Disgraced former Speaker of the Assembly Scott Jensen reemerged into the public eye last week, showing up at the Capitol to testify in support of a deeply flawed bill in the Assembly on behalf of his secretive pro-school voucher group that has spent an estimated $4.4 million on Republican candidates since 2010.
This reemergence was only made possible by a sweetheart deal given to him by Waukesha County District Attorney Brad Schimel – the same man who wants to be the next Attorney General.

After being convicted on multiple felony counts for political corruption, Jensen tied the courts up in appeals for ten years and was granted a new trial. Jensen then got his former GOP colleagues to change state law so that his case could go back to his handpicked prosecutor – Brad Schimel. Brad Schimel gave him a sweet heart deal, refused to prosecute him and now all of Jensen’s felony convictions have gone away.

Thanks to Republican District Attorney Schimel, fellow Republican Scott Jensen avoided any felony convictions and instead plead guilty to a misdemeanor, a fact that should insult anyone in Wisconsin who values clean government in our state.

Oh crap (literally): USDA to let poultry companies inspect their own meat. Sign the petition before feces are in your chicken.


Scuba, do you want chicken factories inspected by the poultry companies who own them—while feces-filled birds, doused with chemicals, zoom through the assembly line at three per second? That could be the future, if we don’t act now.

Sign our petition to President Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack—urging them to dump the “filthy chicken rule.” Click here to sign.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering a rule change that would privatize poultry inspection—allowing companies to inspect chicken and turkey carcasses themselves.

What happens if birds are contaminated with feces? The rule allows companies to douse them with more chemicals, while jacking up assembly line speeds to three birds per second.

USDA will be finalizing a decision soon, so we must act now. Sign our petition to President Obama and Agriculture Tom Vilsack: Reject the “filthy chicken rule.”

Keep fighting,
Paul Hogarth, Daily Kos

The interesting, and to my mind, encouraging, thing is that the move, which will cost Wisconsin an estimated $860 million over two years, has met with skepticism from some Republicans in Wisconsin. Bade reports that “he’s facing headwinds from a handful of Senate Republicans who say the tax cuts should come after paying off a slew of unpaid bills due in just a few years. Walker’s plan would actually worsen the longer-term deficit outlook.” One state Republican senator told Politico, “The tax plan sets us up for a very bad time in the future.”

And Walker would do well to listen to him—because if he’s truly eying a run in 2016, he’s badly misreading the mood of the national electorate and even of congressional Republicans. The salience of revenue-reducing tax cuts as a plank in the national Republican platform has diminished over the years, as gains in income have been concentrated among a small cohort of already-wealthy voters. Recall: Mitt Romney, if only vaguely, promised to pay for lower tax rates by limiting deductions. Rep. Paul Ryan’s most recent budget proposal also was revenue neutral. Sen. Mike Lee’s barebones tax reform proposal is possibly revenue-negative, but it hasn’t been scored and, as written, won’t see the light of day.

The bottom line is that the GOP isn’t anxious to return to the playbook of the Aughts. In his first presidential campaign, Gov. George W. Bush warned against letting Washington get its hands on projected budget surpluses—“the people’s money”—so he promised to cut taxes instead. In office, Bush drained federal coffers of the surpluses—and then some.

Governor Walker is foolish to think Republicans, let alone the electorate in general, want to see that movie again.