Tag: Gov. Scott Walker

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom government transparency moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies political challengers Regulating Protest responsibility too much government

How Insidious the Plot?

Eric O'Keefe, Gov. Scott Walker, John Doe, Wisconsin

The story of the Wisconsin John Doe raids against conservatives, covered yesterday and the day before, is a big one. Huge. So I now continue.

The rest of the story? Recently, materials that police seized from the subjects of those dawn raids were leaked, illegally, to the Guardian newspaper — in direct violation of a court order. Yet more lawlessness.

Who leaked this information? Well, it was in the possession of the Milwaukee County prosecutors, and they haven’t alleged a Russian hack.

What’s really going on? Eric O’Keefe stated on Monday that “even though they never brought a charge, the prosecutors did achieve one of their major goals: the unlawful seizure of millions of private communications to create a searchable database of political intelligence spanning Wisconsin and the entire country.”

In short, the abusive investigation was part and parcel of a partisan effort.

State Rep. Dave Craig is urging the creation of a special legislative committee to “take sworn testimony … to determine whether those charged with the public trust have acted maliciously by intentionally leaking sealed materials in violation of state policy.”

It’s important that justice be done. To prevent future tyranny.

We don’t want to see a repeat of the IRS abuse of Tea Party groups without anyone being held to account.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Speaking of the IRS, it turns out that the head of Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board (GAB) was a pal of Lois Lerner, who headed the IRS division responsible for violating the civil rights of Tea Party groups — before she took the Fifth, refusing to testify before Congress and then retiring with a six-​figure pension. Further, there is evidence the GAB may have illegally provided confidential information to the IRS in hopes of getting the Feds to join in harassing these conservative groups.

 

FOR MORE ON THIS INCREDIBLE STORY

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Eric O'Keefe, Gov. Scott Walker, John Doe, Wisconsin

 

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies political challengers Regulating Protest responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

A Morning After

Eric O'Keefe, Gov. Scott Walker, John Doe, Wisconsin

Yesterday we celebrated the end to “a disgraceful episode in Wisconsin history” — the dawn police raids of the so-​called John Doe investigations against conservatives alleged to have violated campaign finance regulations.

State and federal courts ruled that no laws were broken and some laws were unconstitutional — certainly Milwaukee County DA John Chisholm’s prosecutorial methods violated the rights of citizens the court called innocent.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, announced Monday, not to hear Chisholm’s appeal thankfully ends this particular reign of error and terror.

So what have we learned?

First, courage is contagious. Had Eric O’Keefe with the Wisconsin Club for Growth not bravely spoken out, others would have remained quiet, and the prosecutors might have gotten away with what National Review’s David French called “a pure intimidation tactic to try to terrify conservatives into silence.”

Another unmistakable conclusion: yes indeed, it can happen here. 

It has.

Obviously.

And if changes are not made, it will happen again.

Reforms have already been won. Not only is the John Doe investigation shut down, the law was changed, allowing for no more John Doe attacks. The Government Accountability Board, found to have acted from partisan motives, has been completely disbanded and new ethics bodies formed.

Another avenue of correction comes through the courts. The MacIver Institute filed a class-​action lawsuit against Milwaukee County DA John Chisholm and others for illegally seizing documents, and Cindy Archer, whose home was raided by police, has filed a civil rights lawsuit.

Ms. Archer’s suit was dismissed after a federal judge ruled that the prosecutors had immunity. But that dismissal is now on appeal before the federal Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

The prosecutors will go to court … as defendants.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Eric O'Keefe, Gov. Scott Walker, John Doe, Wisconsin

 

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Accountability crime and punishment moral hazard national politics & policies property rights Regulating Protest responsibility U.S. Constitution

It’s Morning in Wisconsin

Assault on Free Speech in Wisconsin, police abuse, harassment, militarization, democracy, intimidation, collage, photomontage, illustration, editorial, violence

Regarding mornings, put me in Sheriff Hopper’s camp. He’s the Stranger Things character, repeatedly informing folks: “Mornings are for coffee and contemplation.”

Speaking of stranger things, who expects an early morning SWAT-​like police raid on their home?

Three years ago, yesterday, that happened to Cindy Archer, and other conservatives in Wisconsin. Near dawn, a dozen police officers in flak jackets pounded on her door, carrying a battering ram just in case. Her dogs were freaking out and she feared they’d be shot. The police ransacked her home, confiscating her computer and smart phone.

This was a secretive John Doe investigation, so Ms. Archer was informed she could discuss the raid with nobody but her lawyer. The raid was public, the media tipped off, but Archer was prevented from defending herself publicly. Or even privately, among friends and relatives.

Her suspected crime?

Like her fellow targets, she had supported Gov. Scott Walker’s effort to reform the law regarding public employee unions. And for fundraising “coordination” in pursuit thereof.

The gag order slapped on conservatives in 29 groups might have prevented us from knowing the partisan political assault taking place, but Eric O’Keefe, the head of the Wisconsin Club for Growth, courageously spoke out.

“Had I honored their secrecy order, I couldn’t have organized our defense,” Eric O’Keefe told Blaze TV. “I decided quickly — look, this is supposed to be a free country, I’m going to operate as though it is, even if it isn’t today.”

First, John Doe Judge Gregory Peterson ordered the probe to close. Prosecutors appealed.

O’Keefe went to federal court and soon Judge Rudolph Randa agreed that Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and the Government Accountability Board were violating their rights. Randa warned: “[A]ttempts to purify the public square lead to places like the Guillotine and the Gulag.”

Randa’s ruling was stayed pending the appeal to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. “It is utterly clear that the special prosecutor has employed theories of law that do not exist in order to investigate citizens who were wholly innocent of any wrongdoing,” read the that court’s majority opinion.

Still, the persecutors persisted, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. Yesterday morning, the High Court denied Milwaukee County’s appeal.

Calling the three-​year dystopian odyssey “a disgraceful episode in Wisconsin history,” this morning Mr. O’Keefe is pushing the state legislature to have some coffee and contemplate (and then legislate) ensuring this never happens again.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Assault on Free Speech in Wisconsin, police abuse, harassment, militarization, democracy, intimidation, collage, photomontage, illustration, editorial, violence

 

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Accountability Common Sense government transparency ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers

Walker vs. Union Power

Taxes Make Us Strong

Governor Scott Walker, who is running for the U. S. Presidency, has cooked up a white paper on the subject for which he is nationally known: labor relations. It’s a doozy.

His main points are:

  • Reduce the power of union bosses by eliminating the National Labor Relations Board.
  • Eliminate big-​government unions.
  • Take “right to work”
  • Protect state employees’ First Amendment rights.

And that’s not the whole of it. Some of his points are worth quoting at length, including this:

On Day One of my administration, I will put in place accountability and transparency rules. I will require online disclosure of union expenditures, including revealing the total compensation of union officers, itemizing union trust fund expenditures, increasing reporting requirements for local affiliates of government employee unions, and restoring conflict-​of-​interest reporting requirements.

Walker’s is not a detailed, in-​depth policy paper. It’s a list of goals, really. It does not address how he would accomplish this, if elected. It’s obvious that many (perhaps most) of these reforms would require congressional compliance and even legislation.

Yet by focusing on the inordinate power of government workers’ unions, Gov. Walker advances what many of us were hoping for when we first heard that the surprisingly daring, surprisingly successful Wisconsin governor would make a bid for the top spot in the federal government. Something needs changing.

And that something is the general purpose for government: what and whom government serves, other than itself, and how.

Or, in Walker’s words, “commonsense reforms” to narrow “the federal government’s role.…”

He says let’s close “special-​interest loopholes … once and for all.”

Is that possible? It’s worth a try.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Taxes Make Us Strong

 

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general freedom

Rauner on a Roll

political, politics, Labor Unions, collage, photomontage, politics, protest, illustration, editorial, crowd

Last week I came not to bury a newly elected chief executive but to praise him — for not merely paying lip service to term limits, but for in fact making the passage of state legislative term limits a high-​priority, line-​in-​the-​sand policy goal.

I refer, of course, to Illinois’s new governor, Bruce Rauner.

Another controversy catching my attention pertains to union-​bullying. Governor Rauner hopes to stop public-​employee unions from extracting dues from the unwilling. These “fair share” dues are spent on bargaining strategies or political causes with which the dues-​payer may be wholly unsympathetic. Why should workers be compelled to part with part of their income to support activities they don’t consider beneficial?

Rauner is using both an executive order and a lawsuit to try to outlaw coercive unionizing of public employees. (He has also acted to liberate private-​sector employees from unions.) The order declares that dues may no longer be extracted from unwilling non-​members. The complementary lawsuit is a preemptive bid to get the order judicially sanctioned as legal.

Governor Rauner is not a union member. He therefore lacks standing in the lawsuit, so three public union members have joined as plaintiffs. Representing them is Jacob Huebert, an attorney with the Liberty Justice Center (and author of the book Libertarianism Today).

Again, I say: Yes!

To be sure, I wouldn’t endorse everything that Rauner is saying or doing, even on issues where we’re simpatico. But when you’re right, you’re right. Good going, Governor.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Labor Unions

 

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crime and punishment insider corruption

Free Talkers Now

Ah yes, “criminal schemes.”

The Weekly Standard reminds us that when partisan Democrats declare Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to be “at the center of a ‘criminal scheme’ in which Walker’s campaign illegally coordinated political activity with outside organizations,” they neglect the fact that two judges have already determined that the “case” against Walker is worse than bogus.

“Political coordination” seems to be an infinitely elastic category of pseudo-​crime applicable to anyone a political apparatchik chooses to target. You “politically coordinate” if you’re a) political active, b) share political values with any other activists, and c) read the newspapers, talk on television. If “political coordination” is criminal, so is freedom of speech and freedom of association. It’s all the same species of delinquency.

Wisconsin district attorneys abused power to harass reformers like Governor Walker, my colleague Eric O’Keefe, and others into (what they hoped would be) silence and ineffectuality. Despite a gag order intended to shut up the victims, though, Eric has spoken out; and he’s sued Milwaukee County DA John Chisholm.

In May, federal Judge Rudolph Randa observed, for one thing, that the “theory of ‘coordination’ forming the basis of the investigation, including the basis of probable cause for home raids, is not supported under Wisconsin law and, if it were, would violate the United States Constitution.” Randa granted a preliminary injunction (pdf) to stop the probe.

I’m hopeful that the bad guys won’t win here. We still have the First Amendment.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Though, 44 U.S. Senators are proposing to repeal it.