By Noor Al-Siai
The Raw Story (9/8/17)
While the rest of Wisconsin’s road infrastructure “crumbled,” state Republicans quietly approved $4 million in repairs to a tiny airport near a golf course owned by a Republican “mega-donor.”
According to the Associated Press, Sand Valley Golf Resort developer Michael Keiser donated $25,000 to the state’s Republican Party earlier this year. Soon after, the Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee approved the $4 million repairs to the golf resort’s diminutive airport.
The report also said that the donation came “three weeks after Gov. Scott Walker (R) released his budget without funding for Wisconsin Rapids’ Alexander Field [airport].”
“It sure looks like Mr. Keiser’s campaign contributions to Scott Walker and Republicans teed up millions in taxpayer-funded improvements to help bring corporate jet ferried golfers to his Wisconsin courses,” Mike Browne, as spokesman for liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now, told AP. “Meanwhile the rest of us will continue to have to deal with crumbling roads and bridges and delayed projects as these same Republicans take a budget mulligan and refuse to fix the state transportation funding crisis.”
Keiser has donated “at least $65,000 to Walker and Wisconsin Republicans since 2012,” the report continued.
(Commoner Call cartoon and photo by Mark L. Taylor, 2017. Open source and free to use with link to www.theommonercall.org )
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Con Job: Norms Of State Government Crippled For Convenience Of Foxconn
By Chris Rickert
The Wisconsin State Journal (9/
Wisconsin voters have given Republicans the governor’s office, Legislature and, via a 5-2 majority of conservative justices, the state Supreme Court.
Now, Republican lawmakers want to give a Taiwanese company $3 billion in Wisconsinites’ tax dollars in return for thousands of jobs to make the products that help make the company’s CEO worth $10.3 billion.
And they’ll be darned if they’re going to let a little thing like due process get in the way.
Republicans on the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee on Tuesday approved an amendment that would require automatic Supreme Court review of any appeal to any circuit court decision related to the development or operation of a Foxconn LCD plant in southeast Wisconsin. It would also automatically stay any circuit court decision related to Foxconn if the decision is appealed.
In quashing the criminal investigation into Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign, upholding the 2011 law that curtailed public-sector collective bargaining, and other partisan issues, the Supremes have been the GOP’s go-to court. So it’s not surprising that Republicans want the Court to be the last word on Foxconn.
Still, the Court is already able to allow litigants to leap-frog the appeals courts, and there is no class of litigation now that, by statute, gets automatic Supreme Court review.
As for staying a circuit court decision — that’s also been a judicial decision, not a legislative one. There’s nothing in state law currently that makes a stay mandatory when the decision involves a specific party. …