Two years of finger pointing changes nothing
Has anyone noticed how consistent underscoring of scandal and play-to-play tactics employed in the deep workings of Walker's Wisconsin only served to fill space in newspapers, and excite the social media with "must read" tweets, links, and cacophony? - Secret email networks, new voter ID laws, trans vaginal ultrasound procedures, union bashing, gerrymandering vote districts without public input, authorizing paramilitary security in the North woods, silencing public singing in the Capitol rotunda, (take a deep breath here), replacing the Department of Commerce with the "quasi" failure of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, filing a motion to absolve legislators from responding to Freedom of Information Act orders? (Add your tweeted, posted, pasted infringement of ethical debasement "here")
Hey. They just don't care
The disgrace of political self interest being played out in Washington over funding the government, is alive and well in sweet Wisconsin. The concept of "disagreeing without being disagreeable" has become as dated and sentimental in American politics as episodes of "Matlock", "Perry Mason", and "I Love Lucy" on cable TV. The "trickle down" theory of economics has proven to be an out-and-out lie, but "trickle down" jobbery, skimming, and shuffle has become the "new normal", the default deal, the secret email network of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
Investigate Scott Suder, prosecute ALEC
The case of the Wisconsin Sportsmen grant secretly tucked into the budget bill and passed last May smells of fraud. Below is a short history of the "discovery" of another rendition of a secret email network embedded in the budget bill. The bullet points trace the powder burns of the past few weeks - the initial plot of the attack goes back much further.
1) United Sportsmen was the only applicant for the award.
2) The carefully crafted grant requirements were unanimously voted into the state budget in May after just seven minutes of discussion.
3) United Sportsmen falsified its 501(3)(c) status on the grant application.
4) United Sportsmen has a scant record of any involvement in promoting hunting of fishing.
5) Sept 5 - Late Thursday Gov. Scott Walker canceled a controversial $500,000 grant to a Sportsmen's group with little training experience but close ties to GOP politicians.JS OnlineBy Jason Stein and Patrick Marley of the Journal Sentinel
6) Sept 11 - GOP legislators did not tell any member of the opposition party that the grant to the Sportsmen of $500,000 would trigger a loss of $28 million dollars to the taxpayers of Wisconsin. according to the DNR.
7) Sept 16 - Scott Suder, the Assembly head who lobbied for the Sportsmen grant resigns to accept a position at the Public Service Commission where Walker awards a $94,000 a year salary – nearly double his legislative salary.Wisconsin Public Radio
8) Back in May Terry J. Kohler personally reached out to key Republican lawmakers to urge them to slip the taxpayer money into the state budget for the Wisconsin Sportsmen group. Read the letter: PDF of Kohler letterTerry Kohler was the real firepower. He is a Wisconsin industrialist, and one of the most influential GOP donors in the state.Journal Sentinel
The Sportsmen "sinecure" for ALEC
"Sincecure" is not my word. I had no idea what it meant until I looked it up. It is the very word used by Phil Montgomery, chair the state Public Service Commission, to rationalize and defend his confidence in Scott Suder's appointment to the commission. The word choice is an unabashed admission that Suder was appointed as a reward for services rendered in promulgating ALEC legislative maneuvers into the legislative calendar for two years.
The quote:(the bold is mine:)
September 25, 2013 Cap Times editorial
Montgomery says he stands by his decision to help Suder secure a sinecure as the administrator for the PSC’s Division of Water, Compliance and Consumer Affairs. Why? Montgomery claims it has something to do with Suder’s legislative record.
The definition
si·ne·cure
[sahy-ni-kyoor, sin-i-]
1.
an office or position requiring little or no work, especially one yielding profitable returns.Definition
It is all "OK"
Scott Suder is being rewarded with a high paying, cushy job on the PSC for all his hard work pushing ALEC formulated legislation into the lives of the people of Wisconsin, and this is so normal and without question that Montgomery openly admits it to the press?
Passage of the golden ALEC Sinecure award dates back to Montgomery's own appointment to the PSC.
By Thomas Content of the Journal Sentinel - March 28, 2011
Until January (2011), Montgomery served on the board of directors of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a national organization that works on development of state-level polices that promote limited government, free markets and federalism.
Investigate ALEC
When Scott Walker became governor very few people had ever heard of ALEC, but with the curtailment of collective bargaining and anti-union, anti-teacher, anti- women, anti-voting rights legislation showing up in red state after red state, the source of all of the similar wording in all the bills proposed in all the states were traced back to ALEC...AND they don't care. It seems the low and unethical tactics employed by ALEC, the Koch Brother's American for Prosperity, and the Bradley Foundation will not serve to shame them into lining up with established democratic principles. They don't care. They don't care in the Senate, or in the Congress or in Wisconsin. Unless the ruthless tactics of pay-to-play, rule bending, and out-and-out corruption are investigated and prosecuted - progressives, democrats, and all people of ethical consciousness are accepting complicity in the new normal of Walker, Montgomery, Suder, and ALEC.