MAGA Maniac Michael Gableman wasted millions of taxpayers dollars and a couple of years "investigating" the alleged voter fraud. All he had to show for all that time and money were hundreds of dollars in receipts from restaurants and huge grocery bills from the local Pick'N'Save.
When open records requests were filed, he ignored those. When he was sued for not complying with open records laws, he fought tooth and nail to the point of being found in contempt of court. But still, there was nothing to show what he did with all that money.
Eventually, the mattered ended in front of the Office of Lawyer Regulation, where he was ordered to do a deposition, but yet he refused to cooperate.
Now a referee in the case is allowing him to waste even more time and money:
A referee told former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman he’s getting “one more chance” to properly appear and give a deposition in his discipline case, rejecting Gableman’s attempts to avoid doing so.
Gableman’s attorney, Peyton Engel, argued that Gableman does not have to appear because he will just plead the Fifth Amendment to every question.
The Office of Lawyer Regulation on Feb. 28 filed a motion to compel Gableman to sit for a deposition. The accompanying documents showed in addition to concerns about possible criminal charges, Gableman had sought to put off the deposition while he tries to raise funds for his legal defense and to reach a stipulation that could resolve the case.
Referee James Winiarski said Thursday the Fifth Amendment is applied only on a question-by-question basis, and cannot be used as justification to not make an appearance.
“You don’t fail to appear for a hearing because you might get asked questions where you’re going to claim the Fifth Amendment as a claim to not answer a question,” Winiarski. “I don’t agree that you cannot appear for a deposition on that basis.”
If Gableman hasn't cooperated at all through all these procedures, he's not about to cooperate now. It's time that someone holds him accountable for all this, and with more than a slap on the wrist.
Then, while they are at it, they can call Robbin' Vos onto the carpet, since he's the clown that authorized Gableman to waste all that money without any supervision. He's just as culpable.
A tell in poker is a change in a player's behavior or demeanor that is claimed by some to give clues to that player's assessment of their hand. A player gains an advantage if they observe and understand the meaning of another player's tell, particularly if the tell is unconscious and reliable. Sometimes a player may fake a tell, hoping to induce their opponents to make poor judgments in response to the false tell. More often, people try to avoid giving out a tell, by maintaining a poker face regardless of how strong or weak their hand is.
There is an important election coming up on Tuesday. Unfortunately it is not the Supreme Court election, the Democrats in Wisconsin dropped the ball on that one and far right wing Justice Ziegler is running unopposed.
The far right wing, led by the unlimited well of money in Bradley Foundation, have been working on taking over the state of Wisconsin, with a combination of stealth candidates, lots of money and dark money groups attacking the opposition. Their success is unparalleled in WI. They are so good at winning elections that they have even elected such horrendous people statewide as homophobic hateful Justice Rebecca Bradley and unethical unintelligent Mike Gableman (among others).
The one office they have not been able to touch was Superintendent of Public Schools. This year, fresh off right wing victories we have not seen since 1984 they were empowered and had momentum, yet the best they could come up with was Lowell Holtz.
Open records requests show us that while Mr. Holtz was a sitting superintendent of the Holman School District, a former State Legislator and former candidate for this very office, Don Pridemore, was emailing and recruiting Mr. Holtz.
Who cares if the kids are being starved and their schools are crumbling, Mr. Holtz has no interest in visiting these schools unless he can ride in style.
Luckily, this situation will never materialize because Mr. Holtz nor his primary challenger will never be Superintendent of Public Instruction in Wisconsin,
However, there is a moral to this story. It shows how little the state power infrastructure of right wing Wisconsin, understands and feels about public education.
They have no problem whatsoever recruiting a candidate illegally(they know the rules of no campaigning on public time) and have so little respect for Dr. Evers and our public school system, that they would put someone like Lowell Holtz in charge.
It is not about competence, or ideas, its about having complete power.
If you will notice, Bradley and the boys have thrown in the towel. They have decided to stop throwing dirty money after bad and have pretty much conceded this election.
They know Lowell Holtz will not win, so they have decided to save their money for 2018 where they will bury good public education advocates running for the legislature in Wisconsin and bury them in bullshit with dark money.
We can address that when the time comes but for now we need to send a message.
Our public schools and our kids education is off limits.
Please make sure and show up and vote in force for Dr. Tony Evers on Tuesday!
PS: Also please do NOT vote for Justice Ziegler. She is guaranteed a win, lets make sure that her under vote if considerable and telling.
Last Tuesday, Wisconsin held their primary which was the first time a partisan Presidential Primary was on the same ballot as a non partisan local and state wide election was on the same ballot.
The turnout was surprisingly high for a spring election and the ballot was confusing. For some reason there was a a spot at the top of the ballot where you could fill out Democrat or Republican. Why that would be a an option on a non partisan ballot is beyond me. That being said, lets move on to the individual races.
The Top of the ticket featured the first time there was a contested Presidential primary in ages. I Will not focus on the clown show on the right, instead lets focus on the Democratic Primary.
While the Republicans did receive more votes (around 97000) the leading vote getter in the Wisconsin Presidential Primary was Senator Sanders:
Bernie Sanders - 567,936
Ted Cruz - 531,129
Hillary Clinton - 432,767
Donald Trump - 386.370
John Kasich - 155,200
In the days leading up to the primary, Bernie Sanders was traveling the state holding rallies while Ms. Clinton was holding private events when she was not flying back to New York for a Lehman Brothers fundraiser.
Previous champions of labor like Cory Mason, Chris Taylor, Debra Kolste and Janis Ringhand inexplicably decided that the person who was in favor of every free trade deal in our history and championed the horrendous TPP would be the best choice for the people of WI.
Unfortunately Bernies strong showing showed us why the Democratic party continues to be insignificant in Wisconsin, the huge disconnect between the party and the voters!
Quick piece of advice to the WisDems - Progressive populism is not against the law! Until the state Democrats begin to make this a priority:
Over this:
We will continue to be a red state.
Things are not any better on the State party level, Martha Laning, State Party Chair, said that she would use her super delegate vote for the winner of the Wisconsin primary, and after Bernie won handily, quickly switched positions to sayings he would support whoever was winning at the end. Thus telling 568,000 Wisconsinites who braved the weather, lines and restrictive voting laws, thanks for playing but the game is over. Sit down and be quiet until we need you in the fall.
The way that the establishment circled their wagons for the Wall St. Senator did not go unseen by the people of Wisconsin. With Bernie Sanders outdrawing all candidates on a regular basis to great enthusiasm, it looked like the party establishment banded together to stop the Sanders uprising. If only they were so united for workers rights, public education and jobs.
The Supreme Court Race:
Wisconsin, despite already electing Mike Gableman to the Supreme Court has now elected someone even less qualified. In doing so, there is much blame and self reflection to go around and none of it belongs to Bernie Sanders.
First, Judge Kloppenburg made it clear that she did not really want the help of the Democratic party since this is a "non partisan" race and the Democratic party gladly obliged. Her opponent, was handpicked by the GOP, coordinated her campaign with the GOP and even let it be known that there was no need to even listen to oral arguments just rule how they tell her to rule.
The two parties are playing different games by different rules and as long as that continues to happen the GOP will continue successfully stacking the courts.
Secondly, many people loved that at the insider dinner in Milwaukee before the election when Hillary laid into Rebecca Bradley. While it was very much justified it hurt the cause.
No sane person would think that Ms. Kloppenburg was as hyper partisan as Ms. Bradley but when the establishment Democrat, with record negatives, lays into one candidate that confirms to people throughout the state that one candidate is an R and one is a D.
Now Ms. Kloppenburg is associated with all as the Democratic candidate and is twisting in the wind with no help from the Democratic party.
Again different games, different rules, same results.
Which brings us to the Milwaukee County Executive race.
While I live in Dane county and am not effected on a daily basis of Mr. Abele's poor policies. However as an observer from afar I found something interesting that no one seemed to talk about.
By all accounts, Mr. Abele spent approximately $5 million dollars smearing former Democratic Senate minority leader Chris Larson. What is important to note is that Mr. Larson was the former Democratic leader of the Senate when Mike Tate was the chair of the Democratic party. In all of Mike Tate's elections, Chris Larson was one of his biggest supporters.
Chris Abele hired Mike Tate to help him run his campaign. Mike Tate then promptly went to work smearing his old friend and supporter. Everyone knows that when Mike Tate took over the party, the Dems held both houses and the Governor's mansion and during his tenure they lost all three and have become irrelevant. We see with Tate taking a few pieces to smear a friend, the lack of values and ethics and character, and a good part of the reason why the party is no longer relevant.
One last observation. In the five million dollars that Tate/Abele spent to keep his $130,000/yr job, how many times did they mention the importance of electing JoAnne Kloppenburg? The same amount of times that anyone in the establishment has spoken up about Chris Abele working against the party.
My first recommendation for the party is to have Peter Barca resign his leadership position immediately and place Rep. Jonathon Brostoff Assembly minority leader.
On Tuesday morning, I wrote at Cog Dis and Crooks & Liars about how Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman wanted to revisit an appeal by former Walker aide Kelly Rindfliesch. Rindfleisch was convicted of doing illegal politicking while working for Scott Walker when he was Milwaukee County Executive.
I also pointed out that Gableman's unprecedented request was a huge conflict of interest.
In what I am sure is pure coincidence, Gableman rescinded his request on Tuesday afternoon:
Justice Michael Gableman last week took the unusual step of asking his colleagues to reconsider that decision and take up her appeal. But on Tuesday, Gableman withdrew his request.
[...]
In a letter to attorneys in the case, Gableman noted that Rindfleisch still had that other avenue of appeal. He didn't address the question of whether he also lacked support among his fellow state justices for his request.
"Her appeal is now pending before the United States Supreme Court where, among other things, she will have the benefit of review by the entire court," Gableman wrote of Rindfleisch. "I believe that is the better course of action at this time, and therefore withdraw my motion."
Now Scott Walker and his dark money supporters are going to have to find a new way to kill off the John Doe investigation if they don't want it raising its ugly head while Walker is running for president. Because, let's face it, if they can't do their illegal collaboration and buy elections, what chance do these fools stand in a fair election?
As previously reported, Kelly Rindfleisch, a former aide to Scott Walker when he was Milwaukee County Executive, was charged and convicted of illegal politicking during government time and using government equipment. She appealed the proceedings and subsequent conviction numerous times to no avail. One of her latest appeal attempts went to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which declined to hear her case on a 6-0 vote (Justice David "Choke hold" Prosser recused himself.) Rindfleisch is now almost halfway through "serving her sentence." (More on that later.)
Rindfleisch has since made an appeal to the United Supreme Court, continuing her argument that the subpoenas were too broad and too vague and thus unconstitutional. She hasn't won on that argument yet, but what they hey?
Following that, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, one of the four corporate-controlled conservative justices, in an unprecedented move, asked his fellow justices to consider revisiting the Rindfleisch appeal:
On Thursday, a memo was filed from Gableman asking that the high court revisit the issue when it next meets in private. He did not explain why he wants to take the issue up in his one-paragraph memo.
Such a move is highly unusual, if not unprecedented. The original decision not to take the case was agreed to by all the justices except David Prosser, who did not participate in the case.
At first glance, the gentle reader might suspect that Gableman's unusual and questionable request came as a favor to one of his main benefactors, Wisconsin Club for Growth (WCfG). WCfG has a number of cases pending before the Wisconsin Supreme Court regarding the John Doe investigation into the illegal collaboration between them and Scott Walker.
If WCfG could pull some money strings and get the Supreme Court to overturn Rindfleisch's conviction, this would set a precedent and give strength to their own cases.
To strengthen one's suspicions, one of the dark money propaganda groups, which has written over 200 articles about Rindlfeisch and labels her a "political prisoner," has revealed that Rindfleisch, who was given work release privileges from her home confinement (talk about doing hard time!), is working for Eric O'Keefe, the head of WCfG:
A deputy in Sauk County’s Huber, or work release, division, confirms that Rindfleisch is being monitored with an ankle bracelet and living with her sister in Sauk County. She is confined to the home, but has Huber privileges, including the right to work.
Rindfleisch is working for none other than Eric O’Keefe, the long-time conservative activist who has filed multiple lawsuits against Chisholm and two of his assistants alleging prosecutors trampled conservatives’ First Amendment rights with their politically charged John Doe investigations.
Wisconsin Watchdog has confirmed that Rindfleisch works for O’Keefe’s E&L Corp., a Spring Green-based company that O’Keefe has operated since 1993.
Rindfleisch, according to the Huber division, is picking up the cost of the monitoring device, at $17 a day.
O’Keefe, director of the limited-government group Wisconsin Club for Growth, has come to the defense of Rindfleisch, who was convicted in 2012 on a nebulous charged of misconduct in office. Rindfleisch served as deputy chief of staff for Walker when Walker was Milwaukee County Executive.
So, the former Walker aide who was convicted of illegal politicking ends up working for a Walker ally who is under investigation for illegal collaboration with Walker. And now, a Supreme Court Justice, who has ethical issues that he is still under investigation for and who has received financial support from WCfG, wants to reopen a case he originally voted not to hear.
Yeah, nothing to see here, right?
The real kicker is that if these four conservative justices, including Gableman, had even a modicum of ethics themselves, they would have already recused themselves from all of these cases due to their own conflicts of interest, as the Supreme Court of the United States had already ruled.
Justice Ann Walsh Bradley won and her opponent James Daley did not take it well:
In what could be the worst congratulatory note in history, Mr. Daley wrote:
In a statement, Daley congratulated Bradley but said that, "Tonight we witnessed first-hand the power of incumbency, as liberal special interests band together to protect their candidate."
Hey Jimmy:
Maybe one should not hang out with bitter hate filled partisans if you have a problem with partisanship.
By the way Jim, if you think liberal groups banded together to win an election, you have not been paying attention the last 5 years to elections in WI.
Looks like Wisconsin really dodged a bullet of stupidity here. Michael Gableman is more than enough of an intellectual lightweight serving that we did not need to add to that caucus.
Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley today accused colleague David
Prosser of a "history of abusive behavior" so severe that she and the
chief justice lock themselves in their offices while working after hours
out of fear for their safety.
Prosser said he had not read the filing and declined comment.
Bradley wrote she had not commented on what happened in the June 2011 incident out of respect for the process.
But she said some of her colleagues have commented in "national, state, and local press spinning the facts."
In particular, she took aim at Justice Pat Roggensack, who is up for
re-election this spring. Bradley noted Roggensack's comments that the
justices "are doing just fine" and are working well together, saying it
"strains credulity that a justice on our court would be perpetuating the
myth that our issues of workplace safety and work environment have
somehow healed themselves."
Bradley's decision to recuse herself is unlikely to have a significant
impact on the stalled discipline case filed against Prosser. Prosser has
sought the recusal of all his colleagues on teh court and so far only
Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson and Justice Pat Crooks have agreed to
sit on the case. That is short of the quorum needed for the court to
issue a decision.
David Prosser demonstrating his one-handed choke hold.
About a year ago, during the elections season (the first one), news came out that the intemperate David Prosser had acted most unprofessionally, calling Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson "a bitch" and threatening to "destroy her."
Later in the year, anxious to get busy rubber stamping illegally passed laws, Prosser again lost his temper and physically assaulted Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, by putting a choke hold on her.
In the Republican's War on Women, he must be a general or something.
After the news of Prosser's boorish behavior broke, right wing propagandists got busy and tried to do whatever they could to cast doubt on the course of events. They went from claiming that the Dane County Sheriff, who was investigating the case, was a lackey to the Democrats and to Abrahamson to actually accusing Bradley of assaulting to the disreputable Michael Gableman, a charge that was later shown to be a complete fabrication. They even tried to weave a whole new tale out of whole cloth stating that Walsh Bradley was the aggressor.
After it was decided that no criminal charges would be issued, the right wing crowed that this vindicated Prosser and that it was all that much garbage.
Except it wasn't.
On Friday, the Wisconsin Judicial Commission leveled three charges against the Madison Strangler:
Prosser is accused of violating three provisions of the ethics code. One says judges must be "patient, dignified and courteous" to those involved in the court system; another says judges must cooperate with one another; and the third says judges should maintain high standards of conduct to ensure the integrity of the judiciary.
Before anyone gets too excited, it should be noted that it will be the Supreme Court who will ultimately decide Prosser's fate, based on the findings of either a three-judge panel or a jury. That means the Annette Ziegler, who was already found unethical by the Commission, and the lying Gableman would be involved in the decision making. And both of them have a history of not recusing themselves when they should.
Until we do a complete housecleaning, the state will continue to have these embarrassing and outrageous scenarios play out.
The Wisconsin Law Journal has announced their 2012 Leaders in the Law. Their announcement includes this preface on how the honorees were chosen:
The Wisconsin Law Journal has named its 2012 Leaders in the Law. The attorneys and judges selected have demonstrated their outstanding leadership, vision and legal expertise in Wisconsin’s law community. Honorees were chosen based on a wide variety of achievement criteria, including outstanding leadership, vision and legal expertise.
Scrolling down the list of honorees, two names jump out at me.
One is Attorney Michael Maistelman of Maistelman and Associates. Maistelman has a long history of expertise in Wisconsin election laws. Among his many successes, Maistelman was the legal representation in the charges against former State Senator Dan Kapanke, who had repeatedly willfully failed to follow election laws regarding campaign finances and open records request. It is Maistelman's expertise in election laws that led me to consult with him about the ongoing move by Scott Walker and his cronies to try to force the Government Accountability Board to use tax dollars to do his political work. And in the interest of full disclosure, it was Maistelman who ably represented me when the disreputable and misnamed Citizens for Responsible Government launched their false and libelous attack in a futile effort to discredit me.
The other name is that of the Honorable Maryann Sumi of Dane County Circuit Court who had correctly ruled that the Republicans violated the open meeting law when they tried to ram through the malicious and punitive Act 10 bill.
It should also be pointed out that absent from this list of honorees is Rick Esenberg, infamous for his rather selective and, at times, misleading interpretations of the law.
Also missing his Justice Michael Gableman, who has recently been found out for violating judicial ethics during his hearing regarding other judicial ethics violations.
Reports are that at the time this list was released, Justice David "Rubber Stamp" Prosser was in another fit of rage and was heard to yell, "I'm gonna choke the [redacted] for not putting me in there!"
It wasn't enough that Annette Ziegler embarrassed the Supreme Court by coming in under a cloud of ethics problems.
It wasn't enough that Michael Gableman broke judicial ethics by running a blatantly false and racist commercial against sitting Justice Louis Butler.
It wasn't enough that David Prosser, winner of the mystery votes game of Waukesha County, then proceeded to fantasize that he was in the game of Clue. (It was Prosser with the choke hold in the chamber.)
Gableman has to again bring disgrace to the Supreme Court. This time he violated ethics rules by accepting thousands of dollars worth of free legal advise during his first ethics violation hearing. On top of that, Gableman never bothered to recuse himself from cases involving the donating law firm (which should be charged too).
Of course, the Republicans are completely silent about the matter, and it is a Democrat that has to lead the call for this matter to be investigated.
If there is a bright side to this most latest stain the Republicans have brought upon our state, it's that alleged legal expert and admitted Bradley Foundation beneficiary Rick Esenberg is getting a healthy helping of crow to eat.
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.
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).
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!
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