Written by Reynolds Jones   

If tomorrow you were to agree to receive stolen property, or agree to purchase drugs, or agree to hire a 5 year old child prostitute from her mother - and if you were actually talking to an agent working a sting, OR were talking on tape with a reporter - even a guerrilla reporter under an assumed identity -- you would be arrested. It would be rapid, public and painful. You would not receive the stolen goods first, nor would you receive the drugs or anything else. You would simply be arrested. You would be charged, and, if the evidence was clear enough, convicted.

So, you can imagine my confusion about the situation in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin state codes are VERY clear. According to WIS. STAT. § 13.625 lobbyists or lobbyist principles may not give anything of ANY value to an elected official in Wisconsin. The statute is very clear when it says that (according to the Wisconsin Alliance for Justice ) "With very limited exceptions, no lobbyists or lobbying principal may furnish anything (defined literally) of pecuniary value to an elective state official or a candidate, agency official, or legislative employee, unless those items are also made available to the general public."

Any value is defined literally, we are told.

So...

When "Buffalo Beast" reporter Ian Murphy called Governor Walker, and as confirmed by the Governor's spokesman, spoke with him - and as confirmed by the recording of that conversation - offered the governor a trip to California and some sort of feting once he was there -- after, of course the governor finished destroying another part of the Labor movement and the middle class - and the governor, on tape, accepted that offer...

How is that different from a person who thinks they are talking to a drug dealer and tells a reporter that they will buy cocaine?

It isn't.

Why then has governor Walker not been charged, and presumably removed from office? He is a public official. He accepted what he thought was a gift (or to most of us, a bribe) - so why has he not been arrested?

I find it very confusing, and I do not understand why the media hasn't focused on this like a spotlight. If the Wisconsin middle class is to be hit, yet again - at least let the attacker have a clean nose himself. Governor Walker at this point provably does not. He should be charged based on the tapes from the "Buffalo Beast," and he should resign - allowing his lieutenant governor to take power.

To me the whole situation is disgusting and contrived by the extreme - but I find Walker's apparent immunity to punishment for his clearly illegal intentions (which as I have shown above are punishable without action) to be extremely disturbing on an even deeper level. I am seeing a lot of signs on the Right that even the idea of democracy is no longer convenient for them, and now is under threat.

Walker needs to be brought to justice - and then the situation can be readdressed.