Spring elections in Wisconsin are often overshadowed by events like the sun returning to the state and opening day for the Brewers. But this year an extremely important and historic election should command resident’s attention. The race for Supreme Court features a new public financing component and could shake up the current 4-3 conservative majority of the court.

The campaign features incumbent and conservative Justice of the Supreme Court David T. Prosser against liberal challengers including; former Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg, State Public Defender Marla Stephens and Madison attorney Joel Winnig. In the wake of the state’s total turn towards the Republican party, conservative incumbent Prosser would appear to have an easy edge for reelection, but a little noticed piece of legislation passed on December 1, 2009 may have grave implications for Justice Prosser and conservatives who hope to maintain the all-important majority on the court. 

The Impartial Justice Act passed by Democratic majorities in the state legislature, and signed by Democrat Governor Jim Doyle in December 2009, took effect on May 1, 2010. The Act establishes a voluntary public financing program called the Democracy Trust Fund for candidates running for Justice of the Supreme Court. Candidates who choose to participate in public financing for their campaign must abide by very strict fundraising and expenditure restrictions in order to qualify for a Primary grant of $100,000 and a subsequent $300,000 grant for those candidates who qualify for the April 5th Spring Election. 

Candidates for Justice of the Supreme Court aren’t required by law to participate in the public financing program, but built into the Impartial Justice Act are strong disincentives to opt out. Most prominent is a supplemental rescue grant for participating candidates to match any expenditure made by a non-participating candidate that exceed 120% ($120,000 for the Primary and $360,000 for the Spring Election) of the initial public financing grant. In other words, the state of Wisconsin is ensuring that if you want to raise your own funds for your campaign and not receive any public money, those who do take public money can’t be outspent by more than 20%. 

Perhaps the Impartial Justice Act began with noble intentions, such as trying to extricate money and influence from the high court in order to maintain “a fair, neutral, impartial, and non-partisan Wisconsin judiciary.” But in practice, the Act has severe implications that don’t square with the values of our Constitution. 

For starters, there are always First Amendment issues when dealing with campaign finance regulations. In December of 2009, Wisconsin Right To Life filed a complaint against the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board claiming that the Impartial Justice Act “violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution by unduly impinging upon protected political speech and association” and more specifically that the Act “reduces the ability of Wisconsin Right to Life to participate in judicial elections” through the regulation of independent expenditures and the supplemental rescue grants for participating candidates. By offsetting private campaign contributions, the state is reducing influence, part of the purpose of the Act. But if campaign contributions are an extension of First Amendment rights to free speech, the Impartial Justice Act clearly violates the Constitution.

Second, the Democracy Trust Fund is supposed to be funded by $3 voluntary check-offs by Wisconsin taxpayers on state income tax returns. But if the Fund doesn’t accrue enough $3 donations to fully fund the candidates, as is expected, then the state is on the hook to provide enough money for participating candidates. For those of you unfamiliar with the status of Wisconsin’s budget, it faces a $3.3 billion dollar deficit over the next two years. Needless to say, Wisconsin can’t afford to publicly finance modern Supreme Court campaigns that over the last three elections have seen candidates raise an average of $900,000 each.

Finally, public financing for the office of Justice of the Supreme Court simply has no place in our republic. Wisconsin taxpayers shouldn’t be coerced into funding candidates for Supreme Court that they may not personally endorse. Furthermore, the Impartial Justice Act uses the power of the state to artificially level the playing field among candidates for the Supreme Court. Under the new Act, candidates can receive significant amounts of public money not based on merit, qualification, or popularity among voters, but by simply declaring ones candidacy and following arbitrary rules devised by the government. The Impartial Justice Act represents a troubling intrusion of the state into the realm of free elections.

All of the candidates for the Justice of Supreme Court in the state of Wisconsin, including Justice Prosser, are participating in the Democracy Trust Fund to publicly finance their campaign. Wisconsin’s experiment with the Impartial Justice Act begins today. On April 5th 2011, the implications this little noted law may just alter the makeup of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Paula Dorsey, the former President of District 48 Council of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), was recently sentenced to three years probation for embezzling union funds to feed a gambling addiction. Dorsey, a former Milwaukee Public Library employee, embezzled over $180,000 of AFSCME funds and accrued total losses of  $208,706 between 2004-2009. While the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s coverage of the story largely focused on Dorsey’s gambling addiction, a larger story looms that demands a real investigation.

The June 22, 2010 plea agreement  in United States of America vs. Paula Dorsey describes how the bank account that Dorsey embezzled funds from was intended to finance “Operation Big Vote,” an AFSCME project to turn out the vote among minorities. The plea agreement describes  “Operation Big Vote” as a benign-sounding “non-partisan AFSCME program.” However, a 2006 Florida lawsuit describes the mission of the program to register “citizens from traditionally disenfranchised communities, including low-income communities and communities of color” due to a supposed history of “voter suppression.” “Operation Big Vote” has been been directly involved in voter fraud in St. Louis and has been linked to ACORN, an organization whose history of voter fraud is well documented. Clearly, “Operation Big Vote” has struggled in the arena of accountability and legality.
Continue Reading »

 

In a recent press release, liberal advocacy group, One Wisconsin Now, slammed Governor Scott Walker’s proposal to require a super majority for any tax increase, calling it a plan that “could doom the state’s economic future to California-sized deficits.”¹ Unfortunately, One Wisconsin Now provides no facts to back up this allegation. This is a case of mistaking correlation for causation.

If the secret to solving budget deficits was high taxes, as One Wisconsin Now seems to imply, California and Wisconsin would be well on their way to a budget surplus. Unfortunately, high taxes in both states have contributed, not solved, a burgeoning budget crisis. According to sampling of data compiled by the non-partisan Tax Foundation, California² and Wisconsin³ suffer from some of the highest taxes in the country.

 

 

• California’s Business Tax Climate ranks 49^th. Wisconsin’s ranks 40th.
• California has the 3rd highest individual income tax. Wisconsin has the 11th.
• California has the 7th highest Corporate Income Tax. Wisconsin has the 17^th.

A careful review of the facts prove that California and Wisconsin have massive budget deficits because they’ve spent recklessly for decades and amassed billions in unfunded pension liabilities. At the current level of tax collection, California would have to devote 4.15 years of tax revenue to its pension fund to fulfill obligations. Wisconsin would have to devote 6.29 years of tax revenue to fully fund its pension obligations.⁴

Walker’s proposal to require a super majority to raise taxes won’t send Wisconsin careening towards a “California-sized deficit.” It will simply make it more difficult to raise taxes. What will lead Wisconsin in that direction is to continue reckless spending levels, not tackling the massive unfunded liability of state pension obligations, and perpetuating myths that high taxes are the answer to budget deficits.

 

Last week, the Wisconsin State Assembly and Senate passed Assembly Bill 1/Senate Bill 1 enacting tort reforms. A litany of groups opposed to the bill calling it “a cloak for corporate interests”¹ and “a corporate wish list.”²

But examine who benefits the most from weak tort laws and it;s clearly trial lawyers and injury attorneys who often benefit to the tune of 40 percent of verdicts and settlements.

One prominent Wisconsin law firm posts its record of results from just a “small portion of our many successful outcomes” in recent years.⁴ The total for these awards and settlements comes to $477,899,650. Assuming the typical fee of 40%, $191,159,650 lined the pockets of a single Wisconsin law firm in recent years.

Continue Reading »

In the last two years, George Soros’ Open Society Institute has provided $895,000 in grants to organizations in Wisconsin for various purposes. Soros, an unapologetic Nazi sympathizer, is committed to using his vast funds to create an “open society” based on various social engineering experiments. Soros made his fortunes through hedge funds and currency speculation that has ruined lives and threatened the economies of more than one country.

In the state of Wisconsin, the Open Society Institute has granted $895,000 to 14 organizations. Continue Reading »

 

In Wisconsin, 14 groups receive grants from the Open Society Institute. The Open Society Institute, founded in 1993 by Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros, purports to be committed to “building vibrant and tolerant democracies.” But evidence suggests that Soros and the Open Society Institute are instead committed to radical social engineering, anarchy and the ultimate destruction of the United States.

 

Despite being born Jewish, Soros is an unabashed Nazi-sympathizer. In an interview with Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes, Soros declared that 1944, the year in which Soros corroborated with the Nazi’s in Hungary to confiscate property from Jews, was “the best year of his life.” Soros went on to claim that he “rather enjoyed it” and only felt feelings of “absolute power.”

  Continue Reading »

 

Madison’s Capitol Times recently ran an editorial cartoon likening Governor Scott Walker to Benito Mussolini, but a study of the facts shows that it’s Wisconsin’s progressive groups that have the true unsavory connection—taking money from a self-confessed Nazi-sympathizer.

 

According to a press release dated November 12, 2009, liberal billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Institute awarded a $470,000 grant to “groups in Wisconsin to monitor federal stimulus spending, encourage public participation in state-level decisions, and advocate for an equitable distribution of recovery funds.”¹ The Wisconsin groups receiving the grant include:

 

• Citizen Action Wisconsin Education Fund
• Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods (a project of Citizen Action Wisconsin)
• WISDOM (statewide parent network for the Milwaukee Inner-City Congregations Allied for Hope (MICAH))
• Voces de la Frontera
• Midwest Environmental Advocates
• Institute for Wisconsin’s Future
• Institute for One Wisconsin

 

For over three months, a pro-rail alliance consisting of these very groups has staged numerous rallies and protests against Governor Scott Walker’s fulfillment of his campaign pledge to kill the Madison-Milwaukee high-speed rail project. The rail project, funded by an $810 million grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, was designed to artificially create jobs by way of a massive government spending project that neither the federal government or the state Wisconsin could afford. Wisconsin voters rebuked the expensive rail project by electing Governor Walker on November 2, 2010.

 

The protests against Walker masquerading as a true grassroots movement is a sham. The truth is that the protests against Walker are fueled by hard-core liberal activists and organizers funded by George Soros to ensure that every stimulus project be completed regardless of fiscal sense or the will of the voters.

 

Last week liberal advocacy group Citizen Action Wisconsin voiced their opposition to Assembly Bill 2/Senate Bill 2 currently being debated in the Wisconsin state legislature. Yesterday, this Bill that makes contributions to Health Savings Accounts (HSA’s) connected to high deductible health plans tax deducible passed through the Senate (21-12) and the Assembly (66-28) and awaits Governor Walker’s signature.

Citizen Action Wisconsin, a longtime advocate of universal healthcare, released a press release titled “Health Savings Accounts are Bad Medicine for Wisconsin.” Executive Director Robert Kraig is quoted saying that “Governor Walker and the new Legislature are selling old snake oil to the sick today” in reference to the proposal put forth, going so far as to say that HSA’s “will actually make the health care system even sicker.” Continue Reading »

    

Last week, environmental advocacy group Clean Wisconsin showed its hypocrisy in the energy debate by advocating for a high-cost, low-production energy source over a proven high-capacity, high-reliability option.

 

On January 9, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that environmental groups Clean Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Citizens’ Utility Board filed a motion with Nuclear Regulatory Commission to halt a proposed expansion of the the Point Beach nuclear plant in Two Rivers, Wisconsin.¹ The proposed expansion would boost power output 17 percent on the 40-year-old reactor. Clean Wisconsin opposed the expansion claiming “we don’t need the power” despite a one-to-two percent annual increase in demand.

 

At the same time, Clean Wisconsin published an op-ed decrying Governor Walker’s proposal to prohibit the construction of wind turbines within 1800 feet of the nearest property line claiming that “Governor Walker would close Wisconsin’s doors to clean, renewable wind power and cost our state thousands of jobs.”²

 

 

It is evident that when Clean Wisconsin claims “we don’t need the power,” it is only if that power is nuclear, coal, or any other source that does not fit their political agenda. Clearly, Clean Wisconsin isn’t a nonpartisan resource on energy policy, but rather an environmental special interest group that is supporting its own political agenda. Continue Reading »

  Recent figures from the non-partisian Tax Foundation prove what Wisconsinites have felt forever: they’re being taxed to the brink. The foundation found that:

 

• Tax Freedom Day, the day when Wisconsinites have earned enough money to pay their total tax bill for the year, is on April 12. This ranks 13th nationally.
• Wisconsin’s state and local tax burden is ranked 9th highest nationally and hasn’t been below the national average between 1977-2008.
• Wisconsin’s individual income tax ranks 11th among states that levy the income tax.
• Wisconsin property taxes are the 11th highest in the nation.
• Wisconsin’s business climate ranked 40th according to the Tax Foundations’s 2011 State Business Tax Climate Index. Continue Reading »