Wisconsin Republicans' Coup Against Reality

In our democracy, we the American people have a vested, sacred interest in protecting our families' health, safety and lives.

When our society through legislative bodies enacts legislation, the process whether at the municipal, state or federal level, is supposed to be orderly and process-driven in which all parties and interests are equal under the law—broadly speaking.

But equality in the legislative process is not a feature of contemporary America.

This inequitable dynamic has accelerated in modern America as the Republican Party has worked for polluting industry, while erecting measures in many realms to disable and eliminate competing interests of industry, e.g. those families and communities that do not wish to be poisoned by industry-produced toxic wastes.

The legislative process where Republicans work as majorities suggests another realm for Republicans to rig the process: the judicial branch. Inequality for industry before adjudicating bodies is the industry-desired standard against families and communities working together to protect their health and very survival.

Rigged Judicial Hearing

As legislative action at the federal and state level the last 60 years has yielded laws and and agencies protecting health and safety, Republicans have inserted mechanistic language in statutes and legislation stating remarkably that courts examining governmental action will always arrive at predetermined results favoring a vague private interest as a protected class of litigants: Property owners and their "free" use of property, (Strifling, Marquette University Law School, Mal Contends).

In 2014, an orderly, neutral state administrative law hearing led to a result explicitly recognizing the rule of law against polluters producing toxins on their property, (Wisconsin Watch).

Among the Republican Party's counteroffensive is an audacious statutory and legislative framework that industrial property owners can do virtually anything, including inflicting costs onto society.

REINS - Regulation from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny

At this moment there are two bizarre bills in the Wisconsin legislature that call for automatic triggers if a state agency issues regulations: the REINS - Regulation from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny - Act, (Senate Bill 15, and Assembly Bill 42). SB 15 passed the Senate on August 8 2017. The legislation was tabled from consideration in the Assembly on June 14, 2017.

The radical REINS Act is effectively a legislative veto process of state agency regulations that Republicans want to protect polluting industry.

An amended REINS Act bill could be used in theory to protect families from polluting industry, a clean water advocate points out.

For example, a state administrative action issuing a Wisconsin Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (WPDES) under a state program that vectors manure into the environment could be halted under the theory that real dollar costs to society in healthcare, real property devaluation, road repair, well contamination/remediation costs, county-level conservation compliance and enforcement costs, nutrient management plan costs and so on make Big Ag-friendly administrative rules a cost that society, families and communities should not be made to bear.

But in Republican land, a regulatory action or rule is destructive if it protects families and communities against industry polluters because of the fact families are not real and do not exist in the current reality.

Look for new exposure in the months to come of a new and dangerous conception of property rights pushed by Republicans who are selling out Wisconsin families and communities and will not stop this perverse project.

Wisconsin Republicans' Destruction of Ad Law Dismantles Public Protection

Madison, Wisconisn — In Wisconsin, Republicans have been busily working since 2011 to ensure that any proceeding, hearing, deliberation and election arrives at an orderly pre-determined result favorable to Republicans' special interest.

To the extent Republicans may face adjudicative or electoral defeat, then the respective system must be rigged, gerrymandered, and programmed, with Constitutional rights vacated.

This radical destruction of Equal Protection and Due Process accomplished over six years is vastly under-reported in Wisconsin by a corporate press.

David Strifling at the Marquette Law School takes a shot at chronicling some major results of the statutory changes and corruption in administrative law in Wisconsin.

Writes Striflin:

In Wisconsin, the past five years have seen an unprecedented makeover in longstanding principles of state-level administrative law. These changes shift power away from agencies and toward courts, the legislature, and the governor. In this post, I divide the changes into three categories: 1) reductions in agency authority; 2) additions to the rulemaking process that, among other things, allow the Legislature to indefinitely block new rules; and, perhaps most importantly, 3) fundamental revisions to the doctrine of judicial deference to agency interpretations of law. Taken together, these developments deeply change the balance of power between agencies and the three branches of Wisconsin government.

Of course, Republicans cannot exactly write a statute explicitly reading that quasi-judiciary hearings arrive at pre-determined results. But they try.

So, like the statutory mandates for Wisconsin municipal, (kangaroo), court, Republicans have engineered statutory language mandating agencies rule in favor of a class of litigants when competing interests litigate a claim.

Notes Striflin:

In 2016, the Wisconsin Legislature changed that approach by enacting Wis. Stat. § 227.57(11). The statute provides that a 'court shall accord no deference to the agency’s interpretation of law if the agency action or decision restricts the property owner’s free use of the property owner’s property.' The contours of this exception aren’t clear; the terms 'restricts' and 'free use' will no doubt provide ample fodder for disputes in the years to come.

No, the statutory contours are not clear.

But the desired certainty for favored interests that exists in societies lacking the rule of law and Constitutional protections for all is an affront to American democratic traditions, which is what Republicans want.

WTMJ Goes Soviet

WTMJ - On your side, comrade

From Pravda, make that WTMJ:

TODAY'S TMJ4 and Newsradio 620 WTMJ discovered that several members of our staff signed the recall petitions for Governor Walker. Some of those employees play a role in our news-gathering and editorial process. Several of them also work on-air: One at TODAY'S TMJ4; four at Newsradio 620 WTMJ. ... [M]any employees told us that they felt signing the recall petition was not a political act, but instead felt it was similar to casting a vote.  WTMJ does not agree. ... [W]e want to assure you, our viewers, that we are taking measures to make sure all of our reporting is fair, balanced and to ensure something like this does not happen again.

So another one of the Party organs takes exceptions to its employees exercising the Wisconsin Constitutional Right of Recall (Article XIII, Section 12). Wonder what measures WTMJ will take.

Journal Communications Chairman, President, and CEO: Steven J. Smith is a board member of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC), but I guess their activity is properly sanctioned by the Party.

Funny how progressives and liberals fight for the rights of all citizens; and rightwingers like WTMJ, the Wisconsin State Journal and other GOP organs police unsanctioned political activity of their employees.

From the Capital Times [leebrals in Madison]:

The same constitutional amendment that protects the right to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and the right to assemble — the essential underpinnings of democratic life — also protects the right to petition for the redress of grievances.

To tell an American that it is wrong to sign a petition, any petition, is to our view the equivalent of telling people that they cannot speak their opinion, publish their views or worship as they choose.

Conservatives and liberals have long agreed that nothing smacks more of totalitarianism than to tell a citizen what he or she cannot say, to tell a publisher what he or she cannot print, or to tell a believer how he or she should worship.

Yet in recent days there has been a flurry of debate about whether citizens of Wisconsin — judges, journalists, elected officials, public employees — should be sanctioned for signing petitions to recall Gov. Scott Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch or members of the state Senate.

When Scott Walker was for recalling the Milwaukee County executive, Herb Kohl, and Russ Feingold, WTMJ didn't police its employees for unsanctioned political activity.

Back when he was a state legislator, Walker was an enthusiastic proponent of recall elections. In fact, he was one of only a handful of state legislators who aligned himself with—and ultimately took money from—a group that was seeking to recall US Senators Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl.

Walker got even more enthusiastic about recalls in 2002, when he became the favored candidate of the group seeking to remove Milwaukee County Executive Tom Ament. After Ament resigned, Walker was elected to replace him. When he ran for governor in (2010), Walker talked up the recall drive of 2002 as an exercise in democracy—celebrating the recall as a tool for holding errant officials to account.

Wonder why the different treatment by WTMJ between then and now.