Should any of this surprise us at this point? Unlimited donations flooded into the coffers of the Joint Finance Committee while they deliberated on the budget legislation. This was made possible by the recall campaigns. Talk about irony!
Meanwhile, it appears that our fearless gov received contributions from 10 donors for his gubernatorial campaign that exceeded the legal limit of $10,000. Their names are listed in the JS today. One of them, Ted Nickel, was appointed by Walker to be state insurance commissioner.
Alberta Darling, co-chair of the committee - $30,000 from just one donor.
Well, money decides a lot of things in politics these days. Those of us who don't have much, or any, well, tough luck. This is nothing new in U.S. politics, of course; but in recent decades, there have been attempts to pass laws to eliminate some of the most egregious imbalances. Our own former Sen. Russ Feingold was one of those stalwart backers of campaign finance reform (and got his reward from the corporate right in his last election campaign). But the Supreme Court has been shredding those laws, claiming that corporate money spent on election campaigns amounts to 'speech' under the Constitution.
That we have come to such a point, when a court of ideologues can say stuff like that with no popular rebellion, is a sad state of affairs indeed. It turns the original motivation of the original Boston Tea Party on its head. But then these guys have made off with that revolutionary brand as well.
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