DPW Chair Martha Laning clarifies DPW’s fundraising pact with Hillary Clinton

In the face of questions about that fundraising pact, Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Martha Laning clarified the fundraising pact in an email to DPW members.

Some of you expressed concern over a report in today’s New York Times that the DPW, along with several other state parties, has entered into a joint fundraising agreement with the Hillary for America campaign.

This is a standard type of fundraising agreement that allows the state party to generate more resources in advance of the general election, money that will be spent electing Democrats up and down the ticket. In no way does it imply any sort of endorsement of Sec. Clinton’s campaign. Any candidate can pursue an agreement like this. Should any other Democratic candidates for president request that the DPW enter into a joint fundraising agreement we would be happy to do so.

Some typical expenditures for these types of funds are voter registration drives and voter ID education. In 2012 the DPW entered into a joint fundraising agreement with Tammy Baldwin’s Senate campaign.

Map: National treasures funded by the Land and Water Conservation Fund--a program Congress wants to kill

Randomly drop your finger on this map and you're guaranteed to land on a magnificent natural attraction, a rich historic site or an all-American recreation spot. That's the nature of a map that highlights places funded by the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), one of our country's top conservation tools for preserving national parks, forests, trails and recreation sites.

Many more national gems are waiting to receive funding from the LWCF, but this won't happen if Congress continues on the path it's on. The Land and Water Conservation Fund is at risk of being dismantled this fall by a largely anti-conservation Congress that has shown little interest in supporting conservation programs on public lands.


Help us add more treasures to the map: Tell Congress NOT to dismantle the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Speaking to the press after a campaign rally in his home state of Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker (R) told members of the media that he and many of the other Republican candidates for president are “tremendiciously concerned” about Donald Trump. Walker, a man who spurns the merits of education, called Trump “a vacuous, stubborn, asshole who spews toxic crap everywhere he goes” but told reporters “that’s not not even close to why” he and his fellow GOP hopefuls are concerned about Trump’s run. According to Walker, it’s because Trump is “the wrong asshole for the job” that Walker doesn’t want him out front.

“It’s not that he’s an asshole — we’re all assholes. I mean, how do you live life in 2015 and honestly stand in front of the American people and tell them we don’t help the rich enough, but we help the poor too much,” Walker asked the reporters rhetorically. “Our polices are asshole policies. We’re against gay marriage so much we’d rather just stop issuing marriage licenses to everyone instead of being respectful of LGBT people,” Walker said, adding, “we flatly oppose health care reform, climate change solutions and even an historic nuclear arms deal with Iran, and all without offering a single, viable solution as the alternative. In fact, our solution is precisely to have no solution — because government solutions are bad to us, remember, so laziness excused as ‘principle’ is what wins the day for our voters. We are assholes.”

A few hundred miles away in Ohio, Jeb! (R-FL) was echoing Walker’s sentiments. Telling the press that “while [he] totally understand[s] Trump’s appeal and even is jealous of his ability to literally say the things we all want to say but are too afraid to” he is concerned about Trump’s unwillingness to couch his rhetoric in platitudes. “See, we Republicans aren’t afraid to front the nonsensical, antiquated policies of the past — like, say, supply side economics — but we always have to be sure to hide the subtext of our rhetoric. Trump just comes out and says racist, xenophobic and downright stupid stuff. It’s the stuff our base believes, and it’s the stuff they want to hear, but he’s doing it all wrong. This country needs a president with a family pedigree of championing stupid economic policies and woefully overly-aggressive and misguided wars that knows how to dress-up the Republican crazy with prettier words.”

“He’s just not very good at obfuscation,” Sen. Lyndsey Graham (R-SC) told an audience of about two dozen people at a doughnut shop just down the street from his studio apartment in Washington, D.C. Graham told those near him that “Republican politicians go through a grueling, 15-day bootcamp where you are ridden hard, you are hidden fast, and you are trained to say, think and feel the most horribly regressive things, but to do so in a way that makes you the victim if someone calls you out on it.”

The Scott Walker 2016 presidential campaign is in trouble. That’s the consensus among most political pundits from all over the political spectrum. He’s polling much lower than most in his party thought he would, helped by the fact that he can’t quite seem to get a clear message out that doesn’t heavily parrot front runner Donald Trump, who is sucking up most of the attention around the Republican primary. In a new twist, Walker’s flagging numbers have been matched by his literal deflation, as cubic foot after cubic foot of hot air escapes his mouth in a furious attempt to wrest control of the party back from Trump.

“All that flailing away at birthright citizenship, climate change, and abortion rights has left Governor Walker literally flat,” a Walker aide speaking on the condition of a breakfast burrito told us. “There were some structural integrity issues, and now he’s leaking hot air all over the place,” the Walker aide told us. According to sources close to the Walker camp, two of his biggest financial supporters — Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries — are starting to panic and are not furiously stuffing hundred dollar bills into Walker’s rapidly deflating silicone and polymer frame, hoping to keep him propped up with as much dark money as they can.

The plan, according to people close to the Kochs, is to keep stuffing one-hundred dollar bills into any empty cavities they can find in Walker’s structure, but focusing primarily on his large, bowl-shaped empty skull. It’s unclear at this stage, according to the same sources, if the Koch brothers are considering backing any other candidates. “They seem committed to propping up Scott Walker,” one source told us, “no matter how empty headed he seems to be.”

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Though it’s unclear just how much money the Kochs are willing to keep stuffing into Walker to keep him inflated, a new SuperPAC has been formed expressly for collecting donations to help supplement their budget. Plump Up The Dud PAC says in their charter they are “completely committed to keeping flimsy, vapid demagogues with no real ideas of their own at the forefront of the debate,” and a spokesman for the group told us he is “extremely confident they can keep finding scared, rich, white conservatives to hand [them] money by the truck load” because “at the end of the day, they’re scared shitless of their taxes going up by a few pennies on the dollar and will just keep feeding the beast, no matter how abysmally he’s performing.”