Vote Early, Vote Often...

Tomorrow is a primary election day, and while this news is greeted with a yawn by 90% of the eligible voters in the state (turnout is predicted to be 10%), for some of us it’s a must-vote day.

By any metric, our state Supreme Court – pictured above – is one of the most dysfunctional, politicized bodies in the nation.  Half of them are, let’s face it, bought and paid for by left-leaning “progressive” political organizations; the other half are in essence a wholly-owned subsidiary of the very right-leaning Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce.

Patience “Pat” Roggensack wants a second 10-year term on the highest court, and she’s the only one of the three candidates with enough money to do TV ads.  Her ads are paid for by an outfit called “Wisconsin Club for Growth”, which in English is pronounced “The Republican Party”.

Marquette University Law Professor Ed Fallone and Milwaukee consumer law attorney Vince Megna are also running.  The top two vote-getters advance to the April 4^th general election.

Roggensack’s TV ads claim she’s supported by just about every county Sheriff and law enforcement agency in the state, and when a candidate touts that fact, and that fact alone in their TV ads, you know which way they lean, even though the ads also loudly proclaim she’s a “fair and impartial” judge.  It's my opinion that a “fair and impartial” judge wouldn’t trumpet her only claim to fame as being the darling of the cops.

But then, there aren’t many cogent adults in Wisconsin who don’t know which way any given Justice of the State Supreme Court leans.  Our “non-partisan” highest court can easily be broken down into left-leaning and right-leaning: Roggensack, along with Justices Annette Ziegler, Michael Gableman, and David Prosser (former Republican Assembly Speaker, appointed to the court by Tommy Thompson and re-elected, who clearly has rage and impulse control issues) are right-wingers; Chief Justice Abrahamson and Justices Ann Walsh Bradley and N. Patrick Crooks are left-wingers.

 

Non-partisan?  Not really.

Considering Justice Gableman and Justice Ziegler’s well-publicized ethics issues, Justice Prosser’s apparent proclivity to try and strangle Justices who hold a different opinion, and the parade of name-calling attack ads that characterized the last three state Supreme Court races, we’ve got a real mess on our hands.  More than a few media editorial boards in Wisconsin have begun calling more loudly for Supreme Court Justices to be appointed, not elected.

As regards tomorrow’s election: I’ll be voting against, rather than for.  The decision is yours, but please vote.

Why He Won't Recuse Himself

The short answer is, because to do so would be an acknowledgement that he did something wrong.

I refer, of course, to Herr Goebblemann (Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman), the most recent ethically-challenged Justice to be elected to the highest court.  He accepted two years’ worth of high-priced legal counsel from the Milwaukee law firm Michael, Best & Friedrich.  Those lawyers really ought to use the Oxford comma in their business name instead of the ampersand, if you ask me….and nobody did – i.e., Michael, Best, and Friedrich.

The deal was, in essence, we’ll give you all the counsel you need on the ethics charges, and if at the end we can’t stick the taxpayers with the bill, we won’t bill you.  This is called “contingency billing” and lawyers do it all the time.  It’s the same concept as “no fee if we don’t win”.

A lot of folks like me think it’s wrong to offer a contingency arrangement for defending a sitting justice on ethics charges.  Ordinary folks like you and me would never be able to get such a deal.  If we got the can tied to our butt by the boss after being caught doing something which violates the “moral turpitude” clause (if there is one) of our employment contract, you can bet there’s not a lawyer in the state who’d take such a case on a contingency basis.

Be that as it may, lawyers are also very familiar with the concept “admission against interest”.  An example might be, if the cop pulls you over for speeding, and you say “I didn’t realize the speed limit here was 35” – you’ve sort of admitted that you were going more than 35 mph, and the cop might want to write you a ticket for inattentive driving, as well.  That’s why the best counsel when you’re pulled over for ANYTHING is to answer directly only the questions the cop asks, and not volunteer ANY other information.

For Herr Goebblemann to recuse himself from cases where Michael, Best & Friedrich are involved as counsel to the party or parties involved would be to sort of admit that taking all that free legal advice from MB+F was wrong.  Now, us ordinary non-lawyer folks know it was wrong for him to get all that free legal service, but for him to acknowledge that there even might be a QUESTION that he can’t be impartial about it would be…….yup, a sort of admission against interest.

I’m sure that some bar-admitted lawyer reading this rant could point out flaws in my logic and/or analogies.  So be it.  This is something Herr Goebblemann’s colleague, the Gut-Check Judge (Justice Annette Ziegler), knows a thing or two about.  She sat in judgment on cases involving her sugar-daddy hubby’s bank in West Bend, and said she did a “gut-check” before taking the case to see if she thought she might not be able to be impartial when dealing with a case involving hubby’s bank, and sure enough, those gut-checks never prevented her from judging a case!!!!

But you see, that’s the thing.  These folks NEVER seem to be able to determine what’s a conflict of interest, and what isn’t.

We need to help them see more clearly when they’re up for re-election.  (Which in Justice Ziegler’s case is 2017, and in Justice Gableman’s case, 2018.)

The Most Dangerous Gang In The State

They're devious, divided, disgusting, disorganized, duplicitous, dangerous, and deadly. They've been know to throttle each other by the throat when they disagree. They're unethical, act like they're superior, on the take, and ruthless.

I refer, of course, to our state Supreme Court.

This latest news, about Herr Goebblemann, comes as no shock. The only surprise is that it's taken this long for somebody to break the story, about how he's been on the take from a fat-cat Milwaukee law firm for years, while at the same time sitting in judgment in cases involving that same firm.

Of course, there's his compadre, Madame Gut-Check, d/b/a Justice Ziegler, who finds nothing wrong with sitting in judgment on cases involving her hubby's bank. When questioned about that, she said she did a "gut-check" to see if she could be impartial while sitting in judgment of cases involving sugar-daddy's bank, and sure enough, she saw no problems.

Some wag posted an item the other day suggesting that instead of forcing Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce to buy individual judgeships on the highest court, we should just sell naming rights to the court ("The Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce Supreme Court") and let the big business boys over on East Wash just pick the folks they want to serve on the court.

It could also be suggested that the bidding rights be extended to outfits like WEAC, but everybody knows they don't have any money any more, or SEIU, or name-your-lefty outfit.

This thing with Mikey-boy Goebblemann could really be a dog with fleas. How any human being with an IQ above room temperature could think it's OK to accept tens of thousands of dollars worth of legal services from a big-time right-wing bunch of Milwaukee gunslingers with JD's is fine, and then to sit in judgment on cases involving that firm....well, let's just say that it takes a special kind of snake to operate that low on the turf, while holding a position that just a few decades ago was so exalted.

Every so often, like now, I have hope (faith disappeared a long time ago) that an incident like this one with Goebblemann will cause the people of this great state to rear back and clean house on every wing of that big building with the high dome at the head of State Street - that their disgust will be of such magnitude that they'll rise up in disgust and do what's necessary to oust the whole lot of them and start over.

But then, I realize that like the situation in Washington DC, no one has faith in any of our government institutions any longer, and they don't even care that the rats are running the ship.