One Wisconsin Now

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]