For dozens of conservatives, the years since Scott Walker’s first election as governor of Wisconsin transformed the state — known for pro-football championships, good cheese, and a population with a reputation for being unfailingly polite — into a place where conservatives have faced early-morning raids, multi-year secretive criminal investigations, slanderous and selective leaks to sympathetic media, and intrusive electronic snooping.
That is not the way that the story has been covered elsewhere. For example, here is Wisconsin Public Radio six months ago.
As others were charged and convicted in what eventually became known as “John Doe One,” Democrats increasingly tried to make sure Gov. Scott Walker was politically wounded, partly because the probe grew to include people who were helping Republican election efforts in 2010 while working for Milwaukee County.
The heat on the governor grew again over the past 12 months, after news of “John Doe 2” came out. That second investigation looked into alleged illegal campaign coordination in 2011 and 2012 between Walker, other Republicans and the conservative group Wisconsin Club for Growth.
Obviously, French’s account is meant to arouse libertarian ire. However, there is nothing in the WPR account that would suggest anything other than a legitimate, successful probe into political corruption.
Are there any progressives willing to believe French’s version? Are there any conservatives or libertarians willing to believe WPR’s version?
It seems possible to me that what NPR is willing to describe as “illegal campaign coordination” *might* not be what an ordinary USAian would consider “political corruption”. And it seems to me that the US could do OK with absolutely no restrictions on “campaign coordination” and indeed it’s not clear that such restrictions are consistent with the First Amendment or with widely shared (among classical Athenians and Magna-Carta-era barons and others) intuitions of what representative institutions are about. “Political corruption” as ordinarily understood includes many things that should be prosecuted, e.g. dishonest vote counting or various kinds of exchanges of government favors for political support. To stretch the concept of political corruption to include “illegal campaign coordination” calls for an explanation IMHO, not merely an appeal to the authority of NPR. Indeed, it probably also calls for a clarifying definition before that explanation can be made. (Is the common understanding of corrupt campaign coordination sufficiently well fleshed out that reasonable people can agree on whether, e.g., the Magna Carta people or the US founding fathers or various big political ground shifting movements (overthrowing the Whigs, e.g.) or dissidents in USSR or China or Iran were/are corrupt in how they coordinate(d) their campaigns?)
Except it’s hard to get excited about “political corruption” when it essentially involves people thwarting stupid, anti-free speech campaign finance laws.
WPR’s slant on things was more or less disproven by federal judges involved in the case.
They say others were investigated and convicted. Who? Was it just the one conviction mentioned by French, unrelated to any right wing or Republican campaign activities or politicking?
When a story suggests that a conviction proves that a broader investigation was warranted, but doesn’t mention any details of the conviction, I immediately wonder why it slipped those details. The same applies to the other points of vagueness in the WPR story — who wanted Gov. Walker to be “wounded”, and what were the factors in that beyond the allegations of wrongdoing? Were the allegations a cause or effect of the desire to effect partisan gain? Why not mention that courts have questioned whether the allegations, even if true, are not clearly illegal?
The most problematic was the timing which gives lie to sense that the Democrat AG was targeting Republican donors just as the election campaign was getting underway. Not unlike what the IRS did with Tea Party applications.
But more was, and I assume it was half-baked into the law, the gag orders. Those subject to early morning assaults were told they could not tell anyone about the raids, not their family, not their neighbors who witnessed the raids, nor, interestingly legal counsel. Yet, strangely, a reporter just happened to be on those people’s street when the raids happened. Purportedly, the prohibitions on speaking of the raids was a provision in the law to avoid undo impugning of the targets of such investigations. But that makes it odd that they could not seek legal counsel. And even odder when the “gag” was broken by intention or error with media presence. In any case, the individual whose reputation is impugned should not be gagged, only those investigating or those interviewed but not subjected to subpoenas or raids.
Parse this sentence for obfuscation:
“Democrats increasingly tried to make sure Gov. Scott Walker was politically wounded, partly because **the probe grew** to include people who were helping Republican election efforts in 2010 while working for Milwaukee County.”
WPB was used as a means of creating a cloaking “justification” for the “probe,” which by reason of the means and publicity employed in the “probe” disclosed the underlying use of discretionary power for political purposes to offset electoral results.
The “probe grew” for the purpose of “wounding” Walker by including people employed by Milwaukee County (amongst others) who may have helped, or did help, in 2010 Republican election efforts.
Ann Althouse’s blog has covered this in great detail, I would start there.
http://althouse.blogspot.com/
I think you’ll find that the Democrats don’t come out looking very good. Similar to what the Democrats in Travis County, TX have tried to do.
My assumption is that their is a lot of corruption in politics and most of it is never prosecuted so I am willing to believe WPR story.
A sure way to get rid of political corruption is to get rid of competitive politics. Which seems to be what the John Doe raids are aimed at. And which seems to be the goal of the Left and the Democratic Party nationally.
The violence of the investigation suggests to me French is more correct than WPR.
The heuristic I use is that if there was a conviction a crime was probably committed and if there wasn’t it wasn’t. The more access the defendants have to legal resources the more likely that it is to be true. That’s not infallible by a long shot, but it’s a lot better than trying to piece together whether a crime was committed from media accounts, which is impossible.
This answers whether a crime was committed (yes), but leaves aside the questions of 1. Is the criminal statute implicated bulls*** , and 2. Is it bulls*** that the prosecutor decided to pursue the case. On both points I would warn libertarians against hypocrisy: libertarians seem to be getting increasingly schizophrenic about whether bad laws should or shouldn’t be enforced, and seem to be getting increasingly unrealistic about what the results will be if you leave that decision to individual prosecutors rather than to more senior policy makers. There is a tension between saying “Obama not enforcing immigration policy is the end of the rule of law” while you simultaneously say “Prosecutors enforcing all these stupid criminal statutes for their own ideological gain is the end of the rule of law.”