Political Heat

More than 96 percent of recall signatures valid The Government Accountability Board will officially recommend tomorrow moving forward the recall elections of Gov. Scott Walker, his Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and several Republican state senators, following the certification of millions of signatures submitted in favor of their facing special elections. The GAB certified 900,938 signatures as valid against the governor specifically , striking less than four percent of those submitted as invalid. To put the size of that number into greater perspective, recall organizers needed only 540,208 signatures to trigger a recall, meaning the number they garnered was 166 percent greater than what was required of them.

Effects of governor's "reforms" aren't responsible for job growth this year The job numbers from February (and revised numbers for January) were released last week (PDF), showing a two-month growth in numbers thus far this year. Unfortunately, those numbers still fail to help the state recover from the disastrous "reforms" Gov. Scott Walker put in place last year. With the revised January numbers and the preliminary February numbers from this year, Walker remains more than 8,000 jobs short of the number he inherited when he took office a year ago.

Governor cites study his administration had previously ignored Gov. Scott Walker recently took the time to tout a new report that says Wisconsin's economy is set to improve . "Strong signals suggest we are turning things around for Wisconsin’s economy," Walker said, "and the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s newest report of state leading economic indexes provides yet one more indication that our pro-jobs policies are moving us in the right direction." That's an interesting study to choose, however -- previous Philadelphia Reserve Bank reports have been scoffed at by the Walker administration and his supporters after they have consistently shown Wisconsin heading in a more disastrous path. It's also highly misleading: the entire country is set to improve, and Wisconsin is going to be behind the rest of the pack once again .

Ironies exist within movement to oust Democratic, Republican lawmakers Wisconsin State Sens. Bob Jauch (D-Poplar) and Dale Schultz (R-Richland Center) are both new targets of a recall campaign . The reason? Both senators co-authored a compromise version of a mining bill that would have kept intact the rights of citizens to voice their input on the mine, as well as preserve established environmental standards within the state. The proposal, which had the support of 17 state senators (a majority), failed to pass because the Republican leadership wouldn't allow it to be voted upon in the Senate. Instead, those leaders insisted that only their bill, which had the support of 16 senators (a minority), could suffice.

Judges shouldn't be restricted from participating in the democratic process Should judges be allowed to sign recall petitions? If so, should their doing so play a part in whether their rulings should be taken seriously, or whether they should rule at all? A recent news article highlights the phenomenon in detail, noting that 29 Wisconsin circuit judges have indeed signed the recall petition against Gov. Scott Walker. Excluding appellate judges and State Supreme Court justices (none of whom signed the petition), that amounts to about 12 percent of the state's judiciary. Prior to this discovery, the issue of judges signing the recall was brought up in a different context. Judge David Flanagan, who issued a temporary injunction halting the voter ID law that Republicans had passed last year, had also signed a petition (which his wife had circulated). Critics of his ruling held that he had a conflict of interest in the case , that his signing the recall somehow inferred that he had...

Candidate for Lieutenant Governor would work to restore Wisconsin's ideals Mahlon Mitchell, the president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin, announced today that he will run for the office of Lieutenant Governor against current office-holder Rebecca Kleefisch in her impending recall election late this spring. Mitchell's entrance into the race signals the first major name to challenge Kleefisch, giving Democrats a guaranteed full ticket against both her and Gov. Scott Walker. Mitchell's candidacy is beneficial for two reasons. First, being the head of a respected union, Mitchell exemplifies the fact that the Democrats mean business when it comes to protecting workers' rights in the state. But more than that, Mitchell represents those who WEREN'T affected by Gov. Scott Walker's attack on state workers. Firefighters weren't forced to take lower pay or lose their collective bargaining rights when Walker introduced his budget repair bill early last ...

Embattled justice continues to face problems due to behavior issues The Wisconsin Judicial Commission has rendered a decision regarding Justice David Prosser's conduct on the State Supreme Court last year, during which the conservative justice wrapped his hands around a fellow female justice's neck and called another female justice (and head of the Court) a "total bitch." The Commission has submitted an official complaint to the Supreme Court, which will decide how to further proceed. Here are some excerpts from the actual complaint (PDF): "The Commission has found probable cause to believe that Justice Prosser willfully violated SCR 60.04(1)(o), Wisconsin Code of Judicial Conduct. This provision states that a judge must cooperate with other judges of a common judicial system to promote the satisfactory administration of justice." "The Commission has found probable cause to believe that Justice Prosser willfully violated SCR 60.02, Wisconsin Code of...

Claims that Wisconsin was worse under Doyle exaggerated Editor's note : the following post uses Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) numbers. I tend to use BLS in every post on jobs I can. Yesterday, I wrote a post using DWD numbers since the BLS site hadn't updated yet. Though the two indicate different numbers for different months, the changes are almost insignificant to warrant edits to yesterday's post. Keep that in mind if you see discrepancies between numbers on today's post and Monday's. Yesterday I looked at jobs during the first year of Gov. Scott Walker's term, noting that two budgets were active during that time (the tail end of Gov. Jim Doyle's and the first six months of Walker's). Those two budgets produced very different outcomes in terms of jobs in 2011, with the current governor's budget (and other reforms) producing great losses for Wisconsin overall. It was suggested to me that I should look further back, to compare Doyle's number...

Governor fails to make feasible argument regarding content of judge's voter ID decision A second Wisconsin circuit court judge has ruled the voter ID law passed last year as unconstitutional. Ruling in favor of the plaintiffs -- the League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan organization -- Judge Richard Niess determined that the voter ID law was in direct conflict (PDF) with the state's constitutional mandates for who is and isn't a qualified voter. Article III is unambiguous, and means exactly what it says. It creates both necessary and sufficient requirements for qualified voters. Every United States citizen 18 years of age or older who resides in an election district in Wisconsin is a qualified elector in that district... The government may not disqualify an elector who possesses those qualifications on the grounds that the voter does not satisfy additional statutorily-created qualifications not contained in Article III, such as a photo ID. Yet the judge's ruling wasn...

Graphs show that Wisconsin is worse off on job creation under conservative governor's leadership Last week, I published a post regarding my sentiments on the recently released January jobs report. I noted that, even though the first month produced a great deal of jobs, it still wasn't enough to overcome the devastating first year of Gov. Scott Walker's term in office. The visual evidence provides a clearer picture of what a torrential year it truly was: It was feared that Walker had had six months of losses, totaling more than 35,000 jobs disappearing in that time. But the revised numbers show that the state suffered much worse under Walker than was previously thought, adding another month of losses (for a total of seven) and 40,100 jobs gone. The months of net gains were notably diminished from earlier estimates as well. In fact, the total from the five months where there were net job increases totaled 19,500 jobs -- or less than half the total losses in the other seven m...

Idea would "protect" imagined threat while protecting voter access to the polls A lot of hubbub is being made over the controversial voter ID bill in Wisconsin, with good reason: the law disenfranchises thousands of voters, mostly minorities and the elderly. In one case, an octogenarian woman from Brokaw, Wisconsin, will have to pay $200 to get an ID because she wasn't ever given a birth certificate and never needed an ID previously. In all, over 177,000 elderly Wisconsinites could be affected by the new voter ID law, as well as half of all African Americans in the state. This past week, a judge placed a temporary injunction against the law . It was announced yesterday that a decision would be made Monday over its legality. Wisconsin's voter ID law is similar to many others that have been passed or proposed in the rest of the country. With the potential to affect millions of voters across various states, the impact could potentially change the outcome of countless ...

State gained in January, but revisions show 2011 was much worse than we thought There's good news and bad news regarding the latest job numbers for Wisconsin . The good news is that the state gained 12,500 jobs in the first month of the year. Pushing politics aside, we should be happy that more jobs have come to the state during that time, regardless of whether it helps one party over another. Yet there is bad news as well: revisions from last year show that Wisconsin did a lot worse on the jobs front than was previously thought -- so much worse that our total numbers from January, despite the spike that we saw overall, are lower than what we previously perceived we were at in December. In fact, since Walker took office our economy has only grown 6,000 net jobs in the private sector . Overall, total non-farm employment is actually lower now than it was under the previous administration, meaning that we have less jobs now than when Walker took office. In short, we're going backw...

Blame belongs to those who didn't compromise Amid the failure to compromise on conditions for a decent mining bill and the news that the company involved is abandoning the project altogether, it's only natural that the two sides involved in the political struggle over the bill would cast blame on one another. But let's assess that situation deeper. Republicans are upset that all 16 Democratic senators (plus moderate-Republican Sen. Dale Schultz) didn't vote to accept their bill, which was written in part by Gogebic Taconite itself, the company that would have carried out the actual mining ( maybe? ). Their bill, it should be observed, would have relaxed environmental standards and loosened the ability of citizens to voice their concerns or challenge decisions that the company would make that would affect their lives. On the Democratic side, things are equally frustrating. The Democratic/Schultz compromise bill would have made reforms as well, but also would have pres...

In my previous post on Gov. Scott Walker's newest ad asking you to help him "oppose" the recall, I took a look at job claims the Republican executive made. Namely, I took issue with Walker pretending that he was responsible for any job gains made in 2011 (because those gains occurred under a different governor's budget) and casting blame on the previous administration for losing 150,000 jobs in the state when it was due more to a global economic recession. It's clear from that assessment that Walker isn't being honest with the people of this state within his latest ad campaign. Sadly, his dishonesty goes even further, into claims that he balanced the budget and didn't raise taxes. In fact, the first claim is murky, at best, and blatantly false at worst; the second claim is an outright lie. The Budget In his latest ad , Walker makes a claim that he resolved the budget problems the state saw when he took office: We kept our promise to balance the budget...e...

Campaign ad misleads on a plethora of job claims made by Wisconsin governor UPDATE (March 10): New job numbers are out that make the data below different. To read a new blog post on the updated numbers, click here . A new Scott Walker ad is out , and it's full of the same old lies that the other ads have been notorious for. It's beyond reproach that Gov. Walker would lie so blatantly to the people of Wisconsin. With graphics and selective wording that promotes his cause, Walker asks that you "help [him] oppose the recall" efforts by supporting his campaign. Yet the ad, engrossed in so many lies and misleading statements, serves as a standalone reason itself why the governor deserves to be removed from office. Though it gives the viewer attempting to view the it great headaches (at least this viewer ), it's worth examining closer, line by line, to demonstrate just how baseless Walker's argument to stay in office really is. JOBS Walker starts off the ad by st...

Conditions for turning Wisconsin's economy around haven't been created under Walker's watch The much anticipated January jobs numbers for Wisconsin are set to come out this week. Given the six months of continuous losses, many are hoping that January will signal a turnaround for the state, that we will finally see a change that will be congruent with the positive news on jobs seen at the national level . Yet, given the path Gov. Scott Walker and state Republican legislators have carved out for us thus far, there's reason to be skeptical. Don't misunderstand what I mean to say here: I'd LOVE to be wrong. If being wrong on my prediction means that more people and more jobs come into our state, then I'd gladly deflate my own ego and have egg on my face later on this week. But the fact of the matter is that Walker & Co. has done zilch in producing the conditions necessary to grow jobs in our state (much less grow jobs themselves) since his budget passed in J...

Conflict of interest may have played a role in one justice's decision-making Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne filed a motion with the State Supreme Court this week to contest the legality and implementation of Act 10 , putting into doubt whether the law ending collective bargaining rights for state workers was done so legitimately. The law had been argued before the court last year, when the conservative bloc of justices, in a convoluted decision , ruled that open meetings were subject to the rules that lawmaking bodies placed on them, and as such only those bodies (and not the courts) should decide whether or not the law was broken. In short, the conservative bloc of the court rendered longstanding and respected open meetings law as insignificant, more of a mission statement than any type of legal policy. But new evidence in the case suggests a conflict of interest in that ruling. Justice Michael Gableman, one of the conservatives on the court, received free legal serv...