Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Walker's high court win carried steep price

Updated from 10/4] I'm not surprised that the US Supreme Court didn't take the Doe prosecutors' appeal of the Wisconsin Supreme Court's dismissal of the John Doe II probe despite some state justices campaigns' acceptance of large sums of the same dark money and campaign assistance which also helped give Walker his 2012 recall win.

Lawyers I know said the US Supreme Court takes for formal review very few of the petitions it receives, and maybe the message being sent to Wisconsin is, 'you have a remedy for the pickle you're in: it's called "elections.'


Though with legislators and an unashamedly pro-Walker State Supreme Court majority making and interpreting the rules, laws, election procedures and district boundaries, that kind of 'fix-in-yourself' dictum is a cop out.


Here's what I want to say now that the legal history of John Doe II, and John Doe I, for that matter, seems to be a closing book:


Walker and his donors and his campaign committee and his appointees and support networks all the way back to his days as Milwaukee County Executive spent a helluva lot of time and money going right up to the commonly-accepted line of traditional and legitimate campaigning, financing and organizing - - and kept crossing it, knowingly - -  whether with a secret email and fundraising system set up and staffed in a public office, or through a go-for-broke secret system of coordination among donors and so-called 'independent' third parties during the recall campaign - - and all of these politicians and staffers and funders and operatives had to be aware they could get caught, but opted for taking the chance because they believed their ends were justified regardless of the means to get there.


And, of course, knowing that if they and their cause were to hit the fan, they had stockpiled private lawyers, friendly Attorneys General, a State Supreme Court majority, and even GOP legislators waiting in the wings to redo the campaign coordination statute, and the John Doe statute, plus the elections, ethics and accountability laws, codes and machinery if need be - - to preserve, protect and defend Scott Walker and his network of one-percenters.


Who would sign everyone of those self-preserving personal and partisan 'reforms' into law, completing a deeply corrupted and perverse incineration of democracy we had known and practiced and honored in a once-progressive state.


Imagine this as the norm from now on.

That is the full, damage-done scope of the ruinous coordination that has taken place across the board here since the 2010 election and also in the across-the-line gerrymandering that has deeply, and perhaps permanently, embedded in the state a party and Governor whom Republicans revere because he is pledged to enforce a reactionary, donor-driven, anti-worker ideology that has turned the state into a low-wage, corporately-controlled, poverty-enabling backwater that has been intentionally polluted - - politically, environmentally and ethically.


In the wake of his victorious skate past the US Supreme Court, I expect an emboldened Walker to further his vindictive budgeting-by-starvation for the institutions he imagines to be liberal - - the UW system, cities and especially the Department of Natural Resources - - even though they have given the state so much identity and value and appeal - - until now.


So, yes, Walker won at the US Supreme Court, but the state, its values, people, history, and potential have all lost.


Pretty steep price, one politician's hide.







8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well said James. Hopefully the people of Wisconsin have seem what Walker and friends stand for: Corporate and political greed! They may have created a corrupt political machine that serves only them but wrongs have a way of righting themselves especially for those who sell their souls to the devil. We have seen what Walker is and I believe that the majority of Wisconsinites would not lay claim to him as someone of character, class or honesty. There is a reason he supports Trump.....they are cut from the same cloth....they are more alike than they even know. How this classless individual devoid of a moral compass ever earned an eagle scout honor is beyond comprehension. He's a charlatan at best and the worst kind of human being.

Jake formerly of the LP said...

Do you think Walker or his puppetmasters care about what damage he leaves behind?

The only solution is to vote out EVERY Republican this November, and in November 2018. And if that fails because the rubes are to gutless, then the state breaks down, likely for good. The oligarchs and their buddies in media may not care, but you'd better

Anonymous said...

Now that the Weasel of Wauwatosa has seen the basics of running for President and raising that money he will follow Huckabee as an eternal candidate who runs every four years. Amazingly almost all of the money raised will be paid out to family members etc. Yes the state under Koch rule has deteriorated and will go even further. The value of a UW degree is on the downhill slide. Don't think for one minute that there isn't more than a little Marquette versus UW attitude happening here. You see the Republicans go after one and only one county board to dictate size and staffing etc. by state law. All as a payback for perceived slights. No criteria given as to how county boards and their budgets should be determined. Just raw political punishment. No forward looking businesses on the cutting edge would want to locate in this homophobic,racist, police brutality defending, anti-education and anti-science state. Hence we rank so low in the numbers that measure new business activity. Every time that Cowboy Clarke shows his hateful face on TV is one more chance for people to see that our largest population center has a cartoonish and hateful buffoon for a sheriff. My advice to people is to stay away until we can straighten this out. That indeed will be a very long time. My advice to anybody else is to get out and move away if you can. The opportunities in neighboring states are far greater than what will exist here for a very long time.

Peter Felknor said...

This is what happens when you vote in really, really dumb people because they're "like us," which is in itself an embarrassing statement. Our current administration can't even progress farther than the laboratory chimps that learned to push buttons to get treats. Unfortunately the rest of us are stuck beneath the grates at the bottom of the cage.

Anonymous said...

Free speech is for every American, not just who progressives think deserve protection.

Anonymous said...

I understand the anger some feel because we can't vote the Republicans out. But people need to remember, WISCONSIN DID VOTES REPUBLICANS OUT IN 2014 AND SO DID MUCH OF AMERICA!

Wisconsin:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/4/1243060/-Still-Think-This-is-a-Democracy-Dems-Won-the-Popular-Vote-in-13-State-Legislatures-GOP-Kept-Power

Nationally:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/05/16/why_the_gop_lost_the_vote_but_gained_house_seats__118430.html

The problem is the gerrymandering and voter suppression -- and if you understand mathematics and the law of large numbers, there are also reasons to question the integrity of proprietary numbers that cannot be verified and even GAB would not release on a precinct-by-precinct basis.

It will take historical turnouts and at least 10% margin (60/40) to take back Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Is Now a Republican Oligopoly: Election results reveal Democrats now start all elections with a ten percent disadvantage

The 2010 election gave Republicans control over all three branches of Wisconsin government: the governorship, the state senate, and the assembly. They took advantage of this control to redistrict legislative districts to give themselves a built-in advantage in all future elections. The recent election results offer a chance to measure the size of this advantage and its likely effect on the state.

For a party wishing to gain an electoral advantage through redistricting, the basic strategy is to pack a select number of districts with very high proportions of voters favoring the other party. This creates the opportunity for a larger number of districts with a majority of voters favoring the party doing the redistricting. In this article, I look at the effectiveness of this strategy in Wisconsin.

More: http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2014/12/11/data-wonk-wisconsin-is-now-a-republican-oligopoly/

Anonymous said...

@anon 10:58
Walker is no longer a Wauwatosa existent he sold his house and moved to Madison.

Anonymous said...

And remember, Walker is from Colorado, but really grew up in Delavan. The old "Eagle Scout" crap that Wisconsin media stooopidly catapult in 2010 and the first-half of his term hid a bigger lie.

Walker's family did not like that there were Hispanics in the agricultural working-class town of Delavan (as opposed to the exclusive nearby community of Lake Geneva). They pulled him from the local Boy Scouts to another area group to get him away from the kids from Mexico.

Yeah, more proof that Scott Walker was created by a dysfunctional media network of propaganda. When was the last time you heard a divide-and-conquer politician promoted in the media as an "Eagle Scout" and "Son of a Preacher".

Nuff said...