Posted on 07/16/2015 7:21:45 AM PDT by conservativejoy
CMD Denounces Corrupt John Doe Ruling From Conflicted Court
Submitted by PR Watch Admin on July 15, 2015 - 8:43pm
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 16, 2015
Contact: Brendan Fischer, brendan@prwatch.org
Madison, WI--Today, the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned the state’s limits on money in politics, opening the door to unlimited, undisclosed spending coordinated directly with candidates, and handing Scott Walker a significant political victory as he begins his run for the White House. The decisions in the case can be found here.
"The dark money groups that bankrolled the Walker teams recall victories got the decision they wanted from the justices they swept into office with their spending," said Lisa Graves, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy.
“It comes as no surprise that a court elected with $10 million in support from the same dark money groups under investigation would overturn years of precedent and open the door to unlimited secret funds in Wisconsin elections, fully coordinated with candidates,” said Brendan Fischer, General Counsel of the Center for Media and Democracy.
The groups challenging the probe and that were alleged to have coordinated with Walker include the Wisconsin Club for Growth (WiCFG) and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC). Both were parties to the case.
Justices Michael Gableman and David Prosser were both elected to the court by narrow margins and with huge expenditures by WMC and WiCFG, yet declined a motion from Special Prosecutor Schmitz to recuse themselves from the case. In court filings, Walker’s lawyer also argued against the recusal motion.
According to CMD's analysis, WiCFG, WMC, and their offshoots spent $3,685,000 supporting Justice David Prosser in his 2011 race, five times as much as the Prosser campaign, in an election decided by just 7,000 votes.
WMC spent $2.25 million supporting Justice Michael Gableman in 2008, five-and-a-half as Gableman's own campaign, in a race he won by 20,000 votes. WiCFG also surpassed Gableman's campaign spending.
Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson was stripped of her title after an election earlier this year in which WMC spent $600,000. Her dissent in the John Doe is stinging: “Lest the length, convoluted analysis, and overblown rhetoric of the majority opinion obscure its effect, let me state clearly: The majority opinion adopts an unprecedented and faulty interpretation of Wisconsin's campaign finance law and of the First Amendment. 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."
Thanks to the court’s ruling, candidates can now work hand-in-glove with “independent” groups that take unlimited, secret donations but stop short of expressly saying “vote for” a candidate. Now, there is nothing stopping a candidate, Democrat or Republican, from forming a nonprofit that takes secret, unlimited funds--and even foreign donations or funding from corporations--and having it operate out of their campaign office. The decision applies to the justices' own campaigns, as well.
“In future elections, the same justices who struck down the anti-coordination rules will be able to coordinate with precisely the same groups that were parties to this case,” Fischer said.
Read more about the history of this John Doe and the implications for Wisconsin's clean elections laws here.
Access the publicly available John Doe documents and emails here.
Gee.....there’s no bias here is there?
This was the investigation in which Karl Rove’s Super Pac, that gave over 10 million to Walker’s campaign, was implicated by some emails that suggested illegal coordination was going on. Also emails from Walker’s office instructing donors how to coordinate without being detected.
She was stripped of her title, repeatedly raped by Walker minions and forced to watch as her children were disemboweled before her very eyes by Scott Walker himself. And they beat her cat to death and poisoned her goldfishes! Poor Shirley!
D**n that Scott Walker!
His/her website was already called out in a different thread. Frankly its time for this poster to be removed from Free Republic.
PR Watch is a respected non partisan watch dog group since 1993. The prosecutor in this case is also a Republican who voted for Walker.
For what? Reporting both sides of the story?
With a pardon to CW for copying and pasting her post in the thread you left.
Your “SOURCE” : )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Media_and_Democracy
“..CMD was founded in 1993 by progressive writer John Stauber in Madison, Wisconsin. Lisa Graves is president of CMD......
“CMD states that it accepts donations from “individuals and philanthropic foundations through gifts and grants”, but “no funding from for-profit corporations or grants from government agencies.” It maintains a partial list of supporters on its website.
In a column for Fox News, Dan Gainor wrote that BanksterUSA received $200,000 from the Open Society Institute (OSI), a grantmaking network founded by George Soros, aimed to shape public policy to promote democratic governance, human rights, and economic, legal, and social reform. CMD stated that it received a grant from OSI “to continue work on national security issues”.
Fox News reported that in 2011 CMD received $864,740 in donations. $520,000, or 60% of 2011’s total revenue, was received from the Schwab Charitable Fund, a donor advised fund which preserves the anonymity of donors by not disclosing individual donor names.
According to the conservative news website Watchdog.org, the Tides Foundation, a foundation known to donate primarily to liberal organizations, reported giving CMD $160,000 in 2011, but that money did not appear on CMD’s tax return. When asked why CMD heavily criticizes conservative organizations for not revealing their donors while refusing to name all of CMD’s funders, CMD’s presdient Lisa Graves said, “The question of conservative funders versus liberal funders, I think, is a matter of false equivalency.”
In June 2014, Politico reported that the Center for Media and Democracy was a recipient of funding through the Democracy Alliance, a network of progressive donors.”.....
Go away.
Self professed credentials don’t impress me. Some of the entries in the excerpt are enough to make me wonder. It smacks of bias to me.
Courts are not unbiased. They have been stocked with political agenda driven hacks!
Jeez,
That’s two threads now that cj doesn’t come back into after the post explaining his websites background...
Not to mention that the author was the LEAD ATTORNEY against Walker in this suit,
True, and in this case two of the Justices had very personal interest in dismissing this case, since their own election campaigns were implicated.
Shades of SCOTUS not recusing the two Justices involved with gay marriages.
You live in MN. Refute the substance of the article. Refute what the Republican Prosecutor said about the conflict of interest the Justices had. That is the heart of the issue.
I was told by Walker supporters last week that the attempt to repeal Open Records Law in the budget deal was just a liberal talking point and never happened. I posted an article from Fox News that reported on the issue and the backlash it caused.
What is it with Walker supporters and Denial?
Hahaha Not everyone that Gets their ass handed to them in court takes to the public to whine about it afterwards.
Given that he writes from a shadowy funded Organization’s net platform makes is all the more Ironic....or maybe Moronic is more appropriate. ;)
For those of us without your superior grasp of fact, who is “the Republican prosecutor,” and what case, specifically, is being prosecuted.
Well troll this Walker supporter would say that the open records incident was an idiotic move and its a damn good thing it was removed, but I’m still waiting for you to explain why you’re using sourcing at this website from a George Soros sponsored site.
Schmitz. He is the special prosecutor. He has been investigating illegal coordination between fundraising organizations that supported Walker’s recall election, one of which was Rove’s Super Pac, American Crossroads.
Two of the Justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court were implicated in the investigation, but refused to recuse themselves from the case which also was investigating their election campaign finances. They just shut down the investigation. It may be appealed to SCOTUS.
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