act 10 rtw
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an 12 23
no lnx
republican Scott Walker went down in history as one of the most anti-union governors in Wisconsin history. Act 10, aggressively pushed by Walker through the Wisconsin State Legislature, attacked collective bargaining for public-sector unions and required public workers to pay more for health care.
Act 10's critics challenged Act 10 in the courts. But in 2014, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in a 5-2 vote, upheld the law as constitutional.
Since then, there has been a major change in the state's highest judicial body. Liberal Janet Protasiewicz, in April, enjoyed a double-digit victory in a Wisconsin Supreme Court race — giving liberals a majority.
In an article published on December 5, The Nation's John Nichols reports that Act 10's future may be in jeopardy given the Wisconsin High Court's new makeup.
"With the April 2023 election win by Justice Janet Protasiewicz," Nichols explains, "the (Wisconsin Supreme) Court now has a 4-3 majority that could well be inclined to reconsider the constitutionality of Act 10. And they will likely get a chance to do so."
Nichols elaborates, "Last week, a coalition of unions, including several affiliates of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, AFSCME, and the Teamsters, as well as SEIU Wisconsin and the Teaching Assistants Association (TAA/AFT) — which represents graduate student workers on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus and is the oldest graduate students union in the world — filed a lawsuit demanding that Act 10 be struck down."
In an official statement, union members cited "low pay, staffing shortages and worsening working conditions" as some of their reasons for filing their anti-Act 10 lawsuit.
READ MORE: Wisconsin court case could end 'virtually impenetrable' GOP 'near-supermajorities' in state legislature
The Nation's full report is available at this link.
3/23
https://www.alternet.org/michigan-repeal-anti-union-labor/
yay!
3 23 yahoomail
Dear MoveOn member,
I'm Tony Evers, the governor of Wisconsin. I've never emailed you before, but I'm emailing you today because I need to talk to you about an incredibly urgent matter: the Wisconsin Supreme Court election on April 4 that will decide whether the far right controls the court or not.
My state is one of the most critical battleground states in the country, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court will rule on hugely consequential election cases that could end up deciding the 2024 presidential election.
That's why Republican billionaires are flooding Wisconsin with cash—all to elect their right-wing candidate, a radical extremist who collaborated with Trump's plot to undermine fair elections in Wisconsin.1
Even the man who financed the January 6 insurrection is pouring money into our state.2
That's why I'm partnering with MoveOn to stop the far right and to win this election. But we need your help.
...
It's not just democracy and voting rights that are on the line in this election.
...
Sources:
1. "Trump ally with ties to 'fake elector' scheme advances in Wisconsin Supreme Court race,"NBC News, February 21, 2023
https://act.moveon.org/go/170624?t=4&akid=347354%2E20164584%2E_YYjVx
no lnx
Trump ally with ties to 'fake elector' scheme advances in Wisconsin Supreme Court race
Daniel Kelly, a conservative with connections to a plan to reverse the 2020 election results, will face liberal Janet Protasiewicz in an April 4 election to determine control of the court.
Feb. 21, 2023,
By Adam Edelman
A Donald Trump ally who advised Republicans on legal efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential race has advanced to the Wisconsin Supreme Court general election, putting him one step closer to a seat on the powerful bench.
Daniel Kelly is a former state Supreme Court justice with connections to a plan hatched by the former president's allies to reverse the 2020 election results in Wisconsin through the use of “fake electors.” He was one of two candidates to advance in Tuesday’s Supreme Court primary, according to projections by The Associated Press.
The other to move forward was liberal candidate Janet Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County circuit judge who was endorsed by the Democratic abortion rights group Emily’s List.
Protasiewicz and Kelly will face off in an April 4 general election that will determine political control of the court — and, with it, the future of many pivotal issues the court is likely to decide in the coming years, including abortion rights, elections and gerrymandering. The winner is elected to a 10-year term.
Although the court and its members are technically nonpartisan, conservatives hold a 4-3 majority. But with conservative Justice Patience Roggensack retiring, that majority hangs in the balance.
There has not been a liberal majority on the court in 15 years, and Democrats see the election as a prime opportunity to shift the balance.
Kelly was one of two conservative candidates in the primary election; the other, Jennifer Dorow, is a Waukesha County circuit judge best known in the state for having presiding over the criminal trial of Darrell Brooks, who was convicted last year of killing six people at a Waukesha Christmas parade in 2021 when he crashed his SUV into the crowd.
Wisconsin faces high-stakes Supreme Court race
FEB. 21, 2023
Protasiewicz won about 46% of the vote Tuesday, a commanding victory based on Democratic turnout, particularly in Milwaukee and Dane counties, that was especially high for an off-year, down-ballot, winter primary election.
The two liberal candidates in the race together won 54% of the vote, compared to about 46% for the two conservative candidates combined.
Kelly only narrowly bested Dorow for a second-place finish, with the two basically splitting the support of voters who turned out for a conservative candidate. Kelly outperformed Dorow in rural counties, while Dorow outdid Kelly in the heavily Republican suburban counties surrounding Milwaukee.
Kelly is a former state Supreme Court justice who lost his seat in a 2020 election to liberal Jill Karofsky. He was appointed to the seat in 2016 by former Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican. He has remained tied to Trump allies through a plan that was intended to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state with the use of “fake electors.”
In a deposition to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, former Wisconsin GOP chairman Andrew Hitt said he and Kelly had “pretty extensive conversations” about the plan, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported last week that the Republican Party at the state and national levels had paid Kelly $120,000 to advise it on “election integrity” issues.
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A spokesperson for Kelly's campaign did not respond to questions about his involvement in those efforts. Kelly spokesperson Jim Dick told the Journal Sentinel that Kelly "believes Joe Biden is the duly elected president of the United States." Dick also suggested to the newspaper that Kelly's beliefs about the election were not necessarily aligned with what his clients believed, saying, "It is a maxim in the legal profession that the views of clients are not attributable to their attorneys."
Kelly based much of his campaign on heavy criticism of Protasiewicz for having openly suggested how she would rule on pivotal cases likely to come before the court involving hot-button issues with national ramifications, like abortion rights, elections and gerrymandering.
Protasiewicz, one of two liberal candidates in the race (the other was Everett Mitchell, a Dane County circuit judge), focused her campaign heavily on her support for abortion rights. Her television advertisements, for example, emphasized that support: One featured her talking directly to the camera, saying, “I believe in a woman’s freedom to make her own decision on abortion,” while a second featured several women touting that support and slamming “extremists” on the other side of the argument.
[pix Daniel Kelly, Scott Walker
Attorney Daniel Kelly in Madison, Wis., on July 22, 2016.John Hart / AP file]
The issue has taken center stage in the race. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, an 1849 state law banning abortion in almost all cases snapped back into effect.
Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul, both Democrats, have said they will not enforce the law, and Kaul has filed a lawsuit alleging that it is unenforceable. The suit is expected to eventually make its way before the state Supreme Court, most likely giving the court the power to decide on abortion rights in Wisconsin.
Kelly, who has refrained from saying how he would rule in such a case, was endorsed by three groups that oppose abortion rights.
The court is also very likely to hear various challenges to existing election laws, as well as cases that might relate to recounts, absentee ballots and other facets of election administration that could have material impacts on the outcomes of close elections in the perpetual battleground — including the 2024 presidential election.
For example, in a 4-3 decision last year, the state Supreme Court deemed all ballot drop boxes outside election clerks’ offices illegal — a setback for Democrats, who had advocated to preserve one of the more lenient rules about the boxes that arose during the coronavirus pandemic. Two years earlier, the court, in another 4-3 vote, narrowly upheld the 2020 election results in the state. Court watchers predict similar cases in the future.
Other issues that could make it before the court in the coming years include challenges to Act 10, a law enacted by then-Republican Gov. Scott Walkerthat eliminated collective bargaining for most public workers. It could also hear cases about redrawn legislative maps (the current map, which experts have said is one of the most gerrymandered in the country, was approved by the current state Supreme Court last year). As is the case in many states, in Wisconsin, if the governor and the Legislature cannot agree on legislative maps, the issue falls to the state Supreme Court.
The general election is on pace to be the most expensive Supreme Court race in Wisconsin history. Candidates and outside groups have already spent more than $9.2 million, an amount that, through the general election, will clearly exceed the record $10 million spent in 2020.
2. "PAC linked to megadonor Dick Uihlein says it's prepared to spend millions backing Kelly for state Supreme Court," WISPolitics, November 18, 2022
https://act.moveon.org/go/170738?t=6&akid=347354%2E20164584%2E_YYjVx
- "Work for anti-abortion group issue in Wisconsin court race," AP News, February 23, 2023
https://act.moveon.org/go/170739?t=8&akid=347354%2E20164584%2E_YYjVx
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https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/03/scott-walker-trump-wisconsin-teacher-union/
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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/07/17/book-review-fall-wisconsin-uplifting-read
A must-read on the summer book list is The Fall of Wisconsin: The Conservative Conquest of a Progressive Bastion and the Future of American Politics, by Dan Kaufman. This remarkable book takes readers on a winding journey through the Native American, Scandinavian, and Socialist roots of the Badger State to its latest incarnation as a Trump satellite state.
“Donald Trump’s victory may have shocked the Clinton campaign and media pundits, but the result merely heralded the final stage of Wisconsin’s dramatic transformation from a pioneering beacon of progressive, democratic politics to the embodiment of that legacy’s national unraveling,” writes Kaufman.
Wisconsinites have had a front row seat to this unraveling. But this is not a gloomy book, nor the dry, didactic reporting of the mainstream newspapers stripped of historical context and evocative language. It is a beautifully drawn portrait of resistance told via the voices of the state’s beleaguered citizenry.
PORTRAIT OF RESISTANCE
The book highlights Mike Wiggins, the chairman of the Bad River Band, and other tribal leaders who successfully battled theGogebic Taconite iron-ore strip minein the Penokee Hills after the company crafted its own bill and paid millions to buy off the state legislature. “The tribes, Wisconsin’s first conservationists, have now become the last hope, the only group with any power to stop the dismantling of the state’s environmental heritage,” writes Kaufman in one of the book’s most affecting chapters.
It stresses the national importance of the fight over Act 10, Walker’s union-busting legislation, which blindsided the voters–even Republicans.“Walker’s agenda, which was always there but nobody knew it, really came from somewhere else, like the Koch brothers, the national party, and ALEC [the American Legislative Exchange Council]. I don’t think it was a local agenda, frankly,” said former GOP State Senator Barbara Lorman.
It details the chutzpah of average citizens who step up to run for office when no one else will. From Lori Compass, who single-handedly launched a recall against Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald in 2011, to Randy Bryce, the ironworker who battled ALEC’s anti-union “right to work” bill and the gutting of prevailing wage. In 2018, Bryce decided to step up and take on one of America’s most prominent politicians, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.
Dozens of other Wisconsinites, including Tia Nelson, Jesse Barnes, Tim Cullen, Curt Meine, Todd Albaugh, Dave Poklinkoski, Marvin DeFoe, Dale Schultz, Tim Cullen, and more, are interviewed and paint a portrait of a resistance that didn’t waver though the deck was stacked against them. Included in this list is Rep. Fred Kessler, who found a way to challenge the GOP’s unprecedented partisan gerrymandering in federal court and get it ruled unconstitutional. Woven into the these tales are the stories of Chief Buffalo, “Fighting Bob” La Follette, socialist Emil Seidel, environmentalist Aldo Leopold, educator John Bascom, Congressman Victor Berger, Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, and other historical figures.
CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE
Kaufman writes that “ALEC played an essential role in the conservative network that has transformed Wisconsin,” highlighting three ALEC measures: school vouchers, right to work, and voter ID.[CRONON?]
This became crystal clear to a young mom living and working in Madison named Chris Taylor. Walker’s attack on unions and on the public schools where her kids went to school inspired Taylor to run for office in 2012 and, once elected, she continued to dig deeper into the group’s radical agenda, which has prompted over 100 American companies to stop funding it. Just last week, long-time supporter ExxonMobil stopped funding ALEC.
“ALEC defines the parameters of what’s possible,” Taylor explains in the book. Since being elected to the State Assembly, Taylor has taken it upon herself to attend ALEC meetings as often as possible in order to report on the organization for multiple outlets. Taylor describes in the book how isolated she feels in a sea of conservatives, including being chased through the halls of one meeting by a drunken legislator.
Taylor explains well the critical “infrastructure” that the GOP built in the state with the support of the $900 million Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which the Center for Media and Democracy exposed in an 11-part series in 2017, and how that infrastructure was critical to the election of Trump and the defeat of Clinton. This infrastructure included candidate training, ALEC politicians, state-based “think tanks,” legal teams, and phony media outlets.
Even in Democratic circles, the expanse and effectiveness of this infrastructure is not widely understood. “‘Republicans have a network, they have an infrastructure.’ We don’t. We might pick up a seat or two here and there, but until we have an infrastructure as strong as theirs, we’re going to lose,” says Taylor.
A NATIONAL MODEL
The book tells a tale of how Wisconsin “went from a state widely admired as a ‘laboratory of democracy’ to a testing ground for national conservatives” bent on making key states Republican strongholds. “Those efforts have been wildly successful, culminating in Wisconsin’s startling deliverance of the White House to Donald Trump,” writes Kaufman.
Grover Norquist explains the centrality of Walker’s Act 10legislation to the Trump election in the book: “Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in 2016 did not lay the groundwork for Republican political dominance. But the March 2011 signing of Act 10, a dramatic reform of public-sector labor laws, by Wisconsin’s Scott Walker certainly did. To understate it: If Act 10 is enacted in a dozen more states, the modern day Democratic Party will cease to be a competitive power in American politics. It’s that big a deal.”
Norquist’s anti-union coalitional efforts, hyper-funded by the Kochs and the Bradley Foundation, helped take the Wisconsin “model” national. The nation is now facing an Act 10 of its own, as Trump’s pick to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, served up the deciding vote for the June Janus vs. AFSCMECouncil 31 decision, which will introduce “right to work” conditions nationwide, as the Center for Media and Democracy detailed in an award-winning investigation in February.
HOPING FOR AN ENCORE
Kaufman followed his book with a New York Times essay “Progressive Populism Can Save Us From Trump.” Many in Wisconsin, who gave Bernie Sanders 71 of 72 counties in 2016, hope he is right.
There is only one flaw in Kaufman’s important book.Walker’s brain, R.J. Johnson, is only mentioned once. Johnson, a native of Florida, is not only Scott Walker’s chief political advisor, but he also oversaw and funneled some $20 million in dark money into the 2011-2012 recall races, and millions more into Senate, Assembly, and judicial races, prompting a criminal investigation by a Republican state prosecutor. Johnson has been responsible for the most disgusting political ads ever aired in the state, the utter destruction of the Wisconsin Supreme Court (turning one of the state’s most respected institutions into what The New Yorker called a “disgraceful mess”), and the wholesale dismantling of Wisconsin’s clean election laws. Few political operatives have had such as impact on the state as this slavish servant of secret money in campaigns and elections.
Let’s hope Kaufman is saving material for his next book.
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