If there was any debate about the rising influence of corporate interests like Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce before the State’s highest court, the last two weeks have ended the discussion. It now appears the Wisconsin Supreme Court is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wisconsin’s corporate crooks.

Those of you following One WI Now’s reporting on the judicial ethics already know that “Justices” Michael Gableman and Annette Ziegler came to the court under a cloud of suspicion. Ziegler got an unprecedented reprimand from the High Court after she ruled in dozens of cases in which she and/or her husband had a financial stake; Gableman remains under investigation. And of course we all remember ads run by WMC supporting these two serial-ethics violators. Just a bit of background...

Last week I reported corporate lapdogs Gableman and Ziegler ruled that owners of a Wisconsin manufacturing company had the right to take millions of dollars in compensation as they drove the company into the ground and failed to pay up on its union contracts. WMC made it clear it early on that it supported the rights of the owners to screw the workers out of the pay they earned with their hard work. And when it mattered most for the CEOs/crooks WMC represents, the justices WMC spent millions electing came through in the clutch. Score: Corporate Special Interest – 1; Wisconsin Working Families – 0.

I guess when rains it pours.

Here at OWN we got the following listing for an event for folks who have unfortunately lost their jobs in these tough times. Please pass the word around to your friends and neighbors who are looking for some support!

You can register for the event by calling Buzz Davis at 608-873-4886 or register online at http://www.onewisconsinnow.org/page/event/detail/townhall/wrby

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Have you or a friend been laid-off, downsized, or part-timed and now you’re looking for work?

The Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans has organized a third town meeting for workers who have lost their jobs, been part-timed or are underemployed.  Workers and their partners living in Stoughton, southern Dane, northern Rock counties or other communities are invited to attend.

Activists in the One Wisconsin Now community have sent over 5,300 email messages to the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC) demanding the big business special interest group drop its lawsuit preventing paid sick days from becoming law in Milwaukee. OWN launched the action last week in advance of the court hearing today about paid sick days and the frivolous suit brought by MMAC.

70% of Milwaukee voters supported the paid sick days referendum last November, a clear mandate. And paid sick days are good for business. Workers without adequate paid sick days often come to work when they are sick out of fear over losing their job. In the process, they spread the sickness through the workplace, making their co-workers sick, extending their own illness, and lowering their productivity. In fact, a study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research showed local employers would save as much as $17 million annually in increased productivity when paid sick days become law.

If you’d like to compose your own message to the Board of Directors of MMAC you can do so by visiting:

Tournament time is here, and we need your help to pick the winners.

We designed our own bracket and filled it with the worst-of-the-worst we've heard from the right so far this year -- it's called March Badness 2009 and your vote decides the winner.

We're stuck on 17 entries, so we've got to have a play-in game. Click on the March Badness logo or go to http://www.OneWisconsinNow.org/MarchBadness to cast your vote for one of these two:

Is it the legal circus surrounding Norm Coleman? Or the obstructionism of House Minority Leader John Boehner? Go to OneWisconsinNow.org/MarchBadness to cast your vote now!

The winner will advance to the official March Badness 2009 bracket that comes out Thursday. So make sure to vote now at http://www.onewisconsinnow.org/MarchBadness and stay tuned this week for the full March Badness bracket and to help pick the "winners."

A story in the Capital Times today details the recent programming changes and the resulting listener uproar on the Mic, 92.1 FM, Madison’s only progressive talk station.

As 2008 ticked over into 2009, the Mic, rather quietly, announced that popular daytime show ‘The Thom Hartmann Program’ was going to be replaced by evangelical money-help host Dave Ramsey—the same Dave Ramsey who hosts a similar financial show on the Fox Business Channel. (I’ll leave my comments about having a right-wing, bible-thumping Fox mouthpiece on my progressive talk station for another post….)

However, the change won’t last. Ramsey is moving to the morning slot and Thom Hartmann is moving back to the 2-5p slot on the Mic.

As an avid Mic listener—the OWN office radio is tuned to the Mic at some point every day—I certainly welcome the change back to Hartmann. But the change and change back really drive home the danger of media consolidation that we’ve all grown accustomed to.

From the moment that state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen filed his frivolous lawsuit against the Government Accountability Board (GAB) it was clear to any honest observer that it was without merit and motivated by rank partisanship. That was confirmed later when it was revealed that Van Hollen’s office had multiple communications with Republican Party officials prior to filing the suit.

While trying to defend his partisan actions, Van Hollen insisted that the GAB was not following the law even though it was carrying out the proper checks as required. Van Hollen’s insistence on checking names retroactively all the way back to 2006 would have caused mass chaos at the polls and could have disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters. All of this drama over some nonexistent requirement that Van Hollen, a McCain co-chair, made up out of whole cloth.

It has certainly become an important question. Just Who Will JB Van Hollen Disenfranchise if the partisan lawsuit that he has filed is successful? According to the Government Accountability Board the answer could be over one million Wisconsin voters.

We already know that Van Hollen’s office communicated with Republican Party of Wisconsin officials about the suit before it was actually filed and we are also well aware of the fact that Van Hollen is a co-chair of the John McCain presidential campaign. We have seen these kinds of partisan uses of public office before and we will not let Florida in 2000 become Wisconsin in 2008!

To this end, One Wisconsin Now is debuting a new web video entitled “WWJBD?” to ensure that people across Wisconsin have the facts and know the impact if Van Hollen’s partisan lawsuit succeeds. It includes a petition to tell Van Hollen once and for all to dump this partisan lawsuit. You can VIEW THE VIDEO at SaveWisconsinsVote.org!

Please watch the video, sign the petition and pass it along to your friends! The more people that see this video and sign the petition, the louder our untied voice will be. We are not only left with the question, “who will JB disenfranchise?” but more importantly we must ask ourselves, what are we prepared to do about it?

The Election Protection Coalition is sponsoring a public hearing tonight to discuss protecting the vote on Election Day. This is even more important considering recent news that the Republican Party of Wisconsin is trying to recruit law enforcement and others to challenge voters at the polls in Milwaukee. People need to know their rights and exactly how to defend their votes. Some of the special guests that have been invited to the event include Asst. DA Bruce Landgraf, Milwaukee City Election Commission Executive Director Sue Edman and others.

What: Election Protection Public Hearing

When: Thursday, October 16, 2008 at 6:30pm

Where: Serb Hall, 5101 W. Oklahoma, Milwaukee

I just concluded my most recent blog by saying that the right wing had very bad intentions regarding our right to vote. Shortly after I got that blog posted I came across a news item from the Washington Post that not only confirms what I just said, but also carries it even further. The Washington Post has obtained a leaked email by the Republican Party of Wisconsin spelling out some of their potential plans for possible voter intimidation on Election Day.

According to the story by the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, Mary Pat Flaherty, the RPW email sought “names of Milwaukee area veterans, policemen, security personnel, firefighters…” to volunteer at inner city polling places, presumably to challenge voters, disqualify voters and create long lines which will cause working people to leave the polls without voting. The email suggested such specific kinds of people apparently because they find inner city polling locations “more intimidating.”

With ordinary Americans increasingly struggling under the combined impact of the banking and health care crises, the Center for American Progress Action Fund is preparing to release a report detailing how the McCain health care plan would increase the burden on middle-class families in Wisconsin. The report, which will be released Wednesday at a joint press conference held by Change to Win, SEIU, Citizen Action Wisconsin, and the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, will detail the number of Wisconsinites expected to lose employer-sponsored health insurance under John McCain's health care plan. It also details the tax hike middle class families would experience over four years under John McCain's health care plan. Center for American Progress Action Fund Senior Fellow James Kvaal will join Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Barbara Lawton, AFL-CIO Wisconsin President David Newby, and Citizen Action Wisconsin Director of Program Robert Craig, to discuss what the McCain health plan means for Wisconsin.

Who: Barbara Lawton, Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor James Kvaal, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress Action Fund David Newby, President, AFL-CIO Wisconsin Robert Craig, Director of Program, Citizen Action Wisconsin (REAL PEOPLE) With participation from Change to Win and SEIU

What: Press Conference to Release Report on Effects on McCain Health Plan on Wisconsin

When: Wednesday, October 1, 2008 at 10:00 AM

Where: State Capitol, Senate Parlor Madison, WI

Hundreds of thousands of legal voters are at risk – but we only get utter silence from the McCain campaign. The media has been reporting that Wisconsinites have received absentee ballot applications from the John McCain for President campaign with incorrect return addresses, which would likely prevent the registration and processing from being completed.

The people of Wisconsin deserve real answers about this McCain mailing immediately and we need a full investigation by law enforcement. Not only could this lead to voters failing to receive their absentee ballots, it also could cause chaos on election day as those who did not receive their ballots scramble to cast their vote. The easy solution would seem to be: check the records, inform people who received an incorrect application and make sure no one is disenfranchised. Unfortunately the McCain campaign refuses to tell us the exact number and won’t even be interviewed about the scope of the problem. One Republican official has said that “hundreds of thousands” of absentee ballot applications have been mailed by the McCain campaign.

We need a formal investigation. Just last week, Attorney General JB Van Hollen and Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm announced a new task force focusing on election issues. While the prudence of having Van Hollen, the McCain campaign state co-chair, is certainly up for question, the task force must investigate this matter and assure the public their right to vote is not being compromised by an intentional disenfranchisement scheme by the McCain campaign. You can make your voice heard now by signing a petition for a complete investigation of the misleading McCain mailing, at SaveWisconsinsVote.org. If you have actually received one of these mailings, you can also use the site to file a formal complaint.

Fair and clean elections are a critical issue for the state of Wisconsin and protecting the right to vote is essential to our Democracy. Please Take Action Today!

J.B. Van Hollen’s frivolous lawsuit against the Government Accountability Board, could disenfranchise up to 1 million legitimate voters in November. Much of that could happen because of very minor discrepancies such as a middle initial, clerical error or an old address appearing on a driver’s license. Even four of the six judges that make up the GAB board found that their own personal information did not totally match.

To drive the point home even more, Michael Horne blogging at Milwaukee World, checked voting records to see if J.B. Van Hollen himself could fall victim to his own partisan mischief. Horne finds some of the following:

...I don't think he'd pass his own test. JOHN BYRON VANHOLLEN is the same guy as JOHN B VAN HOLLEN, who once lived at 816 Chalfont Drive, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, when he served as United States Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin. But a search of "J. B. Van Hollen" (with or without the space) would not turn up his name in the state register of voters, even though he uses the initials and the space as his legal designation in court documents and when he ran for election, and in his official biography in the Wisconsin Blue Book…

And, once you find out his first name is John, things don't get much better, since when he was registered in Sun Prairie on November 5th, 2002, he went by JOHN B VAN HOLLEN, [no middle name, and a space between "Van" and "Hollen"]… Oh, by the way, it appears that Van Hollen registered at the polls, since he also voted on November 5th, 2002, on the spot, according to records. Apparently Van Hollen likes the convenience of registering at the polls -- I wonder what sort of ID he had to produce when he registered in Waunakee on September 14th, 2004 -- also an election day! That's when he signed up as JOHN BYRON VANHOLLEN -- adding a middle name, and merging his two last names into one. How perfect is that?

I wonder if someone will put him on a list and challenge his right to vote at the polls?

It now appears that Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen’s office is admitting that top officials at the Wisconsin Department of Justice consulted with Republican Party operatives regarding the filing of J.B. Van Hollen’s frivolous lawsuit against the state’s Government Accountability Board. The suit could cause as many as 1 million voters to be disenfranchised, an action that is likely to serve the political interests of the John McCain presidential campaign, for which Van Hollen serves as a state co-chair.

Shortly after the partisan suit was filed and a full week before these latest allegations of coordination, OWN filed an open records request with DOJ. In it we demanded full disclosure by the DOJ, asking for any and all documentation of communications that they may have had with Republican operatives prior to filing the partisan lawsuit. They finally admitted to such communications yesterday and today it’s time that they turn over the records that we requested a full week ago.

Wisconsin’s Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen is trying to remake himself into the very image of Florida’s infamous Katherine Harris. His filing of a frivolous lawsuit against the state’s Government Accountability Board (GAB) is little more than a politically calculated move to serve his party masters and apparently to suppress votes in November.

When the GOP didn’t get their way from the nonpartisan GAB, they turned to their highest ranking official in the state to make mischief with our most basic right as citizens. In preparation for the storm of criticism that he knew he was going to take for such a blatantly partisan action, Van Hollen taped an interview about the matter with Wisconsin Eye Wednesday. The interview raises only more questions about his actions and the potential impact on voters in November. In the interview Van Hollen, in a tellingly preemptive move, says that he wouldn’t be surprised if people accused him of filing this lawsuit because of his party affiliation. The AG “doth protest too much methinks” to borrow a famous phrase.

Obviously people are going to think that partisanship is at work because that is exactly where everything points. Van Hollen is a co-chair of the McCain presidential campaign, which stands to gain from the suppression of the voters that would be most likely impacted. Van Hollen is the highest ranking Republican in the state and his actions and argument follow exactly what his party said prior to their rejection at the nonpartisan GAB. So, yes, obviously anyone that is paying attention is going to question Van Hollen’s real motives. Even the state’s largest newspaper, which is often too milquetoast when it comes to the darlings of the right wing, flatly says that Van Hollen’s action “smells of political mischief.”

When he was running for Attorney General, JB Van Hollen made a fake lament about “frivolous” lawsuits a major part of his stump speech. After all of that grandstanding who could forget him then filing his own frivolous lawsuit because he didn’t like a hard hitting ad that was run against him? Later, after he won a very close election, he abandoned the suit and even had to pay for the other side’s legal bills. If it wasn’t clear at the beginning that the suit was frivolous, it certainly was at the conclusion of the matter.

It is within this context and pattern of behavior that we  now find J.B. Van Hollen filing what is yet another partisan politically motivated lawsuit. What makes this one so much worse is that he is doing it with taxpayer money while at the same time threatening many of those same taxpayer’s right to vote. This latest suit is against the state’s own Government Accountability Board (GAB), so Van Hollen has taxpayers paying on both ends of this one.

Today One Wisconsin Now is debuting the new comic series “McCain and Unable.” (McCainAndUnable.com)It will highlight the Bush-McCain follies, showing what would happen if the wealthy ideological soulmates were forced to go out into the real world and deal with the consequences of their failed policies.

The first episode, “McCain and Unable Go to the Gas Station,” brings the duo face to face with the record gas prices Americans have endured. In July, gas prices topped $4.11 a gallon in Wisconsin and diesel was nearly $4.80 a gallon. Average folks were suffering while John McCain and George W. Bush stood arm and arm to pass $5 billion in tax breaks for Big Oil. Apparently that wasn’t enough for John McCain and now he wants to give Big Oil another $4 billion in tax giveaways. Also consider the impact of these additional McCain-Bush policies when it comes to energy:

McCain has 29 Big Oil lobbyists working for him. At least 29 top advisers or fundraisers for McCain have lobbied for Big Oil. They have represented 4 of the 9 oil companies in the 2008 Fortune 200, including: McCain’s senior campaign adviser, Charlie Black, who is a registered lobbyist for two Russian oil companies whose firm was hired by the China National Off-Shore Oil Corporation. [Roll Call 7/18/05, Senate Lobbying Disclosure Records]

Just over a week ago, the Institute for One Wisconsin launched an email campaign asking concerned citizens to send a message to the board members of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC). To date over 10,000 communications have been generated in that very short time. This is just another example of how people all across the state are sick of their increasingly partisan behavior. Outgoing UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley accurately stated that WMC has been taken over by “political extremists” and that they have created a “toxic” political environment in Wisconsin. Obviously he is not alone in making that assessment as evidenced by large numbers of emails sent out by concerned Wisconsinites.

The “political extremists” that Wiley describes are apparently so concerned about the email campaign that one of them decided to send his own communication to the WMC board members. In it he pleads that they should not let the emails disrupt their fundraising drive for the ads that they plan to run in the coming months. In an email to WMC board members, WMC Vice President for Government Relations James Buchen said the following:

It appears that the email campaign is an effort to disrupt WMC's fundraising drive for the WMC Issues Mobilization Council, Inc. We hope that this will not be the case. We hope that Directors will continue to show the resolve and fortitude demonstrated at the June Board Retreat when the Board voted unanimously to launch our fall issue campaign.