One Wisconsin Now

Earlier this week the Capital Times newspaper called for the recall of ethically challenged Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler. They point to her blatant violations of very clear conflicts of interest rules prior to taking her seat on the high court. Her serious and repeated violations of judicial ethics rules are not the only reason for them making the call. They also cite her dishonesty with the public up until the point that she won the election. She continually denied that she did anything wrong during that time and put out many misleading statements to suggest and actually say as much.

The editorial further cites the fact that she now has so many conflicts on the high court that she is not effective for the job which she now holds. The Capital Times says that the slap on the wrist that she got from her colleagues was not sufficient for the violations that she committed. They suggest a recall election in the editorial because such serious decisions do not belong in secret deliberations but in full public view with full public participation. The Capital Times suggests that the only way to properly accomplish this is through a recall of Annette Ziegler.

As ruthless as F. Jim Sensenbrenner ruled while the GOP ran Congress, it's hard not to take some satisfaction in his plummeting influence. But then he goes an does something that warrants mentioning, despite his eroding relevance to the national debate.

The midwest has suffered greatly during the recent floods. Since late-May 24 deaths are blamed on the weather and 40,000 have been displaced from their homes.

Yesterday, the Congress passed a modest $2.65 billion midwest flood relief plan. Twelve members showed utter indifference to the victims and those in need by voting against the bill.

Sensenbrenner, you guessed it, was one of the 12.

Unbelievable.

One Wisconsin Now was proud to help sponsor a Milwaukee stop during David Sirota’s book tour. David Sirota is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of the New York Times best selling, Hostile Takeover. Sirota came to the Schwartz bookstore on Downer last night to discuss the issues addressed in his new book, The Uprising. It is an investigative look at America’s new populist movement. To research for the book, Sirota traveled all across the country interviewing people on the front lines of the movement from both the left and the right.

About 40 people attended Sirota’s presentation Tuesday night. He covered the over arching points from his book regarding this new populist movement. He talked about the broad frustration with our government among regular working people and how it was fostering the movement on all ends of the political spectrum. He pointed to the success of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee who won in some very conservative states using an economic populist message. He commented that this should be a hopeful sign that regular people across the political spectrum are beginning to understand that they have been locked out of our current system.

Yesterday, the John McCain camp issued a press release in conjunction with a new ad touting Sen. McCain’s record on the environment. See the ad for yourself on the YouTube(s).

“Five years ago,” says the ad, “John McCain stood up to the President and sounded the alarm on global warming.” As proof of his maverickiness, the creators of the ad were able to scrape together just a single UPI article titled, “McCain climate views clash with GOP.” The article is actually less than a month old. The political director for the Sierra Club said Sen. McCain "is using the environment as a way to portray himself as being different from George Bush. But the reality is that he isn't."

We already know that the J.B. Van Hollen administration at the Wisconsin Department of Justice has been engaged in a war of partisans vs. law enforcement professionals. First he chased out the universally respected head of the Division of Criminal Investigation, Jim Warren. Next Van Hollen and his partisan hires began targeting other nationally recognized crime fighters, including Carolyn Kelly, the first women in the nation to serve as a state fire marshal. We are learning more about the dysfunction of the J.B. Van Hollen administration after the release of a 300-page file and new comments from Kelly.

Van Hollen released the file responding to a request from the Wisconsin State Journal. Van Hollen said that he felt threatened by Kelly emails even though several of her colleagues said that she wasn't seriously threatening him. This view was shared by her former supervisor, Jim Warren, the head of DCI. Why would Van Hollen feel so threatened from a well regarded law enforcement official when everyone close to her knew that her emails were not serious? Is J.B. super sensitive or could he be just a little paranoid? Remember, this is the same guy that was afraid to go to the GOP National Convention without body guards and once declared that terrorists were running around in Wisconsin.

Shortly after Annette Ziegler was elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court she closed her campaign committee and took her seat on the high court. Not so for the latest Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) empty suit Michael Gableman. He has started campaign fundraising some 10 years early. He is scheduled to have a fundraiser in Pewaukee this evening at a private residence. The going rate to meet WMC’s latest rubber stamp is between $100 and $500. It would be interesting to see what types of people show up and exactly what special interests they may represent. Perhaps my standards are too high, but there is something unseemly about a Justice-elect having a special interest pow-wow only weeks before he takes his seat on the high court.

The contact person for the Gableman fundraiser is Republican insider Mary Stitt. It is no surprise to find her name associated with a Gableman fundraiser. After all Gableman did his share of fundraising for Republican causes, some of it appears to include calls to her. Stitt’s phone number is listed as being one of the questionable calls that he made from a state phone when he was Ashland County District Attorney. The record actually shows that he called her at least 11 times. It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall at tonight’s event. Maybe we could actually catch them in one honest moment as they reminisce about the good old days of fundraising for Scott McCallum. Maybe we could finally get a straight answer about Gableman’s questionable calls to her and others. As nice as it would be, I have a funny feeling that the event will amount to little more than a special interest love fest. Apparently it is never too early to have one of those, even if you are preparing to take a seat on the state’s highest court.

Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen has had a rough couple of weeks recently. First he and his partisan hires have been waging a war on the professionals in the Department of Justice. Van Hollen has demoted some of the most respected law enforcement officers in the nation while at the same time actually driving one of them right out of his job. All of this has been publicly documented on the front pages of the major newspapers in our state. His handling of the professionals at DOJ has been so bad as to warrant criticism even from right wing Milwaukee talker Jeff Wagner.

Van Hollen followed up all of his self inflicted personnel problems with yet another gaffe that garnered more negative attention in the papers. After One Wisconsin Now filed a complaint with his office about Michael Gableman’s questionable use of a state phone, Van Hollen chose to help run out the clock for his fellow Republican. He did this even though he promised to hold public officials accountable during his 2006 campaign.

Once again John Torinus has written a column trying his best to minimize the serious violations of Justice Annette Ziegler. Like Ziegler, Torinus is willfully ignoring many factors in the unprecedented decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court to discipline one of their own. Once again he fails to inform readers of his own conflict while at the same time putting hypocrisy on full display.

John Torinus again failed to tell his readers that he is hardly an objective viewer of the Ziegler scandal. He is a long-time board member for corporate lobby, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC). They shattered all kinds of records by spending unprecedented millions to get Ziegler elected. They not only spent more than Ziegler did on her own campaign but they spent more than both campaigns combined. To present his severely biased views of the Ziegler scandal without making full disclosure of this conflict is deliberately misleading.

Several months ago One Wisconsin Now filed a complaint with the new Government Accountability Board regarding Supreme Court Justice Elect-Michael Gableman. At the center of the issue are what appear to be political calls that he made from a state phone when he was the Ashland County District Attorney. Calls were made to Republican fundraisers, the McCallum for Governor Campaign, the Republican Party of Wisconsin, and to the campaign of Republican Attorney General Candidate Vince Biskupic. Doing political work on state time and with state resources is illegal. To make matters worse, these calls were made at a time when the newspapers were full of stories about the caucus scandal in the Legislature.

The GAB refused to take up the complaint saying that they were not allowed to investigate matters that happened more than three years ago. OWN then forwarded the complaint to Burnett County District Attorney Ken Kutz and Ashland County District Attorney Sean Duffy. Kutz decided not to investigate the matter because it did not actually happen in his county. Sean Duffy, a long-time Gableman supporter, said that he did not have jurisdiction even though the actions actually did happen in his county. Duffy suggested that OWN file the complaint with the State Attorney General’s office. Late last week OWN received a letter from J.B. Van Hollen’s office saying that they cannot investigate the complaint and directed us right back to the District Attorneys. Shortly after Van Hollen’s refusal to investigate, the six-year statute of limitations expired.

It was appalling to see Sen. John McCain in Louisiana to try and distance himself for the horrors of George W. Bush and the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina. Considering how McCain voted to shield Bush from accountability for this national disgrace, he might have thought twice. Consider McCain’s record protecting Bush and abandoning those in need when it comes to Katrina.

McCain Twice Voted Against a Commission to Examine Government Response to Katrina. In 2005 and 2006, McCain voted against creating a congressional commission to examine the federal, state and local response to Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Region.  Both motions failed. [H.R. 2862, Vote #229, 9/14/2005; H.R. 4297, Vote #6, 2/2/2006] 

In an editorial today the Tomah Journal highlights a case that came before the Wisconsin Supreme Court last week. The case involved the family of a three-year-old boy suffering from brain cancer and a large HMO. The same day that the court slapped fellow Justice Annette Ziegler on the wrist for her willful violation of ethics rules, the court narrowly ruled for the family of the young boy. In a surprise to no one Ziegler dissented favoring the corporation.

The editorial reminds its readers that the state’s corporate lobby, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), spent unprecedented millions on her campaign. Even in the midst of facing a Judicial Conduct Panel last year over her conflicts, she still refused to step off a case involving her benefactors at WMC. It should be no surprise that she ruled against the young boy and his family and for the big corporate interests.

What follows in an op-ed submission following my continued disgust with the media’s reporting on conditions in Iraq.

On Wednesday the State Supreme Court issued its ruling in the disciplinary case against Justice Annette Ziegler. The matter has been a dubious first in the history of the high court. As expected, Ziegler’s colleagues took the recommendation of the Judicial Commission and the Judicial Conduct Panel and gave her a public reprimand, which was the very least form of discipline possible.

Ziegler’s immediate response after her colleagues handed down the decision, seemed like it was lifted directly from her non-responsive and misleading campaign statements. In her reaction Wednesday, she said that she was pleased that the Supreme Court “confirmed” that her “mistake” was “inadvertent” and that her family didn’t benefit financially from her violations. Her canned response lacked contrition and totally ignored the more pointed observations of her colleagues. They affirmed that her violations did constitute misconduct and that they were “serious and willful.” Further, they spoke of the “gravity with which this court views Judge Ziegler’s violation”.

Although John McCain claims the mantle of “reformer” he has chosen to surround himself with lobbyists for all sorts of questionable interests. We also know that John McCain has admitted that he still needs an education when it comes to the economy. Given those two facts, why would anyone be surprised that he chose Phil Gramm as his teacher. He is not only a former colleague but he has also been a lobbyist for the mortgage industry. MSNBC is reporting that while Gramm was advising John McCain about his economic policy, he was also being paid by a Swiss bank to lobby Congress about the U.S. mortgage crisis.

When Phil Gramm chaired the Senate Banking Committee, he wrote and passed deregulatory legislation in multiple industries. Some economists point to both this and general lack of enforcement as not only a key reason for the mortgage crisis but also for its spread to other sectors of finance. Given this history it shouldn’t be a surprise that John McCain has proposed even more deregulation and nothing of substance to help individuals that are struggling.

In April One Wisconsin Now filed a complaint against Burnett County Judge Michael Gableman with the new Government Accountability Board (GAB). The complaint centered on what appear to be political fundraising phone calls that he made from the Ashland County District Attorney’s office. These troubling actions took place at the same time that the caucus scandal was in the news. One would think that a lawyer would know that he should not give an appearance of campaigning on state time and with state resources. Given the fact that Gableman’s actions took place at the height of the caucus scandal makes them even more troubling.

The phone records that OWN obtained show Gableman calling several McCallum Campaign operatives just before hosting a fundraiser. He made calls to McCallum’s top fund-raising aides, his campaign office, the state Republican Party, donors who gave to McCallum, and the campaign office of Vince Biskupic. These calls all took place only weeks before Gableman hosted a June 2002 fund-raiser for then-Governor McCallum. Only two months later McCallum appointed Gableman to an open judgeship in Burnett County, even though he never applied and did not go through the prescribed process.