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.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Election — Madison Pushes Turn-out as Progressive-Liberal Candidates Win 54 Percent of Votes

Looming over Wisconsin's Supreme Court race is Gov.
Scott Walker, reviled for selling out the state to dark
money and corporate special interests. The Spring
general election will be held April 3.

Wisconsin election shows Blue Wave amassing

Madison, Wisconsin—Led by record-breaking voter turn-outs in Madison that saw numerous precincts scrambling for more ballots, two Supreme Court candidates dubbed Sandernistas, combined for 54 percent of the vote against a Scott Walker-backed extremist.

Rebecca Dallet and Michael Screnock will advance to the April 3 general election, as progressive Tim Burns' supporters signaled their intention to defeat Screnock.

Progressive-liberal voters prevailing over Screnock is another sign the national Blue Wave is still building.

The Spring Primary race saw massive infusions of dark money and the Republicans' voter-suppression regime that would appear to be insufficient to build a wall against Wisconsin voters after Wisconsin's Lost Decade, 2011-2019 and 13 months of Trump's madness.

Unofficial statewide results from WTMJ-Milwaukee, show

Michael Screnock 46%, 247,480 votes
Rebecca Dallet     36%  191,155 votes
Tim Burns             18%    95,422 votes

At voting sites on Madison's east side to the southwest side, polling stations were running out of ballots around 5:00 p.m.

One polling place in the Meadowood neighborhood (wards 92 and 95), received visits from poll workers from three different neighboring precincts in the course of some 90 minutes, asking for more ballots. The ballots were given, followed by phone calls to the City Clerk's office by the Meadowood chief election inspector.

No reports were made by poll workers of voters having to wait to vote because of no ballots, as election couriers from the City Clerk's office rushed around the city delivering stacks of ballots as city roads iced up after dark.

Logan Wroge of the Wisconsin State Journal reports:

Despite heavy snowfall in northern Wisconsin and flooding in the southern part of the state, Tuesday’s spring primary saw an above-average statewide turnout with 11.7 percent of the voting-age population casting ballots.

In the past two decades, there have been five spring primaries involving state Supreme Court candidates that averaged a 7.3 percent turnout, according to the State Elections Commission. ...

Dane County, which held a handful of local primaries along with the Supreme Court race, saw an 18.7 percent turnout, and 20.3 percent of voting-age Madison residents heading to the polls.

The Madison polling sites running out of ballots were stocked with ballots assuming roughly a 30 percent turn-out, a chief election inspector said last night.

In Dane County the Dallet-Burns combined votes totaled 82.6 percent against 17.3 for Screnock (Dane County, 2018 Spring Primary results, (unofficial)).

The outspoken progressive Tim Burns, whom observers noted pushed Dallet to take several progressive positions, writes this morning:

Thanks so much everyone and congratulations to Judge Dallet. No regrets here. Great campaign team. Said exactly what I thought had to be said—no compromising on that. I’m honored by your support. Will continue to work for a better state and world.

— Tim Burns (@Burns4WI) February 21, 2018

For the Spring General election on April 3, informed campaign sources in Madison say they expect record campaign spending and record voter turn-out.

Wisconsin Court Candidate, Tim Burns, Called a Sandernista; "Fine with That," Says the Progressive

Wisconsin Supreme Court

Madison, Wisconsin—The rightwing Republicans and corporatist Wisconsin Democrats are misreading the electorate.

Tim Burns, one of three candidate running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, stands to benefit.

The latest, the rightwing go-to attorney, Rick Esenberg, looks to inject a some late mischief into the Feb. 20 primary by opining non-GOP candidates are "Sandernistas."

The quick-hitting Burns camapign tweets, "I'm fine with that."

I don’t think so either... but if @RickEsenberg doesn’t like me... I’m fine with that. pic.twitter.com/oreJeedwDe

— Tim Burns (@Burns4WI) February 19, 2018

Some 12 percent of voters are expected to turn out on Feb. 20.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Election—Tim Burns Towers over Two Opponents

Comment such as that above leave Tim Burns, candidate
for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, labeled a heretic.
The National Review today calls Burns a "Sandernista."

Finally, a, Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate calls bull-shite on this farce

Madison, Wisconsin—There is a case decided in 2001 by the nation's highest appellate court that instructs the Wisconsin Supreme Court primary on Feb. 20.

Atwater V. Lago Vista is a Fourth Amendment case in which a mother and her two young children, three- and five-years old, were pulled over by an over-zealous Texas cop, verbally abused, and arrested in front of multiple, gathering witnesses who all confirmed the same story: Young children were traumatized and cried, as their mother was arrested by a vicious police officer for a traffic violation.

"The question is whether the Fourth Amendment forbids a warrant-less arrest for a minor criminal offense, such as a misdemeanor seat-belt violation punishable only by a fine. We hold that it does not," the United States Supreme Court held 5-4

A powerful dissent by Justices O’Connor, Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer notes the demise of the Fourth Amendment right to privacy and security in this "severe intrusion on an individual’s liberty," (as custodial arrests are), in a decision preceding 9/11 by five months, after which for other reasons: Good bye, Fourth Amendment and hello, American police state.

Atwater is animated by a general disdain the state and federal courts have towards the liberties of Americans against police incursions. For all the fluff about 'land of the free,' after Atwater, the Fourth Amendment barely exists today.

With respect to the Wisconsin Supreme Court election tomorrow, three candidates are on the ballot, two of whom will continue as candidates in the April 3 Spring general election.

Only one candidate, Tim Burns, cares about the liberties and humanity of Gail Atwater of Texas, brutalized by a cop.

Tim Burns

Tim Burns, has made concern for citizens against powerful interests the basis of his campaign.

The only appellate attorney in the race, Burns acclaims the primacy of voters' rights, the right to safe, clean water, civil liberties and citizens' right to an impartial judiciary among other liberties that 20 years ago were not controversial in Wisconsin.

Rebecca Dallet

Rebecca Dallet is a judge pretending the Wisconsin Supreme Court is a trial court.

Dallet's tendency to mislead the electorate plays well politically with some of the state Party and legal establishment.

But Dallet's record belies her claim to instructive experience for Wisconsin's top appellate court, as a bulwark for citizen liberties against unlawful lower courts, and the corporation and police interests for whom jurists like Dallet work.

Dallet is the presiding judge in Wisconsin v. Ryan Erik Diggins, (2003), (overturned on appeal)), in which Dallet found blacks leaning against a wall were engaging in suspicious conduct because racist Milwaukee police said so.

Under Dallet's black-hence-suspicious theory of liberty and people, one can understand how America has evolved into a police state.

Dallet is the problem, so it's no surprise Dallet donated $2,500 to he Koch brothers' chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

This is how Dallet thinks about the world, a land with little rights dominated by Koch brothers-approved stooges.

Michael P. Screnock

Michael P. Screnock is manifestly unqualified, directly funded by corporate Wisconsin. In the Republicans' view of Wisconsin, privacy and liberty claims are of no moment.

This is a moment for Wisconsin.

But if 15 percent of the electorate votes on Feb. 20, I will be quite surprised.

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.