Tag: wisconsin
Eric Hovde

Wisconsin GOP Senate Wannabe Keeps Predicting Recessions That Don't Happen

Sunwest Bank CEO Eric Hovde, a potential challenger to Wisconsin Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, is slated to address the bank’s Annual Economic Forum in Newport Beach, California, on Thursday.

Hovde will deliver the keynote address at the event, an announcement for which says that attendees will “Gain clear insights on the U.S. economy, real estate, global markets, and more.”

So far, however, Hovde’s predictions about the U.S. economy have been less than accurate.

Hovde ran for the U.S. Senate in 2012. In a radio ad for his unsuccessful campaign, he asserted that a government default on the national debt was imminent and would likely lead to a global depression.

In a March 2012 interview on the “Vicki McKenna Show” in Madison, Wisconsin, he said the U.S. would face a debt crisis similar to one in Greece within the next three to four years. In another appearance on McKenna’s program, he warned the national debt would lead to anarchy in the streets within the next five years.

Hovde made an even more dire prediction in a July 2012 appearance on a show hosted by right-wing host Charlie Sykes, saying the U.S. would fall into recession within the next 12 months.

None of these predictions came to fruition.

Hovde’s alarmist predictions were not limited to his political campaign. In 2022, he told the Business Observer website in Florida that he believed the U.S. was on the brink of a global recession.

“I think we’re headed into a global recession, where there are really no bright spots,” Hovde said. “I think this recession is going to go longer and be more severe and last a minimum of 18 months, and probably more likely 24 to 36 months.”

In April, Hovde predicted recession again but this time said it would be partially caused by energy policy.

“Until we truly get to the heart of inflation and start changing some of our economic and energy policies, then we may enter a recession this year, and I think we will be stuck in this difficult slowdown for some time to come,” Hovde wrote in a Sunwest Bank newsletter.
Hovde has met with the National Republican Senatorial Committee about a possible 2024 run. He did not immediately respond to a request to comment for this story.

Reprinted with permission from American Journal News.

Chesebro Looked Impressive On Paper, But Sadly Had No Ethics At All

Chesebro Looked Impressive On Paper, But Sadly Had No Ethics At All

Where did Kenneth Chesebro come from? Son of a Wisconsin music teacher, he amassed sterling credentials, a Harvard Law degree chief among them. On paper he was impressive. But then he joined a conspiracy to overthrow the democracy. Chesebro gives credentials a bad name.

He applied his legal skills to veil criminal activity under plausible-sounding theory — all the while covering, so he thought, his own posterior. In the end, Chesebro was charged with working on slates of faked electors to overturn results in several states.

One can only marvel at his fancy legal spinning designed to facilitate the destruction of America's revered institutions. But being the careful lawyer he was, Chesebro told the Trump camp that the scheme "could appear treasonous." You don't say.

What made him do it? It isn't that he had been a Democrat who went to the other side. Yes, he had helped his Harvard mentor Laurence Tribe work for Al Gore in the disputed 2000 election. If he jumped the political chasm to advocate for Donald Trump, that was his right.

But if he truly believed in the MAGA cause, that the election was stolen, he wouldn't have agreed to flip on Trump. He would have taken the lumps and tried to defend himself in court.

The best explanation for Chesebro's performance is simpler, and boy, it is sad.

"He wanted to be close to the action," is how Tribe put it. He wanted attention.

Chesebro's Ivy polish was surely a draw for Trump given the downmarket personas of his other legal advisers. There was the batty Sidney Powell, the strutting John Eastman in his jaunty hat and flapping scarf, and the pathetic Rudy Giuliani.

Making a plea deal in the Georgia election interference case, however, puts Chesebro in the intimate company of Powell, whose swanning on TV about the plot to steal the election got so weird Trump had to fire her. Even back then, Chesebro was too smooth to join Powell in her utterly nutty claims that a dead Hugo Chavez was pulling the strings for Joe Biden. A discussion of what Powell truly believed is best left to the psychiatric profession, not the legal one.

Chesebro reportedly did tell the Trump team that a Supreme Court ruling before Jan. 6 would be more favorable to their cause if the justices feared there would be "wild" chaos on that day. This was a reference to Trump's Dec. 19 tweet: "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"

What could be the harm in adding a tablespoon of intimidation into the devil's cake mix? Though Chesebro opined that there was only a 1% chance the justices would step in, appealing to them, he offered, could have "possible political value."

Both Chesebro and Powell made plea deals to snitch on other Trump allies. They include promises not to lie at the co-defendants' trials. Back in September, Scott Hall, a Georgia bail bondsman, became the first Trump ally to plead guilty in the racketeering case.

They're all getting sweet probation deals.

On January 6, Chesebro donned a MAGA hat and descended on the Capital to stop the certification of the election that Joe Biden clearly won. But he will not spend a day in prison, unlike the dopes who charged past him and broke into the Capital.

Because he knew what he was doing, Chesebro proved himself more ethically vacant than the Trumpian mobs. He applied oily legal arguments made potent by an elite education. Supporting an insurrection against the United States, he undoubtedly figured, could be a good career move.

Chesebro now says he abhorred the violence on January 6. Wouldn't he just.

Froma Harrop's column for Creators Syndicate appears in more than 150 newspapers. She is based at the Providence Journal. Follow her on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Robin Vos

Wisconsin Republicans Misuse Tax Dollars To Defend Gerrymander Map

More than half of Wisconsin voters, or 51.2 percent, voted to reelect Gov. Tony Evers in November 2022. Yet Republican lawmakers were still able to win an overwhelming majority in the state Legislature.

That’s because Republicans drew the state’s legislative maps to maximize their party’s power in the state while disenfranchising Democratic and independent voters. This practice is commonly known as gerrymandering.

Now, state Republican leaders have reportedly approved a plan to spend as much as $1.8 million in public funds to pay private lawyers to defend their gerrymandered maps in court.

After the 2020 Census, Wisconsin’s Republican majority in the state Legislature approved new federal and state redistricting plans in 2021 that gave their party the lion’s share of the seats. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers vetoed the maps, explaining, “I promised I’d never sign gerrymandered maps that came to my desk, and I’m delivering on that promise today.”

Though the Republican did not have the votes to override his vetoes, the then-conservative-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted the Republican legislative leaders’ proposed maps for the state districts and a GOP-leaning congressional map.

After the election of Justice Janet Protasiewicz earlier this year shifted the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s majority, advocates for fair maps filed new legal challenges to the state legislative districts on August 2.

The legal nonprofit Law Forward, one of the plaintiffs challenging the maps, tweeted on August 27, “Every day that the gerrymander continues to distort politics and policy in the state of Wisconsin is an affront to our Constitution, an affront to our democracy, and a violation of the rights of the people of Wisconsin.”

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported on August 31 that state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and state Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu signed contracts in August with three legal firms to defend the maps at taxpayer expense against those challenges. Two of the contracts are capped at a total of $1.8 million in hourly legal fees, plus expenses. The third contract has no spending limit.

“Using a blank check written by Wisconsin taxpayers, Legislative Republicans have entered into contracts with three law firms to defend their gerrymandered maps,” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Melissa Agard told the Journal-Sentinel. “Again we see that they only care about their own special interests rather than the interests of Wisconsinites.”

Republican legislators spent millions to defend a 2011 gerrymander in Wisconsin. “We didn’t pick the fight and all we do is keep trying to defend,” then-Senate Republican Leader Scott Fitzgerald said at the time. “Unfortunately, I think we find ourselves in a position where we’re kind of at the whims of all these attorneys that continue to file these lawsuits.”

Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, told the American Independent Foundation that neither expense was an appropriate use of public money.

“The $2 million, it’s outrageous. I’m not even gonna say it’s dismaying, because we’re kind of used to it. But it’s just, it’s so galling, to think that after doing this 10 years ago,” Heck said. “I’d like to say it’s shocking. It’s not shocking, because this has been the norm for the last 12 years, since 2011.”

In 2018, Democrats swept statewide elections for Wisconsin governor, secretary of state, treasurer, and U.S. senator. Due to the 2011 gerrymander, Republicans still won almost two-thirds of the legislative seats.

Under the 2021 maps, Republicans control six of Wisconsin’s eight seats in the U.S. House and the vast majority of legislative seats: 22 of the 33 seats in the state Senate and 64 of the 99 seats in the state Assembly.

Heck noted that while the Wisconsin Legislature has a constitutional role in drawing maps, that does not mean it has the power to spend millions of taxpayer funds to help their future election prospects.

Dan Shafer, who writes the blog The Recombobulation Area, called Wisconsin “the most gerrymandered state in the country” in a March 2023 post.

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

Janet Protasiewicz

New Liberal Majority On Wisconsin's Top Court May Mean Big Changes

Judge Janet Protasiewicz was sworn in on Tuesday afternoon as the ninth justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, cementing a five–member liberal majority that could hear major cases on issues such as abortion and gerrymandering, potentially reshaping the legal landscape of the state.

Protasiewicz took the oath of office at the state Capitol rotunda in Madison, Wisconsin. The liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley administered the oath in front of hundreds of observers.

“We all want a Wisconsin where our freedoms are protected; we all want a Wisconsin with a fair and impartial Supreme Court; we all want to live in communities that are safe, and we all want a Wisconsin where everyone is afforded equal justice under the law,” Protasiewicz said. “That’s why I don’t take this responsibility lightly.”

Protasiewicz’s swearing-in marks the end of 15 years of conservative control of the court.

The new majority on the court is predicted to strike down the state’s abortion ban, which was passed in the mid-19th century but was rendered unenforceable for decades by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling, and throw out the state’s legislative maps. Critically, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin’s liberal majority will be a bulwark against Republican attempts to limit voting access.

In an election held in April, Protasiewicz, formerly a prosecutor and a Milwaukee County judge, defeated conservative former Justice Daniel Kelly by an 11-point landslide. Protasiewicz’s campaign for the open seat centered on abortion — it said in one of her first campaign ads that she supported “a woman’s freedom to make her own decision on abortion” — and the state’s legislative maps, which she called rigged.

Interest groups and donors were aware of the stakes. During the election, powerful pro- and anti-abortion rights groups broke along ideological lines to support Protasiewicz and Kelly, while labor unions and business groups, political parties, and wealthy in-state and out-of-state donors spent heavily to back their favored candidate. The race between Kelly and Protasiewicz was by far the most expensive state supreme court election in modern history, costing at least $56 million. Even that figure, according to WisPolitics, is likely an undercount.

Voter turnout also broke records. Nearly 2 million Wisconsin residents voted in the election. In the last race for Supreme Court, in 2020, 1.5 million Wisconsinites cast a ballot.

“The election of Janet Protasiewicz changed the balance of power, breaking what has for years been an extreme conservative stranglehold on Wisconsin’s State Supreme Court,” state Rep. Lisa Subeck, a Democrat, said in an email sent to the American Independent Foundation. “This opens the door to a new era of fairness on the court, and this gives us great hope on a number of issues.”

“With a case challenging Wisconsin’s criminal abortion ban already filed and expected to make its way to Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, flipping the conservative majority on the court was vital to ensuring our case is given fair consideration,” she added. “Protasiewicz’s presence on the court means abortion could again be available in Wisconsin in the not-so-distant future.”

On June 28, 2022, days after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul, both Democrats, filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s abortion ban in the Dane County Circuit Court. In July of this year, Dane County Circuit Judge Diane Schlipper rejected arguments from state Republicans that the case should be thrown out and allowed the lawsuit to continue.

Also in play are Wisconsin’s legislative maps, which determine how voters are grouped into districts. By strategically creating electoral districts, Republican map drawers have divided voters so as to give the GOP an advantage in the state’s elections for the General Assembly and Senate, a strategy called gerrymandering. Under the current maps, Democrats would have to win by landslide margins to have a chance of securing even a narrow majority in the Assembly.

Right now, despite Democrats having won the last statewide election, Republicans in Wisconsin are two Assembly seats from a supermajority in the Legislature that would allow them to impeach elected state officials and override the governor’s veto.

“If the court were to rule our legislative maps — considered by experts to be the most politically gerrymandered in the nation — unconstitutional, voters could finally have their say in choosing their representatives,” Subeck said. “This comes after more than a decade of unfair maps drawn to ensure a large Republican majority and a decade later redrawn to expand and bake in that majority for another ten years, even as the voters of the state elect Democrats in nearly every statewide election.”

A challenge is already in the works. Subeck noted that Law Forward, a progressive nonprofit law firm, has announced that it plans to file a lawsuit challenging Wisconsin’s legislative maps later this year.

Law Forward declined to comment for this story.

“I think there’s general agreement that the legal action that will be filed will result in a reopening of the redistricting that occurred … in 2021, and a revisiting of the maps,” Jay Heck, the director of the nonpartisan good government group Common Cause Wisconsin, told the American Independent Foundation in an interview.

Originally, during the 2021 redistricting cycle, the conservative majority on the state Supreme Court selected maps drawn by Evers. However, after Republicans in the Legislature filed an emergency request with the U.S. Supreme Court, the six-justice conservative majority overturned the state court’s decision. Conservatives on the state Supreme Court then adopted gerrymandered maps that gave Republicans a significant advantage.

Heck said that in their dissent, the three progressive justices “said that those maps were too partisan, that they disenfranchised lots of voters who don’t really have the opportunity to be able to have their votes count as much as someone voting for a Republican because of the way some districts were drawn. And so I would assume that that would be the basis of the lawsuit.”

If the maps are ruled unconstitutional the court could take a variety of steps to replace them, as redistricting fights in other states show. For example, in 2018, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out Republican-drawn congressional maps on the grounds that they were gerrymandered and asked the state to provide new, less partisan maps, but then-Gov. Tom Wolf and the state Legislature couldn’t come to an agreement. The court ultimately imposed maps of its own.

Heck said he doesn’t think that the court would draw its own maps, but that it would instead solicit maps from elected officials and make a selection from among them, as the conservative majority on the court did in 2021.

“Evers did a very good job of submitting maps that were less partisan and less Republican-leaning than the maps that the Republican Legislature gave to the Supreme Court, which they accepted and ultimately chose 4-3,” he said. “I think that would be the leading candidate as an alternative.

“Now they might decide to select other maps that are there,” Heck added. “Here’s the thing: Maps can be drawn relatively quickly by lots of different entities. And they may say, Well, we will, in the next month, look at some other maps. And so you can imagine the scrambling that I’m sure is already happening to do that.”

In the 2021 round of redistricting, Common Cause Wisconsin supported the maps drawn by Evers’ office. Heck said that, barring unforeseen circumstances, the group would do the same if the Republican maps were thrown out.

Looking ahead to 2024, Heck said, “I think the state Supreme Court majority will be more kindly towards voting, as opposed to the conservative majority that was less friendly.”

Heck pointed to two decisions handed down by the court’s conservatives: one last year to end the use of ballot drop-boxes and another barring election clerks from adding minor details, such as an omitted zip code, on ballots that would otherwise not be counted. Heck called the rulings “death by a thousand cuts to voting in Wisconsin.”

“Under 30,000 separat[ed] the winner and the loser in four of the six elections for president in Wisconsin since 2000, and that’s out of 3.5, 3.6 million votes cast. So it’s infinitesimal, the separation. So every vote literally does matter here,” Heck said.

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.