widely reported. Not only has Act 10 severely cut the take home pay of public sector workers, but it has opened the door to nepotism, cronyism, waste, fraud and corruption.

Last year, Lisa Kaiser of the Shepherd Express reported about the income maintenance program in Milwaukee County, which became a personal employment office for its administration:

State employees are speaking out about promotions and bonuses given to relatives of managers within the State Department of Health Services (DHS) Milwaukee Enrollment Services (MilES), headquartered at the Coggs Human Services Center on Vliet Street.
A handful of managers’ relatives with less than two years of experience were promoted over colleagues with up to 14 years of experience.

Those same favored employees were among those who received a $2,500 windfall last week, when DHS awarded roughly 900 employees $2.5 million in bonuses at managers’ discretion.

Vanessa Robertson, chief operations officer of DHS at the Coggs Center, refused to answer the Shepherd’s questions about the allegations last week.

Robertson’s son, Gavin, was among those who received the $2,500 bonus. He was hired in May 2012 and was promoted in April 2013 over employees with more seniority, earning $4.65 more per hour as a result.

David Eisner, a contract administrator for District Council 48, is representing four employees who have filed six appeals with the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC) over the questionable promotions.

Eisner charged that it takes at least two years for an employee to become proficient and a one-year employee such as the COO’s son should not have been promoted in April.

“This is flat-out nepotism,” Eisner said.

While the passed-over employees can appeal the unfair promotions to the WERC, they have no way to appeal the bonuses.

“And if you’re not the boss’s buddy, you’re not going to get a bonus,” Eisner said.

I pointed out other problems with the program:

I would also add that another predictable result of Act 10 and the ensuing corruption is that this program is seeing a higher rate of turnover than ever before. When this program used to be run by Milwaukee County, even under Walker, the turnover rate wasn't that high. Now, since Act 10, they seem to be in a constant state of hiring and training new employees.

With the cost of going through the screening process and the training of so many people, I find it highly unlikely that the state is actually seeing any savings from Act 10.

I would also mention that the Walker appointee to run this program, Ed Kamin, has other problems besides, and possibly partially because of, the rampant nepotism and cronyism - such as violating a number of federal laws and wrongfully denying applicants (most commonly non-English speaking) their due benefits.

Kaiser has done a follow up report on the issue and found that matters have only gotten worse. Not only is the nepotism, cronyism and corruption as rampant as ever, but the workers that blew the whistle on these issues have been bullied and intimidated by management.

And it is not confined to this one program. The abuse of power is happening across the state:

The MilES office allegations didn’t surprise Marty Beil, executive director of AFSCME District Council 24. He said there’s been a huge change in workplace culture at state worksites since Act 10’s implementation.

“Every state work site is a cesspool,” Beil told the Shepherd. “I’m not being facetious here. Workers are concerned with money and benefits but what has been happening at the worksites, the culture that has been established, has been more disruptive than these workers not receiving adequate pay increases.”

Beil said bullying and intimidation are rampant throughout state agencies. He said supervisors try to bully and harass outspoken workers so that they’ll quit or ultimately be fired. Worksites are short staffed, leading to high amounts of overtime and threats to privatize operations, he said.

“It’s like somebody switched a switch in 2011 and these supervisors and administrators all became ogres,” Beil said.

Also common is the lowering of qualifications for professional jobs, Beil said. For example, the Milwaukee Bureau of Child Welfare, run by the state since 2002, has faced complaints about its handling of suspected cases of child abuse and high staff turnover. In response, it’s changed its hiring requirements for those who take initial assessments of child abuse. Previously, access and initial assessment specialists were required to be social workers. Now, those with a high school diploma can be considered for the job.

“What message does that send to the rest of the workers who have master’s degrees there?” Beil said. “And who’s going to get blamed when a person who has a high school diploma makes a wrong decision about suspected child abuse?”

Not reported in the article is the fact that this abuse and exploitation of the system is happening at all level of government.

In the city of Oak Creek, the school board nearly fired a teacher based on hearsay. Milwaukee County Execute Chris Abele tried to steal the pensions of hundreds of retirees so that he could give the money to his fellow millionaires. The list goes on and on.

When Walker bragged about "dropping a bomb" on the state with Act 10, he wasn't just talking euphemistically.

Black Lives Matter - The South Carolina Edition

Warning, this video is very graphic, but I dare anyone to watch it and tell me that people don't have a right to be pissed off at the police brutality and murder by police that is plaguing our country:

WI Supreme Court Won't Hear Arguments Regarding John Doe

At the beginning of the month, I reported that the Wisconsin Supreme Court was taking the unusual steps of considering making the oral arguments regarding the upcoming John Doe hearings secret. The John Doe investigation is regarding the illegal collaboration between Scott Walker, his campaign and dark money special interest groups such as Wisconsin Club for Growth.

On Friday, the Supreme Court went from unusual to disturbingly bizarre by deciding that they won't hear any oral arguments (emphasis mine):

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Friday it would not hear arguments — in secret or in public — as it considers whether to allow an investigation to continue that has looked into whether Gov. Scott Walker's campaign illegally worked with conservative groups in recall elections.

"The prospect of oral argument creates severe tension between important and conflicting priorities," the court wrote, citing the long tradition of open courts and the secrecy of the John Doe.

Instead, the court will decide the matter based on hundreds of pages of briefs that have been filed in the cases, mostly in secret, because the court also rejected a special prosecutor's argument that the secrecy genie has already largely escaped the bottle.

The investigation has been stalled for more than a year, and the court's decision is expected to determine whether it can be revived or shut down for good. Its ruling will likely come by this summer, just as the Republican governor ramps up an expected bid for the presidency.

The Court also ruled against allowing the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel from intervening in the hearings, locking down the secrecy even more.

The Court claims that oral arguments would cause conflict between open courts and the secrecy of the Doe investigation. In reality, the conflict for them is between upholding the law and their indebtedness to the very same special interests involved in the cases.

The fact is that the Wisconsin Supreme Court shouldn't even be issuing orders regarding these cases at all.

As previously reported, four of the seven justices on the bench have received heavy support from these dark money special interest groups. So heavy that the special interest groups spent three out of every four dollars in the elections of David Prosser alone.

The United States Supreme Court has already ruled that judges and justices need to recuse themselves "when an interested party’s spending had a “disproportionate influence” in a case that was “pending or imminent.”'

It is more than obvious that this ruling would apply to the four corporate justice on the state supreme court. Why these justices are committing these injustices - and getting away with it - is beyond understanding.

Walkergate: Walker Sinks Further Into Dark Money Pit

Last year, court documents revealed that prosecutors said that Scott Walker was at the heart of a "criminal scheme," in which he, his campaign and top lieutenants were trying to skirt campaign finance and election laws. The gist of the scheme was that Walker would help raise funds for conservative groups, especially Wisconsin Club for Growth (WCfG), which would use that money to help advance his campaign. (Walker has admitted that he had solicited funds for WCfG, but denies any knowledge of it in the next breath.)

A couple of months after this, it was revealed that a mining company, Gogebic Taconite, had donated $700,000 to WCfG. In return, Walker reduced environmental protections by signing into law a bill that was written by the mining company.

Now, Michael Isikoff, writing for Yahoo News, has come out with a blockbuster report showing that the mining company wasn't the only one in Walker's pay for play scheme:

John Menard Jr. is widely known as the richest man in Wisconsin. A tough-minded, staunchly conservative 75-year-old billionaire, he owns a highly profitable chain of hardware stores throughout the Midwest. He’s also famously publicity-shy — rarely speaking in public or giving interviews.

So a little more than three years ago, when Menard wanted to back Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — and help advance his pro-business agenda — he found the perfect way to do so without attracting any attention: He wrote more than $1.5 million in checks to a pro-Walker political advocacy group that pledged to keep its donors secret, three sources directly familiar with the transactions told Yahoo News.

Menard’s previously unreported six-figure contributions to the Wisconsin Club for Growth — a group that spent heavily to defend Walker during a bitter 2012 recall election — seem to have paid off for the businessman and his company. In the past two years, Menard’s company has been awarded up to $1.8 million in special tax credits from a state economic development corporation that Walker chairs, according to state records.

And in his five years in office, Walker’s appointees have sharply scaled back enforcement actions by the state Department of Natural Resources — a top Menard priority. The agency had repeatedly clashed with Menard and his company under previous governors over citations for violating state environmental laws and had levied a $1.7 million fine against Menard personally, as well as his company, for illegally dumping hazardous wastes.

Walker's spokeswoman, of course, denied that Walker had anything to do with this bit of quid pro corruption (emphasis mine):

Laurel Patrick, Walker’s press secretary, strongly denied that the governor had provided any special favors for Menard and said Walker was “not involved” in the decision to award his firm tax credits, which were approved by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation for expansions of existing facilities in order to create jobs. (She also noted that Menard’s firm had been awarded $1.5 million in tax credits in 2006 under Democratic Gov. James Doyle. State records show these were reduced to $1 million when the company failed to meet its full job-creation requirements.)

Patrick declined, however, to respond to any questions about the Menard contributions. Citing a “pending legal” investigation into Wisconsin Club for Growth fundraising that will be argued next month before the state Supreme Court, AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Walker’s political organization, Our American Revival, said she also could not answer any questions about the Menard donations, including whether the governor had solicited them, was aware of them or had ever discussed state business with Menard.

Oopsie! Perhaps Patrick forgot that Walker is the Chairman of the WEDC.

Walker created the WEDC for exactly this type of pay for play, despite the repeated warnings that these quasi-private/public schemes never end up well. In an ominous move, Walker want's to take away legislative oversight of WEDC and have it completely under his control and run by his political appointees. Methinks that the above stories gives us a clearer understanding why Walker would want this.

While it is good that Walker's corruption is finally having the light of day shown on it, it comes as nothing new to us in Wisconsin, where Walker has a long history of this sort of unethical and illegal behaviors. As I noted then, the only surprise is that Walker hasn't gotten any better at concealing his corruption. Then again, he's always been a slow learner.

It is also worth noting that lawsuits regarding the John Doe probe is scheduled to be heard by the Wisconsin Supreme Court later this year. Four of the seven justices have had extensive help from WCfG, which, according the Supreme Court of the United States, is grounds for them to recuse themselves. That said, given the prevalent and pervasive corruption that Walker and his dark money supporters have foisted upon the state, I wouldn't hold my breath for them to do the right thing either.