Yesterday, the Wisconsin State Journal revealed that six of their staffers had signed the petition to Recall Scott Walker. As a result of these employees blatantly flaunting their constitutionally protected First Amendment rights to petition their government for a redress of grievances, they will face potential internal disciplinary action, according to WSJ editor John Smalley.
Regarding the discovery that one of these overzealous partisans, chief photographer Steve Apps, is directly involved in news coverage and the dissemination of information to the public, Smalley had this to say:
"I remain confident in Steve's abilities as a photographer and a journalist. He knows he made a mistake in signing a petition."
Yes, a terrible and and tragic mistake. I would imagine that Mr. Apps finds laughable the notion that signing this petition may have in any way affected his ability to report on the news in an unbiased manner, as if that series of pen strokes altered his opinion and mindset. Give me a fuckin' break. Steve Apps and all of these other individuals should be commended for standing up for themselves and their rights.
Only a few days ago, Gannett Wisconsin Media published a series of nearly-identical editorials in their various Wisconsin newspapers, including the Green Bay Press Gazette, Appleton Post-Crescent and Oshkosh Northwestern, apologizing to their readership for some of their employees having failed "to avoid behavior that could raise doubts about their journalistic neutrality." You may recognize the Gannett Company from its ownership of USA Today, as well as the Arizona Republic, Cincinnati Enquirer, Detroit Free Press and many other publications around the country. These discoveries were made by the Gannett Wisconsin Media Investigative Team, the same group responsible for the outing of twenty-nine WI circuit court judges that signed the petition to Recall Walker. Not surprisingly, shortly thereafter the conservative "watch" dog Landmark Legal Foundation filed a complaint calling for an investigation into these Wisconsin judges for supposedly violating the WI judicial code of ethics. This hunt came less than two weeks after Dane County Circuit Court Judge David Flanagan was raked over the coals for issuing a temporary injunction against Walker's precious Voter Suppression Law on the merits of it's unconstitutionality, without revealing that he had signed the petition to Recall Walker.
According to Marquette University Law Professor Edward Fallone, the charges of ethics violations or need for recusal are unfounded:
"Because the disqualification grounds of Wis. Stat. 757.19 would not mandate the disqualification of Judge Flanagan in the Voter ID case, so long as he subjectively believed that he could continue on the case in an impartial manner, the question next turns to whether the Code of Judicial Conduct, as reflected in the Rules of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, is somehow violated when a state judge signs a recall petition. Once again, the answer is “no.” There is no provision of the Code of Judicial Conduct that prohibits a sitting judge from signing a recall petition."
I would be remiss if I did not give credit for these attempted smear campaigns where credit is due. Let us remember that none of these searches could have been possible without the noble, patriotic duty carried out by the Tea Party-organized Verify the Recall campaign. The brainchild of WI Tea Party groups Grandsons of Liberty, We the People of the Republic and ignominious Texas Tea Party group the King Street Patriots, Verify the Recall's searchable database was created so that anyone in the public could participate in uncovering the undoubtedly rampant fraud so prevalent in the petitions and shed some light on our democratic process. (Note the slightest hint of sarcasm.)
These petitions were already public documents available to open records requests. The signatures are already posted on the website of Wisconsin's election overseer, the Government Accountability Board. Sadly, in the past individuals would have been forced to slog through hundreds of thousands of pages online to find a specific signature of the elector they hoped to chastise. Thankfully, with the creation of the searchable database on V.T.R., presumably all you have to do is enter a few pieces of personal information for someone you want to "out" for purposes of conspiracy theory, investigations or disciplinary action and...let the witch hunt begin!* Brilliant!!!
Signing a recall petition is not activism. It is a civic expression of your role and responsibility in the democratic process. These individuals are allowed to privately carry-out the democratic action of voting, a blatant expression of one's rights, biases, morals and opinions. The fact that these recall petitions are considered public documents does not make signing one any more an expression of political activism than casting a vote in an election. These employees were not circulators of petitions, out working with United Wisconsin or the various grassroots organizations collecting signatures around the state. They were electors that signed said petitions. They did nothing fucking wrong.
Somehow, the Wisconsin State Journal, Green Bay Press Gazette, Oshkosh Northwestern found it acceptable to endorse Scott Walker for governor in 2010. They sure didn't seem to worry about any public perception of bias or impropriety then. But if State Journal and Gannett employees decided to sign petitions for Walker, THAT is considered ethically unacceptable?? Just because the Wisconsin State Journal, Gannett Media and their many newspapers across the state or any other media outlet put these policies in place and emphasized their importance does not make them acceptable directives and most certainly does not mean their employees' actions were mistakes. Going after members of the Wisconsin judiciary, employees in the journalism industry or ANY business for that matter and threatening them with discipline for signing recall petitions, is outrageous. When a business decides to go out of its way to search a database and single-out its employees who made the decision to stand up for their constitutionally protected right to petition their government for a redress of grievances, it is engaging in a witch hunt, plain and simple.
To automatically suggest that by not signing, one is remaining impartial or non-partisan is a fallacy. But if I owned a business, is it ethical for me to go looking through Verify the Recall's searchable database and posit the threat that if any of my employees DID NOT sign (In the process, making a statement in and of itself, might I add) that they will face repercussions? Of course not! As a business owner, engaging in an investigative action or publicly condemning your employees based on what you find simply because it's available for you to do so, does not necessarily make it acceptable. Unfortunately, these businesses have seemingly fallen prey to temptation and determined that showing some restraint was a little too much to ask. In a state whose political history has been so deeply stained by Senator Joseph McCarthy and his shamefully reprehensible "Red Scare" witch hunts in Congress during the 1950's, I would expect better. Then again, after fifteen months full of threats, secrecy oaths, illegal votes, voter suppression, discussions of planting troublemakers among hordes of peaceful protesters, and extreme polarization levied upon our state by the leadership in Fitzwalkerstan, I am definitely not surprised.
As long as this online searchable database exists, I anticipate that employers, prospective employers and these Conservative attack dog groups will attempt to impugn signers' character by assigning them a scarlet letter, of sorts. Well, if you are ever forced to privately or publicly "bear this burden," I would hope that you would wear this letter with pride. If you were one of the individuals like Steve Apps who was instructed not to sign a recall petition by your employer (to eliminate the perception of bias or otherwise, under the threat of discipline or not) and still signed, I applaud you for standing up for yourself and your rights. If you were one of the individuals who was instructed not to sign a recall petition by your employer and made the decision not to sign of your own volition because you did not feel that Scott Walker should be recalled, I applaud you, as well.
*Note: I only say presumably because the data entry skills of those working for Verify the Recall were clearly not the strongest. As soon as the searchable database became available to the public, I went to find my OWN name in the Walker database to no avail. Having proudly signed the petition shortly after midnight on November 15th, I knew that my signature had to be in there somewhere. Only by remembering who else had signed my page, was I able to search for and confirm that my signature had found its way into the database. You got me!! Nice work, Tea Baggers.
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