Walker Spokeswoman Moves Him Closer To Nixon

Obviously intimidated and hiding behind a campaign spokeswoman - - and probably planning a new round of staged events in warehouses touting job numbers in conflict with official tallies - -  Governor and campaign money manager Scott Walker wraps himself in legalisms to evade responsibility for the John Doe mess he's brought down on himself:

"As previously reported, the prosecutor's attorney stated that Governor Walker is not a target, two separate judges have dismissed the allegations, and the Friends of Scott Walker campaign is not a party to the lawsuit in the 7th Circuit," Walker spokeswoman Alleigh Marré said in a statement Friday.

"Not a target"..."not a party..." and even citing prosecutors whom Walker has been fighting for years echo Tricky Dick Nixon's famous self-absolution from crookery that didn't stand up to political pressures, voter assessments and history.

John Dean has told the Capital Times that Scott Walker is more Nixonian than Nixon, and with Walker back in the shadows as damaging disclosures rain down, the analogy sure looks accurate today.

Appropriate that Walker's got his own Watergate.

Complete with corporate money flowing into a campaign behind the scenes.

As Deep Throat told Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward in the film version of "All The President's Men," follow the money,

Which is exactly what the prosecutors whom Walker said were giving him a pass were doing when tracking an undisclosed $700,000 campaign donation from the Gogebic, the company which helped write and lobbied for a controversial, sweetheart mining bill approved by the Legislature at Walker's urging, according to the Journal Sentinel:

Because Wisconsin Club for Growth's fundraising and expenditures were being coordinated with Scott Walker's agents at the time of Gogebic's donation, there is certainly an appearance of corruption in light of the resulting legislation from which it benefited," investigator Dean Nickel said in documents unsealed Friday.

The $1.5 billion mine would plunge as deep as 1,000 feet into hillsides in Ashland and Iron counties. Officials with the company have outlined plans for two pits covering about 4 miles. Gogebic also would operate a processing plant, turning the low-grade ore in taconite pellets for the steel industry...

The company had an early hand in writing a mining bill and continued to play a key role throughout the legislative process. The bill, one of GOP's signature pieces of legislation since Walker's election, was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Walker in early 2013.

The mine, the sweetheart bill - - so obviously tilted towards the company's wishes at the expense of common sense and the US Clean Water Act that federal warned against it for years - - and the environmental damage it would cause have been principal subjects on this blog for several years, and dozens of posts are available about it through the search box on the blog's upper left corner.

It is also a major focus of a summary, continually updated post about Walker's broad manipulation and disrespect for the electorate.

An excerpt: 

His disregard for the environment and Ojibwe culture was the subject of a major feature piece in The New York Times, though his own Department of Tourism in something of a telling mixed message has been touting the unspoiled area's hiking and camping opportunities.  

Walker has rhetorically crafted the mine into a big potential job creator to appeal to Up North residents in economically depressed counties - - while knowing full well that most of the better jobs if the mine ever opens will go to out-of-state speciality workers already on call or working for the mining company in other states. 

Walker also knows that any mine permits and approvals are problematic, at best - -  in part because the mining law he pushed through the Legislature is incompatible with current Federal water review requirements, not to mention Federal treaties with the Bad River Band. So years of delay and even outright veto and defeat for the mine are quite likely - - by which time Walker would have already extracted the political capital he needed from the issue.