August 2011 Archives

The full report of the incident involving Justice David Prosser allegedly putting Justice Ann Walsh Bradley in a chokehold was released this afternoon. 

The evidence is clear that Justice David Prosser put his hands on Justice Ann Walsh Bradley's neck, which is why One Wisconsin Now is standing firm with the 10,000 petitions calling for Prosser's resignation and the thousands of folks who have already signed on to our Stand with Justice Ann Walsh Bradley letter.

Check out these key excerpts from today's report:

"Did my hands touch her neck, yes, I admit that... Did I try to touch her neck, no, absolutely not, it was a total reflex. (Prosser, p. 39)

"[he said that] believed that he had made contact with Justice Bradley's neck. ... "I remember feeling her neck." ... Justice Prosser went on to say that he remembers the warmth on the side of Justice Bradley's neck in his hands as his hands were touching her neck." ... "What does any self respecting man do when suddenly that man finds that his hands or part of his hands are on a woman's neck? Get them off the neck as soon as possible." (Prosser, p. 41)

"Justice Ziegler said that when she turned her head, she saw Justice Prosser's hands up by Justice Bradley's neck area." (Ziegler, p. 13)

At the June 15 meeting of the Justices over the incident, Justice Bradley said to Justice Prosser: "You put your hands on my neck in a chokehold." "Margaret said that at this point, nobody argued or corrected Justice Bradley from using the term 'chokehold.'" (Margaret Brady, Supreme Court HR Officer, p. 28)

"...when Justice Bradley approached Justice Prosser, she observed Justice Prosser put both his hands up and put them on the neck area of Justice Bradley." (Abrahamson, p. 23)

Justice Prosser's infamous temperant was also on full display:

Justice Prosser called the Chief a bitch. (Crooks, p. 59)

Justice Prosser said he'd destroy the Chief. (Crooks, p.58)

Justice Prosser said that there'd be a war [with the Chief] and it wouldn't be a ground. (Crooks, p. 59)

Justice Prosser said that the judges and police in Dane County were corrupt. (Crooks, p. 59)

Justice Prosser called Justice Crooks a "viper." (Crooks, p. 58)

Justice Prosser was observed getting red in the face and pounding on a table with his fists in conference. (Crooks, p. 58)

After the recent dust up over conservative group Club for Growth airing an ad attacking former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson (R) for stepping into the U.S. Senate race, a new controversy has surfaced after One Wisconsin Now unconvered a deleted post by conservative spin machine MediaTrackers.

The communications director for MediaTrackers -- a Washington, DC-area conservative spin machine focused on Wisconsin -- posted a story on August 24 about a major rift between the national Club for Growth group which ran the ad and the Wisconsin Club for Growth which has defended Tommy Thompson. MediaTrackers has since removed the story from its website, but One Wisconsin Now was able to retrieve using a cached version, which read in part:

Yet in an interesting move, the day after the national Club for Growth expressed concerns over Thompson's anemic record of fiscal conservatism, the Wisconsin Club issued this contradictory statement (which is not listed among the other statements on their website):

"While WICFG does not intend to issue statements or offer opinions regarding the positions of candidates for U.S. Senate, we recognize Governor Tommy Thompson's significant contributions to improving Wisconsin's economy and reforming government.

"Governor Thompson served the citizens of Wisconsin with distinction for fourteen years."

Among fiscal conservatives, the Club for Growth is considered the gold standard and is raising some valid concerns about Governor Thompson's record in Wisconsin. Then, inexplicably perhaps, the state-level Club for Growth says that the national organization has it all wrong and rushes to defend the former governor. Apparently, one group is using a different yardstick than the other group is using.

While the outcome of this apparently not-so-internal confusion between Club for Growth and its Wisconsin branch remains to be seen, the split between the two Clubs over something as straightforward as Thompson's moderate-at-best record on things like healthcare and taxes is likely to create an interesting dynamic as the 2012 election season begins in earnest.

The rift between the national group and the Wisconsin group has potential to be damaging to the GOP for yet another reason: Wisconsin Club for Growth is headed up by RJ Johnson, a paid consultant to Gov. Scott Walker, while the national group is a huge player in Wisconsin political races, having spent over $3 million in the recent recall elections which allegedly flowed through a Post Office box it has in Sun Prairie, Wisc.

The growing divide between the two major conservative organizations and their complicated relationships with recall target Gov. Walker and possible U.S. Senate candidate Tommy Thompson is likely worrying Wisconsin Republicans heading into 2012.

The billionaire Koch Brothers appear to be on the defensive against the Stop Koch, Save Wisconsin buzz on the internet lately, after spending over $40,000 to get Gov. Scott Walker elected less than a year ago, $400,000 supporting Walker's agenda earlier this year, and $250,000 on Republican state senators in Wisconsin's recent recall effort.

Last Wednesday, following Wisconsin's last recall election where it turns out Walker and the GOP lost over 70,000 voters since November 2010, Koch Industries registered at least three anti-Koch domains: StopKoch.com, StopKochIndustries.com, and AntiKoch.com.

Domain research site WHOIS.net indicates the sites were registered on August 17, the day following Wisconsin's final recall effort. If you go to the sites now, you'll see they're directed to tech group Melbourne IT, which specializes in "Online Brand Protection," among other things. And as you can see from the html code, the title of each page is called "Melbournce IT DBS - Parked Page." Parked there, presumably, so dissenters can't.

An analysis by One Wisconsin Now shows that the Republican vote in the nine recent recalls elections fell by over 73,000 since the 2010 gubernatorial election. And while Scott Walker won by 65,000 votes in these 9 districts in 2010, Democrats actually outperformed Republicans in the districts. 

See the preliminary numbers here: 

Now, with a Scott Walker recall in the sights of many middle-class working Wisconsinites, the response by the Republican legislature is to propose new recall election laws to discourage democracy to protect their leader. This, despite nearly a half million people participating in the recall process in 2011.

“Gov. Scott Walker’s attacks on the Wisconsin way of life have been met with a stunning rebuke. This rejection of Gov. Walker’s policies is not just from those who oppose his policies, but by the tens of thousands of voters who supported him in 2010, but who stayed home instead of supporting his agenda in the nine recalls. Anyone who has followed Walker’s long career as a professional politician knows that neither the words ‘moderation’ nor ‘compromise’ exists in his vocabulary. The damage Gov. Walker has inflicted on Wisconsin from a public policy standpoint is only surpassed by the painful division he has created in cities, towns, villages, and families across Wisconsin. It is clear he is the problem and he must be recalled in 2012 so that Wisconsin can heal and we can begin to undo the destruction he has caused.” - Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now Executive Director

The billionaire Koch brothers will stop at nothing to try and buy power in Wisconsin just so they can have their way with democracy. The latest proof of their attempts to deceive voters and grab political power comes from Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a group founded by the Koch brothers.

Americans for Prosperity was caught engaging in voter suppression in the most despicable fashion this week. The group sent out absentee ballots to voters in two recall districts encouraging voters to send the ballots to the city clerk by August 11^th.  The problem is that anyone with an iota of political awareness knows the date for Senate recall elections is on August 9^th.

Local group officials have said that the ballots were only mailed out to AFP members and that the date was mistakenly changed to the 11^th. However, shortly after the ballots were sent out, those who recognized the phony election date filed a voter suppression complaint. Including one North Hudson man who stated that he felt he was targeted because he was a senior and a democrat.

While the AFP would like to play this off as a simple typo, letting this slide as a miscue is far too hard of a pill to swallow, mainly because this is not the first instance of deceitful tactics being used to derail democracy and the recall efforts in our state.  Earlier in the summer GOP state officials ran fake democrats in primary elections, in an attempt to keep the real democratic recall candidates out of the general election.  The Republican controlled legislature even went so far as to pass legislation that requires identification in order to vote, even though it is clear that many of the electorate do not have a government issued ID.  That action was followed up by an attempt to close 10 DMV offices around the state.

 One can only wonder how much the bar of ethical standards will be lowered in Wisconsin politics. Which is a scary thought, because clearly groups like AFP and the State Republicans will reach very far in order to suppress the voice of the people. Their focus is not in the best interest of Wisconsin residents, but on remaining in power and repaying those who got them there through political favors. 

The GOP's leading anti-student voter senator, Sen. Glenn Grothman, issued a press release basically intimidating student voters who may wish to vote absentee. Sen. Grothman always seems to have something disparaging to say about exercising the right to vote. And this isn't even the first time he's complained about the abillity to vote absentee. Funny thing is, Grothman votes absentee a lot. Check out his voting history:

Here's why I ask:

In March, news broke that Randy Hopper's (ex-)wife accused him of cheating on her with a mistress and revealed that he was no longer living in his Fond du Lac home.

WKOTV interviewed Hopper about it, and he said that he was indeed living in an apartment and not at home. The apartment owner also confirmed this. Elsewhere, Hopper's chief of staff Rebecca Hogan confirmed in March that Hopper and his (ex-)wife "separated roughly a year ago."

So everyone agrees: by March of 2011, and for a year at most, Randy Hopper was not living in his Fond du Lac home with his (ex-)wife.

But according to the Voter Public Access, Hopper was still registered to vote at that address, and indeed voted, in April - a full month after the stories broke about him not living at that address.

This all leads me to wonder: Did Randy Hopper vote using an address at which he was not registered? And if so, how many times?

It's no secret that a lot of the tea party movement anger is fueled by a combination of ignorance and racism.

But as this caravan of extremism trucks in a cadre of malcontents, ne-er do wells, and in the case of Joe the Not Plumber, lampreys on the corporate money shark, one wonders: Will Alberta Darling accept their invitation to come and speak?

We've documented tea party racism and hatred in Wisconsin, here...and...here. And here, where the-wackadoo Tea Party Express spokesliar Mark Williams told Wisconsin that "political correctness was responsible for 9/11 and political correctness was responsible for Barack Obama."

Let's also not forget this appalling episode of the Tea Party Express, when Williams said in a hateful letter to the NAACP, "I am disinclined to take lectures on racial sensitivity from a group that insists on calling black people, 'Colored.'"

Lovely.

The question is: Will Alberta Darling join the hate fest, or will she condemn, or will she offer the kind of wink and nod to the hatred, ignorance and extremism of the tea party?

Remember it was the tea party that in 2010 was going to dispatch its people as the poll workers to suppress minority and students votes. 

This may be why many elected Republicans, like Scott Walker, have embraced this hateful movement. What will Alberta Darling do when they're in her community this week?

The American Federation for Children is a private school-pushing group led by ethically-questionable former GOP speaker Scott Jensen. Naturally, the group is supporting public school-attacking, ethically-challenged state senator Luther Olsen.

In a new political ad, the pro-private school group claims that "out-of-state" groups are attacking Olsen for his record. Interesting, because the group appears to be "copying" the same stock footage of a classroom used in ads by the Republican State Leadership Committee and the Florida Chamber of Commerce we reported on earlier this year.

Here is a screenshot of the Olsen ad:

"Saved Teachers (sic) Jobs"

And here are screenshots of the previous videos from the other anti-public school groups:

UPDATE: As chance would have it, at nearly the exact time I originally posted this piece, Gawker posted a story about teachers too. The stock photo Gawker used in their post looks awfully familiar...

Nobody believed the GOP last week as they tried to tell us the Walker Administration created half of all jobs created in the U.S., even as unemployment increased in our state.

The Appleton Post-Crescent got to the bottom of Walker and the Senate GOP's hoodwink and editorialized against them misleading Wisconsin on the jobs numbers. That's not stopping "VP of Marketing" Rebecca Kleefisch, as she continues to distort the truth this week in a column titled, "State's economy killing the competition".

But, Capital Times columnist John Nichols points out the numbers actually aren't so rosy:

Under Gov. Scott Walker’s “leadership,” unemployment is increasing in Wisconsin at twice the rate it is nationally.

As we learn about a GE operation in Waukesha moving to China and Wausau Paper struggling to make ends meet, we should reassure ourselves that selling out the middle-class for corporate tax breaks never ever ever works.