Thursday, December 7, 2017

In WI, the far-right is at war with itself

It's the Dairyland version of "Alien vs. Predator," or "Mothra vs. Godzilla."

In this corner, we have the conservative, Bradley Foundation-funded law firm Wisconsin Institute for Liberty and Law, WILL, which is suing to block the way local taxpayer funds are being used to finance a project in Eau Claire.


And in the opposite corner, we have the conservative and regal Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel. 

Image may contain: 1 person, smiling, sitting and suit\
His office is jumping in against WILL.
At issue is whether local economic incentives can result in cash payments to a private developer or company — which in the Eau Claire case include $1.5 million, but in the Foxconn case total $100 million.
The state is seeking to intervene in support of the Eau Claire project in a lawsuit brought by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty on behalf of local taxpayers who say Eau Claire abused Wisconsin's tax incremental financing (TIF) law...
In a court filing this week, state Solicitor General Misha Tseytlin warned that the plaintiffs in the Eau Claire case seek to invalidate "a common feature" of Wisconsin’s TIF law: "cash grants paid to developers to help finance projects that promote economic the development...
The right hand in Wisconsin seems not to know what the other right hand wants, so enter Brad Schimel's Solicitor General. 

By the way, as I noted earlier, does Wisconsin really need a Solicitor General?
Schimel, by the way, has imitated [EPA administrator Scott] Pruitt's operation in Oklahoma by setting up within the Wisconsin Attorney General's office a new unit of hard-right lawyers under the supervision of a grandiosely-titled Solicitor General, to sue the federal government.

4 comments:

Golden Eagles said...

Why does he need a SG? Because Schimel is not competent.

Anonymous said...

Hey Jim, stop stealing my material. I did the "Alien v Predator" comparison in commenting on your blog about Vos v Walker.

James Rowen said...

Don't remember it. So sorry.

Anonymous said...

Knee-jerk first-thought reactions are making you miss an opportunity here. An opportunity to actually see things as they are, and not just through an Ideology-Affirming lens, and an opportunity to see a problem for Walker in the election. These 2 groups, who seem the same to YOU, are not. Conservatives are not all knuckle-dragging easily dismissed clones. This group WILL represents in this suit are not happy with Walker and his extreme levels of crony capitalism. Alienated, disaffected conservatives. Libertarians with no home at the governor's mansion. Walker courted true Libertarians early on, but his years of in-office behavior have proven him to be a faithless suitor. Maybe these people behind this suit are true conservatives in the fiscal sense, where Walker surely is not. His WEDC is a farce. So the Tiger or the Lady, sir. Do you prefer to validate simplistic perceptions and keep the base happy that way? Or admit there is a wide rage of personalties and perceptions on the "right" as well as the "left", and that they're not all cartoon characters, in order to reach a Happy Place wherein Walker is not uniformly loved by "conservatives". Some, on the "right" can't stand the guy. My guess is you'll stick with the cartoon mentality.