Thousands fill the Capitol rotunda in Madison, Wis.

[JackRiddler]

.

I think this is the right thread for Class War On the State Level, so here's a piece I've been saving to post... the mural was removed and put into storage on the following weekend.

http://wonkette.com/441316/maines-new-t ... ore-441316

CLASS WAR

Maine’s New Teabagger Governor Axes Labor Mural From Dept. of Labor

by Ken Layne

6:21 pm March 24, 2011




Still don’t believe it’s a full-on war against workers? It is: “Gov. Paul LePage has ordered the removal of a 36-foot mural depicting Maine’s labor history from the lobby of the Department of Labor. Worker advocates described the move as a ‘mean-spirited’ provocation amid the administration’s high-tension standoff with unions.”
http://gregcookland.com/journal/2011/03 ... l-removed/

LePage is the new GOP/Tea Party governor who squeaked into office with 38% of the vote. And, like Scott Walker and another dozen Kochsuckers waging class war against American Workers from the statehouses, LePage is trying to break up what’s left of the unions and push everybody down to poverty just like his corporate backers want. No rights for workers, and to hell with anyone who complains — unless by “anyone” you mean “a billionaire industrialist who writes nice fat checks, for liberty libertarians.”

The mural is a 36-foot-long scene of workers and labor battles that is housed in the Department of Labor.

So what reason is LePage’s kochsucking spokesperson giving for the incredibly cheap, mean-spirited attack on a piece of public art in the Labor Department honoring the basic rights of regular Americans to earn a fair wage for their labor?

The Lewiston Sun Journal reports:
http://www.sunjournal.com/state/story/1004031

According to LePage spokesman Dan Demeritt, the administration felt the mural and the conference room monikers showed “one-sided decor” not in keeping with the department’s pro-business goals.

“The message from state agencies needs to be balanced,” said Demeritt, adding that the mural had sparked complaints from “some business owners” who complained it was hostile to business.

Paul LePage needs to be yanked out of his office by a bunch of pissed-off grim-faced yankees, tarred and feathered (this hurts!), and sealed inside one of those display canoes at the back of the L.L. Bean. But, well, nobody’s going to do anything. At least somebody’s proposing a replacement mural showing the proud history of Maine industrialists and their proud use of child labor and their proud maiming of workers in unsafe factories, etc. [Lewiston Sun Journal via Wonkette operative "Matt N."]

[Nordic]

I know we're supposed to be anti-violence and all of that, but some of these people just need to have their asses kicked.

[justdrew]

Walker gives lobbyist's college dropout son an $81,000-a-year job
With no degree and little expertise, Wisconsin Governor’s appointee pulls in big bucks
By Stephen C. Webster | April 4, 2011 @ 1:52 pm

It's good to be born to people who know people.

That's largely the perception many Wisconinites are taking away from this weekend's revelation that the son of a major political donor to Republican Governor Scott Walker landed a very well-heeled post in the state's Department of Commerce with apparent ease.

His qualifications: dropping out of college, working for a few Republicans, working for a lobbyist shop and getting busted a couple times for DUI.

Most guys in their mid-20s would be staring down a decade of riding the bus after a couple drunk driving convictions.

That one reason why Wisconsinites aren't necessarily happy to hear that the young Brian Deschane, the son of a lobbyist for the Wisconsin Builders Association and a major Walker donor, is now earning $81,500 a year on their dime.

And lucky him: In Brian's first two months on the job, he even landed a 26 percent pay raise, according to The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel [1]. It's a very generous percentage too -- unlike Wisconsin teachers, who typically make about half of Deschane's salary [2] and see their pay increase only 21 percent every 10 years.

So how does a man in his mid-20s climb the career ladder so quickly?

His online resume [3] places him at a number of jobs in recent years, including fundraising for Republicans, working in the office of a Republican state Senator, managing a failed Republican congressional campaign and finally serving pseudo-political functions at big business lobbying groups connected to his father's industry.

As for the government job, Jerry Deschane, Brian's father and the executive vice president of the Wisconsin Builders' Association, told the Journal Sentinel that he didn't help Brian get his shoe in the door.

Hard work, he said, and a respectable resume, made Brian a good fit for Walker's team.

But a look at the numbers belies the assertions of the elder Deschane that it was all about his son's resume.

Deschane's lobbying shop bet big on Walker, the paper noted, with the group and individual members donating a combined total of over $121,000 to the Republican's campaign.

In a state currently racked by accusations of class warfare, those donations are only fueling appearances of cronyism.

Many of Walker's critics already accuse the governor of creating the state's budget crisis, pointing to the $140 million in spending and giveaways he and fellow Republicans pushed through the legislature in January.

Walker claims the state's deficit is at or around $137 million, and that removing the right of public workers to bargain for better compensation and working conditions is the only way to solve the crisis.

Wisconsin Democrats have since set about collecting signatures for numerous Republican state Senators, with an eye on triggering a series of recall elections that could flip the balance of the state's legislature.

Although the state's Republicans claim they passed a bill stripping unions of their right to organize, a judge has placed it on hold and it has not been implemented.

A State of Wisconsin website [4] which listed Brian Deschane's telephone number appeared to be in error. He could not be reached for comment.

URL to article: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/04/w ... big-bucks/

URLs in this post:

[1] according to The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel: http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/noquar ... 59584.html

[2] typically make about half of Deschane's salary: http://teacherportal.com/salary/Wiscons ... her-salary

[3] His online resume: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/brian-deschane/12/7a6/526

[4] A State of Wisconsin website: http://legis.wisconsin.gov/lc/publicati ... gencyID=31

[The Consul]

Where's the Weather Underground when you need them? Seriously, this place is far more ficked up than it was when RMN was president.

[seemslikeadream]

Update at 11:10 a.m. ET: With five precincts remaining, Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg has taken a 447-vote lead over incumbent Justice David Prosser in the Wisconsin state Supreme Court race out of 1.5 million votes cast, the AP reports.

[NeonLX]

Update at 11:10 a.m. ET: With five precincts remaining, Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg has taken a 447-vote lead over incumbent Justice David Prosser in the Wisconsin state Supreme Court race out of 1.5 million votes cast, the AP reports.

Please oh please oh please let those five remaining precincts be in solidly progressive areas...

[seemslikeadream]

^^^^

oh yes she's declared victory by 205 votes!! All precincts in... on to the recount and Fox's voter fraud excuse

[justdrew]

I bet JoAnne Kloppenburg isn't a perfect human being, nonetheless, it's a good thing everyone didn't vote for None of the Above.

Sometimes better is the best you can get.

and you know, democracy relies on people finding common ground, not absolute agreement on every issue. though it can be a bitter pill at times.

[seemslikeadream]

BREAKING: Prosser Up by 7000+ in WI Supreme Court Race After 'Bookkeeping Error' Discovered by Controversial Clerk in Republican Waukesha County
County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, a GOP activists, previously criticized for storing election results only on a personal computer in her office...

As word was floating around this afternoon about a possible "book keeping error" discovered during canvassing of Tuesday's incredibly close Wisconsin Supreme Court election, an error that might give thousands of votes to Justice David Prosser, we idly wondered if the county in question might turn out to be the very controversial Kathy Nickolaus' Waukesha county. And, whaddaya know...
BREAKING: Computer Error Could Give Prosser 7,381 More Votes, Victory
April 7, 2011 5:29 P.M. By Christian Schneider

After Tuesday night's Wisconsin Supreme Court election, a computer error in heavily Republican Waukesha County failed to send election results for the entire City of Brookfield to the Associated Press. The error, revealed today, would give incumbent Supreme Court Justice David Prosser a net 7,381 votes against his challenger, attorney Joanne Kloppenburg. On Wednesday, Kloppenburg declared victory after the AP reported she finished the election with a 204-vote lead, out of nearly 1.5 million votes cast.

On election night, AP results showed a turnout of 110,000 voters in Waukesha County - well short of the 180,000 voters that turned out last November, and 42 percent of the county's total turnout. By comparison, nearly 90 percent of Dane County voters who cast a ballot in November turned out to vote for Kloppenburg.

Prior to the election, Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus was heavily criticized for her decision to keep the county results on an antiquated personal computer, rather than upgrade to a new data system being utilized statewide. Nickolaus cited security concerns for keeping the data herself - yet when she reported the data, it did not include the City of Brookfield, whose residents cast nearly 14,000 votes.

Throughout the day Thursday, official canvass numbers flipped the lead back and forth between Prosser and Kloppenburg. While many believed a recount was inevitable, the addition of the Brookfield votes for Prosser could push the justice's lead beyond the legal threshold that would trigger an automatic recount. Under state law, Kloppenburg could still ask for a recount up to three days after the official canvass, but would have to pay for it herself.

The above comes from the Rightwing National Review Online and is similarly reported at this hour at the similarly Rightwing Weekly Standard where Stephen F. Hayes adds that Nickolaus is also "a Republican activist":
[T]he discovery of the extra votes is sure to stoke the embers of the heated battles that have taken place across the state over the past two months, particularly because Nickolaus, the woman at the center of the controversy, is a Republican activist. A posting on the website of the Republican Women of Waukesha County indicates that Kathy Nickolaus recently served as president of that group.

As Schneider notes in the NRO piece, Waukesha's County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus had indeed come under scrutiny for her election procedures in the past. As The BRAD BLOG flagged back in August of 2010, it was discovered that Nickolaus keeps election results on her personal PC in her office, and only on her personal PC.

At a press conference moments ago, Nickolaus attributed the confusion in numbers to an error in Microsoft Access on her computer.

As we noted, quoting the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last year in regard to questions about Nickolaus', um, unusual election procedures:
Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus' decision to go it alone in how she collects and maintains election results has some county officials raising a red flag about the integrity of the system.

Nickolaus said she decided to take the election data collection and storage system off the county's computer network - and keep it on stand-alone personal computers accessible only in her office - for security reasons.

"What it gave me was good security of the elections from start to finish, without the ability of someone unauthorized to be involved," she said.

An audit of Nickolaus' election procedures was subsequently performed by the county of Nickolaus' election procedures and a number of recommendations to improve her system were made, including the recommendation that she stop using the same ID and password for three different employees in her office. Nickolaus claimed, in opposing that recommendation, that it would take too much time for one employee to log off before another one logged on.

When presented with the results of the audit at a County Board meeting, Nickolaus said only she would take the recommendations "into consideration" and was then taken to task for what one member of the Executive Committee described as her "smirks" during the discussion, as reported by the Journal Sentinel in January of this year...

Several committee members said they were uncomfortable with Nickolaus' refusal to adopt the recommendations.

During one part of the discussion, Dwyer erupted in exasperation at Nickolaus' facial expressions.

"There really is nothing funny about this, Kathy," he said, raising his voice. "Don't sit there and grin when I'm explaining what this is about.

"Don't sit there and say I will take it into consideration," he said, asking her pointedly whether she would change the passwords.

"I have not made my decision," she answered. After supervisors continued to press the issue, Nickolaus indicated she would create three different passwords.

"This isn't that big of a deal. It isn't worth an argument," she said. "This is ridiculous."

Nickolaus also said she would make her own assessment of when to back up computer programming for election ballots - and store the more frequent backup in another building, as the auditor recommended.

We explained, in our August 2010 report, how insane it is to allow such a situation to exist where one insider official has that much control over results with no oversight whatsoever by the public...
Hopefully, the citizens and county administrators in Waukesha County, Wisconsin (adjacent to Milwaukee) will realize how completely insane it is to allow one person, County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus (R), to have complete, unfettered, un-observable, un-overseeable control of such public information, and are willing to do something about it.

For the record, for just one tiny reason why election officials are not to simply be "trusted" (as the very best ones will tell you), here's the story of former Monterey County (CA) Clerk Tony Anchundo. And, if that's not enough, feel free to peruse the story of Clay County (KY) Clerk Freddy Thompson. Just let us know if you need more.

What part of 'public official' and 'public elections' to these sorts of folks not get???

The Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, as we reported when covering results and explaining how votes are cast and counted in the Badger State yesterday (and the concerns related the optical-scan and touch-screen systems used in the state as made by companies such as Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia), has become a proxy battle between supporters of Republican Gov. Scott Walker and his opponents in the public who have protested for weeks against the GOP state legislature's attempt to strip unions of many of their collective bargaining rights.

A victory by Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenberg would change the balance of the state's high court where Republicans currently have a 4 to 3 majority with Prosser as a close ally of Walker's.

We will, as you might imagine, be discussing this this evening on the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show which I am again guest hosting all this week from 9p-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT).

Officials dispute reliability of Waukesha County clerk's election data system

By Laurel Walker of the Journal Sentinel

Aug. 13, 2010 |(30) Comments

Waukesha — Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus' decision to go it alone in how she collects and maintains election results has some county officials raising a red flag about the integrity of the system.

Nickolaus said she decided to take the election data collection and storage system off the county's computer network - and keep it on stand-alone personal computers accessible only in her office - for security reasons.

"What it gave me was good security of the elections from start to finish, without the ability of someone unauthorized to be involved," she said.

Nonetheless, Director of Administration Norman A. Cummings said because Nickolaus has kept them out of the loop, the county's information technology specialists have not been able to verify Nickolaus' claim that the system is secure from failure.

"How does anybody else in the county know, except for her verbal word, that there are backups, and that the software she has out there is performing as it should?" he said. "There's no way I can assure that the election system is going to be fine for the next presidential election."

Cummings stressed that the voting process at local polling places is not in question. However, municipal clerks send their election night results by dial-up modem to the county clerk, where they are tabulated and stored. That prompted Cummings' concerns.

The County Board's Executive Committee is scheduled to step into the fray at its meeting Monday. The clerk's office is scheduled for a complete audit beginning in March 2011, but the County Board may seek an earlier look at the elections system, said Mark Mader, the board's chief of staff.

Mike Biagioli, the county's manager of information technology, sees risk in Nickolaus' action.

"What happens if something goes wrong on election night? We don't support her at all on election night. She was pretty clear about that. If something goes wrong, what do you do?" he said. "I would love to be able to go in and verify that everything is OK."

Nickolaus said that she has the statutory responsibility for elections "and it's my duty to make sure it's as secure as possible. The administration, IT (information technology), believes they should be able to get into it whenever they like. So whatever they decide, they make changes to the network and it affects my office."

Cummings said, "Nobody's trying to do her elections for her." He said, however, that he was troubled that Nickolaus talks about the computer equipment, software and data as if it is hers, although it was purchased with county funds.
Backup debated

The tug-of-war between Nickolaus and administration is evident in a March 8 memo from Cummings to Nickolaus in which he said hardware and software on the clerk's computers were "obsolete, not repairable and unsupportable." Without improvements, he worried that the elections system could be "inoperative and irrecoverable."

Nickolaus and Cummings both said the problem stems from when Waukesha County moved its network from an old, outdated Novell server - the processing unit that multiple personal computers tap into for shared services - to a Microsoft platform. Among other things, the conversion saved the county $500,000 a year, Cummings said.

Nickolaus' election system, however, depended on the old platform, so technicians restored a lone Novell server for her use, without a backup.

Biagioli said a major upgrade to the election system was recommended, but Nickolaus has said it's unnecessary.

In March, Nickolaus said, she moved the data off that server and into her own stand-alone system. She has a backup on a second computer, she said. In addition, she said, as she programs for elections, she does frequent backups during the day.

Nickolaus said she was a programmer for 15 years before becoming county clerk. And she said her staff knows how to operate the system, so "if I get hit by a bus, this election is going to run just fine."

Several years ago, Nickolaus discontinued reporting election results on her county website for individual municipalities, as was done under the prior clerk. She said that change had nothing to do with the problems with the county servers or with her taking her system off the network.

Rather, she said, it is not her responsibility and that local clerks can post results on municipal websites. She said she doesn't have the staff to enter all the data that's required for such reporting.

[justdrew]

Nickolaus and Cummings both said the problem stems from when Waukesha County moved its network from an old, outdated Novell server - the processing unit that multiple personal computers tap into for shared services - to a Microsoft platform. Among other things, the conversion saved the county $500,000 a year, Cummings said.

complete and utter nonsense.

obviously she was holding votes and/or has submitted fraudulent data. I wonder what will be found at the polling places? better get that shit secured by court order and seized right now. may be too late already.

[Stephen Morgan]

Nickolaus and Cummings both said the problem stems from when Waukesha County moved its network from an old, outdated Novell server - the processing unit that multiple personal computers tap into for shared services - to a Microsoft platform. Among other things, the conversion saved the county $500,000 a year, Cummings said.

complete and utter nonsense.

What you gonna do about it?

obviously she was holding votes and/or has submitted fraudulent data. I wonder what will be found at the polling places? better get that shit secured by court order and seized right now. may be too late already.

Are there any exit polls available?

[seemslikeadream]

Published on Friday, April 8, 2011 by The Nation
The Strange Politics of Fitzwalkerstan: GOP Clerk "Finds" Votes to Reverse Defeat of Conservative Wisconsin Justice
by John Nichols

Suppose the Democratic governor of Illinois had proposed radical changes in how the state operates, and suppose anger over those proposed changes inspired a popular uprising that filled the streets of every city, village and town in the state with protests. Then, suppose there was an election that would decide whether allies of the governor controlled the state’s highest court. Suppose the results of that election showed that an independent candidate who would not be in the governor’s pocket narrowly won that election.

Then, suppose it was announced by a Democratic election official in Chicago that she had found 14,000 votes in a machine-controlled ward that overwhelmingly favored the candidate aligned with the Democratic governor. And suppose the Democratic official who “found” the needed ballots for the candidate favored by the Democratic governor had previously been accused of removing election data from official computers and hiding the information on a personal computer, that the official’s actions had been censured even by fellow Democrats and that she her secretive and erratic activities had been the subject of an official audit demanded by the leadership of the Cook County Board.

Now, suppose that the number of additional votes tabulated for the governor’s candidate was precisely the amount needed to prevent the independent candidate from demanding an official recount.

Would even the most naive Illinoisan simply accept at face value that the new count was “legitimate” or that the governor’s candidate should suddenly be presumed to have been “elected”? Not likely.

Wisconsinites should respond with equal skepticism to the news that Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, a former Republican legislative staffer who worked for Prosser when he served as Assembly Speaker and with Walker when he was a GOP rising star, has found all the votes that justice needs to secure his reelection and that the governor needs to claim a “win” for his agenda.

There is no need for a conspiracy theory. The facts raise the questions that lawyers, campaigners and activists are now asking.

The clerk, who has a history of secretive and erratic handling of election results, says she forgot to count the votes of Brookfield, the county’s second-largest city, in the total for Tuesday’s Supreme Court election.

Nickolaus claims that it was “human error” that caused her to “lose” the Brookfield results on her personal computer where she had secreted away the data. Yet, she apparently knew of the “mistake” for 29 hours before reporting it and then handed the information off to conservative bloggers and talk-radio personalities.


But what is most important to note are the numbers. With Governor Scott Walker’s candidate, Justice David Prosser, essentially tied with his independence-and-integrity challenger, Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg, it was all but certain that a recount would be required. And the final unofficial count, as tabulated Wednesday afternoon, put Kloppenburg ahead by several hundred votes, giving the challenger an advantage gloing into the thje count.

Then, two days after the election, Nickolaus found the 7,582 votes needed to put Prosser outside the zone of a state-funded official recount.

Former Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager says she’s the developments require inquiry and explanation.

She’s right.

The Kloppenburg campaign has demanded “a full explanation of how and why these 14,315 votes from an entire City were missed.” As part of the search for that explanation, the campaign plans to file open records requests for all relevant documentation related to the reporting of election results in Waukesha County, as well as to the discovery and reporting of the errors announced by the County.”

The open records highlight concerns about the credibility of Nickolaus -- whose secretive and suspicious activities led the Waukesha County Board’s executive committee order an audit of the clerk's use of election equipment and her controversial approaches to counting and tabulating votes.

That’s appropriate. But these requests do not go far enough.

Weeks ago, state Rep. Mark Pocan, the former co-chair of the legislative Joint Finance Committee, suggested that the lawless actions of Governor Walker and his legislative consigliere, state Senator Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, had remade Wisconsin as a rogue state he dubbed “Fitzwalkerstan.”

After a snap 17-second tally that denied most Assembly Democrats a chance to vote on Walker’s anti-labor agenda, after the threats to deny Democratic state senators legislative voting rights, after the attempts to close the Capitol to the people of Wisconsin, after the violations of open-meetings laws, after the flagrant violations of a judges temporary-restraining order, the “Fitzwalkerstan” label seems increasingly apt. And the idea of leaving an inquiry into the Waukesha County scandal to authorities who bow to the governor’s is simply untenable.

The circumstance lends legitimacy to the call by the advocacy group Citizens Action of Wisconsin for “an immediate federal investigation and immediate impoundment of all computer equipment, ballots, and other relevant evidence needed to verify a fair vote count in Waukesha County. “ Citizen Action says this investigation should include an accounting of all communications by “Kathy Nickolaus and anyone in the Waukesha clerk’s office with all outside actors, and all interested parties to the election dispute.”

It also demands a full recount, no matter what the ultimate margin of victory or defeat. Whether David Prosser or JoAnne Kloppenburg is elected, the only way that the high court will retain even a shred of credibility is if every ballot is recounted, every tabulation is reviewed and every citizen is certain that this election was legitimate.

Calls for an investigation in Waukesha

by Andrew Beckett on April 8, 2011

in Elections

Waukesha County’s sudden release of almost 14,000 votes Thursday in the race for state Supreme Court is prompting calls for an independent investigation of the results. Robert Kraig with Citizen Action of Wisconsin says the U.S. Attorney’s Office should step in to review what happened and why it took nearly two days for the Waukesha County Clerk to release information about the error.

Kraig says the longer officials wait to intervene, the greater the chance that crucial evidence could be lost or destroyed. He says there are far too many questions about how votes from Brookfield were accidentally left out of unofficial results, and failing to take action could leave half of the state wondering if the election was just stolen.

The announcement suddenly gave incumbent Supreme Court Justice David Prosser an almost 7,500 vote lead over challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg. The change widened a gap that had only numbered a few hundred votes after the election and greatly reduced the chances of a statewide recount.

If a similar situation had occurred in Milwaukee County, Kraig believes officials would already be swooping in to seize ballots and voting equipment. He says such a major discrepancy deserves close scrutiny.

Kraig admits the whole situation could really be the result of an error made by the Waukesha County Clerk. However, he does not believe the people of Wisconsin should just take her word for it.

[seemslikeadream]

WisPolitics: Railroad exec charged with making illegal campaign contributions
4/11/2011

Railroad executive William Gardner was charged with two felonies this morning for making illegal campaign contributions.

According to the complaint, he engaged in a pattern of having Wisconsin & Southern Railroad employees and his daughter make political contributions to Gov. Scott Walker's campaign and then reimbursed them with either personal or company funds.

Gardner, the president and CEO of the railroad, faces two class I felonies, one for making excessive contributions and the other for unlawful donations.

He acknowledged making illegal contributions last year, and Walker's campaign returned $43,000 in donations following the revelations.

The guv's state office said it would not comment on the complaint, and the state GOP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

As part of a plea deal, Gardner would serve two years on probation with a stayed prison term.

The GAB announced this afternoon Wisconsin & Southern Railroad Company will pay a civil forfeiture of $166,900, while seven employees will pay forfeitures of $250 each.

The complaint details how Gardner made donations and was reimbursed by the company and then solicited others to do the same.

For example, Gardner made a $5,000 donation to Walker in November 2009 and then submitted a report to the company seeking reimbursement for an expense detailed as “Friends of Scott Walker” and “Contribution for Governor” for the exact amount of his contribution.

Gardner also personally made contributions to former Rep. Mike Sheridan, who was then the Assembly speaker, and to the Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee.

Gardner said in a statement this morning that at the time he made the contributions, he did not realize his was violating the law.

The complaint notes that Gardner re-cut checks to Sheridan and the ADCC because his initial contribution of $2,000 to the Janesville Dem exceeded state contribution limits. He ended up giving $500 to Sheridan and $3,500 to the ADCC, which the complaint says suggests he was "informed as to the law of campaign contribution limits."

The ADCC later returned the money.

After soliciting one railroad employee to donate $4,900 to Walker's campaign, Gardner wrote in an e-mail to him "And lets (sic) not blab this around ..."

Gardner's attorney told investigators he wanted the employee to keep quiet "out of a concern for lavish political spending during tight economic times requiring Railroad wage cuts."

"Ignorance of the law is not an excuse," Gardner said in a statement. "More importantly, I had the obligation to make sure what the law was before getting myself, the company, and others involved. But I didn't. My employees had every right to assume that what I was asking them to do was legal. But it wasn't. I failed them and everyone else miserably."

The complaint details $60,800 in donations that were reimbursed by Wisconsin & Southern Railroad and another $12,000 made by others that Gardner reimbursed himself.

Of that, $57,800 went to Walker. Former Gov. Jim Doyle received $5,000, while state lawmakers Alberta Darling, Ted Kanavas and Mike Sheridan received $500 each and the ADCC received $3,500.

Gardner stressed in the statement that Walker nor his campaign never suggested he or the company would get anything in return for the contributions and he "never asked, suggested or even though I would."

The complaint includes an e-mail Gardner sent Walker following a meeting at Noodles & Co. in Madison thanking him for the time and expressing his hopes that the Republican would pick a Transportation secretary who understands the importance of rail in Wisconsin. He also wrote with adequate funding for capital upgrades on the state-owned rail lines, "Wisconsin & Southern Railroad Co. will continue to spur economic development throughout the state and do what we do best."

The investigation was initiated May 10 after someone described as a “former woman friend” of Gardner contacted the GAB April 19 because a man she did not name asked her to make a contribution to a candidate using his funds. She did not identify Gardner in that initial call, but a GAB investigator was able to determine it was him.

According to the complaint, she contacted the GAB in an attempt to force Gardner to return her personal property. She wrote in an e-mail that she had not disclosed Gardner's name to the GAB but would do so if she did not receive "all of my belongings, and I mean everything belonging to me" by April 30.

Gardner responded in an e-mail, "Knock yourself out. I did nothing wrong and have broken no law."

Gardner has an initial court appearance scheduled May 2.

The Government Accountability Board and Milwaukee County DA's office scheduled an afternoon news conference to discuss the case.

- WisPolitics Staff

Waukesha Dem member of the Board of Canvassers: “Shocking & somewhat appalling… I feel like I must speak up.”
Posted on Monday, April 11, 2011 by GottaLaff

An eye-opening, blunt statement from Ramona Kitzinger, in part, via the Waukesha County Democratic Party:

… No one explained why they were beginning the canvass on Wednesday, just to please report immediately.

Before this telephone call, I had not been contacted as the designated Democratic observer, and I saw no public notice of the abnormal canvass time. … The canvass then proceeded as normal, with no glaring irregularities or mention of a possible 15,000 vote error in Brookfield City. [...]

In retrospect, it seems both shocking and somewhat appalling there was no mention of discovery of this 15,000 vote �human error� that ultimately had the potential to tip the balance of an entire statewide election. How is this possible?

Once the canvass had been completed and the results were finalized, I was called into Kathy�s office along with Pat (the Republican observer) and told of an impending 5:30pm press conference. It was at that point that I was first made aware of an error Kathy had made in Brookfield City. Kathy told us she thought she had saved the Brookfield voter information Tuesday night, but then on Wednesday she said she noticed she had not hit save. Kathy didn�t offer an explanation about why she didn�t mention anything prior to Thursday afternoon�s canvass completion, but showed us different tapes where numbers seemed to add up, though I have no idea where the numbers were coming from. I was not told of the magnitude of this error, just that she had made one. I was then instructed that I would not say anything at the press conference, and was actually surprised when I was asked questions by reporters.

The reason I offer this explanation is that, with the enormous amount of attention this has received over the weekend, many people are offering my statements at the press conference that the �numbers jibed� as validation they are correct and I can vouch for their accuracy. As I told Kathy when I was called into the room � I am 80 years old and I don�t understand anything about computers. I don�t know where the numbers Kathy was showing me ultimately came from, but they seemed to add up. I am still very, very confused about why the canvass was finalized before I was informed of the Brookfield error and it wasn�t even until the press conference was happening that I learned it was this enormous mistake that could swing the whole election. I was never shown anything that would verify Kathy�s statement about the missing vote, and with how events unfolded and people citing me as an authority on this now, I feel like I must speak up.

So do a lot of people. Please feel free to help her get her message out.

You can see Ms. Kitzinger standing behind Kathy in the video.

[justdrew]

FIXED VERSION (FRAKING MICROSOFT WORD'S AUTOMATIC REPLACEMENT OF NORMAL LETTERS WITH "CURRLY QUOTES" AND LONG HYPEHENS WAS TO BLAME, THEN THE TEXT BEING BASSED THROUGH A db/WEB THAT DIDN'T PROPERLY REPRESENT THE CODE PAGE.

anyway...

Statement & Account of Ramona Kitzinger, Waukesha Board of Canvassers member since 2004: Monday, April 11, 2011

(Waukesha County Democratic Party)On Tuesday night, I received a voice message from someone in the office of Clerk Kathy Nickolaus informing me of a Wednesday canvass meeting, which I returned the next morning and said I would be able to report into the canvass by noon - which I did. Normally the canvass would begin at 9am on Thursday, as has been the general practice for many years. No one explained why they were beginning the canvass on Wednesday, just to please report immediately.

Before this telephone call, I had not been contacted as the designated Democratic observer, and I saw no public notice of the abnormal canvass time. The phone call simply instructed me to report by noon to begin the canvass, which I did. The canvass then proceeded as normal, with no glaring irregularities or mention of a possible 15,000 vote error in Brookfield City.

On Thursday, I then showed up as per normal procedure at 9am and the canvass again went normally and concluded sometime between 4pm and 5pm. During the course of the day, the issue of minor vote corrections in New Berlin and Lisbon came up, but again nothing of a historic nature or reflecting glaring irregularities. In fact, the matter of vote totals in Brookfield City came up specifically during the course of Thursday's canvass. In retrospect, it seems both shocking and somewhat appalling there was no mention of discovery of this 15,000 vote "human error" that ultimately had the potential to tip the balance of an entire statewide election. How is this possible?

Once the canvass had been completed and the results were finalized, I was called into Kathy's office along with Pat (the Republican observer) and told of an impending 5:30pm press conference. It was at that point that I was first made aware of an error Kathy had made in Brookfield City. Kathy told us she thought she had saved the Brookfield voter information Tuesday night, but then on Wednesday she said she noticed she had not hit save. Kathy didn't offer an explanation about why she didn't mention anything prior to Thursday afternoon's canvass completion, but showed us different tapes where numbers seemed to add up, though I have no idea where the numbers were coming from. I was not told of the magnitude of this error, just that she had made one. I was then instructed that I would not say anything at the press conference, and was actually surprised when I was asked questions by reporters.

The reason I offer this explanation is that, with the enormous amount of attention this has received over the weekend, many people are offering my statements at the press conference that the "numbers jibed" as validation they are correct and I can vouch for their accuracy. As I told Kathy when I was called into the room - I am 80 years old and I don't understand anything about computers. I don't know where the numbers Kathy was showing me ultimately came from, but they seemed to add up. I am still very, very confused about why the canvass was finalized before I was informed of the Brookfield error and it wasn't even until the press conference was happening that I learned it was this enormous mistake that could swing the whole election. I was never shown anything that would verify Kathy's statement about the missing vote, and with how events unfolded and people citing me as an authority on this now, I feel like I must speak up.

[brainpanhandler]

I am 80 years old and I don�t understand anything about computers. I don�t know where the numbers Kathy was showing me ultimately came from, but they seemed to add up. I am still very, very confused about why the canvass was finalized before I was informed of the Brookfield error and it wasn�t even until the press conference was happening that I learned it was this enormous mistake that could swing the whole election. I was never shown anything that would verify Kathy�s statement about the missing vote, and with how events unfolded and people citing me as an authority on this now, I feel like I must speak up.

Great. Jesus effing christ.

No shit you need to speak up. Goddamnit.

I am still very, very confused about why the canvass was finalized before I was informed of the Brookfield error and it wasn�t even until the press conference was happening that I learned it was this enormous mistake that could swing the whole election.

No need to be confused anymore Ramona. Now in the future maybe you could learn something about those smart tv things and learn to expect the gop are a bunch a dirty rotten scoundrels that will lie, cheat and steal if they can get away with it. Don't trust any of them for a second. Duh! Duh! Duh!

Jesus christ. I want smart, cynical, distrusting to the core, fully technologically capable and on the fucking ball election officials.

Damn it, damn it, damn it!!!!!!!!!

I want observers at every fucking polling station, every goddamn election/canvas/vote counting function for these recall elections.