Disclosure laws give legislators a break

By Bill Kraus

I know, I know. We should have term limits. We should cut their pay so we could guarantee that every legislator had to have a job in the real world. We should give them single-digit approval ratings.

What we should really do is give them a break.

The candidates for the Legislature are told how much money that any supporter can give them for their campaigns and that they must report the names, addresses, and occupations of all of the supporters who give them money.

When they get around to spending this money on advertising they to tell the audiences a.) why the voters should vote for them or, as is more likely in this lamentable era when attack ads are favored, b.) why the voters should not vote for whoever is running against them. These ads must be accompanied by disclaimers. The disclaimer on TV ads must say who they are and that they approve the message in the ad.

Questions in the aftermath of Walker's tsunami

By Bill Kraus

The Walker tsunami opened with a bang. He (and the two-house majority) had promised to get rid of something nobody understood--the structural deficit--and to balance the budget, which everyone understood.

They did that. They did it largely with proceeds from the only cookie jar in the kitchen: education. The other cookie jars, medicaid and corrections, were sealed shut by the feds and fear respectively.

The rest of the early agenda was mostly about getting even, settling scores.

The public employee unions were the bane of Republican candidates and organizations. They had been successfully outspending and outworking anyone who stood in their way for years. The Walker tsunami put an end to that by limiting their bargaining authority and shutting down dues check off, otherwise known as their money machine.

They put an end to public campaign funding--often referred to as “welfare for politicians”--in all its manifestations, including the judicial one.

A letter to Wisconsin snow birds and expatriates

By Bill Kraus


Everyone knows about the recalls. What everyone doesn’t know, and what people who haven't been around lately might not know, is that they really aren’t recalls. They are what golfers call “mulligans” and what non-golfers know as “do overs.” In Wisconsin, if enough people are dissatisfied with any incumbent who has been in office for at least a year, they can circulate petitions seeking a new election, and if they get the requisite number of signatures, an election will be called.

No justification is necessary. This is not an impeachment. This is not a recall. This is a petition for a new election for any and all candidates who want to run including the person who thought he or she was elected for a fixed term.

The recall petition for the governor and lieutenant governor are the most prominent. The reason so many people signed it (more than 900,000) had to do with fixing the structural deficit the Democrats left behind and crafting a balanced budget for the next biennium.