What Walker Knew

Here's a video created by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin regarding Walkergate. Watch it all the way through. The look on Scott Walker's face at the end is priceless:



The video is part of a full-fledged look at Walkergate.

The video is good, but, in my humble opinion, they could have saved a lot of time and money by just offering one link.

Tell Obama To Nominate New FEC Commissioners

Tired of our government being controlled by Big Business? Do you want a government that is truly of the people, by the people and for the people?

Then sign this online petition telling President Barack Obama to nominate new commissioners to the Federal Election Commission:

We expect candidates for federal office to follow our campaign finance laws, but the FEC – the agency charged with enforcing those laws – is completely dysfunctional.

Three of the six commissioners staunchly refuse to enforce the law and five of the six are serving despite expired terms.

Prior to your election, you professed support for campaign finance reform. We agree with you that the Citizens United Supreme Court decision was disastrous and the failure of Congress to require disclosure of campaign-related spending was outrageous. Nevertheless, you have failed to appoint new commissioners who actually would enforce such laws.

To restore some faith into the democratic process, we urge you to nominate new commissioners to the FEC prior to the 2012 elections.

Holperin Introduces Anti-Dumpster Bill

State Senator Jim Holperin (D-Conover) has introduced a bill that would make state government more transparent:

State Sen. Jim Holperin (D-Conover) urged an Assembly committee Thursday to favorably move forward his bill to end the Legislature's exemption from the public records retention law.

Holperin testified at a public hearing on the bill before the Assembly's Committee on Judiciary and Ethics. The senator has authored companion legislation in the Senate, and is the principal author and driving force of the measures.

Holperin thanked the committee and its chairman, Rep. Jim Ott (R-Mequon), for holding the session. The Conover Democrat had requested a Senate hearing last Dec. 19 in a letter to Sen. Rich Zipperer (R-Pewaukee), the chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, but Holperin said Thursday the committee had yet to afford the bill a hearing.

Technically, the open records law does apply to lawmakers. Right now, though, according to an analysis by the Legislative Reference Bureau, the state Public Records Board supervises the state's public records management and preservation program and sets retention schedules for records, but none of those management and preservation procedures apply to the records or correspondence of members of the Legislature.

Hence, a lawmaker could dispose of any records at any time. Holperin's bill deletes the exemption.

This is a good bill and the State Senate judiciary committee should hold a hearing on that as soon as possible. Transparency in government, which this bill would strengthen, is always a good thing.

The Republicans probably would hate to see this bill pass though. It could be a real embarrassment given the Walkergate Dumpster and the revealing of the Super-Secret Money-Loving Voter-Hating Club they've got going on.

Esenberg Shorter

The law is "fairly weak" because it doesn't say what I want it to say.

And he is the right wing's "expert."

Another famous line involving Esenberg:

Ubiquitous Republican-for-hire lawyer James Troupis despatched sometime co-counsel Rick Esenberg to Madison yesterday to pronounce definitively that the WISGOP plan "is simply not vulnerable" to legal challenge and that "any challenge to the plan would be almost frivolous." 

Well, that didn't prove to be true either, did it?

Walkergate: A New Wink-le In The Story

Darlene Wink, who worked for Scott Walker when he was Milwaukee County Executive and was the first name to come out in what appears to the scandal of the century, made it in the news again today.

Wink was first brought to the attention of the public when she was busted leaving comments on JSOnline and other blogs promoting Walker's gubernatorial candidacy and ripping at his opponents.  Little did we know at the time that this was just the very tip of the tip of a huge iceberg of corruption and scandal.

It was only after that news came out that it raised suspicions about other things.

One such thing was an incident in which I, acting as the Chair of Milwaukee County First, asked about a Milwaukee County Parks logo being on a banner announcing a Tea Party rally held at the lakefront.  Stemming from this, Cory Liebmann was able to figure out that it was Wink who not only handled my request but also a suspicious Open Records Request within minutes, leading to suspicions that Wink and other county staffers were behind the official unofficial Walker campaign site, ScottForGov.com.

It was also suspicious that when Walker sent an email, from his campaign website regarding Wink getting busted and demanding that there should be "no laptops, no websites, no time away during the workday, etc.," the site disappeared into thin air.

Wink then came up again when she was found to be tied in to "Operation Freedom," the political stunt posing as a charitable event, from which Tim Russell was embezzling  thousands of dollars.  Despite warnings from the Ethics Board, Walker had Russell and Wink running this thing from his executive office.

Then finally, a couple of weeks ago, almost as an afterthought, Wink was arrested and charged with two counts of illegally campaigning and fundraising.  Much about her arrest was drowned out as people were trying to come to terms with the level of corruption happening with Kelly Rindfleisch.

The Milwaukee County District Attorney offered a plea bargain to Wink.  The deal was that they would drop the charges from felonies to misdemeanors and not recommend any jail time.  In return, Wink was to plead guilty and act as state witness against the others that have been charged and to give information about the "destruction of digital evidence."

Photo illustration by
Anna Ironside

It could very well have been Wink who told investigators where to go in which underground parking area to find the Mystery Dumpster'O'Fun.

News of the deal has many Wisconsinites excited and hopeful that this means she'll spill her guts and give enough information for them to indict Walker.

I wouldn't be too sure about that.  While it's obviously true that, like most people, she really, really doesn't want to go to jail, but how strong is that aversion to incarceration?

I have spoken to people who have known her and they have described her as being very zealous, almost to the point of being cultish, to all things Walker.  In other words, she has drunken long and deep and often of the Kool-Aid and that they could see her taking a fall if it meant protecting her Dear Leader.

I was reminded of this when I saw this quote in the report by Marie Rohde, writing for WisPolitics.com:

“Miss Wink just wants to put this behind her,” Wolff said. “She doesn’t like being in the limelight, and she’s a very loyal person.” 

The question is whether she is more loyal to herself or to Walker.  Of course, they could also be using her to put the pressure on others in an effort to get them to turn on Walker.

But then again, there is this blurb from Dan Bice's report for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Wolff said Wink was able to complete all her legitimate county assignments in her courthouse job, as well as the campaign work done at the request of someone else. Wolff declined to identify that person. Wink was not pressured to do the campaign work, Wolff said.

One could easily assume that it is Walker who asked her to do that work.  My guess is that it wasn't Walker, but that it was Tim Russell.

If my guess is correct, the question becomes who told Russell to have it done.

That person could be very well the same person who told Russell that there should be "no laptops, no websites, no time away during the workday, etc.," and then violated that same directive within days himself.

While Wink turning state witness might not necessarily be the direct downfall of Scott Walker, it could very well be the beginning of the end.

Two Down, One To Go

Those that have followed me a long time know that there are certain things that really tick me off (besides Scott Walker).  Things like child abuse or animal abuse raises my anger like few other issues do.

One story that I've been following for three years, involved one of the harshest acts of animal abuse I've ever heard of and was made only worse because it happened in one of my favorite areas of the state, Central Wisconsin, where my castle is located.

The story involved three assholes that thought it'd be great fun to take snowmobiles and run down some deer, tormenting them and mangling the bodies.

The ring leader of these pukes, Rory Kuenzi, who was already serving a term for a drunk driving killing of a young man, was sentenced last year to 11 years in jail.

Now the second of the three has been sentenced:

A Waupaca man will serve a six-month jail sentence and probation time for his role in the 2009 snowmobile slaughter of several deer. 

Nicholas D. Hermes, 26, was sentenced Tuesday in Waupaca County Court for his role in the deer deaths along a trail in the Town of Lind. Hermes will spend 2½ years on probation and pay about $6,200 in fines and costs. 

In December, Hermes pleaded no contest to three felony counts of animal mistreatment and three misdemeanor charges of hunting deer out of season. Two felony mistreatment counts and two more counts of illegal hunting were dismissed as part of the plea deal.

The third fool, Robby Kuenzi is scheduled for trial April 3.  I expect him to get put away too.

Maybe they can share cell blocks with the Walkergate gang.

Walkergate: What's In Your Dumpster?

Dan Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had a column up with a batch of three stories in it.

The one story that my esteemed lefty blogger colleagues caught on to was the story of Scott Walker's hypocrisy regarding how governor's should behave when they have bad-acting underlings.

But it appears that might not be the most interesting one of Bice's stories.

He also had one about a mystery dumpster that is now part of Walkergate:

The John Doe investigation of Walker's tenure as county executive has taken many odd twists and turns.

But what to make of this?

Last week, Frank Busalacchi, head of the county Transportation and Public Works Department, was asked by investigators for a particular county Dumpster.

"All they asked was if I could move it, and we did," Busalacchi said Thursday. "I think they wanted to look through it."

Was it full or empty?

"I have no idea," he said. "They asked me that, and I said, 'You know, I just got here in November. I don't know what's in a Dumpster on the side of the courthouse. I have no idea.'"

Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, who is overseeing the John Doe probe, wouldn't provide any further insight.

"I have no comment," Landgraf said.

Well, I might have some more information on that.

From what I have learned, the dumpster was indeed moved and had to have a lock broken or cut open. Inside, the dumpster was reportedly full of papers of some sort. What kind is unknown, but it took a number of deputy sheriffs and staff from the District Attorney's office to go through and they are probably still sorting through them

Your guess at what those papers are would be as good as mine, but the first thing I thought of was the missing files that were reported shortly after Walker and his entourage left the courthouse at the end of 2010:

The dozens of Walker's file cabinets were virtually emptied of their contents by the end of last month, and 16 bankers' boxes of records retrieved this week from storage by aides to Holloway appear well short of the total paper-load once held in the courthouse's third-floor executive suite.

A tour this week of the sparsely staffed offices revealed banks of empty file drawers, save a set of various bureaucratic forms, county budget books and one stack of papers on various issues left in the office of Fran McLaughlin, who was Walker's county spokeswoman.

The empty drawers, coupled with the absence of any message or memo telling the whereabouts of Walker's office documents - and at least two bins of shredded paper left by Walker staffers - were perplexing, Mester said.

It was probably those or leftover copies of the Milwaukee County First's Survival Guide to Scott Walker's Courthouse.

Sources have told me that the authorities knew just where to go to find this dumpster, which originally made me wonder if they had put it there, until I learned of the need to force the lock. That would tell me that maybe one of the other persons of interest in this ongoing investigation has cut a deal and turned state witness and told them where to find said mystery dumpster'o'fun.  Remember that Darlene Wink has already agreed to testify about the "destruction of digital evidence."

Now, granted, a lot of the details are vague and a lot of pieces to this latest puzzle are obviously still missing, but it does not appear to be a good omen for Walker as he is going to be meeting with the investigators himself in the near future.

The one thing that I can tell you with some certainty is that it definitely appears that the most eye-popping twists to this story are still in store for us.

But wouldn't it be a form of poetic justice if the contents of that dumpster is what puts Walker's political career, and his demented ideological agenda, in the dumpster instead?

The Secret Republican Money-Loving Voter-Haters Club

Are the state Republicans that megalomaniacal or just plain stupid?

The whole mess the Republicans made with their gerrymandering is coming back to bite them in the arse.

Now it's starting to sound like a bad movie based on the Godfather movies but starring the Marx Brothers.

This story will not bode well for them at all, and it shouldn't:

Included in the documents released Monday was a set of talking points that stressed that those who discussed the maps could eventually be called as a witness in a court case.

"Public comments on this map may be different than what you hear in this room. Ignore the public comments," the talking points also say.

[...]

An immigrant rights group contends that Republicans violated the state's open meetings law in how they developed the maps and filed a complaint Monday with Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne.

Legislative leaders sometimes ask rank-and-file legislators to keep quiet about sensitive legislation, but they do not ask them to sign pledges of secrecy.

The agreement tells each lawmaker "you agree not to disclose the fact and/or contents of such discussions or any draft documents within your possession."

And there's a part that the gone but not forgotten Illusory Tenant would have been all over (emphasis mine):

All the agreements were also signed by Eric McLeod of Michael Best & Friedrich, one of several attorneys who advised lawmakers on the maps. Legislative leaders have committed $400,000 in taxpayer money to pay Michael Best and the Troupis Law Office for their work on the maps.

McLeod has drawn attention in recent months for providing legal services to state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman under an arrangement in which Gableman did not have to pay.

That old peppercorn won't go away, will it?

When this matter hits the Supreme Court, and you know it will, Gableman will either have to recuse himself or set himself up for the third wave of recalls.

Outside of Waukesha and Washington Counties, where money rules all for those Republicans, I wonder if there will be any left in power within the next couple of years. I cannot imagine how any person with even a shred of self-respect could stand by Scott Walker or any of these other corrupt fools.

Once, Twice, Three Times A Liar

Scott Walker is a compulsive liar.  Even when he doesn't have to lie, he does.  And even when he knows he'll be found out to be lying, he still does.

One of the more recent examples was when he tried to tell the people that he "found" all sorts of savings and because of that, he would lift the caps on Family Care.  The truth was that the federal government forced him to do it.

Now, there's a more recent example.

On Friday, his campaign issued a press release, complete with grammatical errors, regarding Walkergate.  In it, he tried to make himself appear the Eagle Scout and was just trying to help out the cause of justice:

Over the last 20 months, District Attorney John Chisholm has been conducting an examination of issues in connection with former employees of Milwaukee County. Throughout that time, our campaign has cooperated with requests for information.  

My cooperation in this matter extends beyond a willingness to supply any and all requested documents. I have already said that I would be happy to sit down with the people looking into these issues and answer any additional questions they may have. To make that point clear, last year, my representatives voluntarily contacted Mr. Chisholm’s office to arrange a time to discuss any outstanding issues. I will be voluntarily meeting with Mr. Chisholm.  

To assemble additional background information, I hired counsel to insure [sic] that I am in the best position possible to continue aiding the inquiry. These attorneys, Mike Steinle and John Gallo, have been reviewing a great deal of material from the past few years, but no public money has been used or will be used for these purposes.  

While all of us need to let this matter run its course, I will continue to cooperate and provide any appropriate information that is requested. 

However, today it's a different story, as reported by Dan Bice:

Gov. Scott Walker acknowledged Monday that prosecutors initiated the upcoming meeting they will have with him as part of the John Doe investigation about activities that occurred during Walker's tenure as Milwaukee County executive. 

"Up until now, we've provided written documentation (from the campaign)," Walker said during a briefing with reporters in Waukesha. "They'd like to talk to us about what they've found and what additional help we can provide."

Even funnier is this line from TMJ4's report:

Walker says his lawyers are examining thousands of emails his campaign has turned over to the DA. He said he hired the lawyers because it would take him too much time to do that work.

Not to mention a dumpster full of hidden files, eh, Walker?

I bet the trifecta in the big lies will be when Walker said, "I am not John Doe."

Walker Finally Gets That High Ranking He's Been Looking For

Scott Walker is in the top five worst governors in United States.

Way to go, Scott!

And once Walkergate is fully revealed, I'm sure you be number one!

Scott Walker: The Artful Dodger

So who hired Kelly Rindfleisch? Scott Walker ain't telling:



Expect to see a lot more of this in the weeks and months to come, either in regards to Walkergate or the recall.

The Walkergate Files

One Wisconsin Now has the neatest websites.  The Walkergate Files is no exception.

I'm especially glad that they got the name right.

But how come I only get one link? They could have saved themselves time and grief by just linking my whole blog.

Can A Sun Devil Learn To Do The Bucky?

We'll find out soon enough as the good people of Arizona try to recall Governor Jan Brewer.

Hopefully, their organization is better than their website.

Their Facebook page is here.

Go Arizona!

Bill Kramer: Little Big Man

Future Lord of
the Flies contender

State Representative Bill Kramer (R-Palookaville) shows just how "macho" he is by packing heat on the Assembly floor:

The Republican lawmaker who presides over the state Assembly says he’s been carrying a concealed weapon during floor sessions.

Bill Kramer of Waukesha is speaker pro tem of the Assembly. He controls debate and can order spectators out of the chamber.

He says he obtained a permit to carry a concealed weapon in November and has at times carried a Glock 26 on the Assembly floor.

He says he feels he needs the weapon given the toxic atmosphere at the state Capitol. Bands of protesters still angry over Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s contentious collective bargaining law have spent the past year harassing GOP legislators.

So what is this little big man afraid of? Having his actions known apparently:

Democratic representatives requested Kramer to rescind his order, saying it was unfair for the whole gallery to be cleared based on the behavior of only some people. Kramer took back the order, saying, “The gallery is for observation. We have public hearings for a reason and that is where you can be heard. We have prohibitions against holding signs and against filming so please put down your signs and cameras. We have prohibitions against showing support or disapproval so I hope you’ll abide by that.”

Then law enforcement began to haul people out for silently holding signs or taking pictures with their cameras. The Progressive’s own Matt Rothschild was arrested for taking a picture of these arrests being made.

A total of eighteen people were arrested and ticketed for offenses that will likely be thrown out in court.

People feel so strongly about protecting and defending their ability to record and document the goings-on in the Assembly because corporate media is doing such a poor job of it. If you’re not at the Capitol on a regular basis, you would find it difficult to believe the impunity with which the rightwing is shoving their racist, sexist, corporatist agenda down the throats of the people of this state.

And just think, he's supposed to be one of the "leaders" in the Republican Party. No wonder Fitzwalkerstan is starting to feel like a scene from "The Lord of the Flies."

Private School Suspends Menominee Girl For Speaking Native Tongue

But there's no racism in Wisconsin, right?

What's love got to do with it? Not much, especially if you say the words "I love you" in the Menominee language in front of a certain Wisconsin teacher.

Seventh grader Miranda Washinawatok, Menominee, found this out.

Miranda speaks two languages: Menominee and English. She also plays on her basketball team. However, two Thursdays ago she was suspended for one basketball game because she spoke Menominee to a fellow classmate during class.

Miranda attends Sacred Heart Catholic Academy in Shawano, Wisconsin. The school body is over 60 percent American Indian. The school is approximately six miles from the south border of the Menominee Indian Tribe Reservation.

[...]

Miranda and a fellow classmate were talking to each other when Miranda told her how to say "Hello" and "I love you" in Menominee.

"The teacher went back to where the two were sitting and literally slammed her hand down on the desk and said, "How do I know you are not saying something bad?"

The story did not end there. In the next session, another teacher told Miranda she did not appreciate her getting the other teacher upset because "she is like a daughter to me."

The article goes on to point out the irony that the Green Bay Diocese, which operates the school, has an answering machine that works for English or Spanish, but not for Menominee, even though Menominee children make up 60% of the school population.

Even though the article points out that the school is Catholic, they don't own the market on bigotry and racism.

What I do think of is the Republican push to restore the racist and bigoted Native American nicknames and mascots for school teams.