You Win, Scooter.

If you can hang on for eight years, and have the resources to hire a VERY expensive legal team, you can thumb your nose at your detractors and move on with your life. Scooter Jensen, you win.

To make a long story short, Jensen was charged with felony corruption in October of 2002 in the so-called “caucus scandal”. He was the only one of the accused felons caught up in the scandal to actually go to trial. The others….Chvala, Burke, Foti, and Ladwig, all did plea deals.

Now, Scooter has joined them. His plea deal, arrived at yesterday with Waukesha County D-A Brad Schimel, lets Scooter off the hook for five grand plus court costs ($89) and gives him two months to re-pay a tad over 67 grand in legal fees he owes to the taxpayers. As the litigators say in court, “my client will make the payment.”

The Jensen case wound its way through the courts for nearly a decade, with conviction, appeal after appeal (even using a law passed by the legislature years after Scooter was first charged), and now has ended in this specious plea deal.

The deal means Scooter can’t seek office, because it means he admits he has violated the public’s trust. But make no mistake: Scooter is, was, and for the foreseeable future will be a “player” on the state’s political scene. Who needs to be a legislator when you can rent them at such reasonable rates?

You win, Scooter, demonstrating again that those who have the gold make the rules.

For those of you who regularly visit this spot on the internet, I don’t need to tell you who the losers are.