Key Questions for Scott Walker

Over the last few weeks I've been openly asking questions related to recent developments in the John Doe investigation of Scott Walker aides. First were the questions related to the arrest of longtime Walker campaign/county aide Tim Russell. Next came the questions about open records and Walker staff involvement with the shill ScottforGov blog. Now more charges have been issued on more Walker aides and naturally that brings an entirely new set of questions. Those include some serious questions for Scott Walker directly. First lets quickly review some of the recently reported findings.

Quick Review:

Yesterday the Milwaukee County District Attorney's office announced charges against longtime Walker aide Darlene Wink and former county/campaign aide Kelly Rindfleisch. Wink had already admitted to leaving political comments on blogs when she was on county time. She resigned in May 2010 when it was discovered. But these charges allege that she was also doing extensive planning for Walker fundraisers and communicating regularly and directly with Walker's campaign and others.

Kelly Rindfleisch was hired at the beginning of 2010, the same year that Walker hoped to win the race for governor. In the communications revealed in her criminal complaint she admits to a friend that "half of what I'm doing is policy for the campaign." Indeed the complaint reveals that she had more than 1,000 emails to top Walker campaign staffers on county time. Those contacts included Keith Gilkes, Stephan Thompson and Jill Bader. There were also communications longtime Walker friend and county/campaign aide Jim Villa, who had an unofficial advisory role with Walker's 2010 campaign.

The complaint for Rindfleisch actually includes an email from Scott Walker to Tim Russell. It is his reaction to the Dan Bice story about Darlene Wink posting political comments on county time. In the email Walker said the following to Russell:

"We cannot afford another story like this one. No one can give them any reason to do another story. That means no laptops, no websites, no time away during the work day, etc."

Perhaps the most remarkable thing that was revealed in the criminal complaint is that selected high level Walker administration officials were using a "secret email system" and network to communicate with each other and with the Walker and Brett Davis campaigns. Not only were they using this secret network for campaign related communications but according to the complaint they were also using it for official county business.

Key Questions for Scott Walker:

1. When Scott Walker emailed Tim Russell with the above listed message, why did he use his campaign email account? This was at the very least a county personnel issue and it was county business. Why would Walker use his campaign email to conduct what was clearly county business?
2. Scott Walker's email to Russell specifically mentions "no laptops", so that shows us that he knew that his top staff were busy using such laptops on county time. How and when did he find that out? It was obviously important to him so why didn't he follow up on that order? Remember that according to the complaint, Kelly Rindfleisch continued doing campaign work on county time after that incident.
3. Could someone please explain the employment dates of Kelly Rindfleisch because the timeline looks pretty damning? She had an extensive political and fundraising background including for the infamous Republican legislative caucus. She was hired at the beginning of a big election year to do what she described at least partially as "policy work for the campaign". Then she left the county job only weeks after Walker won the 2010 election. She was doing work for/with the Walker campaign until only days ago. Again, the timing of her employment stinks to high heaven. What is the story on that?
4. What is up with Walker's top past/present campaign staffers? What? Didn't a single one of them wonder why county employees were communicating with them on a regular basis during work hours? Reading the extensive communications, you certainly get the idea that it didn't bother them one single bit.
5. How many open records requests were thwarted by the existence of the Walker administration's secret network?

The taxpayers of Milwaukee County and the people of Wisconsin should demand some answers and it should be Scott Walker that directly gives them.

Underreported Victims of a Gun Happy Society

When we have a collective debate on gun issues, sometimes we lose sight of the often underreported victims of careless gun policy. We often get bogged down in political grandstanding, legislative victories or false bravado and lose sight of important real world consequences. All-too-often the larger media follows us in that pattern and doesn't spend as much time on the many different victims of gun violence in our country.

For example, we don't see nearly enough reported about how gun violence disproportionately impacts women. The data over the years has repeatedly confirmed this disturbing reality.

• In 2008 7,451 women were treated in emergency rooms for gunshot wounds. A disturbing 66 percent of those incidents were assault related.
• 16 in every 1,000 women in the U.S. have been threatened with a firearm.
• Based on data from 16 states, 73 percent of female murder victims are killed in the home. That is compared to 45 percent of male murder victims.
• U.S. women's firearm death rate is 12 times higher than the combined rate of 22 other populous, high-income countries.
• Gun owners are 7.8 times more likely than non-gun owners to have threatened their partners with guns.
• Firearms appear to be more common in homes where battering has occurred (36.7 percent) than in the general population (16.7 percent)

This kind of troubling data is certainly why advocates against domestic violence stand against legislation like the so-called Castle Doctrine recently passed in Wisconsin. It essentially gives people a free pass from prosecution if they (even wrongfully) kill a person believed to be an intruder in their home. At the time the legislation was being considered, Tony Gibart, policy coordinator for the Wisconsin Coalition against Domestic Violence made the following case against it:

We're concerned that the bill might be used in ways that shield domestic abusers and people who perpetrate domestic violence homicide from accountability.

In addition there is the tragic and uncomfortable subject of suicide and the role that easy access to guns plays in that horrible problem. Again, the facts and reality show that we pay a heavy price in this area.

• 17,352 U.S. residents killed themselves with a firearm in 2007.
• Seventy percent of suicide attempters decide to kill themselves on an impulse - less than an hour before their attempt.
• More than 90 percent of suicide attempts with a gun are fatal only 3 percent of attempts with drugs or cutting are fatal.
• States with high household gun ownership have more suicides than states with low household gun ownership.
• Eighty-five percent of youths under age 18 who died by firearm suicide used a family member's gun, usually a parent's .
  

In an ideal world even the gun lobby would more often consider some of these underreported victims of gun violence before insisting on their broad and often radical policies. In an ideal world the larger media would do a better job of reporting all of the ugly realities of gun violence. In an ideal world the public would become more aware of all victims of gun violence and push for long lasting and life saving changes rather than feeding an increasingly gun happy society.

This post is written as part of the Media Matters Gun Facts fellowship. The purpose of the fellowship is to further Media Matters' mission to comprehensively monitor, analyze, and correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Some of the worst misinformation occurs around the issue of guns, gun violence, and extremism, the fellowship program is designed to fight this misinformation with facts.

ScottforGov Open Records and Timing

Scott Walker's longtime campaign & county aide Tim Russell was arrested on January 5th and charged in Milwaukee County Court. Many people have speculated about this event and about the ongoing John Doe investigation. Just last week I asked a number of questions myself . However there was one particular thread that I didn't list at that time, so I'd like to submit it for consideration now.

On pages 19 and 20 of Tim Russell's criminal complaint it states that he paid for some of the following Walker-related domain names: variations of "scottforgov", "scott4gov", and "MilwaukeeCountyExecutiveScottWalkerForGovernor". As most online observers know, those are domains related to the former Walker shill blog. The anonymous people on that shill blog spent all of their time publicly worshiping at Walker's feet or attacking anyone that they perceived as an opponent.

While the ScottforGov blog was still active there was much speculation about the anonymous authors and exactly who was behind it. Tim Russell's criminal complaint now seems to suggest that he was involved in at least some way. We also know that shortly after Walker aide Darlene Wink admitted to posting political comments to blogs on county time that she resigned from her longtime position in Walker's administration. Very shortly after that resignation the ScottforGov blog was taken down. The timing of that event caused many to openly wonder if Wink and other administration officials were involved with the Walker blog. As far as I know, that suspicion was never totally confirmed but you certainly can't blame people for wondering given the timing and circumstances.

Although the administrator of the ScottforGov blog took down the site, here is a screen cap sampling of its content. Notice that a number of these blog postings appear to have happened during normal work hours.

Now scroll down to the entry entitled "Neumann slithering around for dirt". This posting from what seems to be the administrator of the site bemoans the fact that Walker critics filed open records requests (ORR's) with his office. They specifically name One Wisconsin Now, yours truly and several others. The ScottforGov blogger states that they know about some of these other ORR's because they submitted an ORR for all other ORR's.

I don't have a copy of the above cited records request from the ScottforGov blog but I do have an earlier records request that they sent to Walker directly. It was originally sent from "ScottforGov.com" on 9/28/09 at 10:34 a.m. The request was initially handled by Darlene Wink and the request was fulfilled in less than two hours. Based on these email records it appears that the Walker administration not only responded quickly to the request but that they also provided the records at no cost. Compare that to how they have handled requests from critics.

The important questions:

1. If Tim Russell paid for the domains that pointed to this blog, did he also provide content for it? Did anyone else in the Walker administration?
2. Some of these blog postings happened during normal work hours. Were any of them done by Walker administration officials on county time?
3. Were Walker administration officials essentially requesting records from other Walker administration officials? If so, who knew what?
4. Did the records requester at "ScottforGov.com" receive extra fast, free and otherwise special service?

I have enough information to ask these important questions but I'm hoping that someone can find the actual answers and then make them public.

Badger Guns has new name, subject of a new study

Badger Guns, the West Milwaukee gun shop, has a long and disturbing record of selling guns that are eventually used in crimes. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has done an excellent job of detailing many of those issues. Some of the sales from Badger Guns were even used to injure 6 Milwaukee police officers in recent years. The shop's license was revoked for breaking federal laws and it stopped selling guns on December 31st. However this isn't the first time that they have run into this kind of trouble. The last time that they faced such an obstacle they simply transferred the business from father to son and successfully reapplied for a license.

It was recently announced that Badger Guns will be doing something similar. It is being sold from the previous owner to his brother and the name of the shop will be changed to Brew City Shooter's Supply. Once again the new owner is promising to do a better job of preventing sales of guns that are used in crimes but we have heard this story before. In fact Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn is understandably sceptical of the new arrangement because of the shop's long pattern. In the past he accused the store of having a business plan that involves selling guns to criminals. His recent observations about the new changes to the controversial gun shop are equally as blunt.

Generally, the best predicator of future behavior is past behavior, and every time Badger has been in trouble and surrendered a license, it's turned around and reissued the license and gone right back in the same business it was.

Badger Guns wasn't only in the news recently because of its change in ownership and name. It was also the subject of a new study released by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research.

The study found that the number of guns that were subsequently linked to crime sold by Badger Guns increased dramatically after Congress adopted measures (known as the Tiahrt amendments)likely to reduce the risks gun dealers face if they divert guns to criminals. The study is the first to examine the impact of these amendments on the diversion of guns to criminals and was recently published online in the peer-reviewed Journal of Urban Health.

The new study provides the following description of the Tiahrt Amendments:

The Tiahrt amendments are a series of amendments to appropriations bills and became law in 2003 and prohibit the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) from releasing data from crime gun traces. In 2004, the Tiahrt amendments further restricted crime gun-trace data by limiting access to government officials and prohibiting the use of these data in firearm dealer license revocations and civil law suits.

The study found that after the Tiahrt amendments went into effect, guns diverted to criminals soon after being sold by Badger Guns actually increased by 203 percent. The lead study author Daniel Webster, ScD, MPH, concluded the following from their rather shocking analysis:

Our findings suggest that changes to federal gun policy prompted a dramatic increase in the flow of guns to criminals from a gun dealer whose practices have frequently been of concern to law enforcement and public safety advocates.

This post is written as part of the Media Matters Gun Facts fellowship. The purpose of the fellowship is to further Media Matters' mission to comprehensively monitor, analyze, and correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Some of the worst misinformation occurs around the issue of guns, gun violence, and extremism, the fellowship program is designed to fight this misinformation with facts.

The Latest John Doe News and Things to Consider

People all over the state have been talking about the latest John Doe news that broke last week. Many people are speculating about many different things but in the end there are only a handful of people that actually know what is really happening. I certainly don't claim to have any special insight into the status and direction of the John Doe but I do have my share of questions. I also think that there are several important things to at least consider. So permit me to think out loud for a moment.

General John Doe

1. The investigation is ongoing: I know that Walker fanatics want to believe that the John Doe is over but there is nothing besides their own wishful thinking that indicates it. The beginning of Tim Russell's criminal complaint says as much, even if indirectly. It explains that a John Doe is a secret proceeding but that the responsible judge has allowed the details from last week to come out so that charges could be filed. Further, the district attorney continues to refer to the John Doe as an "ongoing" investigation. And he refuses to answer questions regarding the larger investigation for that very reason.
2. The other involved parties: If this John Doe were only about the charges that were issued last week, then how do we explain some of the other involved parties thus far? There are several that don't' appear to have anything to do with the Operation Freedom funds or any of the other charges issued last week. What about Cullen Werwie and others getting immunity? What about Jensen, the real estate big wig, getting arrested? What about Cynthia Archer's home being searched by the FBI? What do any of them have to do with the charges from last week? I can't think of anything, so what other elements of the investigation are they connected to?
3. The other conviction: Remember that there has already been a conviction in the John Doe and it had nothing to do with the charges that were filed last week. That again indicates that this investigation is very broad and not solely about one specific issue.
4. Still no Walker interview? Am I the only one that finds it odd that Scott Walker has still not been interviewed in this John Doe investigation? Given what we already know it would only make sense that he would have been interviewed by now. But he insists that has not happened and I'm wondering why?
5. What's up with the legal bills? The Walker campaign's last filing shows a large burst of spending on lawyers toward the end of the filing period. They paid nearly $60,000 to the firm that was hired late in 2010 to respond to questions raised by a John Doe. Money speaks and this large stash of money tells me that Walker's campaign is concerned about the John Doe regardless of what they say in a press conference.

Specific to Operation Freedom Funds

1. Kevin Kavanaugh Questions: Some members of the Walker administration apparently became suspicious about Operation Freedom funds sometime in 2008. One of them didn't report anything to the district attorney until mid-2009. If they were suspicious enough to actually report it in 2009, why would Walker go on to put Kavanaugh on his "Veterans for Walker" leadership team in 2010? We know that Walker appointed Kavanaugh to the Milwaukee County Veteran's Service Board but how long did he allow him to serve? Did he allow him to continue serving even after financial questions arose? Why?
2. Tim Russell Questions: I still don't think that we have received an adequate answer for exactly why Walker moved the bookkeeping for Operation Freedom from an American Legion post that did an "exemplary" job to that of his longtime political crony Tim Russell. Furthermore, if he was going to make that move why didn't Walker require at least some level of oversight over Russell? If the board for Russell's org was made up of fake members then clearly Walker didn't require even basic oversight measures.
3. Point of Order: Remember, someone from the Walker admin reported problems before they moved the money to Russell. There is no indication that Walker's administration had anything to do with the detection of the issues with Russell's handling of funds. So kindly stop giving him credit for something that he apparently didn't do.

More Reading: John Doe rips open Walker’s ugly patterns

Meet Judge J. Mac Davis

As we all know, Scott Walker's campaign filed a frivolous lawsuit against the Government Accountability Board because they opted to actually follow the law. Apparently Scott Walker's campaign wanted them to do their work for them and at taxpayer's expense. So thanks to a new court shopping law passed by the radical majority in the state legislature, Walker's campaign filed suit against GAB in the most Republican county in the state, Waukesha.

Lisa Mux at Blogging Blue gave us a good report on what transpired in the courtroom today. What stood out to me most was Lisa's descriptions of the judge in the case, J. Mac Davis. At this point it seems prudent to provide some of the following background information on Judge Davis.

• Son of a former Republican Congressman
• Republican State Senator (1982-1990)
• Ranking Republican on the Joint Finance Committee for 5 years
• Unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 1996. He lost in the Republican primary to Tom Reynolds (yes, that Tom Reynolds)
• Testified for former Speaker Scott Jensen, during his first criminal trial
• At the end of George W. Bush's last term Davis was nominated to the Western District of Wisconsin bench but was never confirmed

Now don't get it twisted. I'm not saying that a judge with this kind of long partisan background can't make a sound legal decision. But I am wondering what kind of pressures he will face with such a politically charged case in a totally toxic environment. But just in case Judge Davis decides to go all Republican activist on us, (maybe he has already) I just thought that you should at least meet him first.

War on (the) Christmas (spirit)

Cartoon By: Clay Bennett via Cartoonist Group (ht: Center for American Progress)

(Reality) Check Yourself

Prior to Wisconsin passing a free-for-all concealed carry law, proponents constantly used the same shtick. Whenever there was a report of a crime anywhere, they would make the inevitable and overly simplistic comment that it never would have happened if we had concealed carry in Wisconsin. I'm wondering what these same people will say when crimes continue to occur now that Wisconsin does allow the legal carrying of hidden handguns. If their past arguments carried an ounce of weight, we should see a dramatic drop in crime because now criminals are suddenly rational and are they are cowering in a corner somewhere. The entire "if we only had concealed carry" argument is built mostly on faulty assumptions and pure fantasy.

The first assumption is that the person carrying the concealed weapon actually knows how to use it. The Wisconsin concealed carry law originally required at least four measly hours of training. However when the gun lobby cried about it, the requirement was quickly tossed. Now there is no real requirement that you even know what you are doing with a gun.

A firearms trainer from Wisconsin recently shot himself in the leg. And he was in a controlled environment on a firing range not trying to quickly engage a criminal. Then there was the recent story about a veteran police officer in a mall that accidentally fired his gun. This is someone with decades of experience and intense training yet the public is supposed to feel safe with a bunch of newly armed know-nothings?

Although there seems to be a lot of fantasies about people carrying concealed weapons and using them to stop crimes, there doesn't seem to be a lot of data to back it up. For example, there were over 1.3 million violent crimes (13,000+ of them were murders) in 2009 but only 215 of them ended with the criminal being killed by a private citizen using a firearm. As much as some people replay the scenario in their own imagination, it just doesn't seem to happen very often in reality. In fact one study suggests that you are 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault if you are armed than if you don't have a gun.

It is important to realize that being in the middle of a violent crime in progress is not going to play out like a scene from a movie. In the tragic shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and others in Arizona, the scene was absolute chaos. In fact one of the legitimate heroes was armed but his handgun very nearly became a horrible liability. He admitted that when he first came on the scene that he was very close to shooting the wrong person. He saw a man with a gun and didn't realize that it was an unarmed bystander that had just wrestled the gun away from the actual shooter. Eventually he decided not to pull his gun because he worried that some other armed person might make the same mistake and shoot him. Thank goodness that none of that happened during the terror and chaos. But the example should certainly teach us a few sober lessons.

Some people also insist that they are safer because they have a full arsenal in their homes but that also doesn't always turn out as imagined. In fact sometimes that can make you even more of a target. Just last month a criminal targeted a man in Hudson, Wisconsin. He kicked open the door and had his gun on the victim before he could even get to his multiple guns, brass knuckles, butterfly knife and an "electric weapon". In fact the armed intruder tied him up and stole both his money and his household weapons.

A vocal minority in Wisconsin continues to celebrate the careless and deeply flawed pieces of gun legislation that passed the state legislature this year. While they are rushing to fully arm themselves I hope that they also take a moment to assess the actual facts. I also hope that they are operating on careful reality rather than on some romanticized idea of what it means to carry a deadly weapon and (God forbid) to actually use it.

This post is written as part of the Media Matters Gun Facts fellowship. The purpose of the fellowship is to further Media Matters' mission to comprehensively monitor, analyze, and correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Some of the worst misinformation occurs around the issue of guns, gun violence, and extremism, the fellowship program is designed to fight this misinformation with facts.

Is Walker History Repeating Itself at Dodge?

The Fond du Lac Reporter is drawing attention to the alarming increase in prisoner attacks on guards at the Dodge Correctional Institute in Waupun. Union officials are saying that it is at least partially due to a combination of low morale, unfilled vacancies and an exodus of experienced staff. Marty Beil, executive director for AFSCME Council 24 offered the following observation:

Working in a prison is not an easy setting even at the best of times, and now with the morale and vacancy levels being where they're at, it becomes a much more difficult place to be. You’ve got long-term correctional officers moving out and less seasoned officers moving in. The inmates understand what’s going on and see the changes. This is already a manipulative environment, and this just enhances that

A spokesperson for the Department of Corrections comments that "there is no staff shortage" and that "all posts are being covered with regular staff or staff on overtime." (keep track of the word "overtime" below)

This phenomena shouldn't really be a surprise to anyone that watched Scott Walker's train wreck of an administration in Milwaukee County. This current story in fact seems to be perfectly consistent with it. Consider some of the following from his failed administration of the Milwaukee County House of Correction:

• Although the Milwaukee County Board had funded more positions at the House of Correction, the Walker administration repeatedly failed to fill them. [Internal Milwaukee County Audits and Memos]
  
• In the short term it may have saved money but it ended up bringing horrible long term budgetary (runaway overtime), safety and low morale consequences.
• In fact things got so bad on Walker's watch that a federal audit was done on Milwaukee County lock-ups and it absolutely trashed the "administration" of them.
• More runaway Overtime (even after it was identified as a major problem a year earlier)
  
• Walker's administration of the House of Correction was so bad that he ended up giving away control of the facility altogether.
  

But wait! That isn't the only situation that parallels the Dodge Correctional issue. There was a similar Walker pattern at the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex.

• Once again, Walker failed to fill fully-funded positions at the facility. [Internal Milwaukee County audits and memos]
  
• Massive overtime costs and staff morale became reoccurring and serious problems.
  
• The facility experienced many failures including increased assaults on staff, sexual assault of patients and even a starvation death.
• State regulators repeatedly threatened the failing Walker administered facility.
  

So when I now hear about increased attacks on workers at Dodge, low morale coupled with high overtime and 37 unfilled positions at the facility, I can't help seeing a very long pattern being continued. I also can't help but remember Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett's words in at least one of his debates with Scott Walker. In it he said (paraphrased), "If you can't run your own House of Correction, how are you going to run the state's Department of Corrections?" It was a great point then and it turns out to be a very relevant question now. I think that we are unfortunately starting to see the clear and most unfortunate answer.

Smear Machine Mission Accomplished

Two weeks ago right wing front group Media Trackers made wild accusations against Senator Lena Taylor for which they provided no real evidence. Most informed observers instantly approached it with extreme caution. Unfortunately too many divisions of Journal Communications Inc apparently didn't see that clear fact and they ran with the story. To their credit, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting today that the primary point of Media Tracker's smear against Senator Taylor was not accurate after all.

This and other recent examples of Media Tracker's false claims reveals that they are all about smearing the opposition and getting negative stories in the media about their political opponents. It seems clear that they have no concern for facts or reality as long as they accomplish those goals. You can really see how this pattern played out in the baseless smear against Senator Taylor.

• They played some twisted version of "Six Degrees of Separation" by trying to somehow link the Senator to voters that temporarily lived at her mother's ministry to the homeless.
  
• They found one homeless guest at the ministry that had a felony on their record and that voted in the spring elections.
• They rushed to promote the smear on Senator Taylor, feeding it to their friends at Journal Communications Inc without taking the time to confirm that the man in question wasn't actually eligible to vote.

All of these steps show you that the real intentions of Media Trackers was not to do honest research. It was only to find something, ANYTHING that they could even remotely tie to a political enemy. If they really wanted to find out if the primary person that they focused on in this smear was actually eligible to vote they could have easily done so and without much effort at all. They could have clearly read his sentencing information such as his Judgement of Conviction. They could have called Probation and Parole to find out if/when he was on "paper". They could have also placed a simple call to the Milwaukee County Sheriff's office. Given the dishonesty that they were promoting through Journal Communications Inc, they clearly didn't bother to do any of those very basic checks.

This very clear smear job of Senator Taylor comes on the heels of their lying attacks on two African American women who signed recall petitions in Milwaukee. The same basic Media Trackers pattern applies.

• They take video of the two young women signing the recall petition in Milwaukee.
• Someone at Media Trackers apparently fancies themselves as an age expert and determines that these young women are underage.
• Rather than taking the next logical step of a responsible investigator (trying to actually confirm the age of the women), Media Trackers again uses their friends at Journal Communications Inc to quickly perpetuate the lie.

In both of these smear jobs Media Trackers essentially followed the same irresponsibly disingenuous pattern. More problematic is that Journal Communications Inc was so easily and/or willingly drawn into both baseless smears and served as the primary promoter of them.

In both of the aforementioned cases critics were immediately skeptical of Media Trackers smear and once someone actually bothered to look at the actual facts, those critics proved to be correct on all counts. However even after Media Trackers false accusations and innuendo-based efforts were fully debunked they remained unapologetic. The likely reason? Because their goal was never to illuminate, objectively report or to properly investigate the issues that they raised. It was to simply find any possible hook (real or imagined) to smear their political opponents and to use the larger media as an "accessory" to the baseless smear. Whether their accusations were eventually debunked is immaterial because for many people on the right it has already become conventional "wisdom".

Mission Accomplished.

UPDATES: One Wisconsin Now's Response
Senator Taylor's Response
New logo for Media Trackers?

Jacque following in some wacky footsteps

The Bible Belt state of Mississippi rejected a radical personhood amendment recently. But that didn't stop a legislator from proposing something similar here. State Representative Andre Jacque (R-Bellevue) recently proposed a personhood amendment for Wisconsin. Once again a radical Republican wants to tinker with the state constitution to make it fully comply with his own rigid dogma. The amendment that he is proposing wouldn't only outlaw all abortions (including in the case of rape, incest and the life of the mother) but it would likely jeopardize things like contraception, in vitro fertilization and embryonic stem cell research.

I certainly hope that people are not surprised that Andre Jacque is this radical because that much was clear long before he was elected in 2010.

He was a supporter in 2000 of perpetual presidential loser Alan Keyes. You remember Alan Keyes don't you? He is the guy that threw out his own daughter and stopped speaking to her when she came out of the closet as a lesbian. He was so extreme that he eventually left the Republican Party and joined the Constitution Party. Even they refused to make Keyes their presidential candidate in 2008.

Alan Keyes came to UW-Madison in 2001 and berated a gay student during a Q&A session. But that certainly didn't deter Andre Jacque who said at the time that Keyes "embodies the conservative principles that a number of people like myself share." [Capital Times, 2/14/01]

As if Keyes isn't enough, Andre Jacque later became a staffer for wacky former state Senator Tom Reynolds. He is the guy that reportedly questioned potential staff about whether they were born-again Christians and whether they would remain virgins until married. Reynolds also attended the rabidly anti-gay International Conference on Homo-Fascism in 2003. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Reynolds scares his own party", 9/18/05]

Right now we have Andre Jacque's personhood amendment, but I'm sure that this won't be his last radical proposal. He seems to be following in some rather wacky footsteps and I'm sure his mentors are very proud. But none of those mentors will get a vote when he tries to run for reelection for the first time. Jacque has apparently decided that he will be running on a record located somewhere on the furthest legislative fringe. We will have to wait and see where that wacky path actually leads.

Paul Ryan Doesn't Represent You

A reoccurring fraud on the media

Almost without exception, when we approach a major election in Wisconsin, Republicans trot out phony accusations of fraud. They make over-the-top unsubstantiated claims and feed the lies to each other via elected officials, their radio propagandists, blogs and special interest front groups. So the proper question is never, "will they make these kinds of false accusations?" Instead the important questions are "when will they" and "how badly will the traditional media fall for it this time"?

In the face of a statewide grassroots effort to recall extremist Scott Walker, all of the usual suspects are out making unsubstantiated accusations of fraud. Recall petitions, I might add, that are being signed at a blindingly fast pace (over 105,000 in four days). So naturally we have to endure the right wing's phony "fraud" claims.

Again, this kind of thing is totally expected because they run the exact same libelous drill every single time. What is always much more disappointing is how many in the traditional media give a measure of credibility to such unproven (and usually false) accusations. For example,I've already seen at least two Milwaukee-area TV news departments reporting on allegedly under age people signing recall petitions. They have raised these right wing questions without providing a proper level of evidence (no, a simple video obviously does not suffice).

Apparently some tabloid prone members of the media just can't help themselves. At some point you would think that they'd learn. We certainly know that there is a long history of these kinds of baseless accusations. The media rushes to report them and then later it is discovered that the accusations were dubious at best.

Who can forget the wild right wing accusations of voter fraud that were actually squashed by the Bush appointee and former U.S. Attorney Biskupic? He investigated hundreds of the Republican claims at that time and found "no widespread voter fraud" (much of the same result that was found nationally). The hyperbolic voter fraud rhetoric was simply not backed up by facts or by reality. Wisconsin Republicans only relied on innuendo, right wing urban legands and wacky conspiracy theories. Yet their false accusations were reliably reported in the media at the time.

There was also the epic example of false accusations that actually took place in the form of a press conference in front of the residence of the falsely accused. The libelous press conference included Wisconsin Republican officials, operatives, elected officials and others. As it turned out, the falsely accused was a young man that was studying for the priesthood and he had not committed voter fraud. None of that stopped the over-the-top and libelous accusations from the right wing who didn't even bother offering as much as an apology.

Wisconsin's recent history is filled with such false and over-the-top accusations of voter fraud. Yet it seems that many in the mainstream media just keep falling for the right wing shtick every single time. It seems that if there is any significant level of "fraud" happening it is the reoccurring right wing "fraud" that is occurring on unquestioning members of the media.

UPDATES (from Journal Communications Inc):

Charlie Sykes, ex post facto equivocator

Jeff Wagner Makes Outrageous Claim on TMJ Radio Today

And then there is @TodaysTMJ4 still promoting the original lie

He's not working for us

FDR: I welcome their hatred

ht: Armando at Daily Kos

From an FDR 1936 campaign speech in Madison Square Garden:

"For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.

I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master."

Are gun extremists ever satisfied?

The one thing that we have learned this year is that nothing ever seems to be good enough for the truly gun obsessed. They are apparently never happy and always seek the most extreme "solutions" to problems that often don't actually exist. Just when you think that they have achieved what they want, they just keep pushing for the furthest fringe. Exactly how far do they want to go with fully arming our entire society? Are there any limits at all and are the rest of us willing to let them drag us to such a dangerous place?

In Wisconsin the gun lobby has been unsuccessful in pushing concealed carry legislation for years. This year they finally got what we thought they wanted as concealed carry legislation was passed into law and recently enacted. However that wasn't good enough for the gun lobby because they didn't want any permit process whatsoever in the law. When their own ally, Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, presented very modest rules for the concealed carry process, they even attacked him. Apparently their constituency can't even handle the idea of having a whole 4 hours of "training" with a deadly weapon. I'm fairly certain that we can look forward to them trying to undermine the handful of weak requirements in Wisconsin's concealed carry law. Perhaps they will try it through additional legislation in Wisconsin's legislature or perhaps they will try to do it through big government legislation that they are trying to work through Congress.

As soon as the ink was dry on the enacted concealed carry legislation, the extremist gun lobby proceeded to the next item on their wish list, the so-called Castle Doctrine. It might be more accurately described as the Shoot First Doctrine. Feeding an apparent Dirty Harry obsession, this legislation would allow people to become judge, jury, and executioner if an intruder enters their home or business. In fact they seem to keep trying to extend where this law would apply (to things like the porch, driveway, and even adjoining sidewalks). It wouldn't matter if the intruder was unarmed and it wouldn't matter if they were not an actual physical threat.

Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm opposed the legislation saying the following:

Wisconsin, like most states, doesn't need a castle doctrine because current law, refined over the last half century, provides more than adequate protection for anyone legitimately acting in self-defense. "The statute in place right now is actually a very good standard, very workable, functional definition of self-defense," he said. Chisholm called the current bill a solution in search of a problem, one that "seems to introduce ambiguity that will make it difficult for law enforcement to make fine distinctions."

The Criminal Law Section of the Wisconsin State Bar also opposed the Castle Doctrine legislation.

"AB 69 changes Wisconsin law by providing a defense for irrational people armed with deadly force. Under its provisions, malevolent, reckless, or paranoid people who shoot trick-or-treaters or repairmen on their porch will be presumed to be acting in self-defense."

"...it provides a solid defense, and a favorable jury instruction, for any man who kills his wife in the family home and lies about it in court."

Nevertheless the Wisconsin Assembly quickly passed the bill earlier this week. In fact they did it so quickly that they failed to include proper protections for people like police, firefighters and other first responders. So after the legislation passed the state Senate the Assembly had to pass the new version. On Thursday the Castle Doctrine bill passed the legislature and awaits Scott Walker's signature.

But once again, passing the so-called Castle Doctrine is still not good enough. Earlier this week, just as the state Assembly took up this flawed legislation, the chairman of Wisconsin Carry Inc. suggested that this was only the beginning. He admitted that the home is the safest place that a person could be (so why the need for the Castle Doctrine then?) and that it is more important to have the "protections" of the Castle Doctrine law outside of the home. He is referring to the next leap to the fringe which is known as "stand your ground" provisions. It looks like vigilantism really is on the agenda.

This brings us back to my initial set of questions: Exactly how far do they want to go with fully arming our entire society? Are there any limits at all and are the rest of us really willing to let them drag us to such a dangerous place?

This post is written as part of the Media Matters Gun Facts fellowship. The purpose of the fellowship is to further Media Matters' mission to comprehensively monitor, analyze, and correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Some of the worst misinformation occurs around the issue of guns, gun violence, and extremism, the fellowship program is designed to fight this misinformation with facts.

I've got Ryan's class war right here, Part 2

The following graphic comes from Citizens for Tax Justice. It identifies 30 large corporations bringing in large profits but paying no total income tax in 2008-2010.

When I see this kind of thing I often wonder: How is it that these massive corporations paid less over several years than a guy flipping burgers did in one paycheck? I also wonder exactly why I'm supposed to feel sorry for these big corporations and why I shouldn't expect them to pay their fair share. By the way is that WE Energies on the list?



ht: Think Progress

This is what a jobs bill looks like

This is really very remarkable isn't it? Walker calls for another special session of the legislature to focus on jobs legislation. Then his rubber stamps in that body proceed to address every crack pot right wing piece of pet legislation that they can imagine. With this crowd that is to be expected but one may have also expected at least one actual jobs bill during this alleged special session on jobs. Instead we have witnessed a bum rush of extremist agenda items including some of the following:

• Feed more Dirty Harry obsessions by introducing the Castle Doctrine (which actually takes away the jobs of Judge, Jury and Executioner).
  
• Mandating abstinence "education" in public schools
• Ignoring painfully obvious disparities by removing race as ONE factor for a scholarship program that serves disadvantaged college students.
• Attempting to break the law (that Republicans already passed) by changing the gerrymandered redistricting maps. Nothing but a naked attempt to thwart the recalls to come.
• Failed attempt to rush through legislation that would require a notary for each individual recall petition. Even though Walker and the author of this legislation both voted for the current system in the late 1990's.
• Finding new ways to scapegoat and otherwise punish teachers.

The list goes on but you get the idea. We can certainly argue about these absurd legislative proposals. However there is no debate that none of them are designed to actually create jobs. And yet this is all that we have seen during another sham of a "special session on jobs". Give me a break, who do they think that they are fooling anyway?

If you want to look at what actual jobs legislation looks like, the Assembly Democrats introduced an entire package of bills that are clearly focused on creating jobs. They have named it the Make Wisconsin Work jobs package. You don't have to like the various bills or maybe you can find ways to improve them but at least they are on the actual topic of JOB, JOBS, and JOBS. Those Democratic bills include some of the following examples:

• Workforce Growth Program - A grant program created under the Wisconsin Technical College System. It would address capacity issues at local technical colleges allowing them to partner with high growth/high demand industry sectors. It would create a better pipeline of newly skilled workers for the industries and businesses that most need them.
• Extending the Transitional Jobs Program which helps people across the state gain the proper skills to reenter the workforce.
  
• Apprenticeship Requirements for State Projects.
• Business Match Training Grants which again partners local businesses with local tech colleges.
• Wisconsin Agriculture Corps which connects youth with farm work and farm life in Wisconsin. The goal is to create long-term working relationships with those corp members and the farms with which they work. It will help create an entirely new group of skilled workers in our state's agriculture industry.
  
• Entrepreneurial Assistance Grant Program - Provides grants to new small businesses for the costs of paid internships. It also gives funds to colleges and universities to establish a curriculum around the internship program.
  

UPDATE: Now read Rep. Mark Pocan on this "Anything But..." special session on jobs.

Fatally Out-of-Touch on Health Care

Scott Walker has had the luxury of receiving taxpayer funded health care for a very long time. Like so many other "anti-government" Republicans, other than a very short period, Walker has lived off taxpayers for his entire adult life. Because of the generous benefits provided by Wisconsin taxpayers, Walker and his family never had to seriously worry about health insurance and medical care costs. His personal hypocrisy makes his extremist policy positions on the issue all the more repugnant.

There are many people in Wisconsin that don't find themselves in such an envious position. In fact all too many hard working Wisconsinites find themselves caught in the middle and falling between the cracks of our dysfunctional health care system. They are working hard but don't earn enough to cover rapidly increasing health insurance costs. Costs that have greatly increased but at the same time have covered much less. The expansion of the BadgerCare program during Governor Doyle's administration provided a solution to more of these people. Because it met such a real need it was certainly not a surprise that it became extremely popular. Naturally Scott Walker plans to mindlessly and carelessly cut from this program, leaving real working Wisconsinites to totally fend for themselves in a hostile environment once again.

The Walker administration apparently isn't content in simply throwing thousands of those Wisconsinites to the wolves. Apparently they want to further protect the predators in this situation, the big health insurance industry. The Affordable Care Act requires insurance companies to spend at least 80% of premiums paid to them on actual medical care. If insurers don't meet this requirement then they have to give rebates to their policy holders. Recently the Walker administration filed for a three year waiver regarding this new rule. If that waiver is granted it will cost Wisconsinites operating alone in the predatory insurance market some $14 million. All to protect a handful of the largest insurance companies. Apparently some insurance companies are ready to actually follow the law and others are not.

As a self-employed person I have personal experience with trying to fend for myself in the predatory health insurance market. In fact I have had a very direct experience with one of the big insurance companies that the Walker administration is now trying to protect. To make a long story short, they may as well have just held me up at gun point and taken my money the old fashioned way. The best that I can do is to chalk it up to a very expensive learning experience.

Although the Affordable Care Act doesn't go as far as I would have preferred, my own personal experience with its provisions have certainly been more positive than the totally unchecked dysfunction that proceeded it. There are many provisions of the law that are helpful to different people for different reasons. For example, here are the items that I have either come to appreciate personally or that I eagerly anticipate once they are fully implemented:

• 80% of the money that I am paying my insurance company each month will either go to actual medical care or a portion of it will be refunded.
  
• Small business and other health care TAX CREDITS
  
• Preventative services that were not covered in the past that are now covered specifically because of the new health care law.
• Health care exchanges (which as far as I can remember used to be a Republican idea) that will give individuals and small business owners more leverage and will help foster a more competitive environment.
  

Most people are not asking for a free pass when it comes to health insurance and medical care. I certainly know that there has been nothing "free" about my own personal experience. Most hard working people are just asking for fair treatment in an environment that has been dysfunctional and predatory for far too long. Now that the individuals who are on their own are starting to actually get some help, Scott Walker has decided to defend the predators. He has made the choice to defend them rather than the people that have quite literally been paying his (health care) bills for his entire adult life. For once, he should be forced to actually live in the dark dysfunctional world that he is constantly trying to perpetuate. Maybe he will actually get that opportunity very very soon.

Where are Wisconsin's concealed carry loopholes?

On November 1st Wisconsin's new concealed carry law will go into effect. I am wondering how many loopholes we will later find in that law? How many will public officials unfortunately notice only after problems arise? Will they get past their Dirty Harry complex long enough to correct mistakes? There are at least a few areas where we should probably be looking for loopholes after November 1st.

When the Wisconsin Attorney General's office released the rules related to the new concealed carry law, it listed a fee that would be charged to cover a background check. That fee was listed as being $13, which tells me that they plan on using their own Crime Information Bureau (CIB) database to do that check. That database is a great tool for identifying any adult arrests and resulting court actions in Wisconsin. However it only gives you a record for adult arrests in Wisconsin. What if a person applies for a concealed carry permit and they have a record in another state that might otherwise disqualify them? How will the Department of Justice know if they only use a Wisconsin database to do the background check?

Recently we also learned that Wisconsin will honor concealed carry permits from at least 25 other states. This is another area where we should watch for loophole related problems down the road. Essentially we are owning the process in all of those 25 states including every lax rule. It will take time to discover the various loopholes that will open as a result of honoring permits from those 25 states.

Wisconsin is set to honor permits from Utah for example. Even the relatively gun happy state of Nevada decided to stop honoring Utah's concealed carry permits because of the lax rules. Some have actually described Utah's concealed carry law as being a mail order approach that has attracted applicants from all over the country. Wisconsin's choice to honor their permits forces us to also honor all of their loopholes and any problems that they might bring.

Last week Milwaukee's Shepherd Express ran a story about the new concealed carry law. In that story they reported several concerns that Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn had concerning it. He said that thousands of career criminals who have pleaded guilty to misdemeanors would qualify for a concealed carry permit because they are not convicted felons. They can carry a hidden handgun even though they are a literal menace to public safety. Flynn also said that almost half of those convicted of homicides in 2011 would have been eligible for concealed weapons permits because they had not been convicted of a felony prior to committing murder. For the same reason he further said that about 75% of convicted robbers could get a permit at the time of their crime.

The bottom line here is that Wisconsin legislators were in such a frenzy to pass concealed carry legislation that they failed to fully address these and other concerns. Unfortunately they were more concerned with pleasing a political base than they were concerned with carefully forming sound public policy. The various loopholes in Wisconsin's new concealed carry law will eventually become clear. Hopefully that clarity will not come at too great of a cost and hopefully our legislators will have the courage to make the necessary changes.

This post is written as part of the Media Matters Gun Facts fellowship. The purpose of the fellowship is to further Media Matters' mission to comprehensively monitor, analyze, and correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Some of the worst misinformation occurs around the issue of guns, gun violence, and extremism, the fellowship program is designed to fight this misinformation with facts.