Uncomfy conservatives and their enablers now even busier dismantling dissent

September 23, 2011 by Uppity Wisconsin

You've got to admire the chutzpah (pronounced "chuts-paw" by Michele Bachmann) of Republicans and conservatives and their opinion-leader enablers. Their attempt to seize permanent control of government (and that's hardly an overstatement, since at least one GOP party official a couple years ago said flat out that was their goal) hasn't been going well, so they're doubling down.

And how do you go about seizing control when the public isn't willing to help vote you into undismissable majorities? Well, there are ways, as we are learning in Wisconsin. For example:

* Trying to elilminate or make much more difficult our state's constitutional provision for recalls of state elected lawmakers for any reason the voters choose. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as of this morning has now written at least two editorials backing this dumb-down of the recall right.  

The Journal Sentinel editorialists went so far as to claim the recalls "were unwarranted" because they only focused on "one issue." Which issue? Well, you know, the dismantling of Wisconsin's infrastructure, draconian wage cuts for the middle class and interference in the state's long-established democratic form of government. but no matter. Hey, you know, average people actually are beginning to use the recall, and it works! Bad precedent, if you're a media megalomonopoly. WE decide, and YOU comport! Besides, as GOP Rep. Paul Farrow said, the recalls were begun by "one small group." Well, one large group (progressive activists, unions and voters at large) and one large one (Koch-fueled wingnut organizations from afar). Even the Journal Sentinel has edited from its brain trust the memory that Republicans were happy to mount their own recalls, until the entire operation backfired.

* Ignoring the state's Open Records Law and the Open Meetings Law, while working in legislative chambers without notice to dumb them down.

Violating the Open Meetings Law was how the GOP majority in Madison eventually succeeded in passing Scott Walker's onerous anti-union bill. And then the conservative dominated state Supreme Court said, well, who ever thought the Open Meetings Law would apply to all government bodies except the biggest and most important, namely the state's elected legislature? It's sneaky-snark time at the Capitol, now. You're lucky if you can find the single photocopied meeting notice that's posted on a bathroom mirror somewhere 20 minutes in advance of whatever vote Republicans don't want you to know about or Democrats to weigh in upon.

* Trying to marginalize binding voter referenda, which are no longer a good idea.

Do City of Milwaukee residents want a near-universal paid sick day ordinance for their community? Seventy percent of voters said yes back in 2008. A coalition of conservative Republicans and business leaders couldn't get courts to agree, but got the legislature to undo the will of the people. It just wouldn't do, having the riff-raff deciding what's in their own best interest, when the elites are so much better at deciding what's in THEIR own best interest.

* Making the vote a problematic process, by criminalizing it and bureaucratizing it to death.

Is your vote registration information in the slightest way erroneous or out of date because some underpaid city clerk screwed up the entry? You're a potential felon who's trying to steal an election along with a vast criminal conspiracy of like-minded socialists! Students, the poor, the elderly, minorities and anyone else who has a funny sounding name or even looks funny is now judged by a different standard, and presumed guilty at the polls unless you prove conclusively each and every time that you're not what you appear to be, at least in the minds of victimized Republicans.

* Gerrymandering legislative districts so that Republican majorities are safer from defeat, in the event the GOP's vote suppression program doesn't work as well as expected. 

* Neutering the Government Accountability Board, so it can't be accountable when it tries to oversee fair elections.

* Gov. Walker's power grab from a compliant legislature in which he decided he shall now exercise veto judgment over all administrative rules, no matter how picyune. This will suddenly look dicatorial to conservatives, the very moment a Democrat next becomes governor, but right now, it's GOP gold. 

* Making centralized decisions on behalf of thousands of local governments across the state, in the name of saving money while imposing new costs on those units. And never minding the GOP mantra that centralized government is bad while local government is the best kind.

* Calling the cops at the slightest insult or provocation, then blaming the cops for being liberals if they don't immediately detain the alleged perps. Also, making legal protests illegal and battening down legislative buildings so average citizens can't observe or comment. It's like the student protest era of the 1960s, only applied to everybody.