The Walker Recall Blacklist is Back, used against Democratic Candidate Mark Harris running for Petri’s seat.

Major donors get to hide their political affiliations all the while influencing local elections and public policy. It’s all about free speech. But those citizens who participate in the actual electoral process, like deciding to have a recall, have their political affiliation publically exposed and are retaliated against by the Republican Party. 

A brief line covering the recent private “debate” between Glenn Grothman and Mark Harris pretty much says it all. Harris had a nice comeback, as seen below, despite Grothman's insinuation that the recall signature all by itself should disqualify Harris from public office. Dissent will not be tolerated. Also note the interesting purpose for voter ID bluntly stated in the picture:

WPR: Republican State Sen. Glenn Grothman, and Democratic Winnebago County Executive Mark Harris, competing in the 6th Congressional District, sparred over topics … Grothman also criticized Harris for signing the recall petition against Gov. Scott Walker. 

Harris destroyed Grothman's smug suggestion that Act 10 helped Harris' county. There's a reason why I thought Harris should have run for governor; he's quietly smarter and more confident than most every politician in the state.

Harris said he did so because Walker's policies hurt the county and its many public employees in and around Oshkosh. 

Harris' answer to signing the recall petition and dealing with Act 10 was right on the money:

Personal Emails now a part of new Right Wing Blacklist.

If you've ever emailed your lawmaker, then you are now open to political harassment and blacklisting.

The message is clear: Shut up!  

Wisconsinites just lost the power of representation in one fell swoop, when the conservative fringe group MacIver Institute forced State Sen. Jon Erpenbach to reveal the email addresses of everyone concerned about the passage of Act 10. You can also thank our conservative activist judges.

The conservative Waukesha Second Circuit Court handed down their first warning shot to all voters; we’ll know what you’re thinking, and we’ll know who are.

State Sen. Jon Erpenbach

Judge Brown: “This result is a notice to legislators and citizens, whoever they are and whatever their opinions, that communications to legislators are subject to the open records law, without redaction.”

Yes, Judge Brown gave us “notice” when it came to contacting our elected representatives via email.

“We conclude the redacted information is not ‘purely personal.”

Your email address isn't personal? Of course former Republican lawmakers make for great wise and wonderful judges too. Take Mark Gundrum’s remarkable "can't prove a negative" logic:

Appellate Court Judge Mark Gundrum, a former Republican lawmaker, wrote that Erpenbach couldn't prove those emailing his office could expect threats for their advocacy or that they had any expectation of privacy when emailing the senator. "In this day and age, it would be unreasonable for a person sending an email to a lawmaker in an attempt to influence public policy to believe that the email and all the information therein might not be seen by persons other than just the lawmaker," Gundrum wrote.

Really, ask any voter, I'll bet you get a different answer. Erpenback offered this:

Erpenbach believes the ruling creates “big problems” because it prevents lawmakers from shielding the identities of people who bring highly personal and possibly embarrassing problems to the attention of their elected representatives. “I think people don’t realize how far-reaching this is,” Erpenbach said … he fears people corresponding with his office could be subject to “McCarthy-like” harassment if their identities were released. He pointed to the negative publicity faced by some people who signed recall petitions against Walker.

“The Senate rules clearly say I can protect the privacy of the citizens of this state that contact my office … I can protect the rights of citizens over special interest groups. If we do not preserve the voice of individual people then we give all of the power in this state to those that can buy the best lobbyist. The issue becomes, is it possible to do a cost benefit analysis on the Constitutional rights of the citizens of this state?”

And while dark money pours into our pubic elections, these conservative activist judgers have the balls to say:

“Public awareness of ‘who’ is attempting to influence public policy is essential for effective oversight of our government,” the judges found.

The public is on notice:

“This result is a notice to legislators and citizens, whoever they are and whatever their opinions, that communications to legislators are subject to the open records law, without redaction.”

Republican Judge withdraws endorsement, again cites Walker Recall Blacklist as reason.

When will the media ask why a perfectly legal democratic process like a recall, is being used to silence Walker's opposition? In this case a "nonpartisan" judge.

This is authoritarian behavior, and it's unquestionably a form of government censorship. And yet, the judge withdrawing his endorsement is repeating a similar action he took against a judge he unseated after referencing the blacklist. Any one?

jsonline: An Ozaukee County Circuit Judge Joseph Voiland, elected after attacking the incumbent for signing the Gov. Scott Walker recall petition has withdrawn his support for a Milwaukee judicial candidate after learning she had also signed the recall petition.

Laura Gramling Perez, a Milwaukee County court commissioner, is running for Branch 32 of the county's circuit court … added that the signature and wrong address that Election Watch found online were not hers.

Walker Blacklist could be one way to shut down press.

What is Dan Bice doing? The Journal Sentinel reporter can't really be serious about using what is now Scott Walker’s official political blacklist, to keep journalists from covering the Walker Authority?

This story does have a sweet ending:

If publishing a tough article on one of Gov. Scott Walker's cabinet members, should a media outlet let readers know that the writer signed a petition in support of Walker's recall election? Milwaukee Magazine decided recently that the information was not relevant. In its current issue, freelance writer Maggie Ginsberg-Schutz penned a feature story taking a critical look at former state Sen. Cathy Stepp's three years at the helm of the state Department of Natural Resources. Called "Natural Selection," the article documents the former Racine Republican's many mistakes while leading the state's top environmental agency.
Asked why she omitted this detail, the writer -- who dubs herself an "independent journalist" -- referred questions to Kurt Chandler, editor of Milwaukee Magazine. Ginsberg-Schutz's article, Chandler suggested, should be judged on its own merits. 

Chandler asked these important questions: 

Chandler raised a number of questions when asked about disclosing the recall signature. For instance, he asked, should a political writer disclose how he has voted when covering a political contest? Must a reporter make public that she has had an abortion when writing about women's health? And what are the disclosure rules for a Mormon reporting on gay rights issues?

"Reporters are citizens as well as journalists," Chandler wrote. "I don’t believe a reporter’s credibility is compromised by his or her political or moral views. 

Trek Bikes makes Walker Blacklist, and now a reelection campaign target.

Since Scott Walker ran for governor, he’s made it clear there were good businesses and bad ones. Add another one to the blacklist of bad businesses. It’s a big reason why the states job growth has been miserable.

Trek, the nation’s largest bicycle manufacturer, hails from the red state of Wisconsin. That’s too bad for them. Like the blacklisted names on Walker’s recall petitions, perceived liberal businesses are not welcome in Wisconsin either.   

jsonline-Dan Bice: The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. — the quasi-public jobs agency created by Walker and GOP lawmakers — has been featuring Trek and four other companies as part of a yearlong marketing campaign to encourage businesses to move to or expand in Wisconsin. WEDC spokesman Mark Maley said Friday that his agency has decided to start phasing out the ads highlighting Trek and the other companies.

Big surprise? Perhaps someone will believe this too...

Maley said the decision to put the brakes on that campaign had nothing to do with Burke's recent decision to enter the governor's race. "Absolutely not," Maley said. "We're proud to have Trek, one of the good companies in Wisconsin,

One of the “good” companies? Like I've always said, Walker has lashed out at and turned down businesses that don’t have a conservative lean to them. That's noticeable in the video:

Maley said his agency won't mothball these promos of the Wisconsin-based firms permanently, he said. "They may surface every now and then…”

As Dan Bice noted: Don't look for Trek to be a part of it.

Walker and the Teabilly Republicans want to Rule through Blackmail and Blacklists.

Absolute power has a way of changing the weak willed into monsters. The Walker Authority is one fine example.

When Scott Walker decided to withdraw his own student nomination for regent using his recall petition as a blacklist, that turned a page for me. If you make a list, any list, Republicans everywhere will use it against you for political or employment reasons.

   

And that’s a direct threat to you and your family. It's unimaginable as a way of life in America.

Check out this story from March, that I completely forgot to shine a bright light on, that is even more relevant today:

Uncle Fester...?

Huffington Post: Al Gerhart, 54, of Oklahoma City, said the Sooner Tea Party will do what he promised in his email … threatened to turn State Sen. Cliff Branan (R-Oklahoma City) into a "laughing stock" and "dig into" his family members and associates unless he backs a bill blocking the United Nations' sustainability agenda.

“We want to know what is going on down there. We want to know if his wife has got a criminal history. We want to know everything about him. We want to find out if this man is a responsible citizen, if he's even got his family under control much less control of his office,” Gerhart said.

Devoid of any moral or ethical issues, Gerhart uses the old Republican excuse that gives them a mental pass:

Gerhart denied doing anything illegal.

Gerhart doesn't stop there either. The following is still another reason why the Walker recall petitions, now a GOP blacklist, is so dangerous and threatening:

“These politicians need to know that it doesn't end when their term is over,” Gerhart said. “They need to know that their decision's going to follow them for the rest of their days. They need to know the Tea Party is not going away — that if we don't win it the first time, we're going to come back the next year and the next year and the next year after. And we don't forget these people that are traitors to the Oklahoma people.”

He said the Sooner Tea Party will report what is found on the Internet, in Branan's district and at Branan's church. “I want the people in his church to know what he is doing. That it's wrong,” Gerhart said.

This is the teabilly Republican style of governing. Any questions?

The Withdrawn Student Regent Nominee Story Widens….he never voted in Walker Recall.

The blow back has been universal and swift, but is it enough, and as big as I think it should be in Walker’s upcoming reelection bid?

The good news is we’re finding out more, and getting a better perspective of not just Walker, but other Republican lawmakers. How they reacted to what was essentially blacklisting another Wisconsinite for signing a recall petition. Let’s face it, the recall petition has been an invaluable source of character assassination for the right wing in the past.

jsonline-Patrick Marley: Joshua Inglett, the University of Wisconsin-Platteville engineering student, did not vote in the actual recall election … Inglett, 20, on Thursday said he signed the petition outside a department store as a show of support for his mom, who at the time was a substitute teacher.

How dare he?!

Walker's deputy chief of staff, Rich Zipperer, told Inglett Thursday that his nomination was being withdrawn because the governor did not believe it could get through the Senate. Walker on Thursday declined to say why the nomination was being withdrawn.

So right away we’re getting conflicting stories. Plus, Walker knew his partisan Republicans senate thugs would surely blackball the recall signer.

Sen. Sheila Harsdorf's committee was to vote on Inglett Thursday, but she canceled the vote at the last moment. Sen. Dale Schultz (R-Richland Center), a member of the committee, said Inglett would have been unanimously approved if the vote had moved forward.

It’s time to stamp out liberal thought at on our university campuses:

Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend) does not sit on the committee, but he … knew Inglett had signed the recall petition but did not bring it up. Grothman said Inglett was a "nice guy" but he wouldn't have supported his appointment because he did not think he would fight hard enough against what he considers a liberal bias on university campuses.

"I want people who view the strong bias on campus as a problem and I don't think this guy would.”

Some Democrat should get up and suggest getting rid of the strong Republican presence on campus as well. I wonder how that would go over?

From the crazy side of politics, Wisconsin Reporter takes back some of it's recently obtained credibility with this silly partisan spin; Josh should have been more forthcoming about something as unimportant as signing Walker's recall petition. He should have known it was wrong to oppose the Walker authority. It won't be tolerated:

It’s not about politics, it’s about integrity.

That’s how Regina Millner, a member of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents, sums up the flap over Gov. Scott Walker’s decision to withdraw his nomination to the board a university student who signed the petition to recall theRepublican governor.

“I think the rationale is not simply signing the petition; it’s about being forthcoming. That represents a real issue,” Millner told Wisconsin Reporter Wednesday.

Pridemore's Media Blacklist...sure.

State Republican Rep. Don Pridemore tried for awhile to walk back his successful attempt to blacklist a few media outlets and reporters, but found out how hard it was to keep lying, so he eventually decided to just come out and admit it. And even laugh about it. From Upfront with Mike Gousha, Pridemore shows us how Republicans would run things if they had complete power without the threat of challenge.

Outrage: Media Trackers says State Sup. Tony Evers has political opinion, wanted Walker recalled.

If you thought it was odd for Rep. Don Pridemore to announce his run for state superintendent so he could bring conservative values to education, while not receiving any criticism for politicizing a nonpartisan office, check out the picture of an overdose of conservative hypocrisy below. but first, check out Pridemore's comment in the video from WKOW.



The right wingnuts at Media Trackers went straight to the online recall blacklist to trash State Superintendent Tony Evers for his opposition to Scott Walker. I mean what the heck, can you imagine the top supporter of public schools getting behind all those lousy state teachers, when he could have simply declared his allegiance to the Walker Authority?

Breaking story? Only to these wackos.

We know how you voted, and we know where you live.....

I thought the mailer I got the other was a little unsettling, since it had my wife's name on it and her recent voting record. Below that was a list of neighbors who were shown to have also voted, and sometimes not.

Is this just another attempt at more political intimidation? Not this time, but what a boneheaded idea:

jsonline: A liberal group is sending unusual letters to some voters telling them whether their neighbors voted in the last two elections in an attempt to get more people to the polls.

The letters are being sent by the Greater Wisconsin Political Fund, which has run ads against GOP Gov. Scott Walker

And from who? WKOW and WMTV:

That flier is upsetting several people because they feel it might be a breach of their privacy. The flier is perfectly legal, but some argue the intentions behind it and it's accuracy.

Michelle Blackman was surprised Friday when she noticed her name, address and the days she voted on, as well as her neighbors. Blackman says, "What my neighbors do is their private business."

The flier was mailed out by the Greater Wisconsin Political Fund.

David O'Grosky says some of the information on his flier is not accurate. It says he voted on November 8th & 10th, but he says that's not true.

Wisconsin Government Accountability Board officials say this is the first time they've seen a flier like this. NBC15 tried to contact the organization responsible for these fliers, but their voicemail was full.

GAB finds Verify the Recall one big waste of Time.

Verify the Recall accomplished a few things; it placated the rabid paranoid conservative mind, and inserted itself into something that wasn't any of their business. They came across like a vigilante brown shirted enforcement agency. And a few of their tea party loons called people on the list at their home, women mostly, and intimidated them. Classy.

The scariest part; they've produced an enemies list, a blacklist, for future witch-hunts and vilification. It was almost funny watching Mitt Romney's campaign sugar daddy Frank Vandersloot whine that people are trying to smear him by digging into his background. Poor baby. He should try signing a Walker recall petition sometime.

According to the GAB:

jsonline: A tea party review of recall petitions did not use the proper standards for judging signatures, an attorney for the state's election agency reported Tuesday.

"The methodology they used just would not have worked for us and would have not been valid or legal under the law and administrative code that governs recall petitions," attorney Mike Haas told the Government Accountability Board. The accountability board did not rely on Verify the Recall's findings …  Haas said he wanted to look at their work after the fact to help decide if such information could be helpful in future recall efforts. But he said the tea party groups were overly strict in recommending throwing out signatures. For instance:
1. they did not count someone's name if they used a middle initial in their signature but spelled out their full middle name elsewhere on the petition.

2. The tea party concluded some people did not live in Wisconsin when in fact they did … the software they used did not recognize all Wisconsin municipalities.

3. The groups also identified as duplicates all people living at the same address with the same name, even though in many cases they were a parent and child who had the same name.

Verify the Recall is now claiming in some way that they brought “integrity and accountability” to the recall, when actually, they had nothing to do with it. It may have eased their minds, but only just a little. It's sad to have such a self-inflated image of themselves. 

Verify the Recall issued a statement "One major point that the GAB fails to mention in its analysis, however, is the fact that VTR fundamentally changed the nature of recall conversations in Wisconsin. ... Following VTR’s launch, recall conversations in Wisconsin changed from 'fraud and indifference' to 'integrity and accountability.'"

Conservative Brownshirts at Media Trackers expands New American Blacklist to Democratic Milwaukee DA’s office.

So what happens when you find your name on the Republican blacklist? Vilification in the public square? Are you grouped together with all the other liberal anti-American dissenters? Will you ever be able to run for office or get a job somewhere?

Or will those who didn’t sign the recall petitions actually be the ones dragged into conservative detention centers indefinitely for supporting the iron fist of the authoritarian administration fixated on blacklisting all dissenters? Can we use their support of Walker as a weapon against them in the future, if by some weird twist, Wisconsinites notice one day they’re living in a despotic society?

We ignore these fringe groups at own peril:

WTMJ: A conservative research group Media Trackers says several dozen employees in Democratic Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm's office signed recall petitions for Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

But Chisholm's top aide says none of the prosecutors who are overseeing a long-running investigation of Walker's current and former aides were among those who signed the recall petitions.

Media Trackers identified 43 people in Chisholm's office … It says one was a deputy district attorney and 19 were assistant district attorneys. The list also includes secretaries and other clerical staff.

You too might be on the black list someday for...well, I guess we'll have to wait and see. 

GAB Data Base won't Include Addresses.

Kind of a moot point now, since we are forever stuck with the right wings “Verify the Recall” blacklist signature site, but the GAB will skip tying addresses’ to the the signers names.

Still for me, signing a recall petition is no different than casting a vote. So why post any of this at all? We need to stop the this new wave of McCarthyism, by legislating an end to this open invitation to intimidate. I’m open to anyone who can make the case for the other side. Any suggestions?

Mary Spicuzza ‏ @MSpicuzzaWSJ  GAB searchable database won't include addresses of those who signed recall petitions, others have made records request for information.

The “Verify the Recall” Blacklist. Will Democrats stop the retaliation? Have they even noticed?

I hate the Democrats. They’re the most inarticulate, weak kneed, back on their heels politicians the world has ever seen. They can’t make an argument if their political life depended on it. And it does.

And right before our very eyes, we’re seeing the first blacklist since the Sen. Joe McCarthy era unfold, without a single objection. Have the Democrats lost their minds? Is this all too complicated for them?

I'm not the only one who has blogged about this extensively, others have as well. We now have another example where the “Verify the Blacklist” is being used again to quell the democratic process:

Blogging Blue: I have covered the story of "Verify The Recall" & how it was never used to make sure the process was clean and fair, but to make sure and intimidate those who signed. With the Governor’s recall a sure thing, the VTR is still working. The latest egregious event comes from the Wausau Daily Herald and their editor Mark Treinen. Seems as though 25 employees exercised their constitutional rights, and signed the recall petition.

"So we were disappointed to learn this week, while checking online databases and asking staff members, that 25 of our coworkers in Gannett Wisconsin Media broke from our ethical code and signed petitions in support of the recall election for Gov. Scott Walker … We are now in the process of addressing discipline and reviewing additional ethics training for all news employees."

Where are the Democrats? Apparently, they’re still begging for a little respect and bipartisanship from the Republicans. We have only ourselves to blame.