This is well worth your time. Peace MG
--- Begin Message ---In this update:
- To: greenm78@uwosh.edu
- Subject: Our Punxsutawney Parliament
- From: Wisconsin Democracy Campaign <wisdc@wisdc.org>
- Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2005 13:54:39 -0600
- Original-recipient: rfc822;greenm78@uwosh.edu
1. Legislative leaders rake in record cash
2. Groundhog Day at the Capitol
3. McCain and Feingold at it again
4. Unfortunately, Ethics Board at it again, tooWhen the problems get big, the big raise money. On the eve of the unveiling of the governor's plan to address a whopping $1.6 billion state budget deficit, a Wisconsin Democracy Campaign review of year-end campaign finance reports shows that legislative leaders raised nearly $1 million in 2004 for their four legislative campaign committees. That is a new record and a 55% increase over what they raised in the comparable 2000 presidential election year.
The Democracy Campaign has long advocated the elimination of these partisan, leadership-controlled fundraising committees because of the role they've played in making rank-and-file lawmakers more beholden to legislative leaders and less able to independently represent their voting constituents.
An editorial in Sunday's Wisconsin State Journal offered one of the most apt analogies we've seen in awhile, likening the Wisconsin Legislature to the movie "Groundhog Day." In the movie, a TV weatherman played by comedian Bill Murray relives the same day over and over again.
Early indications point to a replay of last session's sorry spectacle of hopelessly polarized political leaders avoiding the tough problems and delighting in scoring points on divisive and largely symbolic issues.
Look for lawmakers to produce another state budget with enough Enron-style accounting tricks to make the books appear balanced while leaving a structural deficit to solve on another day. Expect them to continue paying more for failure than they invest in success, as it appears all but certain that the budget increase for prisons will once again be larger than the funding increase for the university system. Other expected replays will be a debate on legislation legalizing concealed weapons, and another vote on a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
Lawmakers will most likely again avoid dealing with glaring flaws in the state's school finance system that has managed to simultaneously hamstring schools financially and radicalize homeowners tired of steadily rising property taxes. But there will be another fruitless debate over a constitutional amendment known as the "Taxpayer Bill of Rights" and when that crashes and burns, they will once again turn to a temporary - and fake - freeze on property taxes.
The State Journal's fitting description of our dysfunctional state government is based on the same observations that inspired the commentary in the Democracy Campaign's recent TV ad and that led the People's Legislature to call for a top-to-bottom cleanup of the state political process.
Arizona Republican John McCain and Wisconsin's own Russ Feingold have introduced federal legislation closing a loophole allowing unlimited "soft money" donations and reining in so-called "527" groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that exploited the flaw in the federal campaign finance law to pour more than $400 million in unregulated soft money into federal campaigns in 2004.
The proposed legislation even has earned the support of archconservative Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, who has called such donations "sewer money."
The new push to close the sewer money pipeline at the federal levels stands in sharp contrast to efforts to protect the soft money loophole at the state level in Wisconsin. The state Elections Board has repeatedly refused to adopt proposed rules regulating soft money, and provisions closing the loophole were removed from the leading campaign finance reform bill that will soon be reintroduced this session.
When the state Ethics Board did not find a conflict of interest in former Transportation Secretary Tom Carlsen's approval of a no-bid contract to a company he used to run and continued to hold stock in, the Racine Journal Times was moved to call it "another toothless gumming" by an agency that "doesn't have the teeth to get its job done."
One more reason the Democracy Campaign calls for replacing the Ethics Board and Elections Board with a politically independent enforcement agency in its Power to the Voter agenda. And another reason why the 1,100-member People's Legislature adopted a resolution calling for "independent ethics enforcement through reform that combines the state Elections Board and Ethics Board into one enforcement agency under the direction of a politically independent board."
To sign the We Want Our Democracy Back petition, go here. To circulate the petition in your community, go here for a printable version of the petition.
Spread the word by sending this message to people you know. To support the Democracy Campaign's work, go here.
Wisconsin Democracy Campaign
210 North Bassett Street, Suite 215
Madison, WI 53703
Phone: 608-255-4260
Web Site: www.wisdc.org
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