Appeals Court declares portions of Wisconsin campaign finance law unconstitutional

Madison, Wis. – In a ruling with stunning implications on political speech in Wisconsin and beyond, the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals declared portions of state campaign finance laws restricting issue ads unconstitutional.

The 88-page decision handed down late Wednesday afternoon sides with Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. and its state political action committee, which sued to block the enforcement of multiple state statutes and rules against groups that spend money for political speech independently of candidates and parties – so called issue advocacy groups.

The 7th Circuit’s ruling, legal experts tell Wisconsin Reporter, could cut the legs out from under a secret John Doe investigation into dozens of conservative organizations on a theory that the groups illegally coordinated with Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign during the state’s partisan recall elections.

Liberalism, and its predecessor, Progressivism, has been established in Wisconsin for a while. In fact, before there was an organized Democrat party in Wisconsin, only the Old Guard Republican and the Progressive Republican parties existed. Any Democrats that had once been in the territory had deserted that party about the time of the Civil War.

That said, the La Follette era, stretching from about the time Teddy Roosevelt ascended to the Presidency and up through the New Deal, “Progressivism” was responsible for the graduated income tax and election primaries, and these were first applied in Wisconsin, before it was adopted by the Wilson Administration in 1913. The concept of unions everywhere, and especially government unions, also was established early on in Wisconsin, and the idea spread everywhere progressive policies were adopted. The idea of government-administered insurance schemes were also introduced by Wisconsin, in competition with commercial forms of insurance, and for a long time, they could offer much lower rates for the same level of coverage, but the program was pretty much kept as a secret from the general population. Though theoretically any citizen of Wisconsin could participate, most of the enrollees were elected officials or state and local employees.

The State of Wisconsin had a social safety net derived largely from the German model designed for the Prussian and later federated German government by Chancellor and Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck introduced the world’s first welfare scheme which provided sickness, accident and old age benefits in 1879, and this was widely copied by Progressives, including FDR, during the New Deal. It was interesting to note that when the Third Reich came to power, the original laws concerning the social safety net were largely unchanged from the way they had been adopted under Bismarck. Germany was a socialist country long before there were any Nazis. And the roots were the same as those of the Progressives in this country and England, where they were called the Fabian Society.

All this is a long way around to firmly associating the thread of Progressivism in Wisconsin with the Nationalist socialism that overtook Germany in the period after the First World War, and in fact, many of the Progressives were firmly on the side of at least keeping a pacifist position, if not supporting the objectives of the Hitler regime.

And now the old tired policies that supported the Progressive agenda for years are finally getting put to the rout. About time.

Meanwhile, our democrat legistards here in Minnesota:

Governor Dayton is demanding the legislature silence liberty activists by passing HF 1944/SF 1915, the “Gag Act”.

This bill would require Campaign for Liberty,NRA,GOCRA,Taxpayers League and any other pro-liberty group that talks about the records of politicians to hand over lists of their supporters to a government monitoring agency.

In other words, it gives the politicians in St. Paul an “enemies list” to go after if you try to speak up about their voting records during the election season.

Now, in the closing days of the legislative session, Gov. Dayton and House Speaker Paul Thissen are scheming to ram through this attack on free speech.

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