Tag Archives: progressive politics

Prosser’s victory

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I’ve experienced JoAnne Kloppenburg’s defeat three times. On Tuesday night I was following the AP county by county reporting, watching vote totals see-saw as each county closed and an AP reporter added data to the complete report they were compiling. I kept a running total of unreported precincts by county and put a wet finger in the air from time to time to see which way the wind was blowing. It was a close race, but by bedtime I was pretty sure Prosser had it in the bag. I texted my friend at 11:33pm, “She’s gonna lose… Waukesha will provide a steam roller finish for prodded” “Prostate” “Whatever” “A real heartbreak” (I was having problems with my iPhone’s automatic spelling correction feature).

At that time there were ninety precincts in Waukesha County and two in Milwaukee unreported to the AP. The race was a dead heat. Waukesha County is largely right wing. It didn’t matter which of those precincts hadn’t reported. I was convinced they’d swamp Kloppenburg.

Amazingly enough, when I woke up, Kloppenburg had won! AP claimed that all of the Waukesha County precincts had reported and the totals showed a razor thin margin for JoAnne Kloppenburg. Clearly there would be a recount, but based on the AP story the Kloppenburg camp was in high spirits. Who knew that the AP report was wrong? It didn’t matter. The news quickly spread that Prosser had hired Ben Ginsberg, the attorney who spearheaded the Bush recount efforts in Florida in 2024:

This was bad news indeed, and my sense was that Ginsberg, working his magic here in Fitzwalkerstan, would out-class any hired gun that Kloppenburg could bring in. For me, this was the second defeat. Later I learned that Marc Elias, who headed up the Franken recount efforts in Minnesota had joined forces with Kloppenburg, but that faint candle was quickly snuffed out. The Waukesha County Clerk reported that the canvas revealed that Brookfield votes had not been posted. Instead of a razor thin margin of 200 or so votes separating the opponents, Prosser now had a comfortable margin of 7,000 votes.

I’m quite confident that the Brookfield numbers as finally reported are correct, because the BrookfieldPatch reported those numbers on election night. I’m also confident that there’s something rotten in Waukesha County because the County Clerk has worked directly for Prosser and was granted immunity during the caucus scandals a few years back. Deke Rivers has a good blog post on the welter of issues that, regardless of the Brookfield botch-job, make it impossible to trust the Waukesha County results without an independent investigation. He says,

This error seems more than fishy given the past working relationship Kathy Nickolaus has had with David Prosser. For thirteen years Nickolaus worked for the Wisconsin State Assembly Republican Caucus as a data analyst and computer specialist. During that time Prosser served in powerful elected positions in the State Assembly.

Before Kathy Nicklous resigned in 2024 from her partisan job she was granted immunity to testify about her role in the caucus. The Republican Caucus was under investigation for using state resources (tax dollars) to secretly run campaigns.

There is no way that I buy into Kathy Nickolaus’ near-tearful explanation of how Brookfield was misplaced when counting and adding the numbers.

I do believe her when she says that the Brookfield numbers were somehow omitted from the initial reports. I also think that it’s likely that the whole Brookfield thing is a red herring and that the Republicans are using it to distract our attention from some other shady manipulation of the process that they’ve concealed. But if we find evidence that they’ve stolen votes from Kloppenburg, or added votes for Prosser, or some other way abused the process it seems unlikely that it will matter. Seven thousand votes is a pretty big deficit to overcome.

State Senate Minority leader Mark Miller says,

It stretches the bounds of credibility to think that over 14,300 votes were somehow “overlooked” until two days after the election.

Based on the partisan, political history of Ms. Nickolaus and the serious concerns that have been raised, by other Waukesha County officials, about the quality of her election administration and the possibility for fraud, an independent investigation of her conduct and the county’s election results is not just warranted but urgently demanded to protect the integrity of our electoral system in Wisconsin.

Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca says,

The partisan, political history of Ms. Nickolaus and the serious concerns about the quality of her performance found in an audit raises the question of whether an investigation is warranted. The public deserves to know that the votes were counted properly.

County Clerk Nickolaus, who worked in the Assembly Republican Caucus under then Minority Leader and Speaker David Prosser, has a history of clashing with county officials over her election responsibilities. She has drawn criticism from the County Board Chairman and other County Supervisors as recently as January for her unwillingness to adhere to audit recommendations. Internal Audit Manager Lori Schubert indicated that after last fall’s elections that Nickolaus needed to improve security and back-up procedures. Director of Administration Norman Cummings late last year indicated that they have not been able to verify that her system is secure.

Her approach raises questions about the integrity of the election to the highest court in our state

Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin tweets, “To assure public confidence in our election process, I have asked AG Holder to investigate the handling of vote records in Waukesha County.” So I guess it isn’t over until it’s over and even we pessimists must hang-in until the bitter end. The Kloppenburg for Justice Committee is accepting contributions to fund a recount.

Madison

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Anna Grindrod Feeny’s video (above) provides an objective framework for the rallies and protests. Here’s my take…

The State of Wisconsin is now a battleground. Tea Party conservatives and their corporate backers allied with the Republican party have taken a stand against organized labor. Wisconsin has a Republican Governor, a Republican dominated Senate, and a Republican dominated Assembly. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court justices are elected for ten year terms and during the last several election cycles corporate cash has flooded the state with predictable results. Wisconsin state government belongs to the special interests so it’s understandable why it seemed like a good idea to break the back of organized labor here.

For the last week I’ve watched the struggle play out on the streets and in the Capitol. Governor Scott Walker drafted a “Budget Repair Bill” that went far beyond the fiscal concerns that it’s nominally supposed to address. One of the many evil aspects of the bill is its effect on the ability of public employee unions to negotiate the terms and conditions of their members employment. Here’s the bill and the Legislative Reference Bureau analysis (pdf).

So the unions took a look at that and said, well… no. That’s not how it’s going to be. On Tuesday 13,000 people came to the Capitol to protest. On Wednesday there were 20,000, on Thursday–25,000, Friday–40,000, and on Saturday, seventy thousand people or more protested the Governor’s hubris. The Governor’s supporters appeared on Saturday too. About 2500 people gathered on the sidewalk at the King Street entrance of the Capitol to listen to speeches by a local Madison right wing newsy, Andrew Breibart, and famous political personality and pundit for hire Joe the Plumber.

I’ve been taking pictures and aggregating them in a couple of albums on Facebook (“This is what dogmocracy looks like,” and “Signs of spring”) as well as in a lengthy and by now repetitious stream on Flickr. It was probably a lot more fun to be there and take the pictures than it is to look at them. Leave a comment if you’re somehow blocked from seeing them, and I’ll try to get permissions sorted out. The whole Facebook thing is a black art from my perspective.

I only took one picture of the Tea Party people. I figured they’d generate their own news and with Andrew Breitbart and Fox news on their side, the spin would be too dizzying for me. In true Breitbart fashion, a couple of pieces of disinformation have already surfaced that have the whole right wing echo chamber simply in a tizzy. It seems that a Doctor has written fake sick leave excuses for teachers! Or not. When Breitbart’s involved the truth-meter buries the needle at zero. Michelle Malkin also came up with a photo of some creep-a-zoids carrying signs laced with profanity. Since I’ve spent hours and hours on site and saw nothing like those signs, I’d bet dollars to donuts that they’re part of the Breitbart team’s Saturday afternoon special disinformation service. Just guessing, you understand.

Tomorrow there’s a press conference at the Madison Senior Center addressing the negative impact the Governor’s Budget Repair Bill 11 will have on our elderly and disabled populations in Wisconsin, by pointing out that the passage of Bill 11 will give Governor Walker’s administration unprecedented authority to make sweeping changes to Medicaid programs such as SeniorCare Rx, Family Care, BadgerCare, ADRC’s, the Benefit Specialists program and services provided by OCI and the Board on Aging and Long-Term Care, without public input or approval from the state legislature. Weather permitting, I’ll be there and hope to share a blog post about this aspect of Governor Walker’s budget planning.

Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill Protest from Matt Wisniewski on Vimeo.

Food Safety

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That damn FDA, founded a hundred years ago, just to make sure the milk bottles you got were full of milk and not white paint and rat shit.
– Jon Stewart

Corporate shills and Senatorial obstructionists have taken a last whack at the Food Safety bill. Filthy conditions in food plants will continue unabated if the bill isn’t separated from the moribund omnibus spending bill. That bill became a grab bag for end of year business, and then, faced with obstructionist challenges, it was quietly killed. The Food Safety bill may have died with it.

Not everybody in these parts thought that the legislation was a good idea. Small organic operations reacted warily, as did the guys who recently shipped a billion eggs contaminated with salmonella. An amendment that addressed the organic local producers’ concerns was added to the bill and it passed. People were generally satisfied that locavore and small farm concerns had been addressed. Then came the oopsie. The Senate bill required a return trip to the House because of some spending provision. Back it went. The House worked their magic and sent it back to the Senate. The Senate, now requiring one more kick at it because the House had touched it, bundled it into the omnibus spending bill and there it remains.

What I liked about the bill was its nod to the role of government in our society. When you sell Gordon Gekko a meat packing plant, you know that there will be some overhead issues. This bill was designed to reduce the number of people poisoned by the greedy, rapacious whackos in charge of corporate food. Tom Harkin currently has the bill on life support in the Senate cloak room. It’s anybody’s guess whether his resuscitative efforts will succeed before the lame duck session of congress expires.

Ben Manski the Progressive Choice for the 77th Assembly District

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Ben Manski provides a progressive alternative in the best tradition of Midge Miller and Spencer Black.

A matter of some urgency

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“Not one dime! Not until Democrats pass healthcare.”

That is what DNC fundraisers calling on Betsy Devine are hearing. In her blog today (see “The Blind Leading the Democrats“) Betsy takes a clear look at the Democrats’ success in 2024 with progressive party leadership, and contrasts that with the stumbling shift to “the center” that returned the US to a one-party system, a party of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations.

If we don’t stand up for progressive reforms now, by 2024 the swing to the right will be so dramatic that Glenn Beck will finally be able to fasten the SS insignia and the swastika armband on his uniform.