Paul Soglin: Waxing America

Reflections Before the Election

Before I enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin in 1962 I knew something of the state's political lore. My parents subscribed to The Progressive magazine. I knew of McCarthyism, I knew that Governor Nelson now served in the United State Senate along with a maverick William Proxmire.

This state underwent many transformations. The most significant and long lasting began early in the twentieth century by Robert La Follette.  Fighting Bob's domination of state politics  was so strong that even the FDR elections in the 1930's left the Democrats without any influence until after World War II.

Finally, the efforts to revitalize the Democratic Party  lead to the elections of Nelson, Proxmire, Governor Lucey, and thousands of others from the city halls to the state legislature.  In the meantime, the Republican Party produced elected officials as varied as Warren Knowles and Tommy Thompson, and Ody Fish and John Walter Chilsen.

Wisconsin politics charged in the 1990's. The undercurrent was previously there, but the nasty forces that worked into organizations like Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce  (WMC) were unleashed in the new century when Governor Thompson went to Washington and the extreme right-wing took over the Republican Party and its front organizations. And where there were no clandestine operations, they created new ones.

We know the outcome. The readers of Waxing America need only go through previous posts to see the documentation of sinister groups that lie and ruin the reputations of people and institutions in their effort to destroy government and create a corporate socialism that sucks the life out of public education, city hall, and the courthouse.

I do not know what will happen in Tuesday's election but I am sure of this: Wisconsin knows WMC.

The Daily Telegram in Superior Gets It

As the newspaper endorsements for the Wisconsin Supreme Court race start  to roll in, it is interesting to see the reasons behind the selections.

The Daily Telegram in Superior announced Wednesday that Wisconsin should Return Butler to state’s high court:

State Supreme Court justices have broad duties, many of them grounded in civil matters. In criminal appeals, their concern is not in case details, but whether circuit court judges properly handled procedural matters

The fascinating thing about the endorsement is not that the newspaper supports Justice Louis Butler, but the analysis about the campaign and why we see the advertising attacking Butler for being soft on crime.

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) the principal architect of the Butler-soft-on-criminals theme, has another agenda item. They call it "tort reform." The problem is it does not sell, not even with its own members.

As the Daily Telegram noted:

The primary complaints against Butler originate in the business community, where some people have concerns he leans toward favoring consumers, i.e., people who sue corporations. But it’s difficult to gain traction when attempting to sell that issue with a TV sound bite. Instead, Gableman supporters prey on voters’ fears by airing lies.

It a recent survey of WMC's own members asking: "What is the top business concern facing your company?" the very last answer was Lawsuit abuse. Whatever you want to call it, tort reform, product liability cases, lawsuit abuse, the answer received 1.23% from the respondents, who like most of us, placed health care costs at the top of the list.

WMC has an agenda. It is one they do not wish to care to share with the public. Just as they do not want us to know that the money paying for their television commercials is coming from out-of-state businesses.

WMC is a conduit. They are a tool to funnel and hide millions of dollars designed to deceive. The Superior Daily Telegram knows better. On Tuesday, we hope the same is true of Wisconsin voters.

WMC Must Take Responsibility for Their Paid Advertisements

An open letter to the attorneys on the Board of Directors and the staff of the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce:

Many of us are deeply troubled by the advertisement paid for by your organization mischaracterizing the legal career of Justice Louis Butler. As you know, the Original WMC Watch program focused on the your board and staff taking responsibility for the placement and the content of these television and radio advertisements.

Now the Judicial Watch Campaign (JWC) comes to several conclusion about your ad entitled "Loophole Louie" including the following:

• WMC "falsely characterizes the court's (Wisconsin Supreme Court) ruling in this case, labeling as a "loophole" a lengthy decision based on the fact that the police in this case intentionally violated a fundamental Constitutional right guaranteed to all citizens..."
• WMC's use of the epithet "Loophole Louie..." is demeaning to the entire Wisconsin Supreme Court and our judicial system.

JWC concludes by citing Supreme Court Rule 20.8.4. This rule for attorneys, among other things, notes that:

It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to...

(c) engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation...

(g) violate the attorney's oath...

The attorney's oath states:

...I will maintain the respect due to courts of justice and judicial officers...

My personal opinion is that the conduct of the Gableman campaign, aided and abetted by WMC and other issue committees, has done more to diminish the stature of the Wisconsin judiciary and the Wisconsin Bar than any collection of offenses committed by attorneys or judges in the past fifty years.

Michael Gablelman: The People Have A Question For You

Madison, Wisconsin, March 25, 2008 Michael Gableman at 57:36 Supreme Court Debate-Butler/Gableman:

....The voters of this state would simply be far better off if all of the third party interest groups took their interests elsewhere and stopped running these ads.

That is what Michael Gableman told a state wide audience Tuesday night in a debate with Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler.

This is the same Michael Gableman who later in the debate was to call Justice Butler "disingenuous." Repeatedly.

The question for Michael Gableman is this, and keep in mind when previously asked if he had meetings with Wisconsin Manufactures & Commerce, prior to his announced candidacy, he refused to answer:

Mr Gableman, did you or anyone representing you, either directly or indirectly through intermediaries, have discussions with Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, The Club for Growth, and/or the Coalition For America's Families, or their representatives, in which you or your representatives of intermediaries were assured that in excess  of $2 million would be raised and committed to their running advertisements designed to assist in your election?

In other words, can you look at the people of Wisconsin and tell them that before you decided to run for Supreme Court Justice, you had no knowledge of a commitment by what you refer to as "third party interest groups" were going to raise this money to assist your campaign effort?

Is there a reporter in this state who can get that question before Gableman?

disingenuous: lacking in candor; also : giving a false appearance of simple frankness

liar: a person who tells lies

lie: a: an assertion of something known or believed by the speaker to be untrue with intent to deceive b: an untrue or inaccurate statement that may or may not be believed true by the speaker

candor: unreserved, honest, or sincere expression

Is it a lie or just disengenuous to ask for the money, get the commitment from the special interests and then when they run the TV ads, Gableman claims he wanta them to stop?

Gableman Loses Face; Finds a Loophole; Screw the Voters

One of the true rarities in Wisconsin politics is the withdrawal of a high profile endorsement.  Of course, that is what happened to Michael Gableman, the Burnett County circuit court judge who will not admit to secret meetings with representatives of organizations like Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC).

Gableman launched an attack advertisement on television against Louis Butler. Then Dodge County District Attorney Steven Bauer pulled his endorsement of Gableman. Bauer was the prosecutor and Louis Butler was the public defender in the case Gabelman dug up.

As reported last Friday, Dodge County DA Pulls Support for Gableman

Bauer said the ad is inaccurate and it also mocks the constitutional right of the accused to have an effective defense attorney.

"As a prosecutor, I firmly believe in convicting and properly punishing criminals, but I also understand that I have a duty to be certain that a defendant is actually guilty," Bauer said in the letter. "A competent criminal defense attorney helps me be accurate."

Bauer goes on to say he is troubled that a candidate for the Supreme Court would "belittle our constitutional right to counsel."

What else can you expect from a candidate who will get perhaps $3 million to fund a campaign in corporate donations that mostly come from out of state?

Gableman will of course claim that the money is not going to his campaign, but is going to front organizations like the aforementioned WMC, The Club for Growth, and the Coalition For America's Families. That of course is just a loophole. After all, it would be illegal for the corporate money to go into Gableman's campaign, so they use the fronts.

The next time you go shopping, get treated at a hospital or a clinic, or buy dinner, ask them if they are a member of WMC.

Ask them if they set up a dummy corporation to collect the rents or to accept royalties so they could move profits out of state where they can avoid Wisconsin taxes. Ask them why they want Gableman on the Supreme Court.

Superior Linens Racine County Contract Needs Airing

Superior Health Linens has contracts in Wisconsin with a number of public and private health care providers.

It once had a contract with Dane County but no more. There were allegations of unsafe working conditions and that resulted in the finding of three 'serious' OSHA violations. Then there were the problem of wages - Superior did not pay a living wage. Dane County dropped the contract in 2006 for the Badger Prairie Heath Care Center.

Now Superior is embroiled in a debate in Racine County over services related to the Ridgewood Care Center. What is curious about all of this is the conduct of certain public officials who are less than forthcoming about the contract. From the Racine Journal Times:  County's top lawyer berates supervisor over contract allegations

It’s not unusual for county staff to talk to the county board, but what was unusual Tuesday evening was Corporation Counsel Jonathan Lehman chastising Supervisor Diane Lange for her comments about a contract he reviewed.

In addition to the rather uncivil discussion there is a series of postponements and delays in reviewing the contract details. All of which makes us wonder if Diane Lange loses her re-election bid, will all of this be hidden with the rest of the dirty laundry?

Needless to say, many of Superior's employees are in low skilled jobs; some have limited knowledge about their rights as workers. Thankfully, that is changing thanks to the efforts of Unite Here  - the result of the merger between the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (my grandparents union) and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union.  As Unite Here states:

UNITE HERE boasts a diverse membership, comprised largely of immigrants and including high percentages of African-American, Latino, and Asian-American workers. The majority of UNITE HERE members are women.

Wisconsin State Journal Wimps Out: Endorses Gableman

Sunday, in a move designed to please no one but the editors of the Wisconsin State Journal, that newspaper chose to make no endorsement in the most important race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court in over fifty years.   For Supreme Court: merit reform

Instead of endorsing a candidate, the State Journal endorses a better method of choosing state Supreme Court justices -- a method called merit selection.

Writing as though both candidates were equally qualified and equally obnoxious, the newspaper notes:

...The mud-slinging mess of this spring 's Supreme Court race is rooted in a fundamental problem with the election of Supreme Court justices...

...In both races, well-financed groups poured money into ads to back their favorite candidates...

Nothing could be further from the truth. The mud-slinging and the financing are not equal on both sides. If the State Journal believes that the Butler campaign is well financed by out-of state interests who are buying this election, they are either misinformed or they are not doing their job in the newsroom.

As for the so-called 'mud-slinging' there is nothing that the supporters of Louis Butler did to compare to the the racist, ill-informed poison, aired by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), The Club for Growth, and The Coalition for America's Families. Together these organizations produced ads reminiscent of "Willie Horton" and  violated the very concept that a defendant is allowed a fair trial.

I am sympathetic to the point the Wisconsin State Journal made. We should give serious consideration to appointing Supreme Court justices rather than electing them. I am not quite there, but I may be there depending upon how this election turns out.

But the newspaper begs the question. To amend the Wisconsin Constitution will take years, and there is not enough time to do that before April 1, 2008.

The only beneficiaries of the Wisconsin State Journal editorial are Michael Gableman and the bag-men raising the money for his election.

Madison Native Bill Foster: The "Newest and Unlikeliest Congressman"

Doug Moe's column in the Wisconsin State Journal today profiles Rep. Bill Foster, who won former Speaker Dennis "Coach" Hastert's old seat in Illinois' 14th District south and west of Chicago.  As a UW undergraduate,  Foster and his brother Fred started what became Middleton's Electronic Theater Controls (ETC), now a "global leader in the field of entertainment and architectural lighting. They light Broadway shows and Disney theme parks, Las Vegas hotels and the set of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."

Rep. Foster was a world-level physicist at Illinois' Fermilab for many years before he decided to get involved in politics.

On Saturday, March 8, in a result the New York Times called "stunning, " Bill Foster won a special election for the Illinois congressional seat opened by Hastert 's midterm resignation. Foster won 53 percent of the vote to Republican James D. Oberweis ' 47 percent.

Moe's column nicely connects the story to Foster's father's life.

In a very real sense, partial credit for Foster 's victory should go to his late father, G.W. "Bill " Foster. He showed his son it was OK to switch careers and follow your heart.

The elder Foster was a beloved figure at the UW-Madison Law School. When he died in 2002, at 82, the faculty passed a memorial resolution praising his work for civil rights and the desegregation of public schools around the country.

...But he had originally been trained as a chemist, a field he had second thoughts about after seeing the spread of chemical weapons during wartime.

The faculty resolution praising Foster noted that he once explained his change of course (he got a law degree at Georgetown) by saying: "It 's my personal conviction that the central problem of our time is political -- the job of folks getting along with other folks by argument and compromise instead of by A-bombs and rampant bacteria. Teaching is one of the better ways to egg people into thinking politically -- and being in politics is the only practical way to participate in working this thing out. "

This week, explaining his decision to enter politics at 50 years of age, Bill Foster said: "My father had a similar trajectory. "

This is the kind of Madison-centric column that nobody in town does better, and it shows how smart the State Journal was to hire Doug Moe and to build p. 2 around him five days a week.

One little quibble with Doug: Illinois' 14th District is hardly "the leafy suburbs west of Chicago."  Only a bit of the 14th fits that description. Its major city is Aurora, Illinois' gritty second-largest city, and the District stretches through conservative farmland almost to Iowa, as redistricting made it even more Republican for "Coach" over the years. It includes Dixon, the boyhood home of Ronald Reagan.

One bigger quibble with the State Journal:  After reading the column in my morning paper, I decided to link it. One problem: No mention of the column or Doug Moe on the State Journal's web frontpage, nor was it visible on the "columnists" page.  Had to find it using the Google.  Maybe they're keeping Doug an online secret for some marketing reason I yet don't understand.

UPDATE:  They've made a web home for Doug, and his columns are now on the frontpage as they are filed, so we can read them the evening before they hit the hard copy paper.

 

- Barry Orton

What Did Gableman Know and When Did He Know It?

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), The Club for Growth, and The Coalition for America's Families are the three main organizations funding the effort to elect Michael Gableman to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

While average Wisconsinites write out checks for ten and twenty dollars to support the candidate of their choice, these three groups, be the end of March, may have spent over $5 million.

Questions for Michael Gableman, or anyone else who knows the answers and is willing to stand up and tell the truth:

• Who are the people from these organizations that met with you or met with your intermediaries?
  
• When you were stunned to learn how much money they would raise for you, and you asked,"Where will the money come from?" what did they tell you?
• Do the names of companies like Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and the international pharmaceutical companies come up?
• Did anyone suggest that the money could be routed through the United States Chamber of Commerce and the Institute for Legal Reform so it would be hard to discover the source?
• If you are the winner in the Supreme Court race can you promise that you will not hear any case involving a a party that funneled money through any of the named organizations in this post?
  • Before hearing every case, will you promise to examine the financial records of these shadowy organizations to make sure they have not bought you?

Right Wing Attacks on Wisconsin Business - Climate Worsens

The rabid right is starting to make Wisconsin's left look moderate when it comes to establishing a hostile business environment; after all we never did have a monopoly on silliness.

The wheels recently came off the wagon in January when John Shiely of Briggs & Stratton attacked the left in Wisconsin, in general, and the left in Milwaukee, in particular, for being antagonistic towards everything business. No one needs to go through the misery of the public dialog, so to spare you:

• Shiely should have stopped, but went on a rant about Chinese limousines, the benefits of low paying jobs in Arkansas, and a general attack on the relatives of Milwaukee mayors and labor leaders.
• The left then, rightly piled on.

Since then, here is what we have:

• On January 30 Mark Belling careened out of control attacking the Milwaukee 7, one of the more progressive business forces in Wisconsin.
• Belling was soon accompanied by Charlie Sykes in taking on both the Small Business Times and the Business Journal.

Now that WMC has reversed its position on the hospital assessment, the right has gone berserk:

• Belling: Business group wimps out of anti-tax battle...The shocking sellout by WMC and MMAC on taxes is an indication of how the business community in Wisconsin is changing. The biggest growth industry in the state is health care. Aurora and all the other "nonprofits" are on a hospital building binge and are buying up many physician practices. This growth is making them a very large part of the private business community. Aurora, in fact, is the largest private employer in the state of Wisconsin!

• Boots & Sabers: WMC Supports Sick Tax: WMC is supporting a tax that will screw the majority of businesses and citizens in Wisconsin for the benefit of a couple of large hospitals.  It’s a pathetic display of shortsightedness.

• Charlie Sykes, in a convoluted mumble-jumble: WMC Backs Tax Hike Memo to WMC: "Government is not the solution to the problem. Government is the problem." But the business group's flip-flip on the tax increase is a reminder that "pro-business" does not always mean "pro-market" or "pro-taxpayers."

Which leads us to this point: I am on the same side with WMC and standing across the line from Belling, Sykes, and the Booted Boys.

Yikes.  Is it me or them?