Corruption and Wisconsin's Kangaroo Court

The next Governor of Wisconsin may directly result from the non-profit Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and their challenge to challenger Mark Green’s transfer of campaign funds from Federal to Wisconsin accounts. They opened the Pandora ’s Box of campaign finance law and in doing so have demonstrated these laws are not for protecting the public but for protecting politicians.

Wisconsin's Kangaroo Court: When the Democracy Campaign raised questions about money Mark Green raised in Washington as a member of Congress and later transferred to his campaign for governor, we set out to expose illegal donations. … How this all will ultimately play out, only time will tell. But what already is well established is that the Elections Board has thoroughly discredited itself.

The problem with campaign finance law is the faulty assumption that money and corruption are directly correlated. This is explicitly stated in the lamentable US Supreme Court Ruling allowing the McCain-Feingold Bill to stand. (Thank you for protecting us from political free speech Russ).

McConnell v. Federal Election Commission: The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), which amended the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA), the Communications Act of 1934, and other portions of the United States Code, is the most recent of nearly a century of federal enactments designed "to purge national politics of what [is] conceived to be the pernicious influence of 'big money' campaign contributions."

The error behind these regulations and prohibitions is equating promotion of ideas with purchase of results. The National Constitution Center argues the justification used for the court’s strange approval of McCain-Feingold is entirely about the definition of corruption.

A Bad First Amendment Bargain: … in order to sustain the act, the Court could not limit the concept of corruption to contributions that affect and are given essentially in exchange for the way an elected representative votes on a particular issue. So the Court expanded Congressional power to define corruption to include contributions to a political party that might give a contributor “undue influence” over a candidate or officeholder and independent expenditures that “improperly” influence the results of elections wholly without regard to whether the contributions are given to candidates or actually affect the way they vote.

The expanded definition is highly problematic, for it gives Congress practically unlimited power to restrict political speech during election campaigns. … If “corruption” is undue influence or the “improper” use of money, and “undue influence” and “impropriety” are anything that Congress says they are, then the First Amendment is a dead letter as an effective restraint on legislative overreaching when it regulates speech during election campaigns.

The Governor’s election has drifted into a debate about money and so I encourage Mark Green to embrace the debate and turn it into a debate about corruption. The "pay to play" administration of incumbent Democrat Jim Doyle is filled with enough Error and Impropriety to merit a campaign discussion about the Wisconsin definition of corruption.

Finally let us keep in mind that our constitution provides not for clean government but for government by the consent of the people. If citizens want corrupt leadership after free unrestricted First Amendment debate, they can elect it as they have done many times in the past.