Best government money can buy

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.

Scott Walker at the service of corporations, not you and me

Really, one can hardly keep up with the pace at which Gov. Scott Walker is prepared to turn over the state of Wisconsin to private for-profit corporations, to let business ruin more and more of what belonged to the people - government, public services, the natural beauty and resources of the state, our once-clean air and once-clean water, etc.

One can hardly keep pace with his initiatives to strengthen business at the cost of human beings and the quality of life in this state.

You remember how he rejected federal money to build high-speed rail from Milwaukee to Madison, part of a longer term plan to have efficient high-speed rail connections from Chicago to Minneapolis? The rail project would have created jobs, help the state get off oil in advance of higher prices and looming shortages in decades to come, get more people out of their cars, and help spark economic development along the path of the train.

Next up - returning federal stimulus money intended to get small towns and rural communities hooked up to high-speed internet connections. Prez Obama has made a high priority of this program and the state was given $23 million for this purpose. More and more internet content requires high speed connections, and the program was targeted towards schools, libraries, and government agencies.  The intent was also to improve communications among fire and police departments in rural areas.

Walker will have none of it.  Why? Because it is federal government at the service of people and this conflicts with his libertarian politics. Oh, wait, something else, too. AT&T Inc., the company that owns the infrastructure through which the BadgerNet Converged Network currently runs, by an odd coincidence contributed more than $20,000 to Walker's campaign, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, compared to $7,600 for Democrat Tom Barrett's campaign.

The Journal Sentinel reported earlier that Walker also received substantial contributions from the road-building interests. I am certain there is no connection between that and his opposition to high-speed rail.

Cynicism is hard to avoid here, isn't it?