Scott-Walker-Gate

Scott Walker's "Good Government" Challenge

Scott Walker has become famous for trying to be on all sides of nearly every issue. Sometimes it happens very quickly, as it did with his ever evolving position on taking federal stimulus funds among other issues. Other times he flip-flops over a longer period of time, multiple times, on a broad range of issues. I'm convinced that the only real predictor for Walker's waffling is if it personally benefits him politically in the short term.

On October 8, 1996 then-Representative Scott Walker announced his "Good Government Package" of legislative proposals. I'm sure that he thought that this was a winning issue for him at that time. The true sign of this is that he all but announced the package from the rooftops. Here are the items that Representative Walker was promoting at that time:

1. Allow individual candidates and political parties to offset up to the amount of independent expenditures spent in any given campaign.
2. Require full and accurate disclosure of every phone call to a voter and require a copy of the script for each phone call be filed with the Elections Board within 24 hours of the first call to voters.
3. Prohibit "mega-PACs" by limiting transfers between political action committees to no more than $5,000.
4. Require that a minimum of 50% of all money spent in a campaign be raised from individuals living within the district.
5. Allow the Elections Board to develop a system for electronic filing of campaign finance reports.
6. Ban legislators from working as lobbyists for at least one year after leaving office.
7. Require legislators to follow the same laws the public does by removing the legislative immunity provision in the constitution.
8. Ban fundraising by candidates, campaigns, and legislative campaign committees until the enactment of the budget.

Since Walker was sworn in as governor we have witnessed him amassing unprecedented power. Whether it is the legislature so willingly giving him their rule making powers or his wiping out scores of civil service positions to make them politically appointed. Walker's actions as governor show that he must fancy himself as some sort of emperor of Wisconsin. His faithful and unquestioning Republican rubber stamps in the legislature have done everything possible to accommodate him in that self-delusion.

So while Scott Walker is busy ramming special interest legislation through, it would be interesting to see him take one brief moment to ram through the remaining elements of then-Representative Walker's "Good Government Package". He certainly could accomplish it, if he really ever wanted to get those things done in the first place. It would also be a great test for Walker to prove that he actually cares about something more than his own political fortunes.

Reaffirming Representative Walker's "Good Government Package" would be one way to prove this because many of these provisions would run contrary to his actions as a recall candidate. For example, while Walker has been busy raising unlimited cash from special interests, over 60 percent of it has come from out-of-state contributors. Sorry, but that flies directly in the face of Representative Walker's 50% rule.

So I would like to challenge Governor Walker to actually live up to the "Good Government" guidelines as expressed by Representative Walker in 1996. Obviously there is zero chance of that happening, which again proves the original point made here. Scott Walker's number one value is advancing his own lifelong political career and nearly everything else is relative and/or secondary to that self-serving priority.

Interview with Kathleen Falk

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to do a quick telephone interview with Democratic candidate for Governor Kathleen Falk. Many of the hot button issues that were recently relevant in some circles don't really interest me very much. So naturally I chose to focus on just a few isolated questions that I personally found interesting. Kathleen Falk will certainly do many more interviews with other bloggers, reporters and others during this campaign. So if I didn't ask your question or address your topic, I'm sure it will be addressed at some point.

First I mentioned the fact that both Scott Walker and Kathleen Falk were County Executives of the two largest Wisconsin counties. They served in these positions roughly during the same periods. Since that timing may mean that they also faced similar challenges, I was interested in hearing Kathleen Falk compare and contrast her tenure with Walker's in Milwaukee County.

Kathleen Falk said that her time as Dane County Executive couldn't be any more different than Walker's in Milwaukee County. She said that it wasn't only like night and day in policy but also in terms of values and style of leadership. In terms of style she said that some want to be known by who their political enemies are and they like to pit people against each other. Obviously she was accurately implying that this is how Walker chose to operate as Milwaukee County Executive (and now as Governor).

Falk went on to say that people who tend to operate in such a divisive fashion continually try to make demons out of their political opponents just to advance their own political agenda. She said that this is certainly not her style and that most Wisconsinites do not desire such a divisive approach to policy or even to politics. She said that this is typically true even when people are looking for a change agent. Most simply want competent stable leaders that help to ensure things like their children having good schools, the growth of family supporting jobs, clean air to breath and clean water to drink.

Kathleen Falk went on to give a more specific difference between her time as Dane County Executive and Walker's time in Milwaukee County. She started by acknowledging that the national recession certainly took its toll on local government budgets over the last few years. She said that her response in Dane County was to properly adjust to the major changes in circumstances while Scott Walker chose to just keep doing that same old things. While Walker continued his same ideology-based approach, Falk sought to collaborate with others to solve the challenges together.

One specific example that she used was that she went to union leaders and let them know that she would like to speak to front line county workers. So she went to talk to people like snow plow truck drivers and mechanics. During those discussions she talked over the issues and listed the various choices. She said that this collaborative approach lead to county employees giving up 5% of their salary. She says that she knew that this was not an easy choice for Dane County workers but after being included in the process as a valuable partner, they were willing to make that sacrifice. After the budget issues were resolved, Falk bragged about Dane County workers rather than trying to score political points for herself. In the end she said that public employees want to be respected just like everyone else and voters want quality public services. Falk said that the approach that she used toward budgetary challenges accomplished both.

During my discussion with Kathleen Falk I also mentioned the role that special interests like Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce played in her 2006 run for attorney general. They have become nothing more than a financial arm of the Republican Party and in 2006 they proved it by dumping millions of dollars into the AG race attacking Kathleen Falk. Even with their millions in attack ads, that race ended with a historically razor thin margin. Given that experience and seeing that a potential run against Walker would dwarf that special interest attack, I asked Kathleen Falk how she planned to address the situation.

The first thing that Kathleen Falk mentioned was just how vicious and inaccurate the WMC ads were in 2006. She also noted that even though they spent some $3.5 million against her that year, they didn't spend any of it in Dane County. She said that WMC didn't run their over-the-top attack ads there because Dane County knew her record and would have known that the attack ads were false.

In terms of what she would do in an election against Scott Walker, she said that she will count on the voters of Wisconsin to rely on other sources rather than just nasty attack ads from special interests. She further said that an election against Walker in 2012 will not be the exact same situation that existed in 2006. She said that polls have already shown that many people have already made up their minds about Scott Walker and the direction of the state.

Falk further pointed to the fact that even though Walker and his special interest allies have already spent millions of dollars in unanswered ads, the polls show that the dial has not really moved for them. In fact she said that the Walker campaign apparently knew that their ads were not working because they stopped doing them and then started sending out massive numbers of expensive direct mail pieces. All of these facts seem to indicate that massive amounts of attack ads may not provide the same bang for their buck as they have in past elections.

After all of the turmoil and division that Wisconsin has faced on Scott Walker's watch so far, Kathleen Falk says that people are more ready than ever to get away from the extremism and go back to the idea of a competent and stable state government.

Tim Russell's "Time Away During the Work Day"

Over the last several weeks the John Doe investigation into Scott Walker's campaign/county operations has certainly provided many compelling revelations. One of the most telling was the email that Walker sent to Tim Russell after Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Dan Bice broke the news about Darlene Wink posting political online comments on county time. In the email Walker said the following:

"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."

This statement has been analyzed in many different ways. Some have focused on the fact that Walker sent an email about official county personnel matters from his campaign account. Others have understandably questioned why Walker would communicate with Russell on a personnel issue given the fact that he no longer worked in Walker's office. Most have also focused on the "no lap tops" portion suggesting that it shows that Walker knew about the secret network that was set up in his executive offices. But today I'm personally wondering about the last part of that email because I haven't heard much commentary on it. Specifically the "no time away during the work day" part.

What exactly did Walker mean when he said "no time away during the work day"? Did he know about members of his administration going to campaign events or meeting and planning with political operatives during the work day? Now that most of his top aides have either lawyered up (including Walker) or have been formally charged/convicted of crimes, we certainly can't rely on any of them to enlighten us on the issue. So I went looking for any possible examples of "time away during the work day" that I might find from Walker administration emails from April-June, 2009.

Obviously it is a very small sample size but I can only use what I actually have to try and determine what kind of "time away" that Scott Walker could have been talking about. In those 2009 emails I found one email chain that stood out from the rest in this area. It involved longtime Walker campaign/county aide Tim Russell and the President of the right wing MacIver Institute, Brett Healy. You might recall that this group has frequently tried to provide cover for Walker's extreme agenda. Recent examples include their rather desperate "it's working" campaign. The latest manifestation of it includes a Koch Brothers fueled $700,000 ad buy.

Brett Healy was formerly the Chief of Staff to former Republican Speaker Scott Jensen. In fact he testified in 2006 regarding the caucus scandal. At the time of Healy's April 2009 email exchange with Tim Russell, he had recently been appointed as President of the then-newly formed MacIver Institute.

On Monday morning April 6, 2009 at 10:07 a.m. Healy emailed Tim Russell at his county email address on what appears to be a work day. After requesting Russell's contact information, they both plan a meeting at the Marquette University Starbucks for Thursday April 9th at 9:00 a.m, which also appears to be on a county work day. In planning the "time away" Russell and Healy exchanged some 7 emails in less than an hour. Milwaukee County taxpayer dollars hard at work! Thank goodness we were all paying Tim Russell to exchange emails and eventually meet with the head Walker enabler at MacIver.

This Russell/Healy meeting happened only a couple of weeks before Scott Walker officially announced his campaign for governor. Did Russell and Healy talk about that coming event? These are two long time political operatives, did they discuss anything political during this meeting during the county work day? A look at the MacIver website several weeks after this meeting shows a continual diet of bashing Walker's perceived opponent at the time, Governor Doyle. Their website also featured the typical gushing over Walker that has become MacIver's hallmark.

In any case, was this Russell/Healy meeting the kind of "time away during the work day" that Walker later banned after he got the bad Wink-related press? Given the facts that we have learned from the John Doe investigation recently, it would certainly be interesting to know more about what Walker was referring to in that statement.

Introducing WalkerInvestigation.com

Find out everything that you ever wanted to know about Walkergate at a new Democratic Party of Wisconsin website: WalkerInvestigation.com

To Quote Walker's 2002 "Ament/Amen" Ad...

"Corruption cannot exist where there are no hiding places"

[Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 3/17/02]

Indeed

Walker Administration Emails 2009

Anyone that was reading this blog in 2010 is probably familiar with my struggles in getting records from Scott Walker's Milwaukee County administration. I only received certain records 9 months and hundreds of dollars after requesting them. Even then, they only sent some of them after a reporter questioned them about the long delay. I've repeatedly written about Walker only "turning on the light" for friends, including an anonymous shill blog that may have been run by some of Walker's county staffers.

Some of the records that I did finally receive included a ton of county emails from 2009. Given some of the recent developments and the news surrounding the John Doe investigation, I decided to search those 2009 Walker emails from a new point of reference. FYI, this blog posting may very well turn into the first of a series.

One thing that certainly stood out in the recent criminal complaints was the email from Scott Walker, using his campaign account, to address the Darlene Wink situation with right hand man Tim Russell. After seeing that Walker used his campaign account to discuss county business, I decided to again search my 2009 Walker administration emails for similar examples. I wanted to test whether Walker's intermingling of his campaign email and county business was a common practice.

Please note that the Walker administration used Lotus Notes and the electronic email records that they finally sent me are in that format. Since I don't have Lotus Notes the emails are a bit of a maze of Lotus Notes code and other data. To check out the emails that I am going to reference below, see them HERE. It is admittedly a pain to read but I've tried to make the reading easier by putting relevant information in bold. I've also deleted vast amounts of the Lotus Notes code. If you are interested in the original version with all of the code, let me know. There could be interesting discoveries hiding in that code.

Here is a summary of interesting items that I found in Walker 2009 emails (instances of Walker using his "skw@scottwalker.org" email address for county business):

• The first email chain listed in the above linked doc appears to be Walker sending a response to a Public Policy Forum draft report on the county budget. Walker seems to be sending it to his county staff. But he sends it to their private emails along with the business emails for Keith Gilkes (his campaign manager) and RJ Johnson (someone that served his campaign as a consultant). If I'm following this right, it then looks like he then forwarded that message from his campaign email to his county email.

• There are at least two examples of Walker forwarding Wispolitics emails from his county address to his campaign address. Both examples include prominent reporting on Walker's campaign for governor. One mentions the RPW convention in 2009 and that Walker won the straw poll and the other mentions his "very special announcement" from April 2009. I'm wondering if the county paid for the Wispolitics reports, exactly how could he legally forward them to his campaign email? Is that giving something of value from the county to his campaign? Does it violate Wispolitics policy against forwarding their products to others?

• An email that appears to be from Cynthia Archer to Walker at his campaign email address (and copying other staff...including Walker campaign consultant RJ Johnson). In that email she spells out their various "options" after a greatly anticipated arbitration hearing. It looks like Walker then takes that Archer email and forwards it from his campaign account to his county account.

Again, what is up with this mixing of county issues and campaign emails? Am I the only one that finds such free email usage suspicious? Did these emails happen before the establishment of the secret network that has been described by the Milwaukee County District Attorney's office?

NOTE: When requesting the email records, I only asked them to go from April - June of 2009. So these emails only represent a sampling from those 3 months.

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