Freedom Line Blog

One of the more disturbing stories of political censorship of the past half-decade just came to a close in Wisconsin. The state’s Supreme Court ruled 4-2 on Thursday that a section of Wisconsin’s campaign finance law is “unconstitutionally overbroad and vague.” Moreover, the court said, a special prosecutor appointed by Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisolm to probe allegedly unlawful coordination between Governor Scott Walker and independent activist groups during the 2011 and 2012 statewide recall campaigns ended up investigating perfectly legal activities.

In short, the political fishing expedition against Badger State conservatives is finished.

Here are a few backgrounders on the investigation, which made prime targets of Wisconsin Club for Growth executive director Eric O’Keefe and at least 28 other activist groups.

A (very) short version: In 2013, the Milwaukee DA’s office and special prosecutor Francis Schmitz began hitting activists with subpoenas demanding everything from emails and memos to donor lists. As one judge would later put it, Schmitz’s subpoenas were “so extensive that they make the fruits of the legendary Watergate break-in look insignificant by comparison.” Although the subpoenas just happened to coincide with the beginning of Walker’s reelection campaign for governor, prosecutors denied any political motivation for the probe. (What? Did you think they would affirm a political motive?)

O’Keefe and Wisconsin Club for Growth sued Schmitz, et. al., contending the state’s investigation violated their First Amendment rights. A federal court last year agreed, halting a probe that had involved—among other things—SWAT teams conducting pre-dawn raids on citizens’ homes as if they were no different than drug peddlers or mob capos. Such abuses were made possible by Wisconsin’s “John Doe” law, which allows prosecutors to operate in secret—and thus without any meaningful public scrutiny or accountability.

As the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports, “Large sections of court filings have been blacked out—which is highly unusual” because of the law, which lets prosecutors the power to compel people hand over documents and give testimony while forbidding them from speaking about the investigation with anyone except their lawyers. Such proceedings may be common in national security and certain criminal cases, but applying the law to a campaign-finance law investigation smacked of political persecution—which the court recognized.

Writing for the majority, Justice Michael Gableman blasted Schmitz’s conduct of the investigation and made a vigorous defense of political liberty. Here’s the key passage from the ruling:

It is utterly clear that the special prosecutor has employed theories of law that do not exist in order to investigate citizens who were wholly innocent of any wrongdoing. In other words, the special prosecutor was the instigator of a ‘perfect storm’ of wrongs that was visited upon the innocent Unnamed Movants and those who dared to associate with them. It is fortunate, indeed, for every other citizen of this great State who is interested in the protection of fundamental liberties that the special prosecutor chose as his targets innocent citizens who had both the will and the means to fight the unlimited resources of an unjust prosecution. Further, these brave individuals played a crucial role in presenting this court with an opportunity to re-endorse its commitment to upholding the fundamental right of each and every citizen to engage in lawful political activity and to do so free from the fear of the tyrannical retribution of arbitrary or capricious governmental prosecution. Let one point be clear: our conclusion today ends this unconstitutional John Doe investigation.(Emphasis added.)

Although Thursday’s ruling is a triumph for the First Amendment, a peculiar censorious instinct remains alive and well among Madison’s progressive elite. In dissent, Justice Shirley Abrahamson wrote her colleagues’ theme music ought to be “Anything Goes.”

“The majority opinion adopts an unprecedented and faulty interpretation of Wisconsin’s campaign finance law and of the First Amendment,” Abrahamson wrote. “In doing so, the majority opinion delivers a significant blow to Wisconsin’s campaign finance law and to its paramount objectives of ‘stimulating vigorous campaigns on a fair and equal basis’ and providing for ‘a better informed electorate.'” It’s hard to see how pre-dawn raids and secret proceedings lead to “fair and equal” campaigns or a “better-informed” electorate, rather than a chilled political climate where dissenters from received partisan wisdom risk incurring the wrath of zealous prosecutors.

Wisconsin’s legislature is turning its attention to overhauling the state’s campaign-finance laws. In particular, some Republicans would like to do away with the “John Doe” provisions. Eliminating arbitrary and capricious rules from the statute books shouldn’t be a partisan matter. Wisconsin has seen what a political prosecution looks like. Avoiding a repeat of such abuses would seem to be a cause both parties could support.

Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker won his third gubernatorial election in four years this week, and he’s already drawing fire from national liberal pundits trying to squelch any idea he could be the GOP presidential nominee in 2016.

Welcome to Walker’s victory lap.

After coming into office on the 2010 Republican wave election, Walker survived a 2012 recall attempt spurred by his reforms that loosened the public labor unions’ grip on the state’s budget. Walker’s 2014 reelection – by the same six point margin as in 2010 and one point shy of his 2012 mark – gives him an excellent springboard to run as a reformer-with-results. What other potential GOP White House hopeful can boast such an impressive policy and electoral record in a purple state?

Officially undeclared, Walker remains a dark horse candidate in a field that will likely be crowded with more familiar names like Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio. Still, based on record Walker compares favorably. Bush has been out of office since 2006 and all the other top shelf contenders are sitting U.S. Senators who have labored in the minority for their entire tenure.

Walker knows what it takes to get big ideas implemented, and he has the battle scars to prove it.

Of course he’ll need to cultivate a national profile, but the release of his memoir, Unintimidated: A Governor’s Story and a Nation’s Challenge, is likely to be just the first step in that process.

Come January 2015, we may be hearing even more from the Wonder Worker of Wisconsin.

Conservatives who want a “reformer with results” resume to run for President of the United States in 2016 should be praying that Scott Walker gets reelected this year. The Wisconsin Republican governor is in his third tough campaign for the state’s top office in four years, having initially won the office in 2010 and then surviving a recall effort in 2012. If Walker wins again in November, expect to see him become the dark horse candidate to win the GOP nomination.

But first Walker has to win reelection. And that’s no guarantee.

Robert Costa of the Washington Post has an interesting analysis of Walker’s main problem this time around: Falling 150,000 jobs short of his 2010 pledge to create 250,000 jobs in Wisconsin during his first term.

For his part, Walker has blamed the state’s union culture. “We don’t have a jobs problem, we have a work problem,” he said in a televised debate with his Democratic opponent. That may be true, but it’s not sitting well with some voters.

If Walker is defeated, conservatives will likely lose an important voice and option during the 2016 sweepstakes. It will also mean rollbacks of the union-busting laws he helped implement. Neither would be good. Hopefully, Walker can avoid both.

Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker’s campaign for reelection just got a whole lot easier.

Earlier today the state’s seven member Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that Act 10 – the controversial union-busting law championed by Walker and the GOP-led legislature – is constitutional, reports NPR.

In upholding the law’s curtailment of certain state employees’ collective bargaining rights – in particular teachers’ unions – the majority reasoned that, “No matter the limitations or ‘burdens’ a legislative enactment places on the collective bargaining process, collective bargaining remains a creation of legislative grace and not a constitutional obligation. The First Amendment [right of association] cannot be used as a vehicle to expand the parameters of a benefit that it does not itself protect.”

The decision vindicates Governor Walker’s goal to free Wisconsin taxpayers from being held hostage by public employee unions who demand ever increasing compensation, and threaten to strike if unsatisfied. Throughout the country, public employee unions have abused the privilege of collective bargaining to bring many states to the brink of insolvency. Armed with this decision, Walker can consolidate his policy victories and begin to tout Wisconsin as a model for other states to follow.

Arguably, the most important part of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s reforms of public employee unions was instituting an annual vote by members on whether or not to stay.

Two years later, Wisconsin’s unions are reeling.

“Under Governor Walker’s 2001 union-reform law, a majority of union members have to vote each year to recertify the union as their representative. If less than 50% of members vote to keep the union and pay union dues, the union effectively loses its ability to bargain for wages,” says an editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

It looks like there’s a rush for the exits.

“A spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state affiliate of the NEA, said recently, ‘It seems like the majority of our affiliates in the state aren’t seeking recertification…’”

To date, 13% of Wisconsin’s school districts and 39 state and municipal units have been decertified since the law went into effect.

Wisconsin’s experience confirms that, when given a choice, many public employees – and especially teachers – don’t see the value of belonging to a union.

Kudos to Governor Walker for giving them a forum to make that choice.

In a speech to a room full of government researchers, Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker made some bold predictions: If Detroit had passed the same public union reforms as the Badger State did, it wouldn’t be bankrupt today. And if Chicago had done so, its public school system would be in much better shape.

Walker’s comments are sure to spark controversy from union-friendly Democrats who disdain his rollback of debt-creating privileges. But liberals should get used to the argument because the success of Walker’s program is quietly making him into a viable 2016 presidential contender.

Later this week Walker is hosting the National Governors Association in Milwaukee, and he plans to deliver a simple message: “Worry more about the next generation than the next election.”

Absent Walker’s track record, it would be an empty bromide. But with it, the phrase introduces a formula for success that Americans nationwide may be willing to try after eight years of economic futility under President Barack Obama.

Stay tuned…

In his column last week, Troy identified Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as perhaps the best potential Republican presidential candidate to correct for Barack Obama’s deficiencies.

In an editorial by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, we have even more proof.

One of Walker’s first acts as governor was to sign into a law a series of big changes on how public employee unions operate. The three biggest were limits on collective bargaining, requiring unions to recertify each year and prohibiting automatic collection of union dues.

According to analysis by the paper, in the two years since the law passed the Milwaukee affiliate of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees “has gone from more than 9,000 members and income exceeding $7 million in 2010 to about 3,500 members and a deep deficit by the end of last year.”

So far Walker’s law has translated into savings of $110 for Milwaukee taxpayers, says a new report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Let’s see, budget-busting president or belt-tightening governor? Maybe, just maybe, America will get to make a sensible choice in 2016.

Avik Roy, an outside health care policy advisor to the Romney campaign, reminds us why you should never trust a clever lawyer or accountant:

Obamacare was cleverly designed such that its most politically toxic provisions wouldn’t go into effect until after the election. In addition, the Obama administration spent billions of unauthorized taxpayer dollars this year and last so that the impact of its cuts wouldn’t be felt until after the election.

2013: Tax increases and Medicare cuts

Over the next ten years, Obamacare cuts $716 billion from the Medicare program in order to fund its $1.9 trillion in new health spending over the same period. $156 billion of those cuts come from the market-oriented Medicare Advantage program, and those Medicare Advantage cuts start to kick in in 2013. 27 percent of all seniors are enrolled in Medicare Advantage, including 32 percent in Wisconsin and 36 percent in Ohio.

I hope the Romney campaign has been hammering home the part about the Obama Administration hiding the true cost of Obamacare from voters in swing states like Wisconsin and Ohio through aggressive direct mail and ad buys in those states because people need to know that before they decide whether to renew the incumbent’s contract.

For my part, a White House that deliberately hides the truth behind unauthorized spending and delayed implementation timelines is one that can’t be trusted; now or in the future.

Here’s what the Vice President of the United States said at a campaign rally in Wisconsin:

“But you can’t erase what you’ve already done, they’ve voted to extend tax cuts for the very wealthy, giving a $500 trillion dollar tax-cut to 120,000 families.”

Remember, America, if reelected, Good Ole’ Joe is a heartbeat away from saying things like this from the Oval Office!

H/T: Fox News

Count me pleasantly surprised by Saturday’s announcement that Mitt Romney has selected Paul Ryan as his running mate. Given the risk-averse nature the Romney campaign had demonstrated up to this point, I was expecting the choice to be bland and uninspiring — my foremost guesses having been Rob Portman or Tim Pawlenty (for what it’s worth, multiple reports seem to indicate that Romney’s final choice came down to those two and Ryan). Ryan, who truly has been the intellectual leader of the Republican Party for the past several years, is a vastly superior choice to either of those two.

I have no idea how the politics of this play out. It seems to me that the fears that liberal demagoguery of the Ryan budget could cost Romney Florida are well-founded, given the state’s huge population of seniors. Minus the Sunshine State, it’s hard to envision a scenario where Romney becomes the 45th President of the United States in January. I also remain skeptical that, even with Ryan on the ticket, Wisconsin will elude Obama’s grasp this time (I hope I’m wrong about this, but it seems to me that the conservative commentariat has been excessively enthusiastic about prospects for flipping the Badger State ever since the Scott Walker recall).

These are not causes for despair necessarily, but cautionary notes as we begin the campaign in earnest after Labor Day. The Romney campaign — not known heretofore for its exceptional messaging skills — has just given itself perhaps the most daunting communications task in the history of modern American presidential elections. This election will no longer be a backwards-looking discussion about Barack Obama’s stewardship of the American economy over the past four years; instead it will be a 90-day symposium about what the “social contract” (a phrase I loathe, but one that will carry the day) will look like in 21st Century America.

The advantage that Romney and Ryan have is that their vision — reining in spending, empowering individuals, reducing the debt, and reasserting individual responsibility — is the only one that is viable in the long-term. The advantage that Obama and Biden have is that their vision — an unsustainable status quo that cossets Americans from responsibility and hides the calamitous costs of the welfare state — is much less psychologically disruptive, a trait that (sadly) goes a long way in winning over a substantial portion of the electorate.

The stakes of this election have just become enormous. This is no longer about whether Mitt Romney will become president or not. It’s now about whether the conservative vision for arresting America’s decline will receive popular ratification. And there are only 12 weeks to make the case. With the smartest, most articulate defender of the conservative alternative now on the ticket, we’re about to run out of excuses. If we can’t win this time, the resultant chaos will make the aftermath of the 2008 election look like a garden party.

From breaking state budgets to disrupting private airline industry reorganization, CFIF’s Timothy Lee discusses the latest antics of big labor unions.

Listen to the interview here.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Byron York explains why President Barack Obama is not campaigning on behalf of Tom Barrett, the Democrat running against Republican Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin’s recall election on Tuesday:

The latest poll on the recall battle shows why Obama is staying away. It’s not just that he doesn’t want to appear with a loser. Perhaps just as importantly, there is no advantage for Obama to risk his own popularity by making a high-profile visit to oppose policies that are finding increasing favor with voters.

The new poll, from Marquette University Law School, shows Walker leading Barrett 52 percent to 45 percent. Beyond the horse race, the Marquette pollsters also asked about specific elements of Walker’s reforms. It turns out some of the key elements of those policies — reforms Obama strongly opposed — are now winning the day.

Those policies include:

• 75% of voters in favor of “requiring public employees to contribute to their own pensions and pay more for health insurance.”

• 55% of voters in favor of “limiting collective bargaining for most public employees.”

• 54% of voters thinking Wisconsin is better off in the long run because of the changes in state government

With these numbers and 52% of voters preferring him, Scott Walker appears likely to keep his job.  If Wisconsin voters start to apply the same poll questions to Obama’s failed economic policies – forty months of 8% unemployment, doubling the national debt in just one term in office – they’ll come to the opposite conclusion about the President.

No wonder he doesn’t want to be seen in Wisconsin.

Greg Sargent: In case you were wondering how high the stakes are for the national right in the battle over Scott Walker’s recall, consider this: The Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a branch of the conservative group founded by the Koch brothers, is sinking at least $700,000 into ads in Wisconsin defending Walker’s record.

Here it is:

In a case that should make conservatives stand up and take notice, and that merits (and later will receive from me) far more ink (or cyber ink) than this blog entry can provide, yet another liberal media organ, with yet another series of tendentious stories, is doing the work of the organized political left and the Democratic Party (but I repeat myself) by trying to rescue Wisconsin unions from duly passed laws reining in their abuses.

It’s a complicated story, but the semi-short version is this: In an absurd and perhaps unconstitutional attempt at strangling free political speech, organs of the Left brought ethics charges  in 2008 against newly elected Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who had just defeated liberal hack Louis Butler in a hard-fought race. They had the temerity to accuse Gableman of lying about Butler during the campaign, and wanted an organ of the state to adjudge what was and wasn’t acceptable political speech — First Amendment be damned.

The charges failed, eventually, on a 3-3 vote at the state Supreme Court.

Later, last year, Gableman joined a narrow high court majority  ruling in favor of the constitutionality of the controversial new Wisconsin laws reining in the unions. The Left wants that ruling vacated — so they are going after Gableman again.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel suddenly is all hot to report that Gableman’s lawyer during the ethics trial back then worked on a contingency fee basis — in other words, that Gableman didn’t pay the lawyer out of his own pocket. Worse, Gableman later ruled in a number of cases in which the lawyer’s firm was of counsel, including some 4-3 decisions — and ruled in favor of the client of that firm.

Egads! Scandal! The way the Journal-Sentinel-House-Organ-of-Democrats has been playing the story in multiple articles, Gableman accepted a free “gift” in the form of the contingency fee agreement (the firm was never paid because the 3-3 tie vote on the ethics charge meant that Gableman didn’t actually “win” the case, and therefore the attorneys couldn’t collect). When Gableman then was faced with other cases involving the firm that had provided him a “gift,” he therefore was supposedly required to recuse himself.  Or so the paper’s biased coverage overwhelmingly suggests. And of course, it just so happens that one of those cases was the union case, which, by this logic, should be re-opened because of Gableman’s ghastly ethics.

What a nice, neat little package.

And what a crock of, uh, you know, rhymes with mitt.

To make its case, the Journal-Sentinal (pretending to be objective) turned for supposed legal-ethics expertise to Stephen Gillers, “a New York University Law School professor who specializes in legal ethics.” Never mind that Gillers is the same hack that the Left and establishment journalists (again, I repeat myself) trot out any time they need a “expert” to bash conservative legal ethics — because, of course, Gillers always somehow seems to come down in favor of whatever position benefits the political aims of liberals. How convenient.

But here’s the real kicker: How is it that a contingency fee arrangement is suddenly a “gift”? I thought the left, always in hock to the plaintiffs’ bar, loved contingency fee arrangements! That’s what gets the jackpots that are used to fund a huge part of the Left’s political apparatus. Is every plaintiff represented through a contingency-fee arrangement getting a “gift”? Of course not. As Viet Dinh, Gableman’s NEW lawyer, wrote in a letter to the editor that the Journal-Sentinel has conveniently refused to publish (although it did selectively quote from the letter in a “news” story), “Justice Gableman has the same fundamental right to representation as any other individual, and there is nothing improper or unethical about acquiring legal representation through a contingency fee agreement…. The inaccuracies are so persistent, and their pattern against Justice Gableman so consistent, that one unfortunately must consider editorial and journalistic bias.”

WAIT: There’s more. This is rich. It now turns out that a clearly left-leaning Judge in Wisconsin, the Hon. John Siefert, sued the Wisconsin Judicial Commission over a different issue in 2008. And guess what: Siefert did so under a contingency fee arrangement!! One waits with bated breath to see if the Journal-Sentinel will now run a series of “news” articles asking if Siefert improperly took a “gift.”

One will probably wait forever, and one’s breath will remain bated.

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses how everyday American workers are being used as political pawns to advance the job-killing agenda of big labor unions.  

The Fix notes that Big Labor is looking awfully small in recent election cycles.  Citing organized labor’s unsuccessful primary attacks on Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), and this week’s failure to recall enough Wisconsin Republicans to take back the state senate, one Democratic strategist speaks the obvious – if anonymous – truth.

“The unmistakable lesson is that every time labor makes it about labor, they lose,” said one senior Democratic strategist granted anonymity to speak candidly. “It’s a messenger problem.”

With public employee unions eating up ever larger amounts of taxpayer money, it’s no wonder the majority of non-union members are revolting at the thought of strengthening labor’s hand.  In reality, the unnamed source mentioned above doesn’t quite draw the right lesson from Big Labor’s election problem.  It’s not just the messenger – it’s the message of more money in a tight recession that’s the problem.  Unless unions get on-board with the national belt-tightening, they’ll experience a lot more rejections in the elections to come.

Byron York reports that the implementation of Wisconsin’s controversial ban on collective bargaining by public employee unions is already freeing one state school district from financial hardship.  Among the benefits of the change in policy:

• Swapping a $400,000 deficit for a $1.5 million surplus thanks to increasing teachers’ health insurance cost of coverage from 10 percent to 12.6 percent, which is “still well below rates in much of the private sector”

• Being able to shop around for health insurance coverage instead of being forced under collectively bargained contracts only to purchase coverage from a union-operated provider – the demanded premium levels have already dropped to “match the lowest bidder”

• Changing work rules like upping a teacher’s hours of instruction from five out of seven periods to six, thus allowing the district to reduce student-to-teacher ratios and provide more one-on-one tutoring with troubled students

Wisconsin’s Democratic Party and its liberal lobbyists may still consider the ban on collective bargaining a “disaster,” but it’s clearly a win for parents, students, and administrators.

Huffington Post reports that even though a Wisconsin state judge invalidated Republican Governor Scott Walker’s bill to remove collective bargaining from public union members, nothing is stopping Republican lawmakers from re-passing the stalled legislation.

Democrats widely expect Republicans in the state legislature to simply attempt to re-pass the measure as law, and this time, the Democratic state senators won’t be leaving the state to slow down the process.

“There’s nothing that we can do,” said state Sen. Jim Holperin (D-Conover). “Republicans have the votes to do this, and if they choose to do it, they can and they will.”

My guess is that if given the chance to follow normal procedures, Republicans will easily re-pass Governor Walker’s bill.  When that happens, Wisconsin’s Democrats should stop wasting taxpayers’ time and money on frivolous lawsuits created by irresponsible lawmakers fleeing the democratic process.

If at first liberals don’t succeed, they plead their case to a friendly judge.  Last Friday, a Wisconsin judge granted a temporary restraining order to block publication of the state’s recently passed union law.  (State law requires the Secretary of State to publish the contents of the law to the public in order for the law to be valid.)

The law’s opponents claim Wisconsin Republicans violated the state’s open meetings law by negotiating the substance of the bill outside the normal committee hearing process.  The judge says all Republicans have to do is re-pass the bill with adequate notice (i.e. 24 hours instead of 2).

Where were these process-conscience Democrats when their federal counterparts rammed through ObamaCare while violating almost every legislative procedure?  Where was the outrage when the Reid-Pelosi gang used the budget reconciliation process and ‘deem-and-pass’ to thwart deliberation?  At least Wisconsin Republicans gave their absentee opponents a heads-up.