Thursday, December 23, 2010

Lawyers, Weasels And (Campaign) Money

Scott Walker can be just so darn impatient, can't he?

He couldn't wait until he was actually in office before he started screwing over the tax payers by interfering with union contract negotiations.

The elections weren't more than a few days old when he started making demands on state staff that he didn't have the authority to make.

Today, we learn he couldn't wait long enough to be sworn into office before he started to buck for being the most corrupt governor in state history.

Dan Bice has a report about something I heard about more than a week ago, which is namely that there are John Doe investigations into Darlene Wink and Tim Russell.

Wink is the woman who was simultaneously one of Walker's staffers as well as the Co-Vice Chair of the the Milwaukee County Republican Party. She apparently got her roles confused, or just didn't give a damn, and got caught by the paper making comments at JSOnli
ne and other nefarious activities during county time. She immediately resigned when caught and everyone thought it no big deal.

Well, almost everyone. Supervisor John Weishan did an open record request on Wink and other Walker staff members. (The request came up empty, which apparently is a lie, given the fact that she is in a fair amount of trouble. In fact, if I was Weishan, I would start pushing that, since it's pretty obvious that Walker and his staff have violated ORR rules.)

Russell is a long-time friend of Walker's, going back decades, who has worked on Walker's campaigns and has a Walker staffer. Based on a complaint by the Democrats, an investigation was launched into him and whether he was campaigning and politicking from his county office, on county time and using county equipment.

The word I've heard from multiple places is that Russell is in some really seriously deep trouble.

Judging from the fact that Walker's campaign has now hired Steve Biskupic, former U.S. Attorney, it would not be a great leap of logic to guess that the probe might be reaching higher up, even to Walker himself.

But that's not all, folks.

Bice also reports that the investigation is still going on into William E. Gardner, who did some illegal campaign donations himself. It appears that there might be more to the story there as well, given how surly Gardner's attorney was.

I am sure all of this will take some time to play out, but it does raise some interesting questions while we await for the final results:
  • Where are all the people that were making false allegations of voter fraud? Are they OK with corrupt campaigns?
  • How far does the corruption rise and spread?
  • If Walker was involved or even simply aware of this, how would this affect his ability to be governor, if at all?
  • In other words, who knew what and when did they know it?
  • Will there be a pursuit of Walker's office violating ORR rules with its misleading report to Supervisor Weishan's request?
  • Where the heck was the so-called government watchdog group, Citizens for Responsible Government, during all of this? Why are they silent now?
  • If something of substance comes out of this, how fast will the other Republicans turn on Walker?
It will be an interesting new year, that much we do know for sure.

3 comments:

  1. This is indeed disturbing. Even more so is the thought of Rebecca Kleefisch taking over if this "goes Nixon" on us.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Outside of the obvious corruption and dereliction of Milwaukee Co. duties, the biggest point is the next-to-last regarding the two-faced wusses from CRG. Can you imagine if a Dem pulled anything close to this?

    Keep it in the spotlight. You know the Faux News GOPs sure would if the shoe was on the other foot.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well, maybe now we know why they are keeping all the money from the inaugural activitis... they will need the money for lawyers.

    ReplyDelete