Republican Campaign Finance Reform

In the brave new world of Ameri© a, where oodles of moolah donated by the rich to political candidates is as much a right of free speech as these very words you are presently reading (penned by an impecunious scrivener, such that I am), thanks to the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court last year – wherein corporations are rendered the equal of actual people – it’s perfectly consistent, and all too legal, that the effective for-profit privatization of electoral campaigns is seen as a freedom of expression, unlike that socialist gulag of public financing where candidates are forced to limit their hungry bellies to the trough of thoughtful spending, heavens forfend.

 

Unplanned Parenthood: the Hit or Misogynists of Wisconsin Politics

If you listen just long enough you can hear Margaret Sanger crying in her grave.  As has been par for the “coarse” since the first second Governor Scott Walker came into office swinging and slinging, and Republicans toed the line striding and stentorian on their high hoarse hearse of this legislative session, the next step in making Wisconsin gallop backward is defunding Planned Parenthood.  She who wrote in a pamphlet nearly a century ago, “No one can doubt that there are times where an abortion is justifiable but they will become unnecessary when care is taken to prevent conception.  This is the only cure for abortions.”  She would be wailing, were she alive today.  And then fighting like hell.

 

I think I cant, I think I cant, I think I cant…

Good news for people who like bad news about Walker!

(No, this is not about Modest Mouse.)

Earlier this morning, a major campaign donor to Gov. Walker was charged with not one but two felony counts for violating campaign finance laws.  See, I just thought that little Scottie as a kid never got that train set he wanted for Christmas, and ever since he’s harbored a grudge against locomotives; and that’s why he turned down nearly a billion dollars in stimulus money for light rail between Madison and Milwaukee.  Turns out, he just has a motive that’s loco.  The president and CEO of Wisconsin and Southern Railroad Co., William Gardner, last year shook his employees down to donate directly to then candidate Walker’s campaign, a sum resulting in $43,800 — eerily enough, only $800 more than what the Koch Bros’ donated to Walker.  The thing is, in Wisconsin it’s illegal to direct company cash to campaign coffers.  (At least until conservatives figure a way around this one, too, by way of the newly popular filthy lucre = free speech equation.)

Again, this all happened nearly a year ago, in May of 2010.  It’s only today that Gardner was officially charged.