Beware the Scott Walker Brady Street moles

Rich is the name, retail sales is the game

Here's an amusing tale from Daniel Bice in the Journal-Sentinel revealing the deceitful shenanigans of one of Scott Walker's political aides who hangs around at bars in downtown Milwaukee, eavesdrops on total strangers' telephone calls, and then strikes up fraudulent conversations of his own, which he surreptitiously records with an i-Thingie.

During which Scott Walker's aide, the notorious Michael Brickman, lies about his name ("Rich"), lies about his occupation ("retail"), and lies that he knows next to nothing of the political campaign with which he's intimately involved (throughout — behold the transcript).

The honest party to the surreptitiously recorded conversation is John-david Morgan, a union activist. Morgan runs an anti-Walker website called Scott Walker Truth Squad dot org. Which is shocking, because everybody loves Scott Walker, especially county employees.

Apart from the Scott Walker aide's underhanded tactics, there's little to Bice's story except for an implied whiff of illegality, which the report concocts by relating Morgan's account of chatting with Phil Walzak at Milwaukee Laborfest. Morgan describes Walzak as "the guy that runs Barrett's campaign." Barrett is Tom Barrett, the mayor of Milwaukee and the Democratic nominee for Wisconsin governor.

Third-party efforts — depending on the nature of the third-party and depending further on the nature of that third-party's efforts — on behalf of a political campaign may be treated as contributions to the campaign, if those efforts are coordinated with the campaign.

But Walzak doesn't run Tom Barrett's campaign; he's one of Barrett's own spokespersons and moreover, flatly denies Mr. Morgan's grandiose perorations. Yet the implied bar-time suggestion was apparently compelling enough for Bice that the reporter contacted two "election law experts," one of whom is quoted as warning,

"If SEIU or any other union spent money based on discussions they had with the Barrett campaign — whatever campaign — yeah, you've got a coordinated expenditure issue," said [George] Dunst, who is now retired from State government.

"The union may, in short, be handcuffed," notes Mr. Bice gravely.

By the same reasoning if SEIU shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, then yeah, you've got a homicide issue. In any event, it would appear the coordination isn't going so well when the putative coordinator doesn't even know who's who with the Barrett campaign.

And while surreptitious bar-time recordings aren't per se unlawful here, I understand they're a bugger to get admitted as evidence in civil cases and this one contains about eleventeen layers of hearsay.

The other election expert cited is Marquette University professor of law Rick Esenberg, who the Journal-Sentinel frequently presents as a disinterested academic. Not exactly. In fact when the O'Donnell parking garage fatality occurred in June, Prof. Esenberg hurried to his computer to announce that any observer that so much as linked to a website whose proprietor simply wondered aloud how the tragedy might affect the ongoing political campaign for governor was a "ghoul." So much for the election law expert's academic disinterest.

In summary, be careful who you're talking to out there, and be vigilant of who's eavesdropping on your private conversations. It could very well be a Scott Walker communications aide (named "Rich" who works in "retail") with a vibrating electronic device in his pants.

Charlie Sykes secretly terrified for Scott Walker

Legendary coif in evident disarray

"Unlikely this will catch on in any big way," denies local medium-wave hominid Charlie Sykes. He's squawking about advice issuing from some Democratic quarters to forego the Democratic Party ballot and select a Republican one next Tuesday, to vote for Republican candidate for governor Mark Neumann against Sykes's favorite Scott Walker.

Wisconsin has an open primary, and a qualified elector needn't even declare party affiliation when voting. At the polling station, a voter receives separate ballots listing candidates for each party respectively, and then chooses one or the other in the voting booth.

It might be unlikely to catch on in a big way in Milwaukee County, where there are a number of competitive Democratic primary races and liberals won't pass up an opportunity to dethrone, for example, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke or State Senator Jeff Plale, both widely viewed by progressive observers as political impostors.

Dane County, the State capitol seat and repository of Wisconsin's second largest population of registered voters, is a different story. Left-leaning voters in Madison — which is nearly all of them, according to standard conservative mythology — could be sorely tempted to derail career politician Scott Walker's lifelong ambitions.

Late momentum favoring Neumann

And the temptation needn't catch on "in a big way," as the radio gabber fears. For one thing, Rasmussen Reports already shows Scott Walker and Mark Neumann in a dead heat,* and for another, Walker needs to deal with voters in Wisconsin's hardline conservative counties, among the next most populous after Milwaukee and Dane.

Potential Democratic shenanigans aside, those out-State voters are the ones the big city-bred Scott Walker really needs to be concerned about, and his comically desperate attempts to paint Mark Neumann as a Nancy Pelosi clone demonstrate that he's very concerned indeed.

No wonder Charlie Sykes's hair helmet is figuratively disheveled.

* Head to head against the (unopposed**) Democratic candidate, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, Scott Walker and Mark Neumann are equally favored. Moreover: "Support for Neumann is up three points from earlier this month [at August 27] and is the highest measured for the candidate since polling of the race began in February."

The latter finding is the true source of the Scott Walker contingent's fear and trembling. Mark Neumann has captured the late momentum.

** eta: Whoops. Sorry about that, Tim John.

Scott Walker's favorite HotAir commenter

@ScottKWalker #believeinjillbader

Hey, remember when two of Scott Walker's top communications directors giddily repurposed some indigenous Miami Bass-style R&B boogying-on-down as Obama's response to critics of a proposed rail link in Wisconsin? "Ha!" they tweeted, and retweeted they, "Ha!"

Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker's communications directors, Michael Brickman and Jill Bader, derived their jollies from ted c, a commenter at the low-rent conservative blog, HotAir.com, of which the Walker gang is undoubtedly assiduous disciples. Stephanie Findley of the WisDems' Black Caucus caught out the Walker endorsement and her objection was reproduced by Time magazine.

Then Jill Bader claimed she'd retweeted a link to the funkay YouTube video clip only by accident. What she really thought she was linking to was the HotAir blog post, and not ted c's comment directly, and oh no, certainly not the YouTube link embedded in ted c's comment.

Even though what she was presented with, by Brickman, was a Twitter post that read (it's since been disappeared):

Ha! @hotair blog commenter: Pres. Obama's response to @ScottKWalker's www.NoTrain.com: http://youtu.be/A_Zi-YSW3aQ #railfail #believeinwi

So Jill Bader, the communications director for the leading Republican candidate for Wisconsin governor (that's Scott Walker's hashmarked official slogan, "believeinwi") actually expects you to believe that she doesn't know the difference between a blog post and a comment to a blog post. That alone strains credulity. As anyone who has spent more than five minutes on the internets clearly understands, the disparity in intellectual quality between blog post writing and blog commenting often, uh, varies widely. We all know the difference.

Then Jill Bader further expects you to believe she thought that a URL containing the hypertext protocol http://youtu.be/ was in fact a link to a blog post at http://hotair. I don't know which you're supposed to swallow: either of those ridiculous expectations, or the fact that she's the communications director for an actual gubernatorial candidate.

Finally Jill Bader — the professional communications director — expects you to believe she's basically just reposting links to various internets locations without checking what those links lead to. And as for "Ha!" and "Ha!" again, there's nothing particularly funny about the HotAir blog post Bader claims she thought she was linking to.

Quite plainly, Jill Bader's ramshackle apologetics are preposterous.

Interestingly, ted c had written "the administration" in his comment but Walker's man Michael Brickman decided for some reason to change that to the more personally specific, "Obama."

Then a little further down the HotAir comments thread, ted c resurfaces to shout "NICE!!!!" at another contributor's providing a link to a photo of First Lady Michelle Obama's posterior, which the photo's host tells us makes him want to throw up.

And there, again, much hilarity ensues.

It's useful to know what manner of drek the Walker campaign's top communications directors are frying their brains with every morning.

Now, were the Walker staffers being "racialist"? Give them the benefit of the doubt and say, No. But are Jill Bader's squirming rationalizations utterly impossible to believe? Unquestionably, Yes.

eta: "@jillbader Sorry. I saw the Soul Train tweet and I don't believe it was a mistake. Not for a second." — Eugene Kane

Seriously. Who would. Scott Walker maybe?

Has Scott Walker lost his marbles?

Walker blames way slab was hung*

All Advance Cast Stone [one of the O'Donnell Park parking garage construction subcontractors] needs to do is provide an analysis of the connection as installed, proving that it is capable of sustaining the minimum specified loads indicated on the construction drawings. . . .

Much as I had said, nearly a month ago.

[County executive Scott] Walker also lashed out at critics ...

I thought this guy was at least a relatively savvy politician. It seems very foolish of him to even acknowledge his own perceptions that those calling for the investigation to be handled by a body comprised of other than county officials are themselves motivated by politics.

Walker's reaction smacks almost of paranoia.

In Scott Walker's professional capacity as one of the persons in charge of the investigation at present, this appears extremely ill-advised and hints at his own lack of objectivity. Which is to say, not the sort of qualities you'd seek in a responsible investigator.

Let alone a State governor.

The county executive's latest remarks drew a strong reaction from the lawyer for Advance Cast Stone, the Random Lake precast concrete firm that built and installed the panels.

I guess so. That's all he needs, is Scott Walker trying his case.

If anybody wants a compelling reason to remove the investigation from Walker's control, I reckon Walker has just handed it to them.

On the other hand, maybe he knows what he's doing. But that's not the impression conveyed by the Journal-Sentinel's latest report.

* The original headline was: Walker sees no evidence other than concrete panel installation, which was a bit less accusatory.

Trucks carrying Scott Walker BS damaged bridge

Loads blew the dial clean off the gauge
Tea-Republican assented to construction priorities in 2007

It's noteworthy that the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel would run seven paragraphs worth of third-party attestations to the alleged political brilliance of Scott Walker without once mentioning Walker's failure to dissent from the construction schedule, that the Zoo Interchange is in Walker's Milwaukee County bailiwick but outside Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett's, or the fact that Walker could have been every bit as — or more — aware of the bridges' advancing decrepitude as Barrett.

Yet Scott Walker lifted not a finger, nor uttered one word. So which set of evaluations is more germane to the Statewide responsibilities Walker seeks: the political, or the managerial. It should be the latter.

The distinct scent of Walker effluvia is familiar:

Neither Scott Walker nor anyone from his staff contacted rail equipment manufacturer Talgo to ask them to consider the Super Steel facility before the company made its decision, Talgo executive Ferran Canals told committee members.

Disappearing news.

Neumann and Walker entertain the lefties

Republican candidate for Wisconsin governor Mark Neumann* is pretty clever if he predicted his YouTubes attack ad lampooning Milwaukee County Executive and GOP rival Scott Walker would immediately turn up on every liberal website in the State.

Then Walker was barraged with negative comments on Facebook. Just 48 hours later, Walker flipped.

According to Neumann, Walker went from being a "surprisingly tough" critic of a recently notorious Arizona immigration law, to whimpering like a baby at the mutiny of his Facebook BFFs,** to asserting he'd be "comfortable" signing the Arizona bill into law (whose own governor might be less comfortable with a Milwaukee county government functionary elbowing onto her desk and stealing her pen).

Which is intriguing because a few weeks ago Scott Walker announced he'd authorize his prospective attorney general to join a Florida lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a certain provision in the federal health care reform statutes.

Walker and his cohorts insist the latter's so-called individual insurance mandate exceeds Congress's power under the U.S. Constitution's Interstate Commerce Clause (even though the federal government will primarily defend the mandate as a tax).

Yet the power to "establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization" is specifically enumerated to Congress and not Arizona nor even Wisconsin. So to the extent that Arizona encroaches on Congress's enumerated power to legislate on immigration matters, the Grand Canyon State's initiative is a constitutional dead letter.

That is, among the scholarly set at least, it inspires little "comfort."

And that concern is entirely separate from the projected glut of unreasonable searches and seizures attached to attempts at enforcing the Arizona law (which some court's injunction is likely to prevent anyway, another reason not to get too "comfortable").

On the other hand, Congress's ability to impose a tax in the form of buying into a federally regulated health insurance system (there's no dispute that health care runs on interstate commerce, the regulation of which is also clearly federal domain) is a far more open question.

Fortunately Scott Walker isn't running for the Supreme Court, because evidently his "judicial philosophy" is lacking in consistency.

Meanwhile, F. James Sensenbrenner is still soliciting activist judges.

* Neumann has gone rogue, spurning the Party faithful at this weekend's State Republican debauch in Milwaukee, which culminates in Scott Walker's allegedly triumphant return from his Apology Tour of President Obama's investments in Wisconsin schools and families.

** We don't know which ones waited until they got off work.

@PolitiFactWisc: Thanks for clearing that up

Claim: "Scott Walker says he would ban stem cell research."

PolitiFactWisc: No one disputes that Scott Walker opposes embryonic stem cell research. . . . [A] survey Walker completed for the group Pro-Life Wisconsin ... showed only that Walker opposes embryonic stem cell research, not that he wants to ban all stem cell research.

Well, Tom Barrett's teevee ad doesn't say Scott Walker wants to ban "all" stem cell research. What it says is that Scott Walker wants to "ban stem cell research," which is true. So how could it be false?

Especially if "no one disputes" it?

It may be misleading (at least, to anybody unfamiliar with the distinction between embryonic and adult stem cells) but it isn't false.

If you had three things and I took two of them away from you and you said, "He took my things!," it wouldn't do me much logical good to say, "That's false, I only took two of your things," now would it?

Meanwhile, in an earlier PolitiFactWisc entry, the PolitiFactWisc team seeks to evaluate Ron Johnson's claim that "Russ Feingold cut Medicare by $523 billion." After determining that "the health care law does not take $500 billion out of the current Medicare budget" and that "[t]here are no cuts to guaranteed Medicare benefits," the PolitiFactTeam nevertheless rates Johnson's claim, "Barely True."*

Ron Johnson says something false about Russ Feingold: It's true. Tom Barrett says something true about Scott Walker: It's false. Got it.

* How come there's no "Barely False" category?

eta: Plaisted, also.

Scott Walker hires himself a sleaze merchant

Back from a well deserved vacation, Chris Liebenthal rounds up the phony outrage emanating from a couple of conservative "bloggers" in the wake of local sleuth Michael Horne's revealing how Republican gubernatorial hopeful Scott Walker had farmed out the design of his campaign website to an Ohio firm with GOP connections.

Dan Cody's item here is also worth a gander, chronicling as it does the comical histrionics of one desperately ineffective amateur logician, Aaron Rodriguez.

Walker is running on a promise of keeping jobs in Wisconsin: "Wisconsin just isn’t competitive," sez the current Milwaukee County Executive. "Other States are taking our jobs."

The Buckeye State for one, with Walker's own generous facilitating.

Lately we've been enjoying following The Real Scott Walker's Dilbertian ambitions on teh Twitter.

Also noteworthy is Scott Walker's retaining the gracious services of R.J. Johnson as his "general consultant." Some of Johnson's prior exploits are related here by Harris Kane of Heartland Hollar fame.

R.J. Johnson, it will be recalled, was formerly the point man for the Coalition For America's Families (CFAF), a sleazeball right-wing outfit that lied and lied and lied about former Justice Louis Butler's record during the 2008 State Supreme Court election.

CFAF's exceedingly disreputable machinations were in support of Michael Gableman, a then-circuit judge currently under investigation by the Wisconsin Judicial Commission for ethics violations.

Indeed, CFAF's dissembling elicited from Gableman one of the more memorable statements of his political campaign:

"I don't know if the number is 30%, 60%, 80%, or 90%," [Gableman] said, before adding, "I'm unaware of any study that contradicts those numbers."

What the Hell, it could be all of them!

Among many, many other things, Johnson and his "family values" henchpersons notoriously referred to a mentally and physically disabled Wisconsin woman accused of sexual assault as a "criminal," after she had successfully withdrawn an unjustly entered guilty plea.

Thus may yet another race to the bottom be in the offing.

And in a masterstroke of unintended irony, the first video testimony at the Flash intro to Scott Walker's Ohio-designed website features a woman declaring, "I have lost faith in the political system."

You and me both, sister. Thanks to the likes of R.J. Johnson.

Shorter Walkers before the committee

News item:
Scott Walker ill-advisedly appeared before Congress today.

Sensenbrenner (R-Damning with faint praise): Walker is an "interesting" and "very polarizing figure." #kochapalooza #kochapalmao

Kucinich eating Walker's brown bag lunch #wiunion

Shorter Issa (R-Accused Car Thief): We don't need no stinking non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau accounting #wiunion

Walker: What we're doing is like jiggering with the finances of my church. #wiunion

Tabatha Fitzcoffey issues arrest warrant for Scott Walker's hairstylist #wiunion

ProTip: @GovWalker, let the congressman be argumentative, don't engage the argumentativeness. #makesyoulookworsethanyoualreadydo

Walker glad he didn't have too many debates #wiunion #dontblamehim

Walker: "I didn't even know where Cali is." #fakekoch #wiunion #walkerplease

Walker: (*thinking*) Why does Mr. Koch want to take me to a Lassie-dog? #kochapalooza #wiunion

Gowdy (R-SC): We were told to go not to the Jewish nor Muslim nor Hindu nor Zoroastrian one but to the Christian Hell. #kochapalooza

The Hill: Walker asbestos underwear pushed to thermal insulative physical properties limit #kochapalooza

Rep. Gosar (R-AZ) looking oddly disheveled, as though he just crawled out of a hedge (or a cactus, as it were). #kochapalooza

Rep. Gosar: "We're constantly kicking the can down the ball." #kochapalooza #andputtingfoodonourfamilies

Cold fish Walker about to get Speier'd #kochapalozza

Walker *still* doesn't know how much oft-reported Koch-group contributed to his campaign #kochapalooza #walkerplease

Shorter Walberg (R-MI) to Walker: Let's you and I compare our bikers' leathers sometime. #kochapalooza

WI Gov. Walker: "Rights come from the constitution." #kochapalooza #takethatyounaturalrightssuckers

WI Gov. Walker: "Rights come from the constitution." #kochapalooza #teapartyaneurysm

Barton (R-IN): Did Fitzgerald test-run "carr[ying] ... feet first" a 6-mos-pregnant woman into the Senate with a watermelon? #kochapalooza

Shorter Walker: I'm merely graciously paving the fiscal way for my Democratic successor. #kochapalooza #cantcomesoonenough

Shorter Gwen Moore: #walkerplease #kochapalooza

Gwen Moore to Walker: Listen to the Highway People. #kochapalooza #rejectedspinaltapsongtitles

Palin coming to reassure Walker being half-term governor ain't so bad #wiunion

Finis.

Angry Wisconsin left should be jubilant

And merry and gay even.

I noticed a number of my friends on the left were angered by the news that Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is withdrawing completely from defending the State's domestic partnership registry against a suit brought by Julaine Appling, a Madison spinster and bit of a nut.

They should be overjoyed, as anytime Walker's lawyers step the hell away from anything is a victory. They've done little more than create havoc and lawlessness since Walker became governor in January.

Appling attempted to have the Supreme Court hear her case (such as it is) directly in 2009, but the court declined. So Appling turned to a Dane County circuit court, which is where the action sits these days.

As Wisconsin has a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage, Ms. Appling and her fellow travelers argue that the domestic partnership registry creates situations "substantially similar to marriage" and therefore violates the State constitution.

The law was, ahem, published under the previous Democratic administration and Republican attorney general J.B. Van Hollen refused to defend it, alluding to some religious scruples, so then-governor Jim Doyle hired the capable attorney Lester Pines.

The registries allow same-sex couples to take family and medical leave to care for a seriously ill partner, make end-of-life decisions and have hospital visitation rights.

Yes, certainly those religious objections are understandable.

Scott Walker fired Lester Pines in March. Now he wants out of the case completely, which is great news. Some on the left are angry because Walker's refusal is yet another indication of his agenda to tear down whatever progress in social justice the domestic partnership registry represents. But this should come as no surprise.

Don't forget Scott Walker's running mate and now his lieutenant governor Rebecca Kleefisch, a fundamentalist Christian, on a fundamentalist Christian teevee station famously asked of the domestic registry, "Can we marry dogs? This is ridiculous."

So we already knew which Santorum-world this gang is coming from.

In the meantime Fair Wisconsin, an advocacy group specializing in these things, was granted intervening defendant status by the circuit court and will do just fine without Walker's attorneys' participation.

The less we hear from Scott Walker's lawyers the better.*

* Comic relief excepted.

P.S. Do not google Santorum.

Scott Walker and the separation of WISGOP powers

Advertisement: Please visit the CAPITOL KAOS archives

[Wis. Stat. Sec.] 165.25(1) [The department of justice shall] appear for the state and prosecute or defend all actions and proceedings, civil or criminal, in the court of appeals and the supreme court, in which the state is interested or a party, and attend to and prosecute or defend all civil cases sent or remanded to any circuit court in which the state is a party.

165.25(1m) If requested by the governor or either house of the legislature, appear for and represent the state, any state department, agency, official, employee or agent, whether required to appear as a party or witness in any civil or criminal matter, and prosecute or defend in any court or before any officer, any cause or matter, civil or criminal, in which the state or the people of this state may be interested.

Here's another interesting and thus far overlooked tidbit from last Monday's marathon session of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, wherein Deputy Attorney General Kevin St. John concedes directly to the Chief Justice that the Department of Justice is appearing not on behalf of Secretary of Capitol Building Maintenance Mike Huebsch, but on the explicit direction of the governor, Scott Walker. And what Walker is complaining about is, ironically, a separation of powers violation.

During St. John's oral presentation, the Chief Justice is engaging the lawyer on some procedural posturings. Recall that while the hearings were underway in Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi's court in Ozanne v. Fitzgerald, Judge Sumi issued a temporary restraining order. A TRO is not a "final judgment" and the difference between a TRO and a final judgment is determinative of how Scott Fitzgerald and the other defendants may attack a judge's disposition, be it final or temporary.

In Wisconsin there exists a right to appeal final judgments, but if the defendant Republican legislators here wish to attack the TRO, they must be granted permission to do so by the court of appeals. Thus did the Department of Justice file a motion for permission to appeal a non-final order (the TRO) on March 21 with the District IV Court of Appeals.

The court of appeals declined to entertain that motion, but rather certified ("passed on," or "kicked upstairs," in the vernacular) the DOJ's petition to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court announced nothing further with regard to that petition until June 3, when it issued an order consolidating it with the DOJ's petition for a supervisory writ, as in the interim between scheduling oral arguments on whether to entertain the supervisory writ, Judge Sumi did indeed issue a final judgment.

So the Chief Justice is wondering about from whence comes the DOJ's authority to bring the petition for a supervisory writ (a writ is a court order, and in this case the DOJ is seeking an order vacating Judge Sumi's disposition based on the Supreme Court's supervisory authority over the circuit courts). The petition for a supervisory writ was filed in the name of Mike Huebsch, but what the record transcribed below reveals is that the order came directly from Governor Walker himself, something Mr. St. John appears to be distinctly uncomfortable with admitting.

The exchange between the Chief Justice and the deputy AG, related to the foregoing issues of who gets to do what and when begins at 00:43:10 of Wisconsin Eye's video of the oral arguments and the CJ gets to the Walker's Point at 00:45:10. The ellipses are pauses, not edits.

CJA: Under what authority does the State bring this proceeding?

KSJ: The State brings this proceeding under [Wis. Stat. Sec. 165.25(1)(m) — see above].

CJA: 165 ... yes.

KSJ: 165.25, sub. 1m.

CJA: Point 25, one ...

KSJ: 1m.

CJA: What does that say, counsel?

KSJ: That provides, that says that the attorney general and I ... quote the statute [KSJ retrieves Volume 3 of the Wisconsin Statutes and Annotations] ...

CJA: 165 ... 25 ...

KSJ: It needs to be read in conjunction with sub. 1, but 1m provides that if requested by the governor or either house of the legislature ...

CJA: Okay.

KSJ: ... may ...

CJA: Did the governor make any request?

KSJ: Yes.

CJA: Is that on record?

KSJ: It's not part of the record for petition [for a supervisory writ]. The State appears in many actions at the request of the governor or on the legislature and wouldn't file that with the court. We'd be happy to do so if that were required.

CJA: Therefore, and represent the State. Okay, the court will take that under advisement. Is that what you're relying on, 'If requested by the governor, appear for and represent the State'?

KSJ: Mm hmm. In any matter in which the State or the people of this State may be interested. There's been a determination made ...

CJA: Oh wait, what about the sentence, "whether required to appear as a party or witness"? That clause.

KSJ: Mm hmm. In any ...

CJA: Well ...

KSJ: And prosecute or defend ...

CJA: Are you required to appear here as a party? Here?

KSJ: Uh, there's no requirement ...

CJA: Okay. So you're going on to, "and prosecute in any court," right?

KSJ: That's correct.

CJA: "In which the State or the people may be interested."

KSJ: That's correct.

CJA: Okay. This is one of the things that is ... and on page four of your Ozanne you rely on 165.25, but there you say only that the AG decides whether what's the best interest of the State so now you're relying on the governor, is that it?

KSJ: There is authority in this case from the governor, there is also authority in this court's precedent that says that the attorney general may appear before this court with or without the governor's approval to advance an interest of the State.

He goes on. But he's already admitted to the Chief Justice, who is more interested in the express language of the State statutes, that in this case what he's relying on is a request from the governor, Scott Walker.

So you have Republican Scott Walker, the chief executive branch officer, petitioning the Republican-controlled Supreme Court,* the top entity within the judicial branch, to in effect discipline a lower court because it ruled against his Republican pals and allies in the legislative branch. And what Walker is complaining about ultimately is a violation of the doctrine of constitutional separation of powers. That is one not-too-subtle irony.

Deputy AG St. John's pursed "mm hmms" indicate he was none too comfortable with the Chief Justice's line of inquiry. Witnesses at trial who answer "mm hmm" rather than "yes" are often admonished by the court for not speaking up clearly and affirmatively. I wonder why St. John was so reticent at providing this information, that the Department of Justice is acting on the direct order of Governor Scott Walker.

Because the named petitioner clearly has no idea what's going on.

Since Monday a slew of additional documents were filed with the State Supreme Court, but this space doesn't know whether Walker's directive to the DOJ is among them. It may well be quite an edifying read.

* Let's dispense with the "nonpartisan" façade for a moment. Everybody knows how many millions of dollars (and thousands of logically fallacious and unethical teevee ads) Republican-affiliated outfits have produced and spent to ensure and protect the current make-up of the court.

Sensenbrenner must be voting for Tom Barrett

New Scott Walker ad, c/w F. James Sensenbrenner voiceover:

Mark Neumann voted 'Yes' for nine billion dollars in pork projects when he was in Congress. He voted 'Yes' to wasteful transportation spending. I voted against that bill because it was full of waste and payoff to special interests. Like me, Scott Walker opposed the bill* and the nine billion of wasteful spending. [Conclusion:] That's why I'm voting for Scott Walker.

Guess who else voted against "that bill"? Tom Barrett, Lloyd Bentsen, Alcee Hastings, Steny Hoyer, Robert Wexler, and ... David Obey.**

See how ridiculous these sorts of ads are? They practically depend on voter ignorance. And there could only be but one rational explanation for this one: Mark-Neumann-breathing-down-your-neck desperation.

Obviously, Scott Walker is feeling the heat.

Sensenbrenner and Walker have spent 59 years on the public payroll

* Except Scott Walker has never been a member of Congress.

** Mr. Obey's farewell speech to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin convention last June was quite possibly the most politically liberal peroration I've ever heard since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

(That's not facetiousness; it was a tremendous speech.)

Scott Walker is shovelhead ready

Scott Walker, a career Republican politician for going on 18 years, is now touring the area inspecting all the great stuff U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama's stimulus package has brought to Wisconsin.

But, Cory Liebmann reminds us, it depends who Scott Walker's talking to, whether or not he likes funding Wisconsin schools, tax credits for Wisconsin families' home improvements, and so forth:

One minute he tells the most rabid elements of the right wing that he will not "feed at the trough" and the next minute he is trying to take credit for programs and investments that were funded via the federal stimulus.

Come to think of it, Scott Walker is kind of a one-man stimulus project all by himself, as he's been collecting a government paycheck for nearly half his life. Mind you, he likely approves of his own funding. Surely even the Tea Party is wise to Walker's charade.

Also: Scott Walker only works part-time, calculates GOP rival

In fairness, maybe that way he does less damage.

Scott Walker's twits redux

"They had no idea that this was the video." — Scott Walker (2:28)

"YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos." — say the kids at Wikipedia

Seriously, who are they and now Scott Walker himself trying to kid?

Scott Walker's man copied and pasted that YouTube link from out of the HotAir comment box and made his very own "Tweet" out of it.

Which was dutifully reproduced by Walker's communications director.

Yo, Scott Walker, we were born at night, but not last night.

So Scott Walker is being investigated for crimes

That would be the right honorable governor of Wisconsin

It must be true, because Rick Esenberg — he's a professor of teh law, doncha know — said so, and in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel even:

To establish a legal defense fund ... [i]t is only necessary that your conduct is being investigated for potential criminal violations of the pertinent laws.

Ah, so as the governor has in fact established a legal defense fund, ergo the governor is being investigated for crimes: the "pertinent" ones being, incidentally, felonies. That means they carry prison sentences.*

That's good to know! Because Walker is up for reelection in a couple of weeks. And the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, which hosts Prof. Rick's legal lessons,** thinks you should return to office a governor who's being investigated for felony crimes. But wait! Right after he just got done establishing his "only necessary" bar, Prof. Rick appears to lower it a bit:

Nor is it even necessary for Scott Walker to be the one who is being investigated. If the agent of a candidate or a public official is being investigated, he or she can establish a fund.

Prof. Rick isn't being terribly clear here, is he? I mean, for a Marquette University professor of teh law. Who is the "he or she"? Is it the agent?

Nope, it's the candidate or public official, Scott Walker (who is both).

And, being a rather coy professor of the law, Prof. Rick doesn't want to tell you what an agent is, in the legal sense of the expression. Maybe he forgot to, after all his nattering about "partisan panic" and "proctological examination[s]."*** Well, I'll tell you: An agent is a person who is authorized to act on behalf of the principal. The principal, in this case, is Scott Walker. And the agent could be one of several individuals already implicated — or soon to be implicated — in the Milwaukee County DA's investigation. Funny Prof. Rick wouldn't tell you what an agent is, huh?

Because the thing is, if the agent mentioned in the statute wasn't authorized to act by Scott Walker, then she or he is no agent at all.

Evidently Prof. Rick was seized by his own partisan panic and clenched sphincter, because for the purposes of the relevant statutes the public official and the agent(s) are one and the same, given that the authorization to act is bestowed upon the agent(s) by the public official.

"Much ado about nothing," harrumphs Prof. Rick.

Well sure it is, when you simply ignore a substantive legal term of art.

Too cute by half, this character is. God help his law students, if they're absorbing any of his special brand of Republican Party disingenuousness.

* As opposed to merely confined at David Clarke's evangelical county jail.

** He's kinda like their agent, reporting from WISGOP HQ.

*** "Elevating the discussion," is what they call this. The elevating in this instance, assumedly, is Prof. Rick's characterization of his adversaries' heads elevated up their asses: respectful debate. Thanks for that, MJS.

Fitzgeralds try foisting civics lesson on Wisconsin

Because evidently they simply presume we're all compleat idiots:

It's disappointing that a Dane County judge wants to keep interjecting herself into the legislative process with no regard to the state constitution. Her action today again flies in the face of the separation of powers between the three branches of government. — Assembly speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (R-WISGOP)

It's always amusing when right-wing ideologues accuse our judges of ignoring the law. Fitzgerald has no basis for this ridiculous assertion.

If anything "flies in the face" of separation of powers doctrine, it's the Open Meetings Law, crafted and approved by the Wisconsin Assembly, the very legislative body over which Jeff Fitzgerald now presides, and which Judge Sumi faithfully followed in both its letter and its spirit.

(Indeed the OML's letter explicitly describes its constitutional spirit.)

Judge Sumi's reasoning is a textbook demonstration of what are under less inconvenient circumstances for conservatives the latter's very own articulated principles of modest construction and judicial restraint.

What up bruh

Then there's Jeff Fitzgerald's big bruh broham Scott Fitzgerald, WISGOP leader of another State legislative body, the Wisconsin Senate:

There's still a much larger separation-of-powers issue: whether one Madison judge can stand in the way of the other two democratically elected branches of government. The Supreme Court is going to have the ultimate ruling, and they're still scheduled to hear the issue on June 6. This overdue reform is still a critical part of balancing Wisconsin's budget.

A couple of things. In Wisconsin, the judiciary is also a democratically elected branch of government (and Judge Maryann Sumi — like, for example, Justice David Prosser — has been elected twice*). And the Wisconsin Supreme Court is not scheduled to "hear the issue" on June 6.

The Supreme Court is only scheduled on June 6 to hear arguments as to whether or not it should decide to "hear the issue." There has been no appeal filed, as has been widely reported, and the Supreme Court has not even accepted Scott Walker's notorious Republican building maintenance supervisor Mike Huebsch's desperate petition for a writ.

And if it is the case that Fitz Van Walker's union-busting provisions of law are indeed "a critical part of balancing Wisconsin's budget," then not only were those provisions passed unlawfully according to constitutional and statutory open meetings requirements, they were also passed unlawfully according to Article VIII of the State constitution, which requires a three-fifths quorum of State Senators** in order to pass "any law which ... discharges or commutes a claim or demand of the state."

Hench-pariahs

Scott Fitzgerald did not have such a quorum when he had passed the provisions of law during a twilight meeting for which he gave only one hour and fifty seven minutes public notice, provisions of law designed to discharge collective bargaining demands of the State to the express end of, as the horse's mouth itself puts it, "balancing Wisconsin's budget."

In other words, even if the State Supreme Court complied with Governor Scott Walker's Department of Justice lawyers' demand that Judge Sumi's decision be vacated, 2011 Wisconsin Act 10 would likely be immediately enjoined by another court on other constitutional "fiscal bill" grounds.

But the reality of the matter is, Scott Walker and his henchpeople in the Wisconsin legislature are inexorably making themselves into pariahs even among their own partisan colleagues, and they can no longer count on the support of the latter to pass their union-busting provisions lawfully, otherwise they would have done it months ago, as early as March 10.

Hence the various desperate flailings of Huebsch, J.B. Van Hollen, et al.

* Thrice if you consider the recent decount attempt.

** And by the end of this summer it's highly probable the Fitz Van Walker regime's cohort of dependable partisans will be diminished considerably, as two or three incumbent Republican State Senators stand a pretty good chance of getting knocked off in recall elections. A recall election, incidentally, is precisely how Scott Walker first gained political power in his prior incarnation as Milwaukee County Executive. But naturally, as recall elections now pose a serious danger to Republican control of the State Senate, they're all of a sudden a really bad idea, says the WISGOP.

(Even as the WISGOP undertakes recalls against several Democrats.)

MJS blames Obama for their boy's rail #fail

Governor-elect Walker and his team have told the company they want the train jobs to stay even if there is no train.

Journal Communications, Inc., which endorsed Scott Walker for governor of Wisconsin, is upset because the federal government passed over the State for grants to upgrade the Amtrak line between Milwaukee and Chicago. Walker, it may be recalled,* turned down $800M worth of new construction for a rail link from Milwaukee to Madison. His sharp negotiation skillz apparently led him to believe he could still have the Amtrak upgrade money, but it was not to be.

The money went to the feds' "strongest partners," the "reliable people." And those ain't among the Fitz Van Walker administration.

The JRN mandarins knew Scott Walker was spurning the MKE-MAD money when they blessed his candidacy. Why did it not further know that Scott Walker is about the worst negotiator in Christendom?

Walker is out of feet to shoot himself in. When will JRN admit it?

Face the facts. Walker blew it.

* Indeed, Walker will be eligible to be recalled from office in January.

PolitiFactWisc: Words don't matter after all

According to PolitiFactWisc:*

[Planned Parenthood's] lobbying arm says in a direct mail piece that Scott Walker "tried to pass a law to allow pharmacists to block women’s access to birth control." That bill might have made it more difficult for some women to get contraceptives at some pharmacies, depending on who was on duty. But words matter — the possible narrowing of access to birth control in some cases isn’t the same as blocking it in all cases.

We rate the claim as Barely True.

Except PP never said "blocking it in all cases" and in any event:

block, vb — Synonyms: IMPEDE, HINDER, OBSTRUCT [M-W]

Scott Walker "tried to pass a law to allow pharmacists to impede women's access to birth control." True.

Scott Walker "tried to pass a law to allow pharmacists to hinder women’s access to birth control." True.

Scott Walker "tried to pass a law to allow pharmacists to obstruct women’s access to birth control." True.

All true.

And this is not the first time PolitiFactWisc has deliberately tampered with the language of the claim it was evaluating.

Jill Bader, [communications director] for Republican Scott Walker’s gubernatorial campaign, said it was "completely false" that the bill had anything to do with birth control.

Now that is pure B.S. What did it have to do with, Nicorette?

* Elsewhere, @PolitiFactWisc claims to have "debunked" PP.

Not even barely.

Congratulations, Wisconsin Governor Dale Schultz

And welcome to the Dark Side?

Republican state Sen. Dale Schultz said this week he was "decoyed" on Feb. 17 by Gov. Scott Walker into missing a key chance on the Senate floor to put in play a compromise on Walker's plan to eliminate most union bargaining for public employees. — Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, 08.04.11

The lone Republican critic of Gov. Scott Walker's budget-repair bill issued his most blistering words yet, accusing his colleagues of "classic overreach." — Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, 03.03.11

While Democrats and their supporters failed last night in their bid to flip the Wisconsin Senate to their favor (it stood at R-19 to D-14 yesterday; this morning it's R-17 to D-16), there remains Dale Schultz, who was not exactly enamored with his party's collective bargaining rights policy. That policy was revealed in February, after Republicans took control of both legislative chambers and the governor's mansion on the heels of a political campaign that studiously avoided mentioning any plans to do so.

This morning conservatives are claiming vindication — and they have some reason to: the results last night are fairly convincing,* albeit they lost two Senators in defense of and on their very own turf — but if we retrofit the present composition of the Senate to the circumstances in February, things would have played out quite differently than they did.

There's apparently much contention among the left over what the issues driving — present tense: there are two more of them next Tuesday — these recall elections are. While it's true that the left bears a panoply of grievances against the Walker regime it cannot be denied that what birthed that conflagration was specifically the regime's objective of disempowering public employees of their rights to collective bargaining.

At least, it shouldn't be forgotten, as the distinction between demanding specific wage and benefits concessions from workers — which the Walker regime did separately and to which the public employees' unions conceded without struggle — and the right simply to participate in the process in a mutually equitable manner is a substantial distinction.**

Sen. Schultz by his appearances perceives that distinction and while it may be an irrelevant intellectual exercise to retroject August into March, among the myriad takes on yesterday's results everybody with a Blogspot.com account is bound to pronounce, it's worth contemplating.

Divining voter intent en masse is the dodgiest of "science" in political science because individual voters are ultimately uncomparable, driven as they are by the disparate personal experiences that necessarily color their perceptions of policy issues and the interplay among those issues' relative importance to them with partisan affiliation — or lack thereof — which in turn may be either confined by or independent of this country's unique two-party system. Which is an admittedly unwieldy way of saying that two diametrically opposed conclusions may be just as equally valid.

So if it is the case that Wisconsin electors prefer their government with at least some marginally substantive Democratic representation as compared to wholesale control by Republicans — which last night's results might well legitimately indicate, as voters just replaced one-third of the Republican incumbents presented to them, kept on one Democrat two weeks ago, and will most likely affirm the incumbency of two more Democrats next Tuesday — then it's not a total fantasy to imagine how things would have played out in the spring were there to be some quantitative resistance to Scott Walker's union-busting "bomb drop."

Especially considering the fact that those electors were kept unaware of Walker's specific plans when they (marginally) awarded him his office last November. Nevertheless and in any event, Sen. Dale Schultz (R-17th) is probably the most powerful politician in all Wisconsin today.

* The vote totals of all six of last yesterday's elections give the WISGOP a six-point margin, 53% to 47%, but all six were Republican seats going in. Those who mock any continued efforts to recall Walker himself shouldn't take too much solace from those figures, however, because obviously they're to be expected from (formerly) exclusively GOP strongholds, allowing for the consideration of which they're not impressive at all.

** And yes I'm aware of the differences between employers whose revenues are raised from the public and those whose are derived from sales in the private sector. I'm approaching the controversy from a philosophical position where rights exist in the abstract and in this case, are not colored by how the employer fills its coffers. You can challenge that premise or assumption and I understand it's a legitimate challenge.

Wisconsin's Scott Walker: On the right track [sic]

Says the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in a bizarre editorial today, praising Wisconsin governor-elect Scott Walker, who the paper endorsed officially and to whose political campaign the paper's corporate affiliate for broadcasting donated 15 thousand dollars.

The opinion piece is either the daftest apologetic the paper has ever run, or else its most elegant expression of droll facetiousness.

The gist of the editorial is to congratulate Walker on a proposed bureaucratic reshuffling, semi-privatizing the State commerce department by recruiting a few outside marketing go-getters to kibbutz with similarly constituted entities throughout the Midwest.

(Political conservatives assume private sector actors are by definition vastly more efficient than their public sector counterparts, even in identical roles. This is axiomatic for conservatives, a veritable Article of Faith, so just concede their point because otherwise after a while the pig starts to enjoy it, as the saying goes.)

Be bolder than bold

The paper claims the strategy is pleasingly in accord with a report — "Be Bold" — issued last month by the Wisconsin Higher Education Business Roundtable, a project of the University of Wisconsin:

"We want to be bold," Walker said of the "Be Bold" report. "I want to be even bolder so we may take this plan and build off it, be more aggressive than what they're presenting."

Is the Journal-Sentinel being sarcastic? Because the report also engages prominently two substantial questions of policy that Walker just stuck his foot in last week, thus gaining national notoriety.

The first is Wisconsin's status as a donor State; that is, one that gets returned a smaller slice of the federal pie than the one it contributes.

Says the report:

If Wisconsin won $1 of federal spending for each $1 of taxes it sends to Washington, D.C., instead of the 86 cents we get back, much of the State’s budget deficit would disappear.

The argument for Wisconsin donating to less well-off States might have had some merit earlier in our history, but not at this juncture with our own economy in crisis. Wisconsin’s economy needs the federal dollars as much as any other State.

Look at him, funny 

The report then recommends a number of strategies for securing more federal dollars, not any of which — oddly enough! — involves rejecting $810 million in federal dollars which the State of Wisconsin had previously labored mightily to duly secure and which today decorate the accounting ledgers of several of those "other States."

I don't know about you, but if somebody who just rejected $810 million came asking for more, I'd at least look at him a little funny, especially while there are 49 other States clamoring not to be donors.

If you're a Wisconsinite who just came in from the bush and didn't know what that $810 million was for, read ahead to the report's bullet point number 10, "Invest Strategically in State's Infrastructure."

While acknowledging that "additions to the State’s infrastructure are often controversial" — possibly a veiled reference to wing-nut radio personalities on the aforesaid broadcasting arm hooting 'Choo Choo!' at an impressionable Tea mob all morning — the business roundtable implores against a public myopia: "A long-term perspective must be maintained to understand and benefit from these investments."

Detecting a whiff of familiarity? No doubt.

Please be being sarcastic

Among the report's related recommendations, this:

Align developing rail strategies with State's economic development strategy, so players in leading clusters are connected to each other, such as universities and market-leading companies. Use rail strategies to connect Wisconsin to Chicago and Twin Cities economies.

Or precisely what governor-elect* Walker just shot down, by refusing the federally funded construction of a rail link between Wisconsin's two largest cities, part of an, er, "long-term perspective" hooking Chicago up with Minneapolis-St. Paul, via Milwaukee and Madison.

The fact is, Walker betrayed this report, and replacing half the commerce department with traveling salesmen has got nothing on turning down nearly a billion dollars in transfer payments while turning away thousands of construction and manufacturing jobs, and all essentially because it was passenger rail, not road construction.

How the Journal-Sentinel gets to lionizing Scott Walker for his conformance with this report is quite the feat of ... something.

One can only hope it's sarcasm. Lord help us if it ain't.

* Yes, governor-elect. He hasn't even taken office yet.