Central Wisconsin Clean Water Group Endorses Rebecca Dallet for Supreme Court

Proposed Golden Sands factory farm in central
Wisconsin could turn rural paradise into an
industrial wasteland. Don Ystad of Adams County
Wisconsin who has been promoting tourism
and recreation for years writes:
"Take a step back from the politics of this
situation and ask yourself, 'what is best
for the state of Wisconsin? Another CAFO sited, or the
preservation and growth of an existing, vibrant area,
poised to be the 'golf mecca of the Midwest?'
Unfortunately, the Wysocki CAFO has the
political support of local State Rep. Scott Krug,
(R-Nekoosa, Wisconsin) and State Sen.
Patrick Testin, (R-Stevens Point). These pols
have already chosen Big Ag over everything else,
including a new Sand Valley Golf Resort,
multi-generational families and entire communities.

Rebecca Dallet is our Supreme Court candidate, says Saratoga Concerned in Republican-dominated central Wisconsin

"Rural America once had strong communities. It would have been very difficult for anyone who built a CAFO facotry farm in a rural area in earlier times. It wasn’t socially or morally acceptable for one person in the community to benefit at the expense of others."
 —John Ikerd, Rural Communities of Necessity
 --
The communities of Saratoga and Rome, in central Wisconsin say the Wisconsin Supreme Court race is personal.

The April 3 race featuring candidates Rebecca Dallet, (a mainstream rule-of-law Milwaukee County judge), and Michael Screnock, (extremist rightwing Sauk County judge) will determine if rightwingers control the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the next nine years.

The stakes are high, but even more so for central Wisconsin where Republican interests and Big Ag are trying to use a local case awaiting decision from the Supreme Court to obliterate local control and codify corporate property rights in a radical and novel interpretation that is dreaded by families.

In Golden Sands Dairy, (Wysocki corporation),  LLC v. Town of Saratoga case, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will decide whether some 1.7 million Wisconsin citizen, some 30 percent of the state living in towns, can act locally to protect local conditions, property values, families, drinking water quality, and local character.  [For legal updates on the case before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, enter 15ap1258 in the Appeal Number field.]

The case was argued Jan 11, 2018.

It's personal because 1,000s of families in Wood, Adams and Juneau counties who have spent generations building lives, security and opportunity for future generations will see dreams shattered and security gone if the Wysocki corporation's badly polluting factory farm begins operations.

The proposed massive factory farm, a CAFO or Confined Animal Feeding Operation, would leave the region an economic moonscape.

That's fine with Wisconsin Republicans, and Supreme Court candidate Michael Screnock whose campaign runs for and is funded by Republican special interests. Screnock in fact is a former attorney for Big Ag against virtually everyone else in Wisconsin.

A major group fighting for entire communities and central Wisconsin families just came out for Supreme Court candidate Rebecca Dallet, and against Screnock.

The group, Saratoga Concerned, is awaiting word from the Supreme Court on Golden Sands Dairy. They are nervous and frightened. Who came blame them?

Today, according to an email, Saratoga Concerned endorsed Rebecca Dallet over Michael Screnock.

From Saratoga Concerned:

As we are all aware, politics are dirty. It doesn't matter the party or the platform, each side spins false innuendos and statements at the other in the hopes of having you simply dislike the other candidate more. The race for Supreme Court is no different even though it is supposed to be a nonpartisan position.

We encourage everyone to vote on Tuesday, April 3rd but instead of voting by your political party leaning, we encourage you to vote the issues. Let's face it, the Wisconsin Republican and the Democratic party are not what they used to be years ago. Voting the issues is the only way to get folks in office who are going to truly represent your interests. We all need to be willing to put our political partisanship aside and vote on the things that are important to our fight.

Saratoga Concerned leadership team has identified our issues  1) Clean water  2) Protection of our Natural Resources and 3) Protecting local control. When looking solely at these three topics we feel strongly Rebecca Dallet is our candidate. Her challenger, Michael Screnock, has repeatedly represented CAFO owners in court against the average citizen and denies their civil right to clean and plentiful water. Not to mention his work with the Michael Best and Friedrich law office that is retained by Wysocki. We cringe just thinking about what may happen if he earns a seat on the bench.

We encourage you to vote the issues on April 3rd.

Our Saratoga fights need a Justice like Rebecca Dallet on the bench.

Wisconsin Progressive Burns Endorses Rebecca Dallet for Supreme Court

The Wisconsin Supreme Court race
to be held on April 3 rivals the Nov. 6
gubernatorial race in importance.

Dallet-Burns coalition means corrupt state Supreme Court could be retaken in three years, as political tea leaves turn blue

Madison, Wisconsin—Rebecca Dallet is running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court against a Scott Walker extremist, Michael Screnock, for a ten-year term.

Tim Burns, a progressive Court candidate who placed third in the Feb. 20 primary election, announced this week he is endorsing and contributing money to the Democratic-leaning Dallet, dubbed a Sandernista.

Though the endorsement by Burns was expected, the Burns campaign Facebook communication highlights the high stakes of the April 3 general election.

If the rightwinger Screnock were elected, the Court would cease to be a court of law in practice, a reality Wisconsin attorneys are prohibited by ethical rules from acknowledging, (SCR 20:8.2  Judicial and legal officials), and a political reality many voters don't realize exists today. The ethics-free Court today is effectively a coup by anti-union, anti-women, anti-black activists.

Two radical rightists on the Court who were appointed by Scott Walker—Rebecca Bradley and Daniel Kelly—have endorsed Screnock.

In the Screnock-win scenario, the Wisconsin Supreme Court would become a rightwing, activist court that would rewrite Wisconsin judicial policy for the specific benefit of the Republican Party and its coalition of corporate money, white Evangelicals, and white racists.

Currently, rightwingers on the Court have a 5-2 majority, with a hypothetical Screnock victory giving the rightwingers a 5-2 majority that would guarantee rightest control of the Court for the next decade.

A Democratic Dallet win would narrow the rightest majority to 4-3.

Assuming the rule-of-law coalition holds in the 2019 election, as expected, the rule-of-law justices could gain a majority on the Supreme Court in 2021. See chart below for election years of current justices.

Wisconsin Supreme Court justices and year 10-year term expires

Justice Michael Gableman - Rightwinger leaving Court. Dallet-Screnock are candidates for April 3, 2018 Spring general election.

Justice Shirley Abrahamson - Rule-of-law judge; term expires 2019
Justice Daniel Kelly - Rightwinger; term expires 2021
Justice Patience Roggensack - Rightwinger; term expires 2023
Justice Ann Walsh Bradley - Rule-of-law judge; term expires 2025
Justice Rebecca Bradley - Rightwinger; term expires 2026
Justice Annette Ziegler - Rightwinger; term expires 2027

Dallet and Burns together won 54 percent of the vote in the record-setting Feb. 20 primary turnout suggesting the Blue Wave in Wisconsin is gathering strength.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court Spring general campaign on April 3 is expected to feature record-setting spending, massive independent expenditures, record turnout, a visit from President Obama and expected near-presidential-level turnout in Madison.

White racist poll workers are expected to amp-up their voter-suppression efforts at the polling place.

Early prognosticators see a narrow Dallet victory with college-aged voters and black voters in segregated Milwaukee as significant X factors.

The anti-Trump, anti-Walker animus has become so pronounced that Walker is refusing to order a special election for a vacant state senate seat that voted strongly Republican in 2016.

Absentee ballots will be mailed around March 10, meaning in some 11 days voting begins.

Tim Burns, Wisconsin Supreme Court Candidate, Rankles Establishment-Sleaze Complex

Rebecca Dallet gave $2,500 to Koch-brothers-funded
Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Pat Roggensack.
(Wisconsin Campaign Fiance Report, p.7)

Tim Burns' toughest opponent is the civil-liberties hating, Koch brothers-loving Rebecca Dallet

Madison, Wisconsin—There's a Spring primary election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Feb. 20.

The candidates are Tim Burns, Rebecca Dallet and Michael Screnock.

Tim Burns is running a hard-hitting, progressive campaign stressing that Wisconsin law and liberties mean ordinary citizens are big players in Wisconsin on the scales of justice.

The rightwinger Screnock, a Scott Walker clone, disagrees.

The corporatist, Dallet, is why Republicans are ascendant in Wisconsin.

Dallet is a stooge for the Koch-brothers-funded and rightwing Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Pat Roggensack.

Dallet went so far as to contribute $2,500 to Roggensack in 2013 for Roggensack's successful reelection campaign.

The Bernie Sanders movement-created Our Wisconsin Revolution has endorsed Tim Burns:

From Our Wisconsin Revolution:

Tim Burns is running for this important position to make sure that the judicial system and especially the highest court in the state is acting to ensure a level playing field for everyone and not corporate interests. This focus aligns with the values Our Wisconsin Revolution is fighting for in Wisconsin. Our members know Tim will bring an experienced, authentic voice of reason to the Supreme Court, a voice that sides with the people of this state. We are eager to mobilize 6,000 members across the state in support of Tim through the Primary and General Election in April.  -- Sarah Lloyd, OWR Co-Chair.

Dallet and Screnock can raise all the money they want. Can garner all the establishment endorsements, and contribute as much money as them want to Koch brothers-funded judges like Roggensack.

The people and law are on Tim Burns' side.

From the Capital Times:

I am the grandson of Mississippi sharecroppers. My father was forced out of school by poverty in fifth grade; my mother in the 10th. But I grew up in a time when a minimum wage job could support a family. We had great public schools and libraries, and I could work hard and become one of the top lawyers in the country.

My national practice is devoted to suing insurance companies and I’ve had the privilege of representing clients from 36 states and 10 foreign countries. I am the only candidate in this race with appellate court experience. I was one of a handful of young lawyers appointed each year to serve as a law clerk on the United States Court of Appeals. I’ve both served as a prosecutor and defended indigent clients in criminal court, but my experience starts there, it doesn’t end there.

I’m running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court for four reasons.

First, I’m running because in the span of my adulthood, equal opportunity for the children of people who struggle has disappeared in our country. It has been replaced by a system where most new income and wealth goes to the top 1 percent and everyone else works longer and harder for less and less. The inequity is astounding, and our rubber-stamp Wisconsin Supreme Court is part of the problem. The courts are the final authority in this country, and ours has been looking out for special interests, instead of standing up for regular people.

Second, I’m running because this is the court that upheld a photo ID law that cost Hillary Clinton Wisconsin’s electoral votes. As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in the 1830s, every major political decision in this country sooner or later finds its way into the courts. If we don’t take back the courts, we will never truly take back our state.

Third, I’m running because President Trump has nominated and has had confirmed extreme right-wing judges on the federal courts. We can no longer count on the federal courts to protect our basic rights, such as the right to vote, workers' rights, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, and reproductive rights. Increasingly, we will need to turn to state courts, like the Wisconsin Supreme Court, for such protections.

Finally, I’m running because I’m a progressive and I think that is what our court needs at this moment in time. Before being appointed to the bench by Gov. Scott Walker in 2015, Judge Michael Screnock worked as an attorney to create the current gerrymandered legislative maps, he helped defend Act 10 in court, and was twice arrested for protesting outside an abortion clinic. He proudly touts his conservative judicial philosophy and admiration of the late Justice Antonin Scalia at every campaign stop.

My other opponent, Judge Rebecca Dallet, is running on her experience, but it is her experience that keeps me up at night. I find her ruling in Wisconsin v. Ryan Erik Diggins extremely offensive. An individual should not be subject to search because they are a person of color standing in a public location for five minutes. Judge Dallet has previously supported conservative judges in Wisconsin, including Chief Justice Pat Roggensack her 2013 race against Ed Fallone.

We do not need more friends of Governor Walker or Chief Justice Roggensack on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

We can change this court before the next presidential election, and the people who are supporting my campaign, Our Revolution, American Federation of Teachers Local 212, former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk, former Congressman Steve Kagen, Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg, former Lt. Gov. Lawton, Congressman Mark Pocan, and others, are ready for a fight to take back this court.

Please join us.

Tim Burns

Light em' up, Tim.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Race—Spectacle of Deceit

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Tim Burns has
often expressed his view that clean and safe water
is protected in the Wisconsin Constitution, statutes
and derived administrative law.

Top Appellate Court Race Misleading and Shameful

Madison, Wisconsin—There are two credible candidates in the Wisconsin Supreme Court primary on Feb. 20—Tim Burns and Rebecca Dallet.

A third candidate, Michael Screnock, is a no-count right winger whom Wisconsinites should reject.

The race for the open Wisconsin Supreme Court seat is for the top appellate court in the state judiciary. In deciding a case, an appellate judge informs the state what the relevant law is and how the law is applied to a case that may be fraught with error from lower court(s).

Rarely does the Supreme Court hear non-appellate cases (original jurisdiction), not decided by lower courts.

Yet, this fact is ignored in the political culture as the media and most campaigns fool the electorate into believing the Supreme Court is a trial court. Or a rubber stamp for a special class of litigants and communities of interest like a county sheriff, district attorney, some dopey rightwing law enforcement association such as the Wisconsin Sheriffs and Deputy Sheriffs Association, or Wisconsin Manufactures and Commerce and the Koch brothers-funded Club for Growth.

Five of the seven justices—Patience D. Roggensack, Annette Kingsland Ziegler, Michael J. Gableman, Rebecca Grassl Bradley, and Daniel Kelly—are corrupt party hacks with their elections bought-and-paid-for by special interest groups. Any pretension otherwise is false.

The anointed right winger to replace the outgoing Justice Gableman, Michael Screnock, would, if elected, be another corrupt hack for far right wing Republicans.

Absentee voting has begun for the Feb. 20 primary election, and nine days out, not a single reference in Wisconsin media notes the principal function of the Supreme Court—the state's top appellate court. The Wisconsin people are being conned from multiple parties.

Rebecca Dallet's Lie

Rebecca Dallet is guilty of this deceit about the Supreme Court as seen in Dallet's campaign web page and advertising.

Dallet sings her praises as a prosecutor and circuit court judge, while presenting campaign surrogates criticizing Tim Burns for not being a trial jurist.

Dallet goes so far as to pronounce Burns "unqualified" because he is not a trial attorney. On this basis many of the faculty at Marquette University Law School and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School are unqualified. Take for instance, Joel Rogers, all-around friendly face whom most Wisconsin pols have encountered once or twice. Rogers has never argued a case at trial, so by Dallet's reasoning is unqualified to sit on this contrived high trial court.

We are not electing a trial judge here; the Wisconsin Supreme Court is an appellate court.

Lying about the nature of the office one seeks should be a political disqualification.

Why is Rebecca Dallet pretending the Supreme Court is a trial court, or is she just lying? Because Dallet like the five Republican Party hacks lacks the character to simply tell the truth.

Good Appellate Judging

What makes a good appellate judge such as a justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, an impoverished institution of lies and corruption today?

Consider the wisdom of Richard Posner (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, (1981-2017)), on judicial opinion writing in federal appellate court: "Be sure to read every case, statute, regulation article, treatise, etc., cited, [case documents]," (p. 257, Reflections on Judging (Harvard University Press. 2013)).

A good Wisconsin Supreme Court justice should be an intellectual, a scholar, a researcher, a jurist who loves reading with a full understanding and appreciation of the litigants, human beings. A justice should as well be impartial, and not rule in accordance with the Republican Party special interests in Wisconsin, for example.

Ideally, candidates seeking the office of a Supreme Court justice should stow the law-and-order, we’re-tough rhetoric, and specifically Rebecca Dallet's he's-no-litigator hokum.

And it truly does not matter how many sheriffs and law enforcement officials you have in your camp.

Honesty demands candidates edify the electorate on judicial processes, the function of the top appellate court in ascertaining what the law is, and the candidates' ability and dedication to this enterprise.

Electing judges whose job it is to avoid advocacy once in office ought to result in the candidates' insulating themselves from specific communities of interest (and their money) during their campaigns.

 An Endorsement

Tim Burns is a breath of fresh air because of his insistence on informing the electorate where he stands on issues of the moment.

Burns has campaigned on his insistence that Wisconsin citizens are the beneficiaries, the stakeholders, of judiciary policymaking. Burns pledges to fight against special interests, and while omitting the appellate function of the court, also pledges to fight for the citizens for whom laws are enacted.

Candidates not mindful of this status of citizens tend to ignore these same citizens once they get into office.

Writes Burns on his website:

• Do you want a Supreme Court that protects your right to vote?
• Do you want a Supreme Court that protects your right to hike and fish in a Wisconsin free from pollution?
• Do you want a Supreme Court that protects your right to ask for a pay raise – regardless if you ask by yourself or collectively with your fellow workers?
• Do you want a Supreme Court that protects your right to build your own small business, or your own small farm and compete on a level playing field with the massive corporations of the world?

There is no pretension from Tim Burns that he is living in a cocoon. For instance, Burns does understand the powerful, affirmative right to vote in Wisconsin.

Burns does believe these rights and liberties are protected by the Wisconsin Constitution and statutes.

This commitment and honesty make Tim Burns the clear choice for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, not to serve special interests, not to work as a trial jurist, but to serve Wisconsin citizens by impartially researching and applying the law.