"Video Competition" BIll's Supporters Coincidentally Get AT&T's Largest Contributions

The Capital Times editorial yesterday phrased it right:

The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign has come up with an especially telling -- and especially troubling -- illustration of the primary explanation for the endorsement by the state Senate of a rewrite of cable television regulations that harms consumers and communities while benefitting out-of-state telecommunications corporations.

The 23 senators who voted in favor of the legislation accepted a total of $1.2 million in campaign contributions from special interests that support the proposal, according to the Democracy Campaign.

In contrast, the nine senators who opposed the bill had accepted less than $100,000 in total contributions from the special interests.

Reduced to raw numbers: The average senator who supported the controversial measure -- which was crafted to benefit its chief proponent, AT&T -- collected $52,297 from interests associated with AT&T and its allies.

The average senator who opposed the bill had contributions from the same interests of around $11,000.

...Politicians always claim that patterns of contributions and votes are mere coincidences.

But these patterns are too consistent to be dismissed as mere coincidence.

Today's Cap Times has a story by Judy Davidoff that several legislators are drafting a bill to stop the kind of misrepresentation that TV4US used to push the "video competition" bill:

Rep. Joe Parisi is not giving up.

The Madison Democrat is still incensed that the group pushing for cable deregulation misrepresented his position on the bill, and he wants to put a stop to the practice.

Parisi and Rep. Sondy Pope-Roberts, D-Middleton -- who also opposed the cable bill but was categorized as a supporter in documents submitted by TV4US to state lawmakers -- started seeking co-sponsors Wednesday on legislation that would prohibit special-interest groups from misrepresenting constituents' views to lawmakers.

Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison, will also introduce a Senate version of the bill.

The legislation, according to an analysis by the Legislative Reference Bureau, would require anyone submitting a communication to lawmakers with the names of constituents to first obtain "a written or electronic document which proves that the named constituent has taken a position in support of or in opposition to the proposal identified in the communication."

"The onus would be on the interest group to have some kind of documentation," Parisi said in an interview.

Meanwhile, Emily Mills at Dane101 tried to pin Senator Russ Decker down as whether or not the "video competition" bill was his priority, and apparently struck a nerve.  A very defensive comment from a "sallyjones" reads very much like it came from Barb Worcester, a senior staffer of Decker's and Chuck Chvala's wife:

Russ Decker never said it was a priority. John Nichols never interviewed him on the topic and has no quote to from Decker saying it is a priority. Go ahead and ask him. Decker was asked if we would schedule the bill everyone took that to mean it was a priority. This bill has been out there for months and the only reason people had some to build support for amendments to make it better is because Decker insisted it go to the Joint Finance Committee. Sen. Robson and others wanted the bill passed in the spring and there are direct quotes for that.

He also didn't put in the liquor provision. Some folks upset about the change in leadership are spreading rumors that just aren't true.

And as a woman I'm a little disappointed that other women would count a woman working in Decker's office as being in "cahoots." Have a little more respect for your own gender than letting people talk you into believing that a professional woman still gets her orders from her husband on what to do. (bold emphasis Waxing America's)

Talk about protesting a bit too much. This debacle never ends...

- Barry Orton