Progressive Thinking

MADISON - I’m going to be traveling all over the state next week, so I hope you can attend one of my events if you’re in Milwaukee, La Crosse, Eau Claire, Wausau, Green Bay, Appleton, Sheboygan, Waukesha, or Janesville.

The Milwaukee event is Thursday, March 17, and is sponsored by the Milwaukee Press Club and is on “Keeping Public Records Public.” I’ll be on a panel with Attorney General Brad Schimel, so I may tangle with him a bit. The event is from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Lake Express High-Speed Ferry Terminal, 2330 S. Lincoln Memorial Drive.

The other events are all panels sponsored by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, and they deal with how to use the open records law. The Council has created Facebook event pages for each of the stops for those on Facebook who care to share them with others.

The stops and locations are listed here:

Day 1: Tuesday, March 15

2 pm: La Crosse
Local sponsor: La Crosse Tribune
Venue: La Crosse Public Library, 800 Main St.

7 pm: Eau Claire
Local sponsor: Eau Claire Leader-Telegram
Venue: UW-Eau Claire, Centennial Hall, Room 1614

Day 2: Wednesday, March 16

10 am: Wausau
Local sponsor: Wausau Daily Herald
Venue: Marathon County Public Library; 300 N. 1st St. Wausau

2 pm, Green Bay
Local sponsor: Green Bay Press-Gazette
Venue: Brown County Public Library, 515 Pine St., Green Bay

7:30 Appleton
Local sponsor: Appleton Post-Crescent
Venue: Appleton Public Library, 225 N Oneida St.

Day 3: Thursday, March 17

10 am, Sheboygan
Local sponsor: Sheboygan Press
Venue: Sheboygan Public Library, 710 N 8th St.

2 pm, Waukesha
Local sponsor: Schott, Bublitz and Engel, S.C.
Venue: Waukesha Public Library, 321 W Wisconsin Ave.

7 pm, Janesville
Local sponsor: Janesville Gazette
Venue: Blackhawk Technical College. 6004 S. County G, Janesville, Room 1400B

I hope to see you at one of these events, before I wear out!

Media reports last month revealed state officials at the highest levels have known for years of attacks and sexual assaults at Lincoln Hills School for Boys without either contacting or fully disclosing the details to concerned local officials or even the family members of the victims. This mistreatment of inmates and the underlying issues it reveals in DOC cause twelve legislators to request independent investigation by Legislative Audit Bureau.

MADISON - The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in February that in repeated cases stretching back at least four years, state officials at the highest levels have known of attacks and sexual assaults at Lincoln Hills School for Boys. What's more, they admit no one bothered telling parents and local officials about the assaults on teenagers at a troubled prison.

The pattern of not sharing glaring problems continued for years, according to leaders in two counties, state officials, former Lincoln Hills staff and a parent of a juvenile inmate.

The whole mess was uncovered last December when federal agents raided the school and a massive federal and state investigation at the Northwoods prison and the sister facility on its campus, Copper Lake School for Girls went public.

Gov. Scott Walker's administration initially blamed the problems on front-line staff alone. But soon it became clear it was a larger failure at the Department of Corrections (DOC) and the Walker administration that had been covered up. Senate Republican legislators have since shirked their legal responsibility to investigate.

The appalling treatment of juveniles at Lincoln Hills is only the tip of the iceberg. Underlying grave issues of safety, overcrowding, repeat offenders, mental illness among inmates and management issues exist in our corrections system that are costing the state in dollars and safety of residents. It is time to bring these problems into the light of day.

On Tuesday, Sen. Kathleen Vinehout (D-Alma) was joined by Sen. Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) and ten other state legislators in a written request to Joint Legislative Audit Committee co-chairs Sen. Rob Cowles (R-Green Bay) and Rep. Samantha Kirkland (R-Salem) for a public hearing to approve an audit of DOC by the independent Legislative Audit Bureau (LAB).

“The Department of Corrections is facing severe difficulties that require our immediate response,” said Senator Vinehout Tuesday. “I call upon my fellow members of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee to approve an audit of DOC. This audit is necessary to address grave issues of safety, overcrowding, repeat offenders, mental illness among inmates and management issues that are costing the state in dollars and safety of residents.”

Vinehout authored a letter requesting the Joint Audit Committee Co-Chairs to schedule a hearing to consider an audit of DOC. The letter was co-signed by over 40 legislators from around the state. The legislators share concern related to a number of issues including staff shortages, forced overtime and the reports of appalling treatment of juveniles at Lincoln Hills.

“The well-respected, nonpartisan, Legislative Audit Bureau has the know-how to understand the systemic problems faced by DOC and help lawmakers craft solutions,” said Vinehout. “A comprehensive program evaluation could identify challenging safety issues before people are hurt; help policy makers target resources to alleviate overcrowding; and spur needed changes in mental health treatment and the reintegration system to address the extraordinarily high number of those returning to prison.”

“Lives are at stake – the lives of staff, children and adult inmates. Enough anecdotal evidence exists to give us stark warning signs – something must be done. A nonpartisan audit could provide direction to move forward from the current crisis,” concluded Vinehout.

Sen. Kathleen Vinehout writes about the frenetic pace at which bills are moving through the legislative process. Members of the public are working hard to get their voices heard on bills that have real impact on their lives, but this speed coupled with lack of information leads to poor legislative decisions.

MADISON - “All your work has made a real difference,” Linda, my staffer, told Mrs. Gifford. She and her husband traveled to Madison to personally deliver letters to every Senator.

“Well, aren’t you nice,” Mrs. Gifford responded. “You just made my day!”

Twenty-eight minutes before the vote on a bill that would make significant changes in high capacity well rules, the Senate Agriculture, Small Business and Tourism committee clerk came to my office and said that bill was removed from the list to be voted out of committee.

As he left our office, he passed Barbara Gifford and her husband Jim who came to ask me to vote against the bill. For the moment, it looked like the Giffords were successful.

Senate Bill 239 is one of three bills that would alter the way Wisconsin grants permits to drill a high capacity well – a well that pumps 70 or more gallons per minute of groundwater. The bill prevents the DNR from reviewing existing high-cap well permits making them approved forever.

Wisconsin’s Constitution protects our water for the use of all residents. This bill would change things to “first come, first serve” - or, as one farmer described it to me, “the first one with the straw in gets to keep the most water.”

Mrs. Gifford lives in a part of the state where high capacity well operations have shrunk lakes, dried up springs, slowed flowing rivers and reduced drinking water supplies.

Some lawmakers did the hard work of balancing policy between the use of water for industry and agriculture and water supplies for drinking and recreation. Senators Cowles (R-Green Bay) and Miller (D-Monona) each wrote thoughtful bills to make real strides in solving the problem.

But SB 239, which is being rushed through the Legislature, simply gave everything to industry with little thought to the future – or the Wisconsin Constitution.

Even with little notice about the committee vote, Mrs. Gifford and her friends slowed the bill by their public advocacy.

Speed and secrecy dominate Wisconsin’s Capitol these days. The practice to vote bills out of committee the same day of its public hearing has regrettably become routine.

Public input from folks like the Giffords is vital in a democracy. Public input answers the question, “What will this bill do?” Lawmakers often learn a bill will do things the author never intended.

One bill with unintended consequences is Senate Bill 747, which changes the practice of massage therapy, authored by Senator Harsdorf (R-River Falls) and Representative Tittl (R-Manitowoc).

The bill appeared on the official Senate Agriculture, Small Business and Tourism committee calendar just one day before the public hearing. The public hearing and the vote out of committee happened the next day and left dozens of unanswered questions.

The bill would make it a crime – with possible 90 days jail time – for anyone who practiced massage therapy or “bodywork” without a license.

I had only a short time to talk with massage therapists about the bill. After I explained what the bill did, both women I called said “WHAT? Put massage therapists in jail? That makes no sense.” Indeed.

Senate Bill 747 would add a number of activities to the practice of massage therapy. Using elastic supportive tape, kneading soft tissue, stretching, even giving advice for self – would require a license. If you did these things without a license, you might go to jail. No one knew how much this would cost.

“The bill should not be here, before us now because we don’t know the cost,” reminded Senator Erpenbach.

Senator Taylor pleaded with the committee chair to postpone the vote. “We may be able to come up with a solution but we can’t do this with a quick hearing and exec in one day.” Like many Senators, she had two hearings scheduled at the same time and a host of other issues demanding attention.

“I can’t get input [from constituents], Senator Taylor told the committee. “Seriously, I hope we would delay this.”

The bill passed on a party line vote.

Speed and secrecy almost always leads to poor legislation. Public hearings exist to gather the public’s ideas, expertise and values. The result of sharing information between lawmakers and the public is better decisions for everyone.

MADISON - The last day of the Joint Committee on Finance (JFC) state budget work in the summer of 2015 was expected to be a day with some surprises. One surprise no one could have anticipated was the inclusion of page after page of open records changes. Limiting not only nearly every Legislative office record, the changes also would have closed state public agency records and the Governors records as well. Maybe that is why we celebrate “Sunshine Week” every year, to remind us all of the value of open government and the importance of transparency.

To close open records was monumental, epic and dangerous. As JFC Democrats we were given only 15 minutes to talk about the Republican motion that gutted open records. I spent every single second of my time talking about the mistake of the open records change. I remember saying that in the future when these Legislators left office and were looking back, this vote, to gut the open records law, would be their biggest regret because of the damage it would cause the people of Wisconsin.

Not one Republican vote was swayed by that argument and every single Republican on the Committee voted in favor of gutting Wisconsin open records law, including Representative Czaja and Senator Harsdorf. So of course it was a little disappointing that the Wisconsin Newspaper Association honored these two Legislators with awards.

Wisconsin had some of the first open records laws in the country. Decisions making sure records of the government were open for inspection in Wisconsin are almost as old as the state itself. As we are about to embark on Sunshine Week 2016 to celebrate open government, I hope we will all reflect on the 2015 budget open records crisis and remember how quickly the rules can change if we take them for granted.

I have always been a defender of a strong Wisconsin Open Records law, even when I was sued because I would not give out personally indefinable information of constituents who had contacted my office. The ability to make a decision as a custodian of public records and the counter balance of being able to bring suit when you disagree is central to the Wisconsin open records law and I hope it will be for years to come. Let’s celebrate Sunshine Week 2016 with extra vigilance given the summer of 2015 action.

For more information on Wisconsin’s Open Records law contact my office at 608-266-6670 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 888-549-0027.

MADISON - Last Friday night, I went over to Lake Mills to speak with a great local group called “Progressives Informed and Engaged.” (They’re acronym is PIE, and true to their name, they brought five delicious homemade pies, and I sampled each one!)

Here’s the text of the speech I gave. There’s a lot of hope in it, so please take a look:

Beating back the counterrevolution in Wisconsin

This week, our ace research director, Mike Buelow, dug out some information that no other media outlet has reported yet on some of Walker’s big donors who exceeded the legal limit in their donations to him. To see who’s on the naughty list, just click here:

Eleven contributors prompted $28K in penalties paid by Walker campaign

Meanwhile, back at the Capitol, Walker was rewarding some of his other donors, even as he assaulted Wisconsin’s great tradition of local control and home rule. Landlords and bill collectors were among the winners—and tenants and consumers among the losers:

Walker approves more laws to limit local control

On Tuesday, we unveiled our “Influence Peddler of the Month,” and it’s none other than Kurt Bauer, who heads Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), which is the most powerful outside group inside the Capitol. You can read all about him here:

Influence peddler of the month - Kurt Bauer

In the next few weeks, we’ll be releasing a comprehensive indictment of the anti-democratic and anti-good government laws passed in the last five years of this Walker counterrevolution, laws that were backed by WMC and other special interests.

Please send us a tax-deductible gift today to help cover our research and to support the urgent work that we’re doing to save democracy in Wisconsin: www.wisdc.org/donate

I look forward to hearing from you shortly.

***

P.S. You can make your tax-deductible gift simply by clicking here (www.wisdc.org/donate) or by mailing it in to us the old-fashioned way at 203 S. Peterson St, Suite 100, Madison, WI 53703. Either way, we really appreciate it!

For different reasons and in different ways, both the Democrats and Republicans are missing something. Both are convinced their own world view is superior, both are slaves to special interests, and both seem oblivious to the fact that most people embrace elements of both world views.

ALTOONA, WI - I’m not one of those who thinks you can’t tell apart the two major political parties in America. I don’t buy for a second that they are two wings of the same bird.

Today’s Republicans and Democrats have very real and very substantial differences. But both parties have been corrupted and each is failing the country in its own way.

On the surface, Republicans and Democrats talk and act differently. Their words and actions differ so much because below ground their core values conflict and they don’t see eye to eye on how the world works.

Republicans concentrate on the individual. They emphasize self-reliance. Successful people are self-made. Achievement comes from discipline and individual initiative. Failure is the fault of individual weakness or lack of effort, not a scarcity of opportunity or the absence of social justice.

Democrats focus on the community. They stress how interdependent we are. Those who succeed stand on the shoulders of countless others. Advancement depends on many helping hands. Creating opportunity for one — and helping up those who fall — is the responsibility of all.

For at least the last 30 or 40 years, just about every step Republicans take and every move they make has been justified on the grounds of four core principles that fit comfortably on a bumper sticker. Less government. Lower taxes. Individual liberty.Safety and security through strength.

Of course, today’s Republicans have an infidelity problem. There’s the dirty little secret that the biggest expansion of the federal government in the last half-century was largely the GOP’s doing. And it’s the richest who enjoy the lowest tax rates. Republicans used to be for local control but aren’t anymore. They no longer act on the belief that the best government is the one closest to the people.

Your average Democrat, on the other hand, does not summon an overarching principle or core value when explaining a stance or justifying an action. Democrats prefer facts, and have large collections of them. Problem is, when facts and values collide, most people will discard the facts and hold on tight to their values.

The Democratic Party is an amalgamation of a dizzying array of issues and causes and constituencies, the sum total of which does not add up to a governing majority in most parts of the country. Think of the group behavior of Democrats and you are reminded more of cats or rabbits than bees or geese. There’s even a metaphor commonly used to describe this trait that runs particularly strong in Democrats. They are said to each be in their own issue silo.

Having grown up on a farm, I can say from personal observation that silos are no fit place to live. They are cramped and cold and dirty. They work well for storing feed for cattle, not so well for storing the hopes and dreams of Democrats.

For different reasons and in different ways, both the Democrats and Republicans are missing something. Both are convinced their own world view is superior, and both seem oblivious to the fact that most people embrace elements of both world views. Most people put great value on discipline and personal responsibility, but also see the importance of lending a helping hand and making sure that everyone gets a fair shake. Few love paying taxes, but most see the sense of pooling our money to pay to do those things that need to be done together.

The future belongs to the party that figures out that, philosophically speaking, we’re mutts not purebreds. And reconciles itself to the unpleasant fact that we see how both parties are slaves to special interests. They favor different constituencies, but they both cater religiously to those constituencies. The future belongs to the party willing to truly dedicate itself to making the government and the economy work for all of us, not just a few of us.

Now there is a core principle — making the government and economy work for all of us, not just a few of us — that fits comfortably on a bumper sticker. Maybe it can be plastered on all the silos.

Wisconsin should follow the lead of Minnesota and make crucial investment in all levels of education. During a recent legislative forum in Chippewa Falls, Rep. Kathy Bernier (R-Chippewa Falls) walked out because of comments made comparing Minnesota and Wisconsin. Sen. Kathleen Vinehout shares why the conversation was important to the overall discussion of school funding.

CHIPPEWA FALLS, WI - “We hired a great inorganic chemistry professor last year,” Mike, a UW-River Falls chemistry professor, told me. “Unfortunately she’s leaving in May for St. Olaf.” I visited St. Olaf in Northfield, Minnesota. They have a great chemistry department.

Mike told me his department used to have 15 professors. They now have 11 – soon to be 10. They plan to replace the person leaving but it’s getting harder to recruit and retain faculty.

The consequences of deep budget cuts to education are disparate but all around us.

Deep budget cuts to the UW system results in fewer course offerings and programs, larger classes and less staff. UW Extension is proposing to remove extension agents from many rural counties. The UW Madison Ag program announced the loss of the only dairy sheep program in the country. Faculty are moving on to greener pastures.

There is a similar story in K-12 education.

I spoke with Katie, an Eau Claire special education teacher who serves on the district’s compensation committee. The committee is working to find money to keep teachers. Katie said, “No raise in seven years is really hard for a lot of families.” Katie worked with an “amazing” special education teacher hired seven years ago who makes less than recently hired teachers.

Like so many other school districts, Eau Claire is considering options for a fall referendum. With declining state aid and rising costs, people across the state have voted to raise property taxes to keep their schools operating.

Alma passed a 38% increase in the school portion of property taxes to pay for a new furnace and keep the lights on.

Other school districts’ referenda aren’t successful. Prescott just lost a referendum to cover operating costs. They now face $1.5 million in additional cuts – over 10% of the district budget. Local people worry more teachers will leave for Minnesota – a state making significant investments in education.

At a recent Chippewa Valley legislative forum with local school officials, one of my colleagues abruptly left the event upset about a school board member’s comments that Minnesota was doing better financially than Wisconsin.

Specifically the board member mentioned Minnesota’s $1 billion budget surplus, funding for education and the big difference between the two states with regard to the prison population. The two states have a similar population and crime rate but Wisconsin incarcerates more than double the number of individuals.

My legislative colleague thought it unfair to compare. But is it?

According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, in Wisconsin 87% of children with at least one parent lacking a high school education are likely to be living in poverty. In Minnesota, 32% of children live in poverty while 39% of Wisconsin children live in poverty.

Among the risks of poverty is lack of education achievement, which can negatively affect life opportunities. Studies show that low education attainment and low incomes can increase the risk of incarceration. Minnesota incarcerates fewer individuals while Wisconsin spends more on prisons than on the UW system.

It is wiser to invest in breaking the cycle of poverty.

Poor children need resources – books, teacher time, health care, and food – things that cost money, which brings us back to school funding.

At the forum, we discussed needed changes to the school funding formula. I reminded everyone that State Superintendent Tony Evers submitted in his budget a proposal to change the formula called Fair Funding for Our Future.

Mr. Evers described his proposal as containing “a number of provisions to fix the funding formula by investing in all students, protecting rural and declining enrollment districts, making adjustments in the aid formula to account for poverty, providing property tax relief and increasing general school aid.”

This is the third time he introduced this proposal. It is the third time Governor Walker and the Majority in the Legislature chose not to pass it.

Education budget cuts end up costing us more. As state funds shift from education to safety (prisons and law enforcement), it becomes harder to break out of the cycle.

But break out of it we must. The investments we make in a child’s future don’t just help one family. The investments help all of us.

Speech originally presented before Lake Mills Progressives Informed and Engaged on February 26, 2016.

LAKE MILLS, WI - Thanks, Leslie, and Progressives Informed and Engaged, for inviting me. I would have come anyway, but the lure of homemade pies made it absolutely irresistible since pies are my favorite things to eat.

I’ve been baking my own fruit pies for 30 years now, and if you need to know, I use a blend of Organic Valley butter and that old standby, white coagulated Crisco, for my shortening, and it works every time.

You know, I could talk about pie all day, or about birds, since I’ve been a birdwatcher for 50 years, and it’d be a lot more diverting than the topic at hand, which is the plight of democracy in Wisconsin.

But that’s why we’re here, and that’s why we all do the political work that we do:

because we believe in democracy,

and we cherish Wisconsin’s historic reputation for clean government,

and we’re appalled at the destruction that the Scott Walker Wrecking Crew has wreaked on our beloved state in the span of just five years.

The fact is, we’re in the midst of a counterrevolution right now.

Our state has been taken over by people who don’t give a damn about democracy.

They don’t give a damn about clean and open government.

They have no respect whatsoever for the public good.

There’s a wholesale assault on democracy in Madison right now, waged not only by Gov. Scott Walker but also by Speaker Robin Vos and your very own Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and by the corrupt justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court – and they’re all doing the bidding of the corporate powers behind them.

When I said they don’t give a damn about democracy, that’s obvious by the fact that they passed one of the strictest Voter ID laws in the country.

I don’t if you saw the recent John Oliver segment on his HBO show ridiculing your own Joel Kleefisch, but it was a thing of beauty. He showed Kleefisch on the floor of the Assembly denouncing people who vote more than once in an election, and then Oliver showed him voting twice on one bill, once for himself and once for an absent legislator. Oliver also showed that Sauk City’s DMV is only open on the 5th Wednesday of every month for registering to vote, and there are only four months with five Wednesdays this year.

That’s how they disenfranchise people. And they do it in other ways, too.

Republicans have also gotten rid of weekend voting before the elections.

And they’ve done away with allowing the League of Women Voters, or anyone else, for that matter, to be deputized to register people to vote.

They even won’t let the city clerks conduct voter registration efforts in public libraries.

Another way they’re assaulting democracy is by drawing some of the most rigged electoral maps in the country. This gerrymandering has got to stop! In secret, in the offices of a high-priced private law firm in downtown Madison, the Republicans met in 2011 to devise, with some fancy computers, some devious electoral maps that stuffed Democrats into fewer and fewer districts. As a result, even though Republicans in the Assembly lost the overall popular vote, they gained 60 of the 99 seats.

I said they don’t give a damn about clean and open government. That’s clear by their repeated efforts to curtail our open-records laws. You’ll remember that Speaker Vos led a sneak attack on these laws on the weekend of July 4 th last year, which showed his appreciation for irony, I suppose.

Fortunately, the people of Wisconsin, and the editorial page writers, rose up and gave legislators a piece of their mind, so they had to back down. But Vos, who has that lean and hungry look, keeps scheming about ways to accomplish this goal even to this day.

They also showed their hostility to clean and open government by drastically rewriting our campaign finance laws so that candidates can coordinate with outside groups, which can raise unlimited amounts of money and never disclose where it’s coming from. And big donors who give directly to candidates no longer have to say where they work so it’ll be harder to tell which piece of legislation is bought and paid for by which company.

And I said they had no respect for the public good. Actually, in their crude and selfish ideology, everything public is bad, and everything private is good. They don’t like public workers; they don’t like public schools. Hell, they don’t even pay for public parks anymore.

So what do they believe in?

They believe in power, and all they want to do is grab as much as they can as fast as they can . And to reward their paymasters and their corporate crony friends, whether it’s the Koch Brothers, or ALEC, or Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. There isa sinister symbiosis at play here. The politicians who rule our state get the money that keeps them in power from these corporate groups, and then these politicians dutifully push through legislation that benefits these corporate groups, which then turn around and give more money to these same politicians. The leaders in the legislature have turned our government into an ATM for their corporate cronies. And that’s what most of the legislation they pass is all about.

Just this week, they passed a bill that helps debt collectors. You know, when these guys were running for office, I didn’t hear them saying we’ve got to make life easier for debt collectors!

There’s no public demand for most of the bills that I see flash across my computer every day.

Were people really demanding the right to carry switchblades?

Were they really demanding the right to allow payday lenders to sell more products to desperate consumers?

Were they really demanding the right for bankers to offer misleading sub-prime loans, which were immortalized in “The Big Short?”

Were they really demanding the right of pipeline owners to exercise eminent domain and boot you out of your house?

Were they really demanding the right to give landlords more power to evict people?

Were they really demanding the right to let huge factory farms have less regulation over their high-capacity wells?

Were they really demanding the right to have more lead in our paint?

Of course not. These are all special-interest bills, written for and sometimes by, they very groups that would benefit from them. They are not written for, or by, you--I can you promise you that.

This is not how democracy is supposed to work.

This is happening not just in Wisconsin, but around the country. And it’s not a new problem:

Thomas Jefferson warned us 200 years ago almost to this day, when he said: “I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of the monied corporations.”

150 years ago, Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Edward Ryan warned us that "there is a looming and new dark power. . . .The enterprises of the country are aggregating vast corporate combinations of unexampled capital, boldly marching, not for economic conquests only, but for political power. For the first time really in our politics money is taking the field as an organized power. …

Well, money has really taken the field these days and it wins almost all the time.

Edward Ryan continued: “The question will arise, and arise in your day, though perhaps not fully in mine:

“Which shall rule — wealth or man?

“Which shall lead — money or intellect?

“Who shall fill public stations — educated and patriotic free men, or the feudal serfs of corporate capital?"

You know who picked up on this “feudal serf” line? Not just Fighting Bob La Follette, who fought corporate power his whole life.

No, a more recent Wisconsin politician, a Republican named former State Senator Dale Schultz. He was the Senate Majority Leader for the Republicans for a while. And when he decided not to run again, he said that many legislators have become, and these are his words, “feudal serfs for folks with a lot of money.”

People get this in their gut.

This is a bipartisan issue. The people by a huge bipartisan margin, already understand that big money plays too big a part in our political life. In a recent poll:

84 percent agreed that money has too much influence over politics.

And 80 percent of Republicans agreed with.

78 percent said money spent by outside groups in campaigns should be limited.

And 73 percent of Republicans agreed with that.

People understand a fundamental truth: We no longer live in a functioning democracy.

As Jimmy Carter told Thom Hartmann last year, we’ve become an “oligarchy with unlimited political bribery.”

Two years ago, two political science professors, one from Princeton and the other from Northwestern (Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page) studied 1,779 policy issues between 1981 and 2002 and what they found was startling: “It makes very little difference what the general public thinks…They have little or no independent influence on policy at all. … In our findings, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes.”

Why don’t they teach that in seventh-grade civics class, or in high school social studies? Because there it is: Our democracy is not working anymore.

We’re finally hearing about this in our Presidential race.

Oddly, Donald Trump has talked about this. Remember in his first debate he said how easy it was for him to buy favors from elected officials? Hell, he bragged that he got Hillary Clinton to sit in the front row of his wedding. And that’s the least of it. Usually, tycoons give money not for vanity’s sake but because they want government agencies to give them something in return. And they get it! Now Trump says he’s not taking money from anyone else—that he’s self-financing, and therefore uncorrupted. Last night, he made the point again, saying he knows politicians because he gives them money, and he gives to candidates from both parties because he’s a good businessman. It’s heads I win, tails I win. And for proof, he mentioned the $5,000 check he’d written to Ted Cruz.

On the other side, Bernie Sanders talks about how the political system is rigged by Wall Street every time he says good morning. And he’s been saying it for at least 15 years now, God bless him, if you’ve heard him at Fighting Bob Fest, year in and year out, as I have.

And he’s gotten Hillary to start talking about it, too.

Both Hillary and Bernie are on record that they would make sure their Supreme Court appointees would vote to overturn Citizens United.

So let’s look at Citizens United for a second.

That decision said corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money to elect this candidate or defeat that candidate. And it contained the two most naïve statements ever written in a Supreme Court decision:

“Independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”

And “The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy.”

What planet were those five justices living on when they came up with those whoppers?

Fortunately, people right here in Wisconsin haven’t fallen for them.

In 60 villages, towns, cities, and counties all across this state (including here in Lake Mills!), the people or their representatives have voted by overwhelming margins in favor of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to say, once and for all, that corporations aren’t persons and money is not speech. (The vote of the town board on Sept. 10, 2013, here was unanimous, by the way.)

But this movement is not just about overturning Citizens United; it’s about overturning 140 years of absurd Supreme Court precedents that grant personhood to corporations.

Amending the Constitution is the fundamental solution to the problem of money in politics, and I hope I’ll live to see such an amendment pass.

I’m an impatient man . I don’t want to wait for the pendulum to swing. I want to give it a big Badger shove in the pro-democracy direction.

As Fighting Bob La Follette put it 100 years ago, “The cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy.”

We need more democracy, now, in this country.

And we need more democracy, now, right here in Wisconsin.

And no, I don’t get discouraged. I know that nothing is static, and that these guys won’t be in power forever, and that democracy surges forward unexpectedly – but especially when we give it a shove.

I’m a student of Howard Zinn’s, the great people’s historian, who chronicled these surges from below. And he once wrote:

“ TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. To live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

So, yes, let’s defy all that is bad around us!

And yes, let’s affirm all that is good!

What is good?

Well, things are starting to move.

Nationally, there’s the Fight for $15 movement. Who would have thought, just a few years ago, that people would have been walking off their jobs, en masse, at McDonald’s and Burger King and demanding $15 an hour? And who would have thought they’d be winning, as they have already in Seattle and elsewhere?

There’s the Black Lives Matter movement, focusing attention on police brutality in a systematic way that we haven’t seen since the 1960s.

Or look at the movement to end climate change: It stopped the XL Pipeline, let’s not forget.

And then there’s Bernie’s campaign, whether you’re voting for him or not, you’ve got to admit he’s drawn attention to some of the key issues of our day: like our rigged economy and our rigged political system, and our rigged media. And he has caught on in a way that few could have predicted.

Here, statewide, you’ve got the success of United to Amend, the group that’s working so hard to overturn Citizens United.

Plus, Walker’sapproval rating is barely above the freezing mark, and that of the Republican legislators is actually below freezing.

And here’s another thing: The Walker Wrecking Crew wasn’t able to get everything that it wanted in this session.

It didn’t get:

--to impose limits on school referendums

--to allow individual landowners to excavate Native burial grounds

--to allow AquaAmerica, a Pennsylvania company, to have an easier time buying up public water utilities

--to allow people who own property on a lake to dredge up and haul away three truckloads of sediment every year.

Here’s another ray of hope: The district attorneys of Dane County, Iowa County, and Milwaukee County are appealing the horrendous Wisconsin Supreme Court decision on the John Doe straight up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where I think they’ll actually win!

But more than any other reason, I’m hopeful because over the last year, I’ve met some really amazing people in the pro-democracy movement here in Wisconsin.

Some of the amazing people are in the state legislature, such as JoCasta Zamarripa, who stands up for immigrants and poor people, or Chris Taylor, who exposes ALEC and defends women’s health. Every day, they defy the high school bullies who rule the Capitol. And there are some courageous Republicans in there, too, like Senator Rob Cowles, who voted against the Campaign Finance bill and blocked some of the worst elements in the latest shoreline giveaway bill. Or Assembly Rep Todd Novak, who voted for nonpartisan redistricting and against the budget.

And some of the amazing people are in the nonprofit sector, like Christine Neumann-Ortiz, of Voces de la Frontera, who last week led 20,000 people in the “Day Without Latinos” rally.

Or people like Jay Heck of Common Cause, or Andrea Kaminski of the League of Women Voters, or Kerry Schumann of the League of Conservation Voters, or Kim Wright of Midwest Environmental Advocates, or George Penn of United to Amend, or Astar Herndon and Martha de la Rosa of 9to5, or Robert Kraig and Anita Johnson at Citizen Action, or like Dana Schultz and Colleen Gruszyinski at Wisconsin Voices, or Scott Foval at People for the American Way, or Peter Skopec at WisPIRG.

These are people, many of them a lot younger than me and with a lot more energy, who are working together as never before to get this state back on track.

We’ve torn down our silos, we’ve shelved our egos, we’re meeting and strategizing together on a regular basis, and we’re all rowing in the same direction. And we’ll get there yet!

So let me leave you with one final quote:

Seamus Heaney, the great Irish poet who died two years ago, wrote a beautiful poem called “The Cure at Troy.” I’m not going to read the whole poem to you but one line sticks in my head: He wrote, there are times in our lives when “hope and history rhyme.”

Let’s make hope and history rhyme again in Wisconsin.

Let’s turn things around here so we can say, once again, that we’re proud to be from Wisconsin.

Thank you.

Just what we need to control costs & provide single payer healthcare for all!

STOUGHTON, WI - The Democratic debate in Milwaukee on February 11th was not one of the best nights for either Sanders or Clinton when it came to explaining their competing healthcare plans for America.

Bernie’s plan basically is the Medicare for All bill supported by progressives for years in our Congress.  This plan would revolutionize healthcare into a single payer system in the US.  The Federal government would tax individuals and employers and with these taxes pay all the healthcare bills for every man, woman and child in America.

In a recent poll 51% of Americans support single payer while 37% oppose it.

Clinton’s plan is basically trying to improve on Obama’s Affordable Care plan by charging additional taxes to pay for incremental changes and expansion of that system.  Basically Clinton keeps the present broken healthcare system of insurance companies, drug companies and for profit and non-profit hospitals in control.

The single payer Medicare for all has gotten nowhere in the past because of continued  campaign finance corruption - whereby healthcare special interests dump bags of money into the political campaigns of politicians supporting the status quo.

Clinton repeatedly asked Sanders where does the money come from?  How much does it cost?  Will it raise taxes?  And of course she states her plan is superior to Sanders’.

Sanders’ plan, including additional taxes, is on his website hiding in plain sight.  It’s a few pages long: berniesanders.com/issues/medicare-for-all/

I am sure Clinton’s staff has studied it well.

It would replace the present US healthcare system with a new single payer system where the Federal government pays all the costs for the system and raises various taxes to pay the bill.  All Americans would receive complete healthcare including prescriptions, dental, mental health and long term care.  Americans would have no more co-pays, no more deductibles and no more arguments with insurance company clerks.

Present total healthcare cost is estimated at about $3.2 TRILLION/yr. for about 323 million people in the USA or about $10,000/yr. per person.

Proposed Medicare for All system cost is estimated to cost about $1.4 TRILLION/yr. with likely additional startup costs.

Taxes:  All present government revenue presently spent on healthcare would be placed into the Medicare for All account.

The following new taxes are added and get placed into the same federal account.

• 6.2% income based healthcare tax by employers – estimated revenue $.63T/yr.  (Example:  For a person earning $50,000/yr. the employer would pay $3,100/yr.  On average an employer today pays $12,600/yr. for family health insurance.  Sanders plan would save the employer about $9,500/yr.)
• 2.2% income based tax on households – est. rev. $.21 T/yr. (Example: Per Sanders, a family of 4, after taking the standard deductions, would pay 2.2% on their taxable income for healthcare.  That 2.2% would equal $466/yr.  Presently a family pays about $5,000 in premiums plus about $1,300 in deductibles for a total of $6,300/yr.  Thus the family would save over $5,800 annually.)

How can both the employer and the worker save substantially each year and still have quality healthcare?  Because the high money earners (both salary and unearned income) and the wealthiest Americans will pay higher taxes.  And various tax breaks related to company healthcare spending would be eliminated.

• Increase marginal income tax rates – est. rev. $.11T/yr.

o   To 37% on incomes over $250,000/yr.

o   To 43% on incomes over $500,000/yr.

o    To 48% on incomes over $2 million/yr. (the top 0.08% or approximately 113,000 households)

o    To 52% on incomes over $10 million/yr. (the top 0,01% or approximately 13,000 households)

• Tax unearned income (capital gains and dividends) the same as income from work – est. rev. $92B/yr.
• Limit tax deductions for families making over $250,000/yr. – est. rev. $15B/yr.
• Place a new tax system on the estates of the wealthiest 0.3% of Americans with estates over $3.5 million – est. rev. $21B/yr.
• Savings from health tax expenditures.  Per Sanders plan “Several tax breaks that subsidize health care (health-related “tax expenditures”) would become obsolete and disappear under a single-payer health care system…” – est. rev. $310B/yr.

Total additional federal revenues per year equal approximately $1.388TRILLION or about $1.4TRILLION.

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All single payer healthcare plan is a healthcare plan that’s smart for kids, working families and seniors.  It’s smart for American corporations facing an unlevel playing field in developed nations that already have single payer healthcare for their workers.

Sanders’ Medicare for All is a revolution I am in favor of.  Are you?

Read more at berniesanders.com/issues/medicare-for-all/ to help you decide how to vote Tuesday, April 5^th in the WI presidential primary.

ALTOONA, WI - Gandhi said: “Our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as in being able to remake ourselves.”

For years I’ve been blessed to be asked to travel the state to speak to every imaginable kind of group. Everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve had the chance to do way more listening than speaking. I was inspired to write a book and Blue Jean Nation was formed because of what I kept hearing.

Everywhere I’ve gone I hear something else too. Sometimes it sounds defeatist. Other times powerless. Every once in a while hopeless. Or even helpless.

I get where these feelings come from. So many barriers to true democracy and real representation have been erected. Voter suppression. Gerrymandering of political boudaries. Consolidation of control over news media in fewer and fewer hands. Ever-greater sums of money in politics. Secrecy and hostility to open government laws and traditions. Courts packed with partisans.

These obstacles are formidable. I’ll grant you, the odds are not in our favor.

But the odds have never favored common folk. The odds didn’t favor the abolitionists or suffragists or the civil rights movement either. Or the progressives and populists who were up against the robber barons in the Gilded Age, or exploited West Virginia coal miners, or children working in textile mills, or the original Republicans who gathered in the little white schoolhouse in Ripon Wisconsin, or the women’s rights movement or gay rights movement, or Gandhi in his time or Malala Yousafzai in ours.

Remember, the abolitionists ended slavery. The progressives beat the robber barons. The suffragists got women the vote. The coal miners got unions. The textile mills eventually were forced to respect child labor laws. The original Republicans drove a major party to extinction. Civil rights activists ended Jim Crow. Gandhi led the Indian people to independence. Malala is making it possible for girls to go to school all around the world.

Remember, the obstacles we face today are not new. They are as old as the hills. Voter suppression and gerrymandering were not invented in 2011. These practices are as old as the republic.

The effects of gerrymandering won’t be overcome in Wisconsin by enacting Iowa’s redistricting system here. Those in office won’t pass such a law. It’ll be overcome by political realignment, by changing enough hearts and minds of enough voters to thwart the willful rigging of elections.

We won’t beat money by amending the constitution, we’ll amend the constitution by beating money . . . by breaking its grip on our minds.

All the political professionals and consultants and others with the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mentality call this unilateral disarmament.

I’m not saying you should unilaterally disarm. I’m saying we should fight with different and more powerful weapons.

We won’t beat money by doing what money does. We’ll beat it by doing what money can’t do.

As the song says, “money talks, but it don’t sing and dance, and it don’t walk.”

Money don’t love either. It don’t marry. It can’t nurse a sick child . . . or comfort a dying loved one.

We don’t need what all that money buys. We don’t need pollsters to tell us what to think. We can think for ourselves. We don’t need speechwriters and teleprompters to put words in our mouths. We can speak for ourselves. We don’t need ad agencies to sell us to our neighbors the way they sell laundry detergent and hair care products and beer and potato chips. We can build relationships.

This is why I say that if Blue Jean Nation could only do one thing, my choice would be to contribute in every way we can to loosening and eventually breaking the grip of the political consulting industry that lords over our democracy and our society.

When democracy in America is rescued, it won’t be political consultants and professional politicians who do the rescuing. It’ll be saved by people who don’t practice politics for a living, people with a life outside of politics, people with the odds stacked against them.

Good people can make a difference to bills moving swiftly through the legislature, like AB 554 where overwhelming constituent contact in legislative offices stopped action on a GOP proposal to allow an out-of-state corporation to buy and operate public water utilities. Sen. Kathleen Vinehout writes about the speed with which bills are moving through the Legislature and how people’s action has made a difference.

MADISON - “What can we, as ordinary citizens, do to keep the legislature and the governor from passing/signing house bill 554? It scares the heck out of me,” wrote Claudia from Eau Claire.

“I know that Kathleen will vote against this terrible bill, but no doubt against the odds,” Sarah wrote from Eau Claire.

The “terrible” bill was AB 554, a bill that would allow out-of-state private corporations to buy public water and sewer utilities. The bill would eliminate a required public referendum to approve the sale.

There is good news for all the folks who wrote asking me to oppose the bill.

Recently the Senate was set to vote on final passage of the bill. However, when time came for the vote, Majority Leader Fitzgerald asked that Assembly Bill 554 be returned to committee – a way to stop the bill.

He later told WisPolitics news service the bill was, “not going anywhere.”

Assembly Bill 554 caused many people to contact elected representatives. My office received 41 calls or letters in just two days. People also attended town hall meetings and researched what their legislators said about the issue.

“What was very telling about this privatization of public services is the New Jersey law passed just a few days ago,” wrote Telford from western Wisconsin. He attended a town hall meeting held by his senator and heard comments supporting the bill. He looked up the bill and found not only had the bill just passed in New Jersey but, in his words, “In the article are the same pro talking points my Senator used in the…listening session.”

WisPolitics described the efforts to get votes for the bill: “Senate Republicans had been working on an amendment to get members comfortable with the bill, but couldn’t reach a consensus.”

Good for Telford and everyone else who paid attention. You made a difference.

Speed and secrecy have plagued the Capitol in the last few months. Bills just introduced are rushed to committee hearings. Complete re-write of bills – called substitute amendments – are introduced just before a public hearing and those who came to testify wondered if their concern was addressed or not. Substitute amendments introduced just before a vote left lawmakers with no time to study the new bill before voting. An Assembly higher education committee voted on bills that had no public hearing. Some bills were voted out of committee just minutes after they had their first public hearing. Some Assembly bills voted on by the full Senate did not have a Senate committee vote.

In one day, 30 committees held public hearings. At least 254 bills passed the full Senate and/or the Assembly in just three days. To put this perspective, only 127 bills were enacted into law during the previous 13 months of this current two-year Legislative Session.

These bills needed public scrutiny. Some took away local powers – like the bill that would not allow counties to issue identification cards. Another took away local powers to protect tenants or set up historic districts. Bills eliminated natural resource protections including many changes to water and shoreland rules. Another repealed the state’s moratorium on new nuclear power plants. Some bills were aimed at elections, such as taking away special registration deputies and new on-line voter registration.

It’s no wonder people worry there is nothing they can do to slow things down. But there is – and people are acting in ways that make a real difference.

Recently two protests brought many first timers to the Capitol. A few weeks ago, Native American Wisconsinites protested the digging up of Native burial grounds. Shortly after the protest, the Assembly Speaker announced he had no plans to move the bill.

More recently, 20,000 Latinos and supporters descended on the Capitol opposing an anti-immigrant bill passed by the Assembly and the bill taking away counties’ ability to issue ID cards. The second bill is headed to the governor. But the first bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate.

So, whatever you do – write, call, attend a town hall, research a bill and tell the world – do it. In the words of Margaret Mead, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

MADISON - When I heard the news about Justice Scalia, one of my first thoughts was how was this going to affect the appeal of the John Doe decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. So I scratched my head on that one, and this is what I came up with:

Scalia’s death ups the odds of John Doe appeal

This week, with every variety of nasty bills being pushed through the legislature at warp speed, we focused on one that Speaker Vos is peddling, and that’s his voucher expansion amendment (Assembly Amendment 3 to Assembly Bill 751), which is up for a floor vote tomorrow. Our research director, Mike Buelow, dug up the info on the voucher school lobby:

Who is behind more $$ for voucher schools?

Ironically, as yesterday was Election Day, the Republican leadership in the legislature thought it was an appropriate time to bring to a vote two bills that interfere with our franchise: one to do away with Special Registration Deputies (you know, those great folks from the League of Women Voters who sign people up); the other to deny towns and counties the authority to issue local ID cards. We wrote about them here:

Assembly poised to pass measures to make it harder to vote

Unfortunately, both of those bills passed, as have some bad environmental bills.

But don’t despair. The Walker Wrecking Crew won’t be in power forever. No one ever is.

And as Howard Zinn reminds us, “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.”

Please enjoy that bit of wisdom, along with the warming weather.

Sen. Kathleen Vinehout is working on a bill to restore the ability of people to cross railroad lines to access public lands. Laws meant to protect energy providers from protesters are being felt by folks who cross over land to access public areas, such as fisherman along the Mississippi River. A new Republican bill (AB 547) could make matters worse.

LA CROSSE, WI - One of the best spots to ice fish is south of Alma just down the dugway from Carrol Iberg’s rural home.

Down there “ice fishing is really good,” Mr. Iberg told me. He fished five days a week and caught mostly pan fish, and a few northern and bass.

To get to one of the most accessible ice fishing areas around, just south of the power plant, you have to cross the railroad tracks.

The rail is owned by BNSF. The company is exerting its authority to enforce a trespassing law by hiring railroad “police” to guard the track.

Mr. Iberg did not think much of a black Tahoe parked along the highway when he went fishing. However, he was surprised when a uniformed “state trooper-looking” person with a gun on his hip threatened him. The rail “police” said Mr. Iberg was trespassing on railroad property by crossing the tracks to get to his fishing hole.

“What bothers me about this,” he said to me. “It’s something I’ve done all my life.”

I asked how long he has fished here. “Approximately 68 years. And I’m 75. My Dad took me and my brother here forever.” He asked me if I thought he had an “adverse possession” claim on the land – like farmers who farmed the same land for 20 years even though the land technically belonged to a neighbor.

I am not sure about the “adverse possession” claim, but threatening Mr. Iberg for ice fishing is going too far.

Rail lines run all along the Mighty Mississippi on Wisconsin’s west coast. For generations, anglers, birders, hikers, hunters and other outdoors enthusiasts crossed the tracks to get to publically owned – and otherwise inaccessible – land.

Long ago, when the rail line was built, people say all kinds of easements and agreements were put in place to assure locals kept access to the lands on the other side of the tracks.

Now the railroad is acting to cut off access to 230 miles of Mississippi River backwater and public lands by enforcing a 2005 law that eliminated the right of the public to cross the tracks.

A bill written by Representative Nerison, and others including myself, would return the law to its pre-2005 language. Rep. Nerison, in testimony at a recent hearing, told lawmakers the bill would restore public access to over 100 state-owned properties.

George Meyer, representing the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, testified public properties accessible only by crossing rail lines include state, county and national forests, US Fish and Wildlife refuges, hatcheries, boat access areas, state parks and “scores of other public properties owned by local units of government.“

The railroad lobbyist testified, “safety is the primary reason, but not the only reason we oppose the bill…it also creates opportunities for the many groups who protest crude by rail and other hazardous goods moved by rail.”

Concerns about protesters evidently led power, gas and transmission companies to lobby for another law to penalize trespassers; including prison time.

I told Mr. Iberg he should know Assembly Bill 547 would make trespassing on power company land a felony – with a $10,000 fine and maximum imprisonment of six years.

“How can they enforce this?” He asked. “When they built the power plant... They pleaded with us to sign on to allow them to put a turnaround [in the public land]… they wanted us to say it was OK to put in the [coal train] turnaround. They were still going to let us fish [inside the circular track.]”

During Senate debate, I explained the Alma power plant is very close to prime ice fishing public land. Inadvertent trespassing on power plant land should not land ice anglers in prison. But it wasn’t until I spoke with Mr. Iberg that I realized the power company built ON public land and prime fishing holes were INSIDE the power company’s circular tracks.

“What happened to America the Land of the Free?” I asked Mr. Iberg. “Exactly” he said. “There’s no use in living by a river if you can’t use it.”

That would be OUR River, and OUR public lands. Or it used to be.

MADISON – On Friday, Gov. Scott Walker’s Department of Corrections Secretary Ed Wall resigned as the investigation of potential abuse of youth at the Copper Lake and Lincoln Hills schools moves on to the FBI.

I am appalled by the latest revelations of child abuse and sexual assault that occurred in Gov. Walker’s Department of Corrections. Sec. Wall’s resignation doesn’t change the fact that Gov. Walker and his top aides ignored critical safety warnings for more than four years.

Rather than covering up Gov. Walker’s failure to act, the Legislature should immediately assert its oversight authority and hold hearings on the safety and treatment of children at Lincoln Hills. Democrats have introduced a series of Correction Reform measures that remain stalled in Republican legislative committees.

In addition to holding officials accountable, we need to address the serious safety and security concerns at Gov. Walker's correctional facilities and immediately pass these reform measures.

Walker flees the angry crowd in Madison to sign bill undermining "Merit System" into law at private sector temporary help giant Manpower. Many employees fear Walker wants to take action against "recall signers". Democrats contend the bill will open the door to cronyism.

APPLETON, WI - Gov. Scott Walker plans to sign a Republican-backed bill to overhaul Wisconsin's civil service system in this northeastern Wisconsin city on Friday, far from Madison and the thousands of state workers angered by his action.

Walker's office says the GOP governor is scheduled to sign the bill into law at Manpower Group in Appleton. The location is choice, since Walker made Manpower a favorite source of temporary help to replace civil service employees during his two terms as Milwaukee County Executive.

The bill eliminates job applicant exams, centralizes hiring decisions within the governor's Madison Department of Administration, does away with bumping rights that have given more experienced workers first call on remaining jobs during layoffs and allows agencies to keep new hires on probation for up to two years before they can receive regular employee status. Until now, new employees were in probationary status for six months before their boss had to make the final decision to hire them.

The bill also adds a definition of just cause for termination and lists infractions that would result in immediate firing. These provisions would add nothing new in actual practice, since state employees committing serious infractions have been subject to immediate termination for just cause for many years.

Walker has been outspoken in his support of the proposal, claiming efficiency as his motivation. However, many employees fear Walker wants the power to take action against so-called "recall signers", meaning the thousands of state employees among the nearly 1 million Wisconsinites who signed the petition to recall the governor during his first term.

Democrats contend the bill will open the door to cronyism within state agencies.

“By dismantling our state’s civil service system, Governor Walker and legislative Republicans are kicking down the door for cronyism and corruption in Wisconsin," said Assembly Democratic Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) on Friday. “The civil service system was founded on the idea that state employees should serve the public interest, not partisan political interests. Republicans have made it clear they will stop at nothing to consolidate their own power while rewarding their cronies with taxpayer-funded jobs."

Early in his administration Governor Walker was caught in a couple prominent situations where he placed allies in key positions with thin to no qualifications. Back during his Milwaukee County days, Walker was also known to place key aides into "holding" positions to draw large salaries. This law will make it easier to more broadly do this unencumbered by the rules.

Additionally, Walker used this approach at WEDC, where he eliminated civil service for hiring staff and we saw continuous problems with turnover and ethically questionable conduct with potential pay to play and taxpayer funds at risk.

"Republicans want to make that (the WEDC) the model for our entire state", concludes Barca. "This is truly a dark day for Wisconsin’s proud heritage of clean, open and transparent government.”

http://newiprogressive.com/images/stories/S5/mining_wisconsin_senate_s5.jpgAB 723 limiting the ability of towns and counties to issue local IDs, AB 868 the "Mark Harris bill" prohibiting legislators from simultaneously holding the office of county executive, bills to siphon more of our taxpayer dollars away from our public schools, maneuverings in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and more attacks on local control are just a few.

MADISON - I’ve spent a lot of time at the Capitol this week, and it’s a real disaster area!

The Republican leadership is ramming through lots of bills that are bad for democracy and the common good.

I was up there Wednesday testifying against a bill, AB 723, that would limit the ability of towns and counties to issue local IDs. Here’s my testimony:

WDC testimony opposing AB 723, regulating photo ID cards issued by local units of government

While I was waiting to testify on that one, I also gave impromptu testimony against a bill -- AB868-- pushed by Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald to prohibit legislators from simultaneously holding the office of county executive. I said the voters ought to be able to decide that one for themselves, and I noted that many legislators have other jobs, including as mayors or county board members.

On Tuesday, I went to the Senate gallery to watch them debate a bill, SB 295, that would, for all practical purposes, block voter registration drives. Here’s the alert we sent out on this one:

Wisconsin  Republicans try to crush voter registration drives

Also this week, Speaker Robin Vos has been trying to siphon more of our taxpayer dollars away from our public schools and into the lap of the owners of voucher schools. We show you the money behind this shell game:

Who is behind more $$ for voucher schools?

We also have been keeping an eye on the maneuverings in the Wisconsin Supreme Court to see whether the three district attorneys who joined the case will be allowed to appeal the court’s horrendous John Doe decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. There’s an effort by lawyers – including one who is now famous for his role in the Netflix documentary “Making a Murderer”—to have Attorney General Brad Schimel try to quash it, which we wrote about twice:

Is Brad Schimel ace in the hole for John Doe opponents?
Schimel angles for an invite to block John Doe

And speaking of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, we’ve updated our database on the contributions to the candidates running to get on that bench next Tuesday:

Supreme Court campaign updated (If you want to find out who has been giving to which candidate, just click on the candidate’s name once you open that link. There are links to "issue" ads and special interest spending as well.)

And while we’re still on the subject of the state supreme court race, please keep your eyes peeled and your ears to the ground for any advertisement you see on TV or hear on the radio – or any mailing you get or billboard you see encounter – from outside groups.

One way to do so is to go to our Hijack Hotline on our website or by using this url:
http://www.wisdc.org/index.php?module=wisdc.websiteforms&cmd=hijackhotline

Or you could send us an email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , describing the ad and where you saw it.

That’s how we keep track of all the outside money!

Thanks for your help.

Assembly Bill 554 does away with the mandatory referendum now required prior to the sale of public water and sewer systems to private companies. It comes at the request of the out of state company Aqua America, which has a poor record of providing services in several other states.

MADISON - “Keep private water companies OUT of Wisconsin,” Glory Adams of Eau Claire wrote. She wants to stop a bill that would allow cities to sell water and sewer systems to out-of-state companies without even a community vote.

Assembly Bill 554, introduced by Rep. Tyler August (R - Lake Geneva), would do away with the mandatory citizen referendum prior to the sale of public water and sewer utilities. It would also eliminate the ban on selling to out-of-state companies.

The bill is moving quickly. It passed the full Assembly and a Senate committee in a few weeks. All that’s needed for final passage is a full Senate vote.

In a follow-up conversation, Glory said AB 554 scares her. “Look at the company that wants to get in. Their record is abysmal.”

I learned Representative Tyler August introduced the bill at the request of a company called Aqua America that does have an “abysmal” record.

Lee Bergquist of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Representative August wrote the bill after Aqua America approached him. Mr. Berquist reported the company met first with the Public Service Commission (PSC) and was told that 161 Wisconsin public utilities had operating losses in 2014. Presumably, these financially strapped cities might make good Aqua America customers.

Aqua America has a long list of problems. Bruce Murphy of Urban Milwaukee recently wrote, “There has been 170 instances since 2005 where Aqua North Carolina did not comply with state and federal laws regarding contamination levels, and customers there have complained about poor water quality, dry wells, high rates and subpar service.”

Mr. Murphy described problems in Texas where customers were required to boil water; Pennsylvania where customers saw rates rise from $153 to $707; Florida where Aqua charged residents twice as much as neighboring local water utilities. Serious problems in Florida included many violations and consumer complaints that water “was smelly, discolored, contaminated and undrinkable.”

Senator Lasee offered arguments for the bill in a public hearing: “We want to give our local partners one more tool in the toolbox to budget prudently, protect taxpayers, and take advantage of the open market principles which are driving down tax and energy costs around the nation. We can realize the same benefits of the free market innovation here in Wisconsin.”

I found no evidence the sale of a public water utility to a private company lowered rates or provided higher quality service.

“I’m really concerned people will think this won’t happen in Wisconsin,” Glory Adams told me. “The problem is, they’ve taken so much away from the DNR and they’ve changed so many rules.”

She continued, “I get really concerned the PSC would be voting to approve these sales. Look at the members of the PSC, they are all appointed by the governor.”

The PSC does play a critical role in the sale of public utilities. Under current law, a city that wanted to sell its water or sewer utility would pass a resolution or adopt an ordinance and send a proposal to the PSC. If the PSC determined the sale was in the best interest of the municipality and its people, they would set a price and other terms of the sale. A majority of citizens in a referendum must then approve the sale.

As amended, AB 554 would allow (not require) a citizen vote only before action by the PSC and only if 10% of the voting population signs a petition asking for a vote. These strange rules set up a situation ripe for shenanigans by local officials.

Senator Dave Hanson, in a recent Green Bay press conference, described what happens after a community sells off its water.

“As the residents in communities where Aqua takes over their water soon find out, Aqua and corporations like them are not responsive to the people they serve. They are not accountable to anyone. They make their profits by cutting staff, cutting corners and raising rates—knowing full well that their “customers” have nowhere else to turn to get their water.”

Selling off water utilities to unaccountable out-of-state companies is a bad idea. The people own water and sewer utilities for a reason. Clean water and functioning sewer is essential to life. Let’s stop this bill now.

ALTOONA, WI - It’s been said art imitates life. But when it comes to politics these days, it’s the other way around.

For the past several decades, the Democratic Party has been the political embodiment of Seinfeld. Urbane, smart-alecky, talking a lot but seemingly never working – just like Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer. Seinfeld was a show about nothing. For many a year now the Democrats have stood for next to nothing.

Today’s Republican Party is Duck Dynasty. Republicans are working for the Carringtons but are politically shrewd enough to know that looking and acting upper crust won’t sell to the masses. So the GOP markets itself as the Robertsons.

Long beards, camo from head to foot, stars-and-stripes bandanas, fundamentalist religion, redneck attitudes and a business fabricating duck calls and decoys that grew from a mom-and-pop operation to a multi-million dollar sporting empire have the Robertsons living large. Got ’em their own TV show too. And, like the Republican Party, the Robertsons are increasingly split politically.

Seinfeld had a big audience. Duck Dynasty has one now. Again, sort of the like the Democrats and Republicans.

Both Seinfeld and Duck Dynasty are entertaining in their own right. Both are good for a laugh. Both have memorable if not lovable characters. Both are seriously lacking in substance. Neither has much redeeming social value. More ways the major parties currently reflect the boob tube.

If the promise of the American Revolution is to be carried forward, if our republic is to endure much longer, at some point we are going to have to do a whole lot better than sitting around in a coffee shop or duck blind, if you catch my drift.

MADISON - The Wisconsin State Senate may vote as early as tomorrow, February 9^th, on a bill that would end a time-honored tradition in Wisconsin: the voter registration drive.

Last week, the State Senate Committee on Elections and Local Government approved Senate Bill 295 on a party-line, 3-2, vote. The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign opposes this bill and urges you – and all your friends – to contact their state senators and tell them to vote against the bill.

The bill would do two good things: It would allow some voters to register on line, and it would allow Veteran Health ID Cards to be valid for voting.

But at the same time, it would make it impossible to conduct voter registration drives. It would do this in two ways.

First, it would forbid the use of special registration deputies. These are people who have assisted municipal clerks in registering voters out in the community. For more than four decades, such deputies have done a phenomenal job in reaching out to our neighbors and signing people up to vote. This is the heart and soul of the work of such valiant groups as the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin.

Second, it would even forbid municipal clerks from conducting voter registration drives. This year, the clerks in Madison and Milwaukee have been conducting these registration drives in public libraries all over their cities.

This bill would depress voter turnout by design, and that’s outrageous.

So please contact your state senator today and urge your senator to vote no on SB 295.

If you don’t know your legislator’s name or email address, just go to legis.wisconsin.gov and type in your address in the box in the top right corner.

Thanks for your activism!

MADISON - Wisconsinites have a celebrated history of progressivism. We value civic engagement and activism. We believe in the power of regular people and government’s role in improving and protecting the lives of citizens.

But after six years under Governor Walker’s failed leadership, many of the values Wisconsinites hold dear are being eroded and undermined.

Today we want you to tell us which of Governor Walker’s policies you think are the most harmful to Wisconsinites.

Was it his attempts to...

1. Rollback worker protections
2. Make it more difficult to vote
3. Infringe on a woman’s right to make her own healthcare decisions
4. Cut funding from our public schools and universities
5. Weaken government accountability measures
6. Other
7. All of the above

It’s no secret that Governor Walker’s drastic departure from Wisconsin’s progressive traditions has negatively impacted people across our state. But if we’re going to return to our roots and fight back against his extreme right-wing agenda, we need you to speak out.

Make sure you answer our quick survey and let us know which of Governor Walker’s policies affected you the most.

Thank you for taking the time to fill out our survey.