Uppity Wisconsin

It's time that someone spoke up in favor of money in politics, and it appears that sordid job has fallen to me.

In their zeal to clean up politics, some goo-goos (so-called "good government" groups) have reached the conclusion that any money in a political campaign is bad.

Ah, for the days of Fighting Bob LaFollette, when voters made up their minds by listening to four hour speeches on the street corner.

Those days are gone and won't be back, but don't try to tell it to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign or Common Cause, who seem determined to make every single campaign contribution seem sleazy.

If a donor who gives to multiple candidates accidentally gives a total of $50 more than the overall $10,000 annual limit to candidates, WDC is right there to file a complaint.

New Hampshire just joined the list of states allowing gay marriage, after a quick trip through the legislature and a world-record-breaking signing by the governor. 

And yet, Wisconsin has somehow lost its progressive way on this issue.  2006 was the sad year in which Wisconsin legalized discrimination, both legally and morally.  It's time to fix this. Let's try again.  Let's keep trying until we get it right.

"I felt like I had been thrown into some surreal sort of nightmare," said Hillary, 17, who was sentenced in 2007. "All I wanted to know was how this could be fair and why the judge would do such a thing."

Hillary Transue was sentenced to three months in a privately run juvenile detention center "for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa." even though "the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke."  Common Dreams.org

According to the AP, "Two lawsuits have been filed against two Pennsylvania judges accused of taking more than $2 million in kickbacks to send youth offenders to privately run detention centers.

The suits name Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan as well as the individuals who allegedly paid the kickbacks and other defendants. They were filed in federal court late Thursday and Friday on behalf of hundreds of children and their families who were alleged victims of the corruption.

LittleSis is an involuntary facebook of powerful Americans, collaboratively edited and maintained by people like you. It's easier than ever to spot the symptoms of corruption and cronyism in our political process. Ordinary Americans have never felt more shut out from all levels of government, more excluded from economic gains, and more powerless to remedy the problems facing their communities and the world. Meanwhile, the powerful networks of individuals who've enjoyed unprecedented influence, wealth, and access while steering our country towards its present crisis continue to elude responsibility in the public spotlight. We all know that the need for fundamental change is urgent. Americans everywhere are pushing back against a broken system that bankrupts and disempowers them. But to effectively push back, we have to study and document the social networks that have our democracy in a stranglehold. We have to expose the individuals and institutions that abuse their power to enrich themselves and their cronies. And we have to make common cause and share this information freely. LittleSis is an invitation for fed up citizens to do just that.

From what I've heard, former Wisconsin Department of Commerce Secretary Jack Fischer is really a pretty good guy, which makes it all the more of a shame that he had to resign after reports about his craving for luxury hotels and caviar tastes on the taxpayer dime.

Good guy, or not, I bet he never thought his behavior representing Wisconsin taxpayers and Governor Doyle's office would draw comparisons to that of Republican Vice President candidate Sarah Palin. 

Here's what Fischer has in common with Palin:

The charges included costs for hotel and commercial flights for three daughters to join Palin to watch their father in a snowmobile race, and a trip to New York, where the governor attended a five-hour conference and stayed with 17-year-old Bristol for five days and four nights in a luxury hotel.

In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters' 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls.

Clerical errors in voter registrations are not examples of voter fraud, as Wisconsin Attorney General J. B. Van Hollen and the GOP continue to propose. Comparing information across computer databases that were never intended for such use is not voter fraud.

Too bad Wisconsin elected officials, and others across the nation, are trying desperately to disenfranchise voters with this nonsense. Van Hollen may not get his way this November, but this issue will not be going away.

So, why is information about voters and voter name comparisons among incompatible computer database systems being sought by GOP operatives? The easy answer is because they're freaking out about their impending loses.

Because there are only two time-tested ways to win elections - 1) Register more voters than the other guys 2) Suppress voting rights and disenfranchise people voting for the other guys as much as possible.

Obama is doing #1. The GOP is banking on #2.

Meanwhile, here are real examples of voter fraud:

This is pretty stunning to think about in full:

However well-intentioned it was, the catastrophic and unpopular intervention in Iraq has served in some parts of the world to discredit the very idea of western democracy.

The recent collapse of the banking system, and the humiliating resort to semi-socialist solutions, has done a great deal to discredit - in some people's eyes - the idea of free-market capitalism.

Democracy and capitalism are the two great pillars of the American idea.

To have rocked one of those pillars may be regarded as a misfortune.

To have damaged the reputation of both, at home and abroad, is a pretty stunning achievement for an American president.

- Boris Johnson, Mayor of London

 

The promotion of failure apparently knows no bounds.

Where else can you receive welfare from the working class, more than $1 trillion worth, give a big assist in bankrupting the global economy, and still get bonuses to the tune of $70 billion in the same year?

Here's an example of real voter fraud folks - Republicans misrepresenting an issue, standing in front of a grocery store asking people to sign a petition to strengthen child molestation laws when what they're really signing is a sheet to register as a Republican.

(hat tip America Blog)

UPDATE: This republican has been arrested for real voter fraud. Holy cow.

Forget ACORN (and here's a good article about how they've actually followed the law), here's the real case of voter fraud that no one wants you to notice - since 2004, as many as 13 million voters have been purged from the roles. This is the concerted effort being perpetrated on American citizens by elected officials like Wisconsin Attorney General J. B. Van Hollen, and those in 39 other states.

They're using clerical errors to suppress voter turnout, folks. This isn't a matter of "cleansing voter roles" for inaccurate information. This is a war on democracy. And it's being done today, illegally, within 90 days of the election.

13 million voters purged. Think about that. And naturally, it's heavily occurring in battle ground states.

The Brennan Center for Justice has the details in its latest report.

And, shock, even mainstream media outlets are beginning to take notice. Here's the latest from CBS.

UPDATE: Find out your voter status here.

Well, gosh, that didn't take long, either.

The U.S. government is spying on the pillow talk of military personnel talking to their loved ones overseas.

"Hey, check this out," Faulk says he would be told, "there's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, 'Wow, this was crazy'," Faulk told ABC News.

So, are these guys terrorists, or just a salacious way for spies to get their kicks on the job? And, um, doesn't this make the needle in the haystack of terrorism a bit harder to uncover?

Don't say you weren't warned.

Well, it sure didn't take long for the corruption to begin in the process of bailing out Wall Street.

Wackovia bank is using FDIC taxpayer money to loan the National Republican Congressional Committee $8 million to help out in the last lap of the election. And nevermind that Wackovia has cut lending to everyone else, more than 1,000 colleges, in fact.

I would bet this isn't the last we'll hear about kickbacks and corruption regarding this ill-conceived bailout for the wealthy.

Hap tip to Facing South.

WTF is going on? Seriously!

The Wall Street bailout legislation passed by the Senate has $1.7 billion in tax breaks for shit like this:

• Manufacturers of kids' wooden arrows - $6 million.
• Puerto Rican and Virgin Islands rum producers - $192 million.
• Wool research.
• Auto-racing tracks - $128 million.
• Corporations operating in American Samoa - $33 million.
• Small- to medium-budget film and television productions - $10 million.

NASCAR is being subsidized in this taxpayer bailout of Wall Street? Do the people who represent us know what's going on in this country? Do they know healthcare and education systems are broken? Do they know bridges are collapsing? Do they know unemployment is at its highest levels in years?

WTF alternate universe are these people living in? Does anyone know?

The proposal to bailout Wall Street investment banks appears to be welfare for the rich. Nearly $1 trillion is being requested from U.S. taxpayers to avoid an economic disaster, and the current plan put forth is being universally reviled by economists and global treasury markets.

Daily Kos has a rundown of the details explaining why U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the Bush Administration's plan is a seriously BAD DEAL for U.S. taxpayers.

In short, there is nothing in this plan that in any way benefits taxpayers. We give money, we get nothing in return.

There will be no oversight as to how the money is spent. None.

Regulatory reform is not part of the plan. This will be allowed to happen again as the bill is currently written.

Something needs to be done. Get Uppity and talk to your representatives about this.

Why is that every time bad investments made by private institutions go belly up, the U.S. taxpayers are called upon to socialize the financial risk? WHY?

Why is it that suddenly, government isn't the problem, it's the solution?

Democrats and Republican lawmakers are to blame for the current mortgage and investment banking crisis. From a legislative perspective, they saw this coming years ago and did nothing to stop it. This has happened before. Remember when taxpayers were called upon to bailout the Resolution Trust Corporation and the S&L crisis in the 1990s?

When will we hold politicians and powerbrokers in this country responsible for believing risk should be socialized, but wealth must be privatized?