Time To Draw The Line On Lobbyists!

By Jeff Simpson

Jack Craver wrote a story recently about how the lobbyist's in Madison do not even waste their time talking to or trying to lobby democrats anymore.

“I will see every lobbyist who asks to see me unless I have a scheduling conflict because I know they have a job to do and I can get important information,” says state Rep. Terese Berceau, D-Madison.

For Berceau, the problem is that lobbyists have no interest in speaking to her anymore. Their avoidance of her and other Democrats reflects the perception that Republicans will be running the show in Wisconsin for many years to come. Unlike in past years, when the balance of power in the Capitol was more delicate, lobbyists no longer see an incentive to cultivate relationships in both parties.

“There’s been a notable change this year,” Berceau says. “I have always been visited by lobbyists, even when we’re in the minority. They’re not even bothering now.”

 

I guess when Democratic elected reps are lamenting that lobbyists will not talk to them, we no longer have to ask ourselves why the Democratic base does not come out and vote.   That being said, this story clears some things up about the Mary Burke campaign.  

Lobbyists have no reason to talk to Democrats anymore because they have no power and the Democratic candidate for Governor's campaign is being run a by a lobbyist.  That explains why her speeches appeal more to the republican base than the Democratic base. 

It also explains why,  when we need to get the base out to the polls and people do not know who Mary Burke is, she spends her valuable time meeting with Kurt Bauer of all people.

If you want to continue your successful and lucrative lobbying business, you need to make sure NOT to ruffle feathers.   It is well documented, with the pettiness of the Wisconsin republicans and Scott Walker, that they will punish you if you do not tow the ALEC line! 

Just ask Mike Ellis!

 



Solutions?  Simple!  Rid your campaign of lobbyist's, and start addressing the real issues in WI.   Charles Blow writing in the NY Times addressed it perfectly: 

We should be in a rage over the widespread attempts to disenfranchise voters, from the gutting of the Voting Rights Act to the rise of the Voter ID movement — a near-naked attempt by conservatives to diminish the number of Democratic voters.

We should be in a rage over Republican efforts, particularly on the state level, to drag the range of women’s reproductive options back to the 1960s.

We should be in a rage over the extraordinary pressures facing ordinary families. According to The New York Times’ Economix blog, college costs have risen over 500 percent since 1985, medical and gas costs more than 300 percent. And, the Pew Research Center reported Tuesday that “in inflation-adjusted dollars, average weekly child care expenses for families with working mothers who paid for child care” rose 70 percent from 1985 to 2011.

And yet, a report last week from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that “some 69 percent of the cuts in House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s new budget would come from programs that serve people of limited means.”

We should be in a rage over the fact that people in this country can work a full-time job and not earn a living wage. We should be in a rage that this country’s infrastructure is literally crumbling beneath us. The “2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure,” produced by the American Society of Civil Engineers, gave our infrastructure an overall grade of D+ and estimated that $3.6 trillion would be needed by 2020 to fix it. 

We should be in a rage that we are spiraling toward cataclysmic, irreversible climate change with little interest or effort in averting it, with little coverage and less than accurate coverage.

But where rage should be, there is too often a whimper

Blow also summed it up perfectly:

When will we demand the country we deserve: reflective of its people, protective of its people, simply of its people? When will the young and the poor and the aggrieved and the forsaken walk abreast to the polls and then to the public squares?

If we don’t like the government we have, we can change it. If we don’t like the path we’re on, we can alter it.

It is NOT too late to alter the path we are on.  Yesterday in Wisconsin, we lost over 1000 well paying jobs throughout the state.  It's NOT working and never has.

I am here to Beg Mary Burke to get serious about running a real campaign.  One that can actually beat Scott Walker.  One that a majority of Democrats and independents are asking and hoping for.  

Let's connect with the people of WI and not WMC.   Let's explain why Walker has been such a failure, in terms of our ideas not their failures.  Let's fire up the base, let there be no doubt or blurred lines on your support for labor, public education and the middle class.

Right now Ms. Burke, you have an army of Wisconsinites ready and willing to follow a leader to victory in November.  You signed up for the position, now prove to us you are that leader!

 

The future of our state depends on it! 

Stop Hitting Yourself

By Jeff Simpson

The Wisconsin republicans are playing the age old "stop hitting yourself" game and the democrats in Wisconsin are again willing opponents!

 This time trying to bring more money into the election cycle for their opponents. Unfortunately, Rep. Fred Kessler (D-Milwaukee) and Rep. Terese Berceau (D-Madison) are playing right into the republicans hands.  

Democrats and Republicans in the Assembly are working together on a bill that would double the amount donors can give politicians and allow voters to register online.

It's a surprise collaboration that emerged just days after Democrats reacted with outrage at a public hearing to an earlier version of the bill from Republicans. A new draft of the measure made public Friday night shows the GOP was willing to drop some elements that Democrats consider onerous to accomplish something both parties want — raising contribution limits.

  Let's put this in a little more perspective before we point out how wrong Berceau and Kessler are.  From the same article:

 Meanwhile, a bill has been put on the fast track that would require women seeking abortions to get ultrasounds and require doctors performing the procedure to have hospital admitting privileges.

 Hmmmm no mention of wanting to work with dems on that one.  Let's continue -

On a third key issue, Senate Republicans are deciding whether to go along with a venture capital bill approved by the Assembly on Thursday.
Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) and some other GOP senators would like to go a different route so the state funds could flow to biotech firms. That plan would be certain to draw fierce opposition from anti-abortion groups that oppose research that destroys human embryos.

Let's also not forget the attack on public education with the misnamed compromise where democrats were not allowed in the room.  

NOW they have an awful bill to allow even more money into their pockets, making it that much harder for actual citizens to ever enter the political arena.   The important issues that matter to Wisconsinites, they are not allowed a seat at the table, yet the democrats join in and give them political cover for a bill that will further help bury them in years to come. 

"stop hitting yourself"