Democracy vs. Money in Wisconsin

By Charles Pierce, Esquire Magazine

02 June 12

his blog has had its issues with Tom Barrett, the decent man who is mayor of Milwaukee, and who's trying to remove from office on Tuesday next Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage its midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin. Specifically, the blog wondered out loud whether or not Barrett fully realized that the only issue in the entire campaign wasn't a Return To Civility, or whether or not he could get tough on his "friends," but, rather, whether or not Walker should be governor anymore. There would be no recall at all but for people standing in the snow last winter, and answering "NO" to that question. There would be no recall at all but for a million or so Wisconsinites signing petitions to the effect that Walker should not be their governor anymore. The recall is a simple, basic thing, and a proud part of the progressive tradition in Wisconsin politics, no matter how messy it seems to the national pundits and to the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

(The reason you know this is that one of Walker's main campaign promises is to "reform" the recall process - probably right out of existence, if experience is any guide. Unless, of course, Walker loses. In which case, he warned on Thursday night, there would be big money almost immediately behind an effort to recall Barrett. "I think you start what I call recall Ping-Pong... I think you're going to see this be perpetual recall." Nice little mandate you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.)

Well, on Thursday night, in their final debate, Barrett showed at least that the penny has dropped. He went up one side of Walker and down the other, slamming him on his politics, on his ethics, and on his being a show-pony puppet of monied interests far outside the state in question, arguing that Walker was treating the state as "an experimental dish for the far right." He slapped Walker around for an Atwater-ish campaign commercial that seemed to blame Barrett for the death of a baby in Milwaukee:

"I have a police department that arrests felons. He has a practice of hiring them."

(The John Doe investigation into Walker's time as Milwaukee county executive, which Barrett hammered like a ten-penny nail on Thursday night, continues apace, by the way. It seems Walker may have been less than honest about his self-proclaimed "role" in launching the investigation. Quel surprise, as we say in Mequon.)

The most telling moment came when Barrett treed Walker on the question of whether he plans to transform Wisconsin wholly into a right-to-work state, as Walker appeared to say to a wealthy backer on a videotape released back on May 10. Walker has consistently ducked the question, and he did so again last night, saying that a right-to-work bill would never reach his desk, and that he refused to comment on a "hypothetical":

"I've said it's not gonna get there, you're asking a hypothetical..And the reason I say that is I saw what happened over the last year and half. And I don't want to repeat that discussion. I think most people in the state, Democrat and Republican alike, want to move forward."

There are enough weasels in that sentence to make a coat. What, exactly, does "moving forward" mean in this context? Does anyone seriously believe at this point that Walker would be reluctant to sign a right-to-work bill because of what's happened in Wisconsin since he blackjacked the public employees, that he's in any way chastened, that the people who groomed him and who are financing his campaign now to the tune of $30 million aren't in this for the long haul? How many people does Scott Walker think will be driving to the polls on Tuesday on a turnip truck? For his part, Barrett was having none of it:

"If that bill hits his desk, he's signing it. I say it right here in front of Wisconsin...The Thursday before the Super Bowl, Mitch Daniels made Indiana a right-to-work state. Mark my words, he'll sign it."

Dawn breaks, finally, over Marblehead. The recall is specifically about Wisconsin's attempt to rid itself of a governor whose primary political strategy over his entire time in public office has been the bait-and-switch. But its true national import is not what it may or may not mean to the president's campaign in November.

In 2010, in addition to handing the House of Representatives over to a pack of nihilistic vandals, the Koch Brothers and the rest of the sugar daddies of the Right poured millions into various state campaigns. This produced a crop of governors and state legislators wholly owned and operated by those corporate interests and utterly unmoored from the constituencies they were elected to serve. In turn, these folks enacted various policies, and produced various laws, guaranteed to do nothing except reinforce the power of the people who put them in office. This is the first real test of democracy against the money power. Its true national import is that it is the first loud and noisy attempt to roll back the amok time that Republican governors and their pet legislatures have unleashed in the states at the behest of the corporate interests who finance their careers. It is the first serious pushback not only against Scott Walker, but against Dick Snyder's assault on democracy in Michigan, and Mitch Daniels's assault on unions in Indiana, and Rick Scott's assault on voting rights in Florida. None of this was in any way coincidental. It was a national strategy played out in a series of statewide episodes, aimed at establishing the habits of oligarchy on a local basis. If Barrett has finally realized that, then he's finally really in the game because he's finally grasped the mortal stakes he's playing for.

Bill Clinton's out there for him today, raising roofs and raising hell, a day late and a dollar short, if you really want to be cynical, but still utterly overmatching the Triple-A team of Republican surrogates - Bobby Jindal? Nikki Haley, who's grateful to have fled South Carolina one step ahead of an ethics investigation herself? - that are out stumping for Walker this weekend. Friday morning, on the spot where Fr. Jacques Marquette first made camp, Clinton talked about creative cooperation, and he ran his riffs about how people come together in small towns, but he also hung on Walker the responsibility for the confrontational politics elsewhere around the country, which is the only national message in Wisconsin worth mentioning. There the blog goes on the road this weekend to see what it can see. This thing is so tight I'm going to need Dan Rather's help with the metaphors.

Obama at Large: Where Are the Lawyers?

By Ralph Nader, Reader Supported News

01 June 12

he rule of law is rapidly breaking down at the top levels of our government. As officers of the court, we have sworn to “support the Constitution,” which clearly implies an affirmative commitment on our part.

Take the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The conservative American Bar Association sent three white papers to President Bush describing his continual unconstitutional policies. Then and now civil liberties groups and a few law professors, such as the stalwart David Cole of Georgetown University and Jonathan Turley of George Washington University, have distinguished themselves in calling out both presidents for such violations and the necessity for enforcing the rule of law.

Sadly, the bulk of our profession, as individuals and through their bar associations, has remained quietly on the sidelines. They have turned away from their role as “first-responders” to protect the Constitution from its official violators.

As a youngster in Hawaii, basketball player Barack Obama was nicknamed by his schoolboy chums as “Barry O’Bomber,” according to the Washington Post. Tuesday’s (May 29) New York Times published a massive page-one feature article by Jo Becker and Scott Shane, that demonstrated just how inadvertently prescient was this moniker. This was not an adversarial, leaked newspaper scoop. The article had all the signs of cooperation by the three dozen, interviewed current and former advisers to President Obama and his administration. The reporters wrote that a weekly role of the president is to personally select and order a “kill list” of suspected terrorists or militants via drone strikes or other means. The reporters wrote that this personal role of Obama’s is “without precedent in presidential history.” Adversaries are pulling him into more and more countries – Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and other territories.

The drones have killed civilians, families with small children, and even allied soldiers in this undeclared war based on secret “facts” and local grudges (getting even). These attacks are justified by secret legal memos claiming that the president, without any Congressional authorization, can without any limitations other than his say-so, target far and wide assassinations of any “suspected terrorist,” including American citizens.

The bombings by Mr. Obama, as secret prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner, trample proper constitutional authority, separation of powers, and checks and balances and constitute repeated impeachable offenses. That is, if a pathetic Congress ever decided to uphold its constitutional responsibility, including and beyond Article I, section 8’s war-declaring powers.

As if lawyers needed any reminding, the Constitution is the foundation of our legal system and is based on declared, open boundaries of permissible government actions. That is what a government of law, not of men, means. Further our system is clearly demarked by independent review of executive branch decisions – by our courts and Congress.

What happens if Congress becomes, in constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein’s words, “an ink blot,” and the courts beg off with their wholesale dismissals of Constitutional matters on the grounds that an issue involves a “political question” or that parties have “no-standing-to-sue.” What happens is what is happening. The situation worsens every year, deepening dictatorial secretive decisions by the White House, and not just regarding foreign and military policies.

The value of The New York Times article is that it added ascribed commentary on what was reported. Here is a sample:

- The U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron P. Munter, quoted by a colleague as complaining about the CIA’s strikes driving American policy commenting that he: “didn’t realize his main job was to kill people.” Imagine what the sidelined Foreign Service is thinking about greater longer-range risks to our national security.

- Dennis Blair, former Director of National Intelligence, calls the strike campaign “dangerously seductive.” He said that Obama’s obsession with targeted killings is “the politically advantageous thing to do — low cost, no US casualties, gives the appearance of toughness. It plays well domestically, and it is unpopular only in other countries. Any damage it does to the national interest only shows up over the long term.” Blair, a retired admiral, has often noted that intense focus on strikes sidelines any long-term strategy against al-Qaeda which spreads wider with each drone that vaporizes civilians.

- Former CIA director Michael Hayden decries the secrecy: “This program rests on the personal legitimacy of the president and that’s not sustainable,” he told the Times. “Democracies do not make war on the basis of legal memos locked in a D.O.J. [Department of Justice] safe.”

Consider this: an allegedly liberal former constitutional law lecturer is being cautioned about blowback, the erosion of democracy and the national security by former heads of super-secret spy agencies!

Secrecy-driven violence in government breeds fear and surrender of conscience. When Mr. Obama was campaigning for president in 2007, he was reviled by Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden Jr. and Mitt Romney – then presidential candidates – for declaring that even if Pakistan leaders objected, he would go after terrorist bases in Pakistan. Romney said he had “become Dr. Strangelove,” according to the Times. Today all three of candidate Obama’s critics have decided to go along with egregious violations of our Constitution.

The Times made the telling point that Obama’s orders now “can target suspects in Yemen whose names they do not know.” Such is the drift to one-man rule, consuming so much of his time in this way at the expense of addressing hundreds of thousands of preventable fatalities yearly here in the U.S. from occupational disease, environmental pollution, hospital infections and other documented dangerous conditions.

Based on deep reporting, Becker and Shane allowed that “both Pakistan and Yemen are arguably less stable and more hostile to the United States than when Obama became president.”

In a world of lawlessness, force will beget force, which is what the CIA means by “blowback.” Our country has the most to lose when we abandon the rule of law and embrace lawless violence that is banking future revenge throughout the world.

The people in the countries we target know what we must remember. We are their occupiers, their invaders, the powerful supporters for decades of their own brutal tyrants. We’re in their backyard, which more than any other impetus spawned al-Qaeda in the first place.

So lawyers of America, apart from a few stalwarts among you, what is your breaking point? When will you uphold your oath of office and work to restore constitutional authorities and boundaries?

Someday, people will ask – where were the lawyers?

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us." His most recent work of non-fiction is "The Seventeen Traditions."

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.