Corruption in Wisconsin

I was born and raised in Wisconsin, so I still have an interest in what's happening there and I am very sad. Wisconsin had a well-deserved reputation as the poster child of honest government. Well...not any more.  Scott Walker and his right-wing legislature has created a government that is opaque and corrupt.

Don't like the mining laws?  Well, it's easy. Just invite the mining industry to write a new law. And we can lie about how many jobs it will create (zero) and screw the environment.

Then lets get rid of open meeting laws. And lets dismantle one of the finest university systems in the nation.

But the coup de grace is the latest....Don't want to be investigated for your lawbreaking?  First have a Republican judge halt the investigation.  And then just to be safe lets just gut the law. Why? Because we can. Keep in mind that this law had been on the books for 165 years and is one reason the state had pretty clean government. And the charge of partisanship breaks down because Republican attorneys were among those calling for the probe.  Quite simply, the only partisanship involved is the Republicans who gutted the law so they wouldn't have to break it.

Quote of the Day

"The Republicans at the Benghazi hearing made Hillary a proxy for an aspect of this phenomenon that virtually every blue-state American has seethed at in the last decade or so: being accused of treason.

We've been told that we hate veterans, that we sympathize with terrorists, that we long for a UN takeover or Soviet rule. It's said all the time that it makes us happy to see cops shot or soldiers killed in battle. Not only do we hear this on right-wing TV, we see the amazing spectacle of millions of conservatives believing it. To believe this stuff, you'd have to believe we aren't even people."

Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone today, writing on Hillary Clinton and the Benghazi Committee. Read his whole column if you have the time. It only takes a few minutes.