Sore Losers and Lame Ducks Should Not Overturn the Will of the People

By Roger Utnehmer

Sore losers and lame ducks are about to try to steal a Supreme Court seat, restrict voting in Wisconsin and subvert the will of the people expressed in the elections of Governor-elect Tony Evers and Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul.

Republican legislative leaders are attempting to take power away from Evers and Kaul, rig the 2020 Supreme Court race to favor a conservative justice and make it more difficult for Wisconsin citizens to vote. The special legislative session starting Tuesday should be repudiated as the unconstitutional power grab that it is.

Voters Needed to Save Democracy

By Cal Potter

There are some elections which prove to be more important than others in the operation of our democracy. One such election is this November. This importance will require voters truly concerned about the health of our nation's democracy to put the current state of hyper-partisanship, and too often single issue voting, aside and do some broader candidate analysis.

Since the Citizens United court decision, with corporations now considered persons and unlimited campaign spending part of free speech, we have seen a flood of special interest money flow into campaigns, fueling the purchase of literally thousands of inane, purely character assassination media ads. At this writing, the Koch brothers alone have already spent over six million dollars trying to defeat U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin. We must elect candidates who will stop this insane campaign spending, and return to elections which solve our nation's real problems.

Wisconsin Government Infected With Political Equivalent of Emerald Ash Borer

By Roger Utnehmer

All three branches of Wisconsin government continue to be infected with the political equivalent of the emerald ash borer. The Supreme Court, the Legislature and the Governor’s office are under the influence of far too much special interest money and the corruption it breeds.

Our state Supreme Court refuses to adopt rules that would require justices receiving significant sums of money from special interests to recuse themselves from voting. When cases impacting those donors come before them, justices who benefit from massive expenditures should not vote on the case. An IQ exceeding room temperature is not required to question if a justice benefiting from millions of dollars of campaign spending really will be objective when voting on matters that impact the donors. It appears that special interest groups have discovered it is easier to buy a Supreme Court than a legislature.

The Speaker of the Assembly, Robin Vos, took a four-day trip to London in 2017, accompanied by and paid for in part, by lobbyists for the pay-day loan industry. Vos claimed he did not discuss pay-day loans with industry lobbyists on the trip. A junket paid for by the insidious industry that preys on the poorest among us smells worse than the stale cigar smoke surrounding their secret deal-making meetings.

Stronger Judicial Recusal Rules Vital for an Impartial State Judiciary

By Jay Heck

Wisconsin, from statehood in 1848 to about a decade ago, in 2007, had a national reputation for having among the most respected, impartial, non-partisan, fair and trusted state court systems in the nation. Much of this was because there was a generally-held belief among all Wisconsinites of all political persuasions and ideologies that the courts should be “above politics as usual.” In order to maintain the confidence of the citizenry, judges and justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court had to be scrupulously non-partisan and impartial and not be perceived as having been compromised by outside lobbying pressure, campaign contributions, or other political influence.

For decades, this standard not only survived, but flourished and as recently as the early 2000’s the Wisconsin Supreme Court was held up by legal experts across the country as the “gold standard” for how Justices should be elected and serve once in office in a state supreme court. The Wisconsin Court of Appeals, the 72 county circuit courts and the hundreds of municipal court judges also were perceived as having the highest standards for impartiality, non-partisanship and fairness across the state. And while Wisconsin legislators fell into public disrepute in the aftermath of the worst political scandal in the state in a century – the Legislative Caucus Scandal of 2001-2002, the reputation of state courts were not only unaffected by the legislative scandal, but enhanced in their execution of equal justice under the law.