Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker

Also agreed. in his press release he said that he was doing the right thing over doing the politically furthering thing. He's ok.

Oh wow, watching last night's Maddow and she's talking about how the person who gets to appoint the judge for the inevitable recount challenge is going to be someone that Prosser called a bitch and threatened to destroy.

This is looking like a For Want Of A Nail / In Spite of a Nail story at this point. Ha.

edited 7th Apr '11 12:26:52 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

I am not particularly inclined to hold temper tantrums against the man when there's so many other, more serious things to be pissed at him about. But he does appear to have a pattern of letting his anger get the best of him, and that's not a handy trait for a politician to have unless you can get the crowd angry with you.

The last thing a judge should be is emotional.

Well it would seem like this justice...

~sunglasses~

...is getting served.

edited 7th Apr '11 12:42:47 PM by GlennMagusHarvey

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

...now I wish that Kloppenberg was Croatian or was from a Croatian.

Unfortunately, the Republican that voted against the plan will probably only come to harm for his stand on principle. When six Minnesota state senate Republicans stood with the Democrats to override Tim Pawlenty's veto of the badly needed gas tax increase for infrastructure repair (you know, to prevent more bridges from collapsing), they pretty much all got drummed out of service... either they recieved no money for their elections or were primaried by harder line conservatives.

I suspect the same thing to happen here.

I guess that would mean that his only option at this point would be to switch to being a Blue-Dog democrat, but I somehow doubt that'll fly.

Oh, hey, surprise surprise — Republican District County Clerk "discovers" another 7,000 votes for Prosser, reverses election results.

—R.J.

Don't celebrate just yet, because someone found a (figurative) bag of 14000 ballots in Waukesha county.

No, I didn't misspell that name. I know it's hard to believe, but it really doesn't contain a dollar sign.

^ Damnit, ninja'd by seconds!

edited 7th Apr '11 5:38:11 PM by GlennMagusHarvey

I call BS.

A local Democrat endorsed the results, so I doubt there was fraud.

Awwww, so it wasn't a neck and neck election after all? Drat.

Welp, time to pack up and go home everyone, looks like that referendum of "The Great Republican Overreach of 2011" was just Rachel Maddow getting a little too excited and that people really don't care after all. Well, that, or people just don't care about elections not held in November.

From a strategic standpoint, it really goes to show that Dems need to be more aggressive on this sort of thing. Well, they made gains against other Walker lackies, as I understand it.

edited 7th Apr '11 6:12:57 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

The DNC and other such groups do seem to ignore a lot of these smaller races. We need someone else in charge, right now.

Democrats won elections for Milwaukee and Outagamie County Executive positions. You may recall that MKE Co. Exec. is none other than Walker's old job.

Well, that's true. But this means that-at least in the short term-they lose on the budget thing. There's not a chance in hell that Prosser is going to vote against Walker.

Not to mention that judges are usually re-elected by solid margins; there have only been five supreme court judges unseated by election in over 150 years of Wisconsin history. Most people, including moderates and liberals, are not inclined to think of justices in political terms. Not to mention that no one knew who the hell Kloppenburg was just two months before the election. And we got outspent by $1 million—IIRC it was about $2.5 million spent by the other side versus $1.5 million spent by us.

Also, I hear that it's still within recount range if we just have a few hundred extra votes coming out of recanvassing in such places as Dane county. That said, whoever made the mistake of not including the tally from the second-largest city in the county—and then some things I'm hearing about a personal computer—should probably be reprimanded strongly, if not fired.

Though, the rest of us who aren't election law specialists or statisticians have other work to do:

• Linhasxoc: Get your dad to vote against Walker and his lackeys.
• deathjavu, you're not in a state senate recallable district, but keep your eyes and ears peeled about what's going on. I'll help with that if I can; you may want to check to see if your assemblyperson is being recalled.

Remember that this is only the beginning.

A local resident offers thoughts on the events that have unfolded.

It occurs to me-if corporations keep spending millions of dollars on political campaigns, isn't that millions of dollars that could be spent on actually producing useful products?

On the other hand, I guess it's a weird kind of stimulus? But, comparatively speaking, not a whole lot of money either way.

Congratulations, you've noticed the long-term thinking that is missing from even the minds of these supposed genius businesspeople.

It's a form of farming, I guess. You lobby the soil, plant campaign contributions, take a PR bath so you don't smell like shit, and watch favorable legislation grow.

edited 7th Apr '11 8:41:01 PM by EnglishIvy

The bottom line is that if we want corporate money to stop influencing our politics, we have to make sure that the people making the decisions of who to give money to think that it's just not worth the opportunity cost.

Long story short: Politicians should be given 10 times their normal salaries so that they're harder to bribe!

...I don't think that'll work.

It would only work if elected officials believes that by accepting donations they'd be hurting their chances at getting elected, yeah-because we're not talking about bribery, we're talking about campaign funding.

I mean, it's a well known phenomenon (by which I mean economic theory that probably has no hard data lulz) that if you pay policemen less money, they're more likely to accept bribes. But it's not really the same with politicians, because here, you're just giving people more incentive to get elected. Ahh well.