Walker Does The Transparency Two-Faced Two Step

Image by Stuart Carlson

In the dark of the night, just before the long Independence Day weekend, Wisconsin Republicans tried to slip in a budget amendment that included the gutting of open records laws.

When the news broke, Walker feigned to be surprised and upset, vowing to make sure that the provision was eliminated or at least changed. Shortly thereafter, it was revealed that Walker was part of the cabal that hatched the plan to wipe out government transparency. He even tried to rationalize his involvement in the scheming:

“Our intent with these changes was to encourage a deliberative process with state agencies in developing policy and legislation,” Patrick said. “This allows for robust debate with state agencies and public employees over the merit of policies and proposed initiatives as they are being formed, while ensuring materials related to final proposals, as well as information related to external stakeholders seeking to influence public policy, would remain fully transparent.”

The Republicans did eliminate the provision but said that they were going to create a legislative committee to study the issue, meaning that they were going to wait until no one was looking and then pass it anyway.

If the gentle reader thought that was the end of it, the gentle reader forgot that with all things Walker, there's more. There's always more.

Apparently, Walker's internal polling showed that this issues was still harming his popularity and so he did what comes naturally for him - he started throwing people under the campaign bus:

Gov. Scott Walker pointed the finger at Republican lawmakers Friday on a widely criticized proposal to curtail Wisconsin’s open records laws, calling it “a huge mistake” that didn’t originate in his office.

“I think it was a mistake to even think about it in the budget, even though it didn’t come from us,” Walker told radio host Charlie Sykes on Friday.

Say wut?! If it was such a mistake, why didn't Walker say so at the time instead of helping them draft the changes?

But it doesn't end there. Because - you guessed it! - there's more. There's always more.

On Friday, proving that they are the slowest learners in the world, the Republican legislators said that they are going to deform the Government Accountability Board (GAB), the watchdog group that ensures that politicians are following the rules and that elections are fair.

In other words, if the criminals can't hide their crimes, they are going to do away with the police, the prosecutors and the entire judicial system.

One would think that after the severe firestorm they went through in trying to remove government transparency, they would have learned their lesson. But like I said, they are the slowest learners in the world.

What makes the whole thing surreal is the rationale that the Republicans are using to attack the GAB - an anonymously written editorial in the Wall Street Journal that cites unnamed sources accusing the GAB of asking the IRS to investigate the dark money groups that Walker had been illegally collaborating with. There is no evidence that the IRS took any action, if these emails were even really sent.

Even worse, they are accusing the GAB of being on a political witch hunt, even though the GAB is made up entirely of retired Republican judges.

One would have to be a completely blithering idiot to believe any of this. Unfortunately, as we see time and time again, Wisconsin and the rest of the nation are filled with these clueless fools.

But the real question is this: If Walker and his Republican cohorts are willing to go to such extremes to wipe out government transparency and accountability, exactly what are they trying to hide?

Fitzgerald's Proposal Leaves State GABsmacked

After the caucus scandals rocked the state a decade ago, both parties came together and worked in a bipartisan fashion to create the Government Accountability Board (GAB). The GAB was created to replace the Elections and Ethics Board, which was so dysfunctional that it didn't even investigate the crimes for which five people had been convicted in a court of law.

Now, State Senator Scott Fitzgerald (R-Arkham)has decided that he doesn't like the way the GAB is working, even though he was a full supporter of it when it was created. His beef is that he thinks that it is partisan and favors the Democrats, meaning that it won't let the Republicans do whatever the hell they want to do.

His brilliant idea on how to fix his misperception is to make the non-partisan board less partisan by replacing the non-partisan judges with partisan activists.

Yeah, I'll let that sink in for a minute.

This idea was immediately panned, not just by the Democrats, but by neutral, outside observers:

A professor specializing in election law who has studied the accountability board bemoaned the proposal.

"I think that's about the worst idea I've heard this year," said Daniel Tokaji, a professor at Ohio State University Moritz College of Law who has written about Wisconsin's accountability board.

"I'm not surprised to see a partisan politician try to wrest power from the GAB. It's unfortunate, but not surprising," he said.

He called the accountability board a national model, saying it does a much better job than the partisan secretaries of state who run elections in many other states.

"The umpire is a player for one of the teams" in those states, Tokaji said.

Senator Chris Larson continued with the sports analogies by comparing Fitzgerald's proposal to the replacement referees that made the beginning of the NFL season such a farce.

I think it would be closer to the truth if you combined the two analogies. It would be more like the replacement refs, but having them picked out by the two sides.

Brian Fraley, in an obvious effort at doing some damage control, became desperate himself. In an article that he got published at Red State, Fraley starts grasping at straws. Some of the arguments that he used to support Fitzgerald's folly was the ridiculous claim that names like Adolph Hitler and Mickey Mouse would be accepted by the GAB, even though no such names were submitted. He also pointed out the work of the fallacious True the Vote, which proved to inaccurate at best. Fraley also adds in the allegations of voter fraud which were totally debunked by the Racine County District Attorney's Office.

The Democrats blasted Fitzgerald's proposal as yet another partisan power grab by the Republicans. And rightfully so.

It's quite obvious that Fitzgerald's proposal has nothing to do with creating jobs, fixing the economy or saving taxpayer money. What Fitzgerald is proposing is an effort to further stack the deck in the Republicans' favor, just like with their gerrymandering and voter suppression.

One might think that since the Republicans control both houses of the legislature, the governor's office, the attorney general's office and the majority on the State Supreme Court, it would seem that Fitzgerald's complaints about the GAB rings false.

I would have to agree.

But it might be the fact that the elections the Republicans could not control, the one for president and U.S. Senate, which were handily won by President Barack Obama and Senator-Elect Tammy Baldwin, that the Republican agenda is not only not working, but an increasing number of people are rejecting it, and the Republicans, which is making Fitzgerald so uneasy.

Then again, Fitzgerald might also have underlying reasons of a personal nature for his proposal.

Keep in mind that it is Fitzgerald's campaign fund raiser and special friend, Judith Rhodes Engels who has her name all wrapped up in Walkergate, the second version of the caucus scandals.

Rhodes Engels was riding with Walker during his last Harley Davidson campaign tour of the state. It was also Rhodes Engels who was found to be giving Walker's Kelly Rindfleisch all the information regarding Fitzgerald's campaign donors.

Furthermore it was Engels Rhodes who partook in a series of secret emails regarding the state function of redistricting, or in this case, gerrymandering. And Rhodes Engels has been observed many times coming and going from Fitzgerald's office in the Capitol Building.

Fitzgerald's proposal might not be just another power grab, but it might very well be a CYA maneuver to protect himself and his special friend/fund raiser.

It's ironic how Fitzgerald now wants to change the GAB - which he voted for to deal with things like the caucus scandal - possibly in order to avoid responsibility for the caucus scandal-like behavior that he and his staff have participated in.

Kristine Burlingame, GAB Is On Line One...

This ad recently appeared in a weekly shopper that hit almost all the homes in Jackson County:

Needless to say, this is incorrect. The Voter Suppression Law was struck down, twice, and the Supreme Court refused to take the case yet. Voters do NOT need to show an ID and are still able to freely exercise their right to vote.

Not only is Ms. Burlingame giving out false information to the voters, she undoubtedly used taxpayer dollars to do so.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce you to the new Kathleen Nickolaus?

Oh, and by the way, this has already been referred to the GAB.

Walker's Disregard For The Law Costs Taxpayers Even More

There is a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that shows the election laws that all but one politician in the state has to follow actually work (emphasis mine):

The GAB staff upheld the city Election Commission's decision to disqualify Jason Hargis, one of three would-be Wade opponents in the 7th Aldermanic District race. City election officials had previously disqualified nominating petitions filed by Wade's other two opponents, Michael (Big Mike) Hagler and Roosevelt Sanders, neither of whom appealed to the state agency.

Initially, the election commission staff had found that Hargis had submitted 200 valid signatures on his nominating petitions, the minimum needed to win a spot on the ballot. But Wade's attorney, Michael Maistelman, obtained an affidavit from one of those 200 people denying she signed Hargis' petition, and that led to the rulings against Hargis at both the city and state levels.

Wade had to hire his own attorney, the esteemed Michael Maistelman, to check the signatures and to challenge them. That's the way the law is written and it worked the way it was intended to.

Contrast that to Scott Walker, the one politician that thinks he is above the law, who is making the taxpayers foot the bill to do what his campaign should be doing.

And now the taxpayers will have to pay more and more as the GAB needs more time to do their jobs as well as Team Walker's and has the Koch-funded GOP operatives plan on pulling another stalling stunt.

Walker, Republicans Continue To Try To Stomp On Voters' Rights

Scott Walker and his Republican cronies will literally stop at nothing to keep their untenable hold on power, no matter how many rights they have to trample or how many ethics codes they have to violate.

Despite it being the law clearly pointing out that it is the responsibility of Walker's campaign to challenge any signatures on the recall petitions, Walker continues to argue that it is his constitutional right to have taxpayers foot the bill for his political activities.  He's even taken it to the point of filing a lawsuit to try to force the Government Accountability Board to do his campaign's job, at taxpayers's expense, of course.

Taking advantage of one of their non-job-creating-job-creation bills which they had passed early in 2011, Walker's campaign chose to file their lawsuit in Waukesha County, home of the unethical and incompetent public officials.  They managed to get Judge J. Mac Davis, a former Republican legislator, to hear the case.

The first sign that this was going to be a kangaroo court type of event is the fact that Davis did not dismiss this frivolous suit on the face of it.  If a layman like myself can see it's so much balderdash, one would think an honest judge would.

This worsened when the Committee to Recall Scott Walker et alia filed a petition to become a party to the lawsuit.  Davis dismissed this motion out of hand, claiming it would bog down the hearing and open it up for "chaos" and making it a "free-for-all."

Yeah, right.

That's like saying the victim of a crime can't participate in their assailant's trial because it would only slow things down.  And isn't it Davis' job to maintain order in the court? Is he saying he is not qualified for the job?

The recall was initiated because Walker was abusing the powers of his office and violating the rights of all the workers, the voters, the women, the children and just about everyone else in this state,.  Now Walker wants to further violate the people's rights and the judge is saying they don't have a standing in the court? Unbelievable!

Fortunately, this is not the last chapter in this story, as that the recall people are filing an appeal, with a twist of irony that I simply just love:

The lawsuit, filed Dec. 15 in Waukesha County, can be brought in one of the most Republican counties in the state because of a change in state law earlier this year by GOP lawmakers and Walker that allowed lawsuits to be brought against the state outside Dane County, the seat of state government. Republicans argued that Dane County judges are too liberal. Judge Davis used to be a Republican state senator. 

Levinson said that same law allows his clients to file their appeal in Madison-based District 4 of the state appeals court. He said they'd file the appeal on the next day that court is open, probably Tuesday. 

Levinson had said Thursday that he didn't think an appeal of Davis' ruling would be worthwhile, but he said legal research Friday convinced him otherwise, and his clients decided to go ahead.

Without the recall groups in the case, Levinson's pleading says, "Win or lose, such proceedings give Scott Walker's campaign committee a stage and a megaphone to continue disparaging and impugning Wisconsin's constitutional  recall process and the integrity of the GAB's administration of elections. Absent a competing view point, this will harm the public interest regardless of the outcome of the case."

Of course, with the corrupt Justices sitting on the Supreme Court and refusing to recuse themselves when they are caught receiving tens of thousands of dollars in free legal advise for their first ethics trial, the recallers  probably would have been smarter just going directly to federal court, because that's where this is going to end up anyway.

Jeff Fitzgerald's Lead Balloon

During the hostile takeover of Wisconsin, Jeff Fitzgerald has behaved just like what he is - that pesky little brother that can't think for himself and follows everything the older kids do.

And when little Jeffy finally comes up with his own  idea - abolishing the GAB and replacing it with a politicized panel - it shows why he should keep his mouth shut.  As for his idea, that went over like a lead balloon, as it should have.

The truly remarkable is that this cartoonish oaf thinks he is somehow qualified to be a US Senator.  He's not even qualified to shovel out the kennels at the dog shelter.

Right Wing's Complaints Highlight Right Wing's Maleficence

On Tuesday morning, the Koch Brother-funded MacIver Institute and Propaganda Machine issued a press release claiming that there was a "problem" with the recall.  Their problem was actually two complaints:

• People were being told that they could sign a petition more than once, and
• The Government Accountability Board (GAB) wasn't going to do a detailed analysis of the petitions for duplicate or otherwise ineligible signatures.

Charlie Sykes, mouthpiece for the GOP, took this bit of propaganda and conflated it to having people encouraged to sign multiple times and implying that the GAB was complicit with committing voter fraud.

The usual suspects mindlessly parroted this, obviously without even giving it moment's analysis.  

Now, whenever one deals with this lot of miscreants and reprobates, one must consider if they have a point of if it is just another one of their fallacious smear attacks.  If you bet on the latter, you're guaranteed to become rich in short order. 

With that in mind, let's see if their complaints have any merit.

First, for the allegation that one can and even should sign a petition more than once.

One Wisconsin Now did indeed post a list of rules and rights regarding collecting recall signatures.  And sure enough, it does indeed include the statement that one may sign more than one petition.  The did, however, include the caveat that only one signature would count.

Hardly what an honest person would call encouraging someone to sign more than once.

To also take the winds out of the sails of these fools, Kevin Kennedy, director of the GAB was interviewed by yet another ersatz journalist, John Mercure, who shills for the GOP in the afternoons on WTMJ 620 AM.  Mr. Kennedy told Mercure that it is the state law that allows more than one signature.

Mr. Kennedy went on to make another valid point that I'm ashamed that I didn't think of it on my own.

Mr. Kennedy pointed out that some people just may want to sign more than once to make sure that their signature is counted once.  

Indeed, there is a group being investigated for threatening to pose as recall volunteers and collect signatures, only to later burn them.  Then there was the student who did rip up a petition and then idiotically tweeted his man love for Walker by boasting how he did it for him.  A 53 year old man in River Falls also shredded a petition.  Another man in Madison is going to face charges for ripping up a recall page that had three signatures on it.

Perhaps before they complain about the ability of people to legally sign more than one petition, the right would do better by policing themselves from giving the people the incentive to sign more than one recall.  But I won't hold my breath for this to happen.  It was their attempts to silence and control the people that led them to the untenable position which they find themselves in now.

Now on to their complaint about the GAB.

When I saw them complaining that the GAB not certifying every signature, I'll admit that I was puzzled.  I remembered writing last year how Maistelman and Associates got Paris Procopis, who was challenging Senator David Cullen, off the ballot by eliminating invalid signatures.  At the same time, the law firm also successfully defended Todd Kolosso from James Sensenbrenner's attempt to have him thrown off that ballot.

I called Attorney Michael Maistelman, one of the state's leading election attorneys, to confirm my suspicion that this was another bogus complaint.  Attorney Maistelman confirmed that it has always been the responsibility of the candidate and his or her campaign to challenge the signatures of their opponent, whether it is for a recall or even just for nomination papers to get on the ballot.  He also told me that he has bumped a number of Republicans off of ballots by having invalid signatures stricken leaving his client's opponent with not enough to get on the ballot.  He said that the Republicans have done that to a number of Democrats as well.

Maistelman also confirmed that it was always the campaign that paid for that legal work to be done. He added that Scott Walker's campaign would have much more funding than what would be needed to review and challenge the signatures of the recall.  

In other words, the propagandist at the MacIver Institute (who didn't even have the courage to put their name to this hit piece), Charlie Sykes, Patrick Dorwin, Fred Dooley and Owen Robinson are complaining about is the fact that the GAB won't spend tax payer dollars to do Walker's campaign's political work.

Think what that really means for a minute.

They are so used to Walker using tax dollars to do his campaigning that they are now actually complaining when that corruption doesn't happen.  They must have completely forgotten about Walkergate or how its already come full cycle.  Now they want it to go for another lap.

Sadly, this does not surprise me.  Not any more that it doesn't surprise me that every three and a half seconds another person who values the tradition of what Wisconsin is really all about stands up and adds their name to the hundreds of thousands of others who have said that they want to take Wisconsin back.

Walker Denies A Voice To 56,000 Dane County Citizens

The question is why hasn't Scott Walker and his administration of cronies taken even the first step in calling for a special election to fill former Representative Joe Parisi's seat in the 48th Assembly District.

As Representative Pocan points out, with all these important things being discussed, it's only adding insult to injury to deny these people any representation in state government as he works to strip them of all their other rights.