Former Big Ag Atty Is Wisconsin Supreme Court Candidate

Sauk County Directory, p. 37

Scott Walker, Big Ag and Judicial Corruption

Updated — When Michael P. Screnock filed a petition for judicial review on October 17, 2014, Screnock represented a massive industrialized factory farm and heavily polluting corporation, MS Real Estate Holdings LLC (formerly MilkSource Holdings LLC and Tidy View Dairy) headquartered in Kaukauna, Wisconsin in Outagamie County.

Screnock was awarded by Gov. Scott Walker with a judicial appointment some seven months later on April 10, 2015, approximately a month before Screnock withdrew from the case.

Now, Screnock is a candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court which is deciding a case that could rewrite property rights law and local control in Wisconsin, Golden Sands Dairy LLC v. Town of Saratoga. [Note: For legal updates on the case before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, enter 15ap1258 in the Appeal Number.] Oral argument was heard in Golden Sands in January 2018.

The Golden Sands case hangs over Wisconsin communities like a Sword of Damocles which will could eviscerate local control in favor of Big Ag operations and real estate developers.

The Republicans' Wisconsin DoJ filed a Friend of the Court brief on Nov. 17, 2017, effectively giving the justices marching orders. The Wisconsin Realtors Association and Wisconsin Builders Association, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce also filed briefs in Nov. 2017.

The Screnock appointment demonstrates again the massive work accomplished by the Scott Walker administration on behalf of polluters known in politics and the public culture as graft and corruption.

Screnock is also one of the attorneys who represented Scott Walker during the 2011-12 Recall campaign, (WisPolitics, PDF, p.4).

Screnock is a former attorney of Michael Best and Friedrich LLP, aka in-house counsel for Scott Walker and the Republican Party of Wisconsin), (Elbow, The Capital Times)).

In New Chester Dairy LLC and MS Real Estate Holdings LLC v. Wisconsin Dept of Natural Resources, Outagamie Circuit Court Judge Mark McGinnis ruled the state Department of Natural Resources doesn't have the authority to monitor high-capacity wells at this factory farm in central Wisconsin, (Wisconsin Public Radio).

This ruling, for the time being, insulates New Chester Dairy LLC and MS Real Estate Holdings LLC and other factory farms from state efforts to protect the region from the toxins and pathogens vectored from the New Chester Dairy LLC CAFO sited in Adams County in central Wisconsin.

Protecting polluters remains a high priority of the Walker administration, (Isikoff, Yahoo News), (Pierce, Esquire).

Screnock filed the petition for judicial review on behalf of MS Real Estate Holdings LLC on October 17, 2014, according to court records.

Screnock officially withdrew from the New Chester case on May 18, 2015 a month after Scott Walker appointed Screnock to a circuit court judgeship in Sauk County on April 10, 2015.

Walker and the Republican Party special interest groups fund judges who will rule in their favor, and Walker appoints judges who do him political favors such as helping polluters in Screnock's case.

Michael P. Screnock awarded with judgeship by Scott Walker for representing Big Ag polluter

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.