Club for Growth Filling WMC's Decreased Role in Supreme Court Race

Wisconsin Supreme Court - Crooked as a dog's hind leg

Update II: See Report: Madison needs to build over 1,000 rental units each year to keep up with demand (Godar, The Capital Times)

Update: Rule-of-law candidate, Ed Fallone, says he'll reverse conflict-of-interest rule written by the Wisconsin Realtors Association and the business lobbying group. Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce.

Judith 'Judy' Faulkner is the embodiment of the American Dream.

A brilliant woman who worked her ass off at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Faulkner wrote computer code assisting medical professionals in tracking patient information.

Reportedly a woman of wide-ranging interests, the former student in the psychiatry department at UW-Madison constantly innovated her computer software, took it to the private sector and later became the founder and CEO of the giant Epic Systems Corp. of Verona, Wisconsin. [Note: Some two years ago, it was announced that Epic is going to build a huge auditorium on its Verona site. As a result, now, sources tell me the downtown condo market in Madison is finally beginning to flourish, vis a vis just three years ago in 2010. Word is new, prospective Epic employees will simply commute to Verona and live in downtown Madison and the Isthmus, and are driving the market.]

Thank you, Judy Faulkner.

One question Ms. Faulkner encountered in Wisconsin is why the Wisconsin Manufactures and Commerce (WMC) sought to create a corrupt Wisconsin Supreme Court that would rubber-stamp the position of the increasingly right-wing and misogynistic Wisconsin Republican Party.

Why exactly is WMC necessarily an adjunct of the GOP and why is WMC spending some $1.8 million to install Michael Gableman to the Supreme Court like it did in 2008?

For no good cause, Faulkner apparently reasoned.

Faulkner, noting what writer, Peter Gruett described as Wisconsin's "slide toward reactionary social and fiscal policies," decided to pull Epic's business from local vendors and contractors who support WMC's bid to take over Wisconsin government, as reported by WMC Watch. [One also wonders why the Wisconsin Restaurant Association similarly supports reactionary social and fiscal policies; why running a restuarant means a woman's right to choose should no longer exist? But that's another story.]

Now, one of the four corrupt GOP justices, Justice Patience Roggensack, is running for reelection. And the WMC News page is unusually silent on the race.

But the Wisconsin Club For Growth is filling in where WMC begged out.

Reads an e-mail from United Wisconsin:

Wisconsin Club For Growth, the ultra right-wing front group funded through shady channels by wealthy billionaires like the Koch brothers, has nearly tripled their investment in Justice Roggensack's reelection.

This week, the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice reported that since the primary, the group has spent $300,000 on TV commercials alone! You see, groups like Club For Growth know that to ensure Walker's most extreme policy overreaches get a less-than fair hearing on the court, they need to maintain the status-quo by keeping the Wisconsin Supreme Court stacked with partisan judges like Roggensack.

Prof. Ed Fallone has a tough election in just one month on April 2.

The Brennan Center also notes, "In 2011, special interest groups set a new record, spending just under $3.6 million on television ads in a race that many groups sought to recast as a referendum on Governor Scott Walker. Wisconsin will likely continue to see high spending by outside groups this year."

One hopes that, like Faulkner, voters conclude there is no cause for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to function as a reactionary and corrupt institution.

One imperative is Fallone telling voters of this reality over and over.

Cap. Times Calls for Ziegler Resignation

The Capital Times became the first daily newspaper to call for the resignation of Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Annette Ziegler.

We can expect more calls for Ziegler's resignation to follow in the coming months.

Ziegler, elected in the spring of 2007, was hit with denunciations for her conduct as a Washington County judge during her successful campaign that drew little attention from Wisconsin voters.

Ziegler, in violation of Wisconsin judicial conflict of interest rules, presided over dozens of cases in which her family had a financial interest, and failed to disclose to the litigants the conflicts in each case.

Now, Ziegler, awaiting discipline for her conduct on the bench as a county judge, is taking criticism for refusing to recuse herself, as a current Supreme Court justice, from a case that is a high priority of the corporate lobbying group, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, that spent over $2 million (surpassing the amount spent by Ziegler’s campaign) to elect Ziegler to her current judgeship.

Excerpts from the editorial:

Scandal-plagued Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler has refused to recuse herself from deliberations on a tax case that is a top priority of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the corporate lobbying group that spent more than $2 million to aid her election bid earlier this year.

In so doing, she has confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that she lacks not just the integrity but the judgment that must always be required of a jurist.

Ziegler does not merely refuse to embrace even the most basic standards of legal ethics. Her actions of recent days indicate that she does not even understand those standards.

It is for this reason that Ziegler must leave the Supreme Court bench. ...

As a national watchdog on judicial ethics issues, James Sample, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, has observed, "The argument could certainly be made that it would be reasonable to question her impartiality (in this case)."

But we don't have to take Sample's word for it. Ziegler has effectively admitted the conflict.

Early in November, the justice disclosed in a letter to lawyers representing the parties involved in the case that WMC had been a key supporter of her campaign. But the letter from Ziegler, whose shamelessness has extended to openly lying to the voters of Wisconsin about the facts of her ethical abuses, also informed the lawyers that she intended to participate in deliberations regarding the tax case.

That combination of an admission of a conflict and a refusal to recuse is what disqualifies Ziegler from further service on the court. And if she does not recognize that fact, then the other justices must speak up to assert a basic standard of judicial responsibility. ...

It does not matter what the court decides in this specific case. The damage runs deeper. When a justice admits to a conflict in a case and then goes ahead and participates in deliberations regarding that case, the whole matter of the high court's legitimacy as a fair arbiter of legal disputes is called into question. ...

Should the Supreme Court, as widely expected, not expel Ziegler (and Ziegler’s resignation is possible, but not likely), the perceived integrity and impartiality of the judiciary will sink to the level of the most cynical of politicians.

Should Wisconsin citizens then decide that Ziegler's current term (set to expire on July 31, 2017) is too long to bear, a citizen recall requiring over 500,000 signatures in a given 60-day period is the only recourse to rid our state of this disgrace to the cause of judicial integrity.

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