recall elections

As journalists and students of political science and public administration are well aware, regulatory agencies -- such as those assigned to protect the environment or oversee financiers or watch drug companies -- are always at risk of being captured by the very special interests they are assigned to monitor. Similar risk now affects newspaper editorial boards that rely more and more upon a narrow, ideological point of view from some of the very organizations they are supposed to view with skepticism.

Well, if this doesn't get your dander up and make you enlist for a recall campaign phone bank or knock and drop, it's hard to imagine what might.

Dale SchultzThe word in the state Capitol is that the awful, anti-environmental, Republican mining deregulation bill is probably dead for the current legislative session. Assembly Republicans had passed the measure, and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald dissolved a committee in his house looking at the bill in an apparent attempt to ram it through more quickly.

But then came one of those benefits of last year's state Senate recall elections that Republicans still pretend were a failure.

Ho-hum. Yet another in a long series of hypocrisies from pro-Republican forces including the GOP itself as Walker protectors pursue their plan to “monitor” recall circulators thereby upholding the "integrity" of the recall process:

Anonymous right wingers in Wisconsin set up a quickly yanked Facebook page called "Recall Walker Worker Infobase," apparently yet another vehicle for stalking and casting aspersion on anti-GOP recall workers.

According to a post (see link below) by observer "noise of rain" on DailyKos, the Facebook-based organizers explained:

"This is a serious page to inform people of what is going on, what they can and cannot do and the basic dangers of allowing a complete stranger who has not had a background check, into your home."

I mean, that's so totally righteous. After all, what if this total stranger seeking your name on a Scott Walker recall petition were carrying a concealed weapon!? Or something even more heinous? Thank god for the GOP-supplied "castle doctrine"! You may fire when ready, Gridley.

You've got to admire the chutzpah (pronounced "chuts-paw" by Michele Bachmann) of Republicans and conservatives and their opinion-leader enablers. First they mounted a bald attempt to seize permanent control of government -- and that's hardly an overstatement, since at least one GOP party official a couple years ago said flat out that was their goal. But the effort hasn't been going entirely as planned, so they're doubling down.

How, exactly, do you go about seizing control when the public isn't keen to vote your political cabal into undismissable majorities? Well, there are ways, as we are learning in Wisconsin. For example:

* Trying to eliminate or make much more difficult our state's constitutional provision for recalls of state elected lawmakers. The recalls can be for any reason the voters choose. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as of this morning has now written at least two editorials backing this dumb-down of what we ought to rename Constitutional Recall.  

Reflexing his muscleIn an interview with an investigating detective on July 8, State Supreme Court Justice David Prosser admitted he made contact with Justice Ann Walsh Bradley in an angry confrontation but recused himself on the basis that ... well, let's hear Prosser tell it:

"Did my hands touch her neck, yes, I admit that. Did I try to touch her neck, no, absolutely not, it was a total reflex."

To put Prosser's defense into other words: Justice Bradley's neck ran into my grasping, outstretched hands. 

Still concerned that the Wisconsin Senate recall elections were too expensive and produced too few results? The Rachel Maddow Show last night suggested otherwise, in an unexpected way.

In Ohio, citizens rose up earlier this year and signed over one million names on petitions putting a referendum on that state's fall ballot to rescind Gov. John Kasich's anti-collective bargaining law for public employee unions. Kasich has said all along that he won't even talk to progressives or Democrats, much less bargain with them, but suddenly, this week, he's making a lot of noise about finding "compromise" on the union bill, which won't go into effect until and if the referendum fails to rescind it.

But polling shows the vast majority of Ohio voters do want to rescind it, and backers of the referendum in the Democratic Party quickly turned down Kasich's invitation this week. Kill the bill, they said, and then we'll talk.

Another happy warriorWisconsin progressives achieved a great victory yesterday.

What, you say? We didn't recapture the state Senate? Republicans still control all the levers of Wisconsin government? Alberta Darling is still going to run the Joint Finance Committee and still sign off on every wingnut legislative venture? Tea baggers think this gives them a renewed mandate for further social mayhem? Plutocrats are going to stick it to working families and the poor some more?

You say progressives here and nationally lost big in Tuesday's recall elections?

Well, if that's how you feel, I understand. Once again our side clawed and fought and came up just short. But what's the alternative to fighting? Giving in and letting the other side be our lords, and not just our landlords?