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by crikkett » Fri Jun 08, 2012 10:36 am
by NeonLX » Fri Jun 08, 2012 6:27 pm
Mike McCabe, director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in state politics, argued the secret behind Walker and decades of Republican success nationwide is "a rich-poor alliance of affluent suburbs and poor rural counties." In the recall, Walker dominated country and suburb alike. McCabe said in 2010, "Walker carried the 10 poorest counties in the state by a 13 percent margin," which used to be reliably Democratic. He said, "Republicans use powerful economic wedge issues to great impact. They go into rural counties and say, do you have pensions? 'No.' Well, you're paying for theirs, referring to public sector workers. Do you have healthcare? 'No.' Well, you're paying for theirs? Do you get wage increases? 'No.' Well, you're paying for theirs."
The scenario was far different 50 years explained McCabe, "The Democrats were identified with programs like Social Security, the G.I. Bill and rural electrification. People could see tangible benefits. Today they ask, 'Is government working for us?' And often their answer is no. They see government as crooked and corrupt. They figure if the government is not working for us, let's keep it as small as possible."
by brainpanhandler » Sun Jun 10, 2012 1:56 pm
Nordic wrote:This has gone almost completely unmentioned, even by ..... well, us!
http://markcrispinmiller.com/2012/06/wi ... surprised/What we got tonight in Wisconsin was the same old stench, coming from the same old corner of the room. To wit, there was a huge turnout (highly favorable to the Democratic candidate Barrett), in fact they’re still waiting in line to vote in Milwaukee and elsewhere nearly two hours after poll closing; and the immediate post-closing Exit Polls had it a dead heat, 50%-50%. But the only place those polls were posted was as a Bar Chart in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Not a single network posted any Exit Poll numbers, though they all have been regularly posting them throughout the 2012 primary season within a few minutes of poll closing. But they all called the race “extremely tight,” since they were looking at the same 50%-50% Exit Poll that the Journal Sentinel at least had the courage to post in some format.
In short order, and quite predictably, the race was Walker’s, the networks anointing him the winner as the Exit Poll “Adjustment” Process played out. You could actually see it on the Journal Sentinel’s Bar Chart: the blue bars shrinking and the red bars lengthening every 20 minutes or so. It will take a bit of visual measuring but the adjustment process was egregious, on the order of an 8-10% marginal disparity between the Unadjusted Exit Polls and the Adjusted Exit Polls congruent to the eventually-to-be-announced “official results.”
We’ve seen this before, election after election, the familiar “Red Shift.” And it’s the Exit Polls that are always “off,” because the Votecounts must always be “on.” Except that the Votecounts are secret and in the full control of outfits, with strong right-wing affiliations, like Dominion Voting and Command Central. Votes counted by partisans in complete secret–is this sane?
Today massive robocalls were reported to have been placed to targeted Barrett supporters, telling them they didn’t have to vote if they had signed the recall petition, and others that they couldn’t vote if they hadn’t voted in 2010. An obvious question: is there a bright ethical line between making (whoever actually made them) targeted robocalls telling your opponents’ supporters they don’t have to vote if they signed the recall petition versus setting the zero-counters on a bunch of memory cards to, say, +50 (for Walker) and -50 (for Barrett) so at the end of the day the election admin sees a “clean” election and you’ve shifted 100 votes per precinct? Do you believe that operators who have clearly not blanched at doing the first would for some reason blanch at doing the second–much neater and more efficacious as it is?
And if you’re thinking “well the pre-election polls predicted a Walker win,” you should know that the methodology for all of those polls, even the ones run by left-leaning outfits, was the Likely Voter Cutoff Model (google it, by all means), which disproportionately eliminates Democratic voters (students, renters, poor, minority) from the sample and so skews it conveniently anywhere from 5% to 10% to the right (the pollsters all would have been out of business by now if they had kept using a sound methodology and getting competitive elections wrong with it).
This election was dubbed “the second most important election of 2012;” it will “foretell” November just as the Massachusetts Special Senate Election (Coakley-Brown) “foretold” November 2010. And there was a massive red shift and even more than the usual indicators that it was rigged. Can anyone live with that, just give it a pass, and sleep tonight?
–Jonathan Simon
What a coincidence, exit polls have been SO BAD! Ever since we've instituted electronic, hackable voting! Gosh, who'd've thunk?!
Wisconsin Recall: The adjusted Final Exit Poll was forced to match an unlikely recorded vote
Richard Charnin
June 6, 2012
The media and the exit pollsters have done it again.
Before the first votes were posted, the media reported that based on the exit polls, the election was “too close to call”. But Walker won by 53.2-46.3%, a 173,000 vote margin. There was a significant 7% discrepancy between the unadjusted exit poll and the recorded vote. What caused the red shift?
Forcing the exit poll to match the recorded vote
The Wisconsin exit poll (2547 respondents) indicated that Walker had 53.0% (see the NY Times link below). The 0.2% difference between the Final and the recorded vote was the result of the standard policy of forcing the unadjusted poll to match the vote.
The pollsters claim that the exit poll had a 4.0% margin of error. But they can’t mean the final, adjusted poll because it is always forced to match the recorded vote within 0.5%.
Why did the media not provide the unadjusted exit poll crosstabs? Was it because they knew that they would have to adjust all the crosstabs to match a bogus recorded vote and did not want the public to view the “adjustments”?
- snip -
rest at link:
http://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/201 ... rded-vote/
by JackRiddler » Sun Jun 10, 2012 8:57 pm
by Joe Hillshoist » Mon Jun 11, 2012 9:19 am
by 2012 Countdown » Mon Jun 11, 2012 10:48 am
by JackRiddler » Tue Jul 03, 2012 4:21 pm
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/02/ ... tist/print
July 02, 2012
Scapegoating the Wisconsin Debacle
Are You Now or Have You Ever Been an “Anti-Labor Leftist”?
by MICHAEL D. YATES
The recent defeat of the Scott Walker recall in Wisconsin, an election in which Walker soundly defeated the same Democratic challenger who ran against him when he became governor in 2010, has generated much discussion. Why was the Wisconsin Uprising of early 2011, where hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites took to the streets and occupied the Capitol building to protest Walker’s attempt to destroy public employee unions and eliminate social welfare programs, diverted by the Democratic Party and labor leaders into a recall effort? Why was the man chosen by the Democrats to run against Walker a person who had himself been an enemy of labor unions and who distanced himself from organized labor every chance he got during the recall campaign? Why didn’t the unions build on the Uprising to reconstitute the state’s labor movement on a more militant and class conscious basis?
Several people, including radical economist and Left Business Observer editor Doug Henwood and Progressive magazine editor Matt Rothschild, took labor leaders to task for not taking advantage of the mass anger and willingness to protest shown by the Uprising. Henwood said,
Suppose instead [of the recall]that the unions had supported a popular campaign—media, door knocking, phone calling—to agitate, educate, and organize on the importance of the labor movement to the maintenance of living standards? If they’d made an argument, broadly and repeatedly, that Walker’s agenda was an attack on the wages and benefits of the majority of the population? That it was designed to remove organized opposition to the power of right-wing money in politics? That would have been more fruitful than this major defeat.
Rothschild said,
Nor were more creative strategies tried. The Teamsters with their 18 wheelers, whose support was so emboldening, could have driven down Interstate 90 and 94 at 45 mph all day long for a week’s time to demonstrate that workers in Wisconsin weren’t going to take this lying down. No coordinated workplace strategies were adopted. Every union in the state could have caught the blue flu, so that workers in one trade after another would call in sick on alternating days. Or unions could have told their members simply to “work to rule”—doing the bare minimum that their contracts required. But none of these options were taken, and the only channel that all of the people’s energy was poured into was the very narrow and murky channel of the Democratic Party. There was a failure of imagination, and a failure of nerve, and a failure of process.
For this, Henwood, Rothschild, and those of us who agree with them, have been subjected to sharp criticism. Gordon Lafer, professor at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center, called Henwood, et. al. “anti-labor leftists” who don’t understand that organizing is slow, difficult, incremental work, that unions have primary responsibility to protect their own members, and that labor must engage in politics. Labor had the choice in Wisconsin of going for the recall or throwing in the towel. Henwood’s and Rothschild’s suggestions are just so much pie in the sky, offered by outside commentators who aren’t serious about organizing and don’t know what they are talking about. It is the slow, painful, incremental organizing that, in the end, radicalizes workers.
Corey Robin, professor at Brooklyn College, agreed with his “comrade” Lafer, accusing those who pointed out Lafer’s close ties to top labor and Democratic Party leadership of making ad hominem attacks. Robin got on his high horse and penned a blog post asking us to imagine how difficult it is to organize people to take risky actions. We “anti-labor leftists” simply don’t comprehend the wealth and power of employers and the hostility toward workers of the government. When we point to such things as the high salaries of union leaders and their sometimes corrupt practices as reasons for labor’s decline, we are making an irrelevant argument.
The acerbic Adolph L. Reed, Jr, professor at the University of Pennsylvania and cofounder of the stillborn Labor Party, put the icing on the cake, unambiguously endorsing the views of his friends Lafer and Robin, not only reiterating the “anti-labor leftist” charge, but accusing us of scapegoating labor for Walker’s victory, of waiting idly by for the “Spark” that will spontaneously ignite working class revolution, and giving aid and comfort to the enemy by having the temerity to criticize the labor movement in public forums!
Unfortunately, the errors and omissions of our triumvirate of political science professors are many. For example, they fail to place the difficulty of organizing workers into its full context. Organizing is going to be especially hard when unions have been granting debilitating concessions to employers for more than thirty years. Officers of some of the very public employee unions whose members led the Wisconsin Uprising of 2011 gave major concessions to the Walker government. Henwood correctly points out that unions are not as popular as Lafer thinks they are. Maybe concessions are one reason (along with those high salaries and corrupt practices). What is more, organizing is an ongoing process, which doesn’t end when a union has won a representation election. How will a local union become a fighting force when its leaders agree to two-tier wage agreements, and a new hire earns half as much as his more senior workmate for doing the same tasks? If my neighbor tells me that solidarity went out the window in his union, why would I want to join it?
Lafer asserts and Robin agrees (perhaps Reed does too, given the stridency of his support for his colleagues and disdain for the “anti-labor leftists”) that labor can’t abandon politics and in Wisconsin had to choose between trying to recall Walker and throwing in the towel. Not only is the recall versus capitulation a false dichotomy if ever there was one, but these scholars of the labor movement ought to know that there is the politics of a recall in which both candidates are hostile to organized labor, and there is the politics of building a labor movement, independent of Republicans and Democrats.
Let’s look more deeply into the difficulty of organizing and the dangers workers face when they try to form a union. Robin’s blog post sounded good on first reading. But then I began to think, isn’t nearly everything hard. It’s hard to organize people, knock on doors, talk to those with whom you don’t agree but whose support you need, write an article much less a book, raise kids, do most any kind of work. Yet, people do hard things all the time. Take risks too. When one thing doesn’t work, you try another, even if it takes a lot of effort and is risky.
Some labor leaders used to know this. When AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka was leading the United Mine Workers and spearheading the strike at Pittston Coal Company, he led an occupation of the mine. Other tactics weren’t working. Something like a quadrillion dollars in fines were levied against the union. But it won the strike. His famous union forefather John L. Lewis was a conservative, but he hired communists to organize and made peace with radical rival John Brophy, once his enemy. Today, Trumka talks, while the house of labor burns. Where is the action? Phone banking and house calling for Walker’s opponent, a guy who took labor’s money but ran away from labor’s support at every opportunity? Doing the same for Obama? Life is too short to waste on such trivial pursuits. As Dr. Phil says, “How’s that going for you?” Is it scapegoating or much needed and honest criticism to say, “Well, Brother Trumka, what you are doing isn’t working? Do something else.” Rank-and-file insurgents like Jerry Tucker and Gregg Shotwell have been saying this to UAW leaders for years. Are they scapegoating? Isn’t the burden of proof on those who run the one-party state UAW to explain to the members why there is so little democracy in the union, why staff have better benefits than those who do the work, why there has never been a public accounting to the membership of the hundreds of millions of dollars in “jointness funds” paid by the corporations and used to create thousands of sinecures for union staff.
Workers will take chances too, even losing a job, when there is something worth fighting for. I put my own employment in jeopardy many times in union organizing campaigns when I was a young teacher, campaigns not just for teachers but for custodians, grounds keepers, and maintenance workers. Vietnam awaited me had I been fired. But our cause was just, and our leadership was radical and democratically chosen, with the aim of doing nothing less than democratizing the university. We never hesitated to put our jobs and careers on the line.
Similarly, I once had a group of steelworkers in a collective bargaining class. Their local leadership, in cahoots with District staffers, gave their (profitable) employer unnecessary mid-contract concessions. The members were outraged. My students taped every class, took what they learned, and, through good organization of the members, defeated the incumbents in local elections. An aroused and empowered rank and file soon forced the company to rescind the concessions. They took risks because their cause was just and they had a chance to succeed. They did that hard work.
No one will commit to demanding endeavors like building a union and a labor movement unless principles worth fighting for underlie them. What are labor’s principles? What will leaders fight for, with every weapon at their disposal? If anyone can tell me, please do. Our labor leaders won’t wage war for national healthcare, the expansion of social security, or reform of our horrendous labor laws. The teachers’ unions won’t even go to the wall to end the insane testing of our children and the gutting of our public schools. Endless concessions, two-tier wage agreements, costly turf wars, limited internal democracy, little or no member education, labor-management cooperation, all of these actions (or inactions), engaged in by most of our unions, are poor excuses for principles. Not many workers are going to go all-out to win them.
By Reed’s standards, this essay no doubt gives aid and comfort to the enemy. So be it. For me, not criticizing those who should know better, who claim the mantle of all of the labor stalwarts of the past, would be to dishonor every poor working stiff in my own extended family–miners, steelworkers, secretaries, clerical workers, glass workers, construction laborers, hospital workers, plumbers, homemakers, all those men and women who did shit work all their lives.
Former economist for the Canadian Auto Workers and eminent labor scholar and left-wing organizer, Sam Gindin, says that the labor movement cannot be rebuilt without a strong left. This means that the task at hand is to revitalize the left, to make it relevant to the lives of the working class. He puts it this way:
What a left has to offer is making connections between people across workplaces, bringing in a class analysis so they see it’s not just them. They can never win if it’s just a few of them against the state. They have to see there’s actually a class involved here. Giving them some alternatives, you know, giving them some historical memory, so they see how workers did this—in fact in more difficult circumstances in the past. Giving them some comparative analysis of what’s going on in Greece and elsewhere—how did people organize. So the left can play that role, in terms of bringing a class perspective, resources, memory into the picture. The truth is the left that we have now isn’t capable of doing that. So I think one of the questions that comes out of Wisconsin is not just “what’s wrong with unions?” but “what kind of a left could actually do that?”
You won’t find much help answering these questions in the Wisconsin pronouncements of Lafer, Robin, and Reed. Let me add that a vibrant left would be there to help channel something like the Wisconsin Uprising into a long-term confrontation with capital. Because contrary to professor Reed’s blathering about the Spark, revolts can and do arise unexpectedly. When they do, that slow patient organizing of workers into collective bargaining units won’t do the trick, unless there is a left inside and outside the unions, always educating, radically.
Corey Robin made a particular point of chastising the “anti-labor leftists” for failing to provide clear alternatives to Lafer’s argument that unions should continue to do what they have been doing, only more of it and better. Of course, it might seem to most people that it is incumbent upon them to explain why their model has failed so spectacularly. And Reed spent years trying to organize the Labor Party, to pretty much no effect, so shouldn’t he have explained why the great promise the Labor Party showed never materialized. Perhaps the reason they didn’t do these things is because honest inquiry would force them to confront the many roadblocks unions and labor leaders have established to prevent the building of new structures of resistance to the rule of capital.
Still, it is a fair question to ask critics of labor to offer at least some elements of a new strategy. I will review some suggestions made by organizers and scholars in another article. Here, let me say, first, that Henwood and Rothschild did make pertinent remarks on what labor might have done in Wisconsin, while their critics have not. Second, the Sam Gindin interview contains several interesting propositions worth pursuing. Third, Labor Notes writer Mark Brenner recently offered a variety of actions local union members can take. Fourth, Bill Fletcher Jr. and Jane McAlevey have provided excellent proposals for labor education. Fifth, master organizer Fernando Gapasin has actually implemented an action plan, which he calls “communities of solidarity” in the unlikely terrain of Eastern Oregon. Finally, readers might find it worthwhile to read the histories of the left-led unions in the United States, whose expulsion by the immediate predecessors of today’s labor chieftains corresponded with the beginning of the long decline of the labor movement as a force for working class empowerment.
MICHAEL D. YATES is Associate Editor of Monthly review magazine.He is the author of Cheap Motels and Hot Plates: an Economist’s Travelogue and Naming the System: Inequality and Work in the Global Economy. He is the editor of Wisconsin Uprising: Labor Fights Back. Yates can be reached at mikedjyates@msn.com
by JackRiddler » Thu Aug 16, 2012 6:53 pm
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolit ... 27206.html
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Ongoing John Doe probe of Walker aides reaches state level
By Jason Stein of the Journal Sentinel
Aug. 15, 2012
Madison - A secret probe into those around Gov. Scott Walker has continued after the June 5 recall election and expanded beyond Milwaukee County and into state government, new records show.
The documents show that Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm's office continues its John Doe investigation into Walker's administration even as the inquiry has gone publicly quiet over the summer.
The records obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel through an open records request show that a Milwaukee County prosecutor sought personnel records from Walker's office and another state agency in June and then met with a top state lawyer the next day.
It was unclear why Chisholm's office was seeking the documents, and there's no indication at all from the records turned over by the Walker administra tion that any crime or impropriety was committed at the state level. Jocelyn Webster, a spokeswoman for Walker's office, said she didn't know why prosecutors wanted them.
"We obviously treat it as any other open records request and try to make sure we are as responsive as we can possibly be," Webster said.
New records
Milwaukee County prosecutors have spent the past 27 months looking into a variety of campaign and other issues from Walker's tenure as Milwaukee County executive.
So far, one former Walker aide from Milwaukee County has pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors for raising campaign funds in the courthouse. Three other ex-Walker aides and appointees in Milwaukee County have been charged with felonies. All have pleaded not guilty.
But the new records confirm that prosecutors are also seeking information from Walker's state administration and did so as recently as June, after Walker's victory as the first governor in the nation's history to win a recall election.
Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney David Robles on June 18 made an open records request to both Walker's office and the state Department of Administration for all communications "related to the designation and determination of individuals as 'key professional staff' of the Office of the Governor" since the time Walker took office on Jan. 3, 2011. Webster said 22 positions in the governor's office fit this criteria, essentially everyone in the office who is not an intern or clerical staff, such as secretaries.
Robles also asked for records related to assigning Walker aides or transition staff to "executive salary group 3," which is a state personnel grade that is used as a reference to set the maximum salary for some staff in the governor's office. The pay range for this group is between $69,300 and $107,400, and it applies to four full-time positions in the governor's office: deputy chief of staff, director of policy, chief legal counsel and director of communications. A fifth position, chief of staff, is at a higher pay grade for which the top possible pay is $125,300 a year.
The day after the open records request, on June 19, Robles visited the chief legal counsel at the Department of Administration. There were no specific records fitting Robles' request, but on July 26 the DOA attorney sent Robles emails and personnel records from the governor's office roughly matching the request. Robles sought the information using the state's open records law, rather than the subpoena power granted to him as a prosecutor.
No comment
Robles, one of a half-dozen prosecutors handling the John Doe probe, declined to discuss his open records requests to the Walker administration.
"I'm not going to comment on anything," he said.
Robles also wouldn't say why he didn't submit his requests on the Milwaukee County district attorney's office letterhead or provide his job title when seeking the government information. His requests also provide what appears to be a private email account. He did list his official work address and phone number on the letters.
"I'm not going to comment on that," Robles said repeatedly.
The Journal Sentinel recently received copies of the correspondence to and from Robles when the newspaper made its own records request to the Department of Administration and governor's office for any such requests.
Robles underlined one phrase in both requests for records on "email on whatever account or system or any other method of communication on this subject."
In charges filed against former Walker aides in Milwaukee County in January, Milwaukee County prosecutors alleged that the aides had set up a private email network to allow them to communicate with each other about campaign as well as county government work without the public or co-workers' knowledge. That system was not disclosed to the acting director of the county's information management division or the employee in charge of gathering emails to respond to open records requests, the charges allege.
Webster said that at the state level all relevant emails dealing with state business are turned over in response to open records requests whether or not they were sent on a state system.
Daniel Bice and Patrick Marley of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this article.
© 2012, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved.
by seemslikeadream » Fri Sep 14, 2012 6:19 pm
Wisconsin Collective Bargaining Law Struck Down By County Judge
By SCOTT BAUER 09/14/12 06:01 PM ET
MADISON, Wis. -- A Wisconsin judge on Friday struck down the state law championed by Gov. Scott Walker that effectively ended collective bargaining rights for most public workers.
It was not clear if the ruling means the law is immediately suspended. The law took away nearly all collective bargaining rights from most workers and has been in effect for more than a year.
Dane County Circuit Judge Juan Colas ruled that the law violates both the state and U.S. Constitution and is null and void. The ruling comes after a lawsuit brought by the Madison teachers union and a union for Milwaukee city employees.
Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie said he was confident the decision will be overturned on appeal.
"We believe the law is constitutional," said Department of Justice spokeswoman Dana Brueck.
Lester Pines, an attorney for Madison Teachers Inc., did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
The proposal was introduced shortly after Walker took office in February last year. It resulted in a firestorm of opposition and led to huge protests at the state Capitol that lasted for weeks. All 14 Democratic state senators fled the state to Illinois for three weeks in an ultimately failed attempt to stop the law's passage from the Republican-controlled Legislature.
Anger over the law's passage led to an effort to recall Walker from office. More than 930,000 signatures were collected triggering the June recall election. Walker won and became the first governor in U.S. history to survive a recall.
by brainpanhandler » Fri Oct 12, 2012 6:53 pm
Walkergate Trials Heating Up, Plea Deal Has State Buzzing
Friday, 12 October 2012 09:44
By Mary Bottari, PRWatch | Report
Since May 2010, the Milwaukee County District Attorney has been conducting a secret "John Doe" criminal investigation involving Scott Walker's former staff and associates during the time that Walker served as the Milwaukee County Executive and was running for governor. The wide-ranging investigation has included allegations of illegal campaign work on the public payroll, embezzlement of funds from a veterans' charity, and even child enticement. So far, it has netted 15 felony indictments and, at this moment, three people are awaiting trial.
The Milwaukee County District Attorney has been carefully lining up the cases so that the smaller fish are squeezed before the big fish take the stand. Yesterday, a pretty big fish made a plea deal and the question is, what shark did she implicate?
...
http://truth-out.org/news/item/12068-wa ... te-buzzing
by seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 20, 2012 7:16 pm
Home-State Scandal Interrupts Scott Walker's Presidential Positioning
John Nichols on November 20, 2012 - 12:17 PM ET
It is no secret that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker would like very much to have his name added to the long shortlist of 2016 Republican presidential contenders. But the nation’s most militant anti-labor politician has suddenly been thrust into the center of a scandal that is likely to dim his national prospects, and that could yet cost him his state post.
Even after major setbacks for Walker’s Republicans in Wisconsin—where Barack Obama easily beat Mitt Romney and progressive Democrat secured the state’s open US Senate seat—the governor was jetting off to California last week to make high-profile appearances at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. And Walker—who came to national prominence in Febreuary 2011 after turning conservative talking pointrs into an anti-labor agenda so militant that it sparked mass protests and a recall campaign—was again performing conservative due diligence last week: refusing to develop a state-run health insurance exchange as part of an ongoing protest against the Affordable Care Act.
But while Walker was piling up presidential points for 2016, a scandal that has plagued him since his election to the governorship in 2010 was taking a dramatic and destructive turn.
At the sentencing hearing for a top Walker aide convicted of felony misconduct in office, the chief prosecutor revealed that when Walker was seeking the governorship in 2010 he was part of an ongoing scheme to use county employees and resources to aid his campaign.
Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf used the sentencing hearing to detail how Walker and his county and campaign aides “routinely commingled political and official county business”—as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel described the way in which “campaign, county work intertwined under Walker.”
Wisconsin media exploded late Monday with reports from inside the courtroom, where Walker aide Kelly Rindfleisch was sentenced to six months in jail and three years of probation. The sentence did not come as a surprise after a long John Doe inquiry that has seen numerous Walker aides and associates charged with felonies and misdemeanors. But the direct linking of Walker to potentially illegal activities in the county executive office was news.
According to one report:
Prosecutors today said Scott Walker had regular meetings with his Milwaukee County staffers and his 2010 guv campaign to ensure there was “good coordination” between the two.
Milwaukee County prosecutors made the disclosure during the sentencing of Kelly Rindfleisch, a former Walker county aide who reached a plea deal to settle charges against her stemming from the long-running John Doe probe.
Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf said the group that met regularly included people from Walker’s campaign such as campaign manager Keith Gilkes and spokeswoman Jill Bader along with county employees such as chief of staff Tom Nardelli, spokeswoman Fran McLaughlin, administration director Cindy Archer and Rindfleisch, according to email correspondence obtained by investigators.
The revelations caused consternation in the courtroom, Rindfleisch’s lawyer, Frank Gimbel, was nonplussed. After Landgraf’s sixty-five-minute detailing of wrongdoing by Walker and his aides, Gimbel objected that his client was “the only one of those mentioned in the power point who’s facing jail time.”
Described as “raising both hands in exasperation,” Gimbel reportedly grumbled about the irony that “Scott Walker has not been accused of any wrongdoing.”
Landgraf did not say during his powerpoint presentation in the courtroom whether Walker or others would be charged as part of the exteneded John Doe inquiry into official and political corruption. After the sentencing, he refused to answer questions—maintaining the rigid professionalism of that has characterized the John Doe inquiry over the past two years.
But Monday’s presentation, the first to explicitly link Walker to courthouse wrongdoing, shook the state, where Walker survived a recall election only after repeatedly declaring that he was not a target of the John Doe investigation.
Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesman Graeme Zielinski says: “It’s clear now that he presided over a criminal culture where county government in Milwaukee became an adjunct of his campaign. The citizens of Wisconsin should be afraid that this criminal culture has been imported to Madison.”
As Walker tries to gin up a presidential campaign, those questions will extend beyond Wisconsin.
That’s not good news for Scott Walker. But it should put a spring in the step of every other Republican who is thinking of running for president.
If Walker’s out of the picture, is it time for Palin 2016? Check out Ben Adler on the conservative pundits pushing for Mama Grizzly’s presidential bid.
Democrats rip Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker over county, campaign ties
By Todd Richmond
Associated Press
Posted: 11/20/2012 12:01:00 AM CST
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker speaking in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)
MILWAUKEE -- Wisconsin Democrats pounced Tuesday, Nov. 20, on newly released emails that indicate Republican Gov. Scott Walker's campaign aides worked closely with his Milwaukee County staff on media strategy during the run-up to his election, saying there's no doubt Walker himself was involved in illegal campaigning.
Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf disclosed the emails during a sentencing hearing for one of Walker's county aides Monday. The proceeding was part of a months-long secret investigation into Walker's county executive office. The governor hasn't been charged with any wrongdoing, but the probe's status is unclear.
The state Democratic Party issued a statement calling the emails a "bombshell" revelation that shows Walker turned his county office into a campaign machine.
"We believe this shows a much greater level of involvement of Scott Walker," party spokesman Graeme Zielinski said. "We believe he was running Milwaukee County like his campaign office."
Walker's campaign has insisted there's nothing uncouth about campaigns communicating with government workers.
"It is a common and routine procedure for campaign staff and an elected official's staff to discuss matters involving the elected official they mutually serve," Walker campaign spokesman Tom Evenson said in a statement. "These frivolous attacks have no factual basis."
Walker served as Milwaukee County executive until he was elected governor in November 2010.
Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, a Democrat, launched a so-called John Doe probe into the county office in May 2010, some six months before the election.
His office has charged six people so far on counts ranging from exceeding campaign contribution limits to theft. Four have been convicted, including Kelly Rindfleisch, Walker's former county deputy chief-of-staff.
Prosecutors accused her of working on Republican Brett Davis' 2010 lieutenant-governor campaign on county time using a secret email system. She pleaded guilty to one felony count of misconduct in office and was sentenced Monday to six months in jail.
During the sentencing hearing, Landgraf presented dozens of emails Rindfleisch traded with potential hosts for Davis fundraisers during county work hours. Landgraf also told the judge that Rindfleisch was in close contact with Walker's campaign on government time. He noted investigators seized 2,216 emails between Rindfleisch and Walker's top gubernatorial campaign officials, including campaign manager Keith Gilkes and spokeswoman Jill Bader, that were transmitted during business hours in 2010.
Landgraf also pointed to an email Walker's county chief of staff, Tom Nardelli, sent to Rindfleisch, other county workers, Gilkes, Bader and campaign consultant R.J. Johnson. Nardelli wrote that Walker wanted them to hold a daily 8 a.m. conference call in the county executive's office to coordinate on messages to the media.
The county office didn't release any statements without vetting them through the media group, Landgraf said. The emails showed Walker personally approved a press release on the county tax levy during work hours.
During one exchange in May 2010, Gilkes and Rindfleisch discussed leaking a story to the media about problems at the state-run Mendota Mental Health Institute to draw attention from the county's mental health hospital, where nine people have died since 2010.
"There has to be a way to blow up the Mendota story before they attack Scott," Rindfleisch wrote, adding in another message efforts to gather information on Mendota "must be done covertly so it's not tied to Scott, the county or the campaign in any way."
In another instance, Rindfleisch and Gilkes discussed how to respond to the June 2010 death of Jared Kellner, who was killed when a block of concrete fell off a county parking structure and hit him. Gilkes tells Rindfleisch in a message written the day of the accident to stay on top of other county staff and "make sure there is not a paper anywhere that details a problem at all." He also ordered Rindfleisch to have the county's attorney review "every piece of paper ever created on this structure."
Rindfleisch's attorney, Franklyn Gimbel, questioned why prosecutors haven't charged Walker, Gilkes or Davis.
Landgraf told the judge that Davis, who now serves as Medicaid director for the state Department of Health Services, is a matter for Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne since Davis lives in that county. He told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Rindfleisch sent emails to Davis telling him she was working on his campaign off government time.
He referred questions on Walker and Gilkes to Chisholm, who declined comment. Davis didn't immediately return messages left at DHS or at his home Tuesday. Gilkes declined comment. Evenson, Walker's campaign spokesman, said Walker is cooperating with authorities and isn't a target in the investigation.
Still, Democrats said Walker's campaign has acknowledged he played a role in directing routine illegal coordination between his campaign and the county.
"Emails to and from Scott Walker himself, introduced into the court record, remove any doubt about whether he was involved in the commission of crimes," the party said, "as well as whether his Milwaukee County office was merely an illegal adjunct of his 2010 campaign for governor.
by conniption » Tue Oct 22, 2013 5:07 pm
The Politics Blog
Oct 22, 2013
Watching Scotty Blow, Continued
By Charles P. Pierce at 4:19PM
Things have been getting interesting for Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manager their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin. He's got a book coming out, ghosted by Washington Post torture-porn columnist Marc Thiessen, no less. Things are sailing except, well, they're not.
A former top-level assistant U.S. attorney has been appointed a special prosecutor in a burgeoning, secret investigation into a wide variety of state issues, including possible campaign violations during the recent recall elections, multiple sources said. Francis Schmitz - who spent nearly 30 years as a federal prosecutor and was once a finalist for U.S. attorney in Milwaukee - is leading the widespread John Doe probe, according to sources. Overseeing the case is Kenosha County Circuit Judge Barbara A. Kluka, who has been used by Milwaukee County judicial officials in past John Doe cases. Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, whose office initiated the probe, declined to answer questions about the John Doe on Friday. Insiders said the investigation covers several jurisdictions, including Dane County. Police and prosecutors in these other counties have been lending a helping hand. "It's now spread to at least five counties," said a source familiar with the probe, adding that Landgraf has been investigating "all over the place." Another source said one reason that these other counties have been roped into the investigation is a new state law that allows elected officials to be tried in their home counties for violations of ethics, lobbying and campaign laws. Ex-Assembly Majority Leader Scott Jensen had his case moved to Waukesha County under a Supreme Court ruling because of the law.
Walker's first campaign was deeply, profoundly corrupt. Six people associated with it -- and him -- were convicted of various crimes. Now, it appears that there may have been some shenanigans in the recall elections as well.
It appears the state-related case opened in February 2012, meaning it was active at the same time as the one focusing on Walker's county aides. However, several sources said they became aware of the newer probe only in the past month and that much of the recent activity has taken place in Madison. Sources familiar with the probe told the Journal Sentinel that it was scrutinizing a wide variety of state-related issues, including the recall races. Sources suggested the probe is looking at a current legislative leader and the governor's contest. "This is activity that occurred since the 2010 election," said a source. The legislative leader did not return calls on Sunday.
As he tours his book in preparation for a run for the presidency, it might be nice if someone asked Walker why every campaign he's ever run has been investigated for corruption, and how he feels about becoming governor while six of his aides become convicts.
Meanwhile, as he goes on with his real job, selling off Wisconsin wholesale to whatever extraction Megalon wants to buy a chunk. it seems that Gogebic, the company planning to dig a gigantic taconite mine in the northern part of the state, has been fibbing about the recent discovery of asbestos-like material at the mine site. And, when caught, the company decided to make an open-pit mine out of a geologist's reputation. So says the Sierra Club, anyway.In a recent Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story, (Mine firm questions protester's role as a state geologist, Oct. 12, 2013) Gogebic Taconite (GTac) launched an outrageous personal attack on a scientist associated with the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey. Sampling of rock from land leased by GTac for a proposed mine was recently confirmed to contain asbestos, a hazardous material known to cause lung cancer. "GTac's initial reaction to the discovery of asbestos at the mine site should be to welcome additional research and testing and to create a plan to protect workers and the public from the health threats associated with asbestos. Instead, GTac's reaction is to try to cover-up the discovery by discrediting the data and by attacking a scientist who had nothing to do with the testing," said Dave Blouin, Mining Committee Chair. "A responsible mining company would first be concerned about their potential workers and their neighbors in the area; attacking sound scientific research would not be the initial concern of a good corporate neighbor."
Good time for a book tour, Scotty.
by cptmarginal » Wed Oct 23, 2013 12:08 am
He's got a book coming out, ghosted by Washington Post torture-porn columnist Marc Thiessen, no less.
by cptmarginal » Wed Oct 23, 2013 12:13 am
by seemslikeadream » Wed Oct 23, 2013 9:49 am
State Debate: On FightingBob, Bill Kraus predicts Scott Walker won't run for re-election
Could Scott Walker skip a re-election bid to focus instead on running for president?
On FightingBob, veteran political observer Bill Kraus thinks so. He contends that if Scott Walker is really running for president -- and Krause believes he is -- then h's likely not to run for re-election for governor in 2014. There are too many potholes in the road to the White House through Wisconsin, Kraus maintains, and Walker can't risk even a skin-of-the-teeth victory if he hopes to get the GOP nomination for president. Further, Kraus sees Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen's early announcement that he won't seek re-election to that post as a sign Van Hollen will take Walker's place on the ballot.
Lose local government and you lose America, warns state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout on the Uppity Wisconsin blog today. She points to continued efforts by Wisconsin legislators -- especially Hazelhurst Republican Tom Tiffany -- to take away any local control over environmental issues. The only reason the GOP majority is doing so is to make it easier for out-of-state interests to mine without regard for local regulations. It's all at the peril of our democracy, she insists.
The Beloit Daily News applauds state Sen. Mike Ellis' call for public hearings on a bill that would depoliticize redistricting in Wisconsin. The Republican president of the Senate asked what his fellow Republicans have to fear in at least holding a public hearing on the bill, the Daily News points out.
Even though Wisconsin Congressman Reid Ribble changed his mind in the end and voted to end the government shutdown, he should be ashamed along with the rest of Wisconsin's Republican delegation to Congress that voted to shut down the government in the first place, writes columnist Bill Kaplan on WisOpinion.
The Racine Journal Times says that the American people were the losers in the government shutdown and it blames not only the GOP, but President Obama. Although Republicans shouldn't have expected Obama to agree to dismantle the health care law, the president and fellow Democrats continue to drag their feet on solving long-term budget problems, the paper maintains. No, happy days aren't here again, it chides.
The La Crosse Tribune editorially lauds UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank for "setting the proper tone" as she begins her new job. Blank admits that the UW hasn't done a good job educating the public and legislators about the university's huge role in Wisconsin's well-being, the paper says.
Meanwhile, BloggingBlue's Zach Wisniewski feels compelled today to offer a "few points of clarification" about his views of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke. He insists that he's not opposed to Burke's candidacy, but feels a primary would still be best to get the Democrats to talk about the issues before the run against Scott Walker.
Read more: http://host.madison.com/news/local/stat ... z2iYJTU7I6
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