...little noticed Wisconsin Republican rules for Gov. Evers, leaked.

Walker Lame Duck Legacy costing taxpayers, twisting Government into one party pretzel!

So, this is "fiscally conservative" policy GOP voters just can't get enough of...really?

"Small government" conservatives, including business owners, rural farmers, and think tank freeloaders, actually love the convoluted multi-tentacled regulations Scott Walker, Robin Vos, and Scott Fitzgerald created stripping the Attorney Generals office of their power. It will now cost taxpayer money to maneuver through a politically motivated maze creating more litigation.

Kaul

JS: The episode is the latest in a saga of confusion for lawmakers as they try to navigate new laws that give the Legislature more power over litigation handled by AG Josh Kaul. Lawmakers and Kaul can't agree on how to share sensitive legal information, and more than a dozen lawsuits involving millions of dollars languish as the dispute continues. 

With the likely loss of Wisconsin settlement money from ongoing lawsuits, costing the state millions, where are all those "fiscally conservative" voters now? 

Here's what "streamlining" government bureaucracy looks like, according to Wisconsin Republican politicians, point by mind-boggling point. Remember, this was once the AG's job, resulting in no news headlines, no controversy:

1. Republican leaders of the Legislature's finance committee hired an attorney at taxpayer expense, $290 an hour, Thursday to sign a secrecy agreement in an effort to end a standoff with Attorney General Josh Kaul ... (to) resolve the dispute triggered by new laws requiring the Democratic attorney general to get legislators' permission to settle lawsuits. 

2. Legal analysis by the head of the Legislature's research bureau suggested only a new law could require lawmakers to keep such information private. And the nondisclosure agreement proposed by the GOP leaders wouldn't apply to any of the committee's members anyway because none of them signed it individually. 

3. Lawmakers this week refused to sign such agreements requested by Kaul, who said he needed assurances of confidentiality to avoid consequences for taxpayers as he seeks to resolve litigation involving the state. 

4. Darling and Nygren signed a contract with Andrew Phillips of the Milwaukee law firm von Briesen that says the nondisclosure agreement binds the committee and its members, even though Phillips is the only person who signed it. 

5. "They can't do that," said Democratic Sen. Jon Erpenbach. "This attorney they've hired does not represent the views of us.""This is the first I'm hearing about it," Democratic Rep. Evan Goyke said. They said they were baffled by the notion that an attorney they didn't know they had could contend he had the power to limit what they could tell the public. 

6. Rick Champagne, the director of the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau, wrote in a memo that a confidentiality agreement signed by an attorney did not apply to individual lawmakers.

"I cannot find any authority that would require a member of the Legislature who serves on a committee to keep confidential any information delivered in closed session unless the information was required by state or federal law to be kept confidential or was information that the member had agreed to keep confidential under a confidentiality agreement signed by the member."  

Hanging in the balance; millions of dollars the state could use, especially against the opioid crisis affecting a lot of rural area Republican voters:

The action comes a day after the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel first reported more than a dozen lawsuits involving state taxpayers are languishing because the Wisconsin politicians can't agree on how to resolve them under the new Republican law that curbs the power of the Democratic attorney general. The impasse comes as billions of dollars are on the table for states — including Wisconsin — suing over the opioid crisis.

A proposed deal to settle more than 2,000 lawsuits against OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma over the company's role in the nation's opioid crisis was pushed back Thursday just as Kaul told lawmakers the tight timeline to resolve the latest dispute was no longer in place. Purdue Pharma is facing pushback from some attorneys general who say the proposed settlement of up to $12 billion isn't enough, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Who can forget this taxpayer paid for fiasco...actual government censorship. Who's silencing political speech again?

Attorneys for a liberal group will be paid $200,000 by taxpayers because Republican lawmakers blocked the group on Twitter. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that state officials agreed Thursday to pay the legal bills for One Wisconsin Now's attorneys. A federal judge ruled in January that Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Rep. John Nygren, both Republicans, had infringed on the group's First Amendment rights. U.S. District Judge William Conley concluded the three lawmakers had acted unconstitutionally by blocking the group on Twitter "because of its prior speech or identity."

Wisconsin can thank Walker/Republican Voters for unaccountable Brazen Power Grab!

While many of us marvel at the outrageous behavior of Scott Walker and his band of Republican pirates plundering what's left of Wisconsin, we shouldn't lose sight of their real enablers...conservative voters. 

Conservative voters automatically elect Republicans, even when the destructive things below happens over and over again. What are we talking about? These now empty and meaningless phrases; "will of the people" and "deficits matter."

Scott Walker/Vos/Fitzgerald Power Grab Embarrassing but Necessary: Republicans have a higher calling so they can do almost anything they want because they're saving the country from those radical, traitorous, liberal leftists, right?

Hey @chucktodd, honest question: What’s an example of Democrats using a lame duck session to strip power away from an incoming administration? In any state? https://t.co/Dws8x005gB

— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) December 9, 2018

Chuck Todd says of Wisconsin GOP's legislative coup: "Democrats have done this in the past to Republican governors in lame duck sessions in other states." This is objectively, provably false.

Nope. Democrats haven't done this in other states. In fact, it's just the opposite, as PolitiFact Wisconsin pointed out below. Scott Walker actually wanted to limit the power of outgoing Governor Doyle, even before he took office:

On Nov. 10, 2010, Walker delivered a letter to Doyle’s administration with five requests:

1. Delay implementation of the new Affordable Care Act in light of Walker’s plans to challenge it in court

2. Suspend negotiations with the state employee unions so they could be considered in the context of the upcoming budget

3. Don’t finalize any permanent civil service personnel because these appointees "should be required to go through the same application process as any other civil servants."

4. Pursue shifting a power plant’s fuel from bio-fuel to natural gas

5. Delay implementing any new administrative rules — Walker added, "I feel strongly that if new or updated rules were urgently needed, they would have been completed prior to now."

Not a problem for Republican voters. It all makes perfect sense to limit the radical "left-wing" agenda that won over Wisconsinites and made Tony Evers our next governor. Go ahead Scott Walker, sign the GOP bills, who's gonna remember 2 years from now anyway?

Higher Deficits and Lower Taxes, Paul Ryan's Voodoo Economic Spell over Voters:  Wisconsin's own notoriously brutal Paul Ryan conned voters by selling himself as an economic genius, spouting numbers and theories that made voodoo supply side economics seem like magic. Well, Voxdotcom has big news for his loyal voters who just elected Ryan clone Bryan Steil, who astonishingly won his last-minute campaign not having to know anything about the issues. Steil redefined "generic," and added new meaning to "robotic." But I digress...

$343 billion. That’s the increase between the deficit for fiscal year 2015 and fiscal year 2018— that is, the difference between the fiscal year before Ryan became speaker of the House and the fiscal year in which he retired. If the economy had fallen into recession between 2015 and 2018, Ryan’s record would be understandable. But it didn’t. In fact, growth quickened and the labor market tightened — which means deficits should’ve fallen. Indeed, that’s exactly what happened in each of the five years preceding Ryan’s speakership; from 2011 to 2015, annual deficits fell each year.

As he prepares to leave office, Ryan says that debt reduction is one of those things “I wish we could have gotten done.” Ryan, the man with the single most power over the federal budget in recent years, sounds like a bystander, as if he watched laws happen rather than made them happen. To understand the irony and duplicity of that statement, you need to understand Ryan’s career.

“It’s time politicians in Washington stopped patronizing the American people as if they were children,” he wrote. “It’s time we stop deferring tough decisions and promising fiscal fantasies.”

Those tough decisions would negatively impact the economic and physical health of every American, but not the corporate or the rich. 

Best for Last; The Elusive Democratic Argument for everything, especially Universal Health Care:  Incoming Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got right to the heart of our upside down political system. What's striking is her lack of hesitation and her ability to ask the basic question voters have been craving for years;

Cortez: "...we write unlimited blank checks for war, we just wrote a $2 trillion check for that tax cut, the GOP tax cut, and nobody asked those folks how are they going to pay for it.

So my question is why is it our pockets are only empty when it comes to education and health care for our kids. Why are our pockets empty when we talk about 100 percent renewable energy that's going to save this planet and allow our children to thrive. We only have empty pockets when it comes to the morally right things to do. But when it comes to tax cuts for billionaires and when it comes to unlimited war, we seem to be able to invent that money very easily. And to me, it belies a lack of moral priorities that people have right now, especially the Republican Party."