Wisconsin State Journal, March 11
Stop playing games with public records
Two state lawmakers are being cute in responding to requests for government emails under Wisconsin’s open records law.
They’re refusing to deliver the public documents electronically, as the requesters have sought. Doing so would make the emails easier to search and analyze.
Instead, state Reps. Scott Krug, R-Nekoosa, and Jonathan Brostoff, D-Milwaukee, think people seeking their emails on various topics should have to pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars for the emails to be printed out on reams of paper, which makes searching for key words and specific information much more difficult. In doing so, these two low-profile legislators now are facing lawsuits, which will waste taxpayer money.
The ruse needs to end, with both lawmakers respecting the letter and the spirit of Wisconsin’s open records law. And this week is the perfect time to do the right thing because the press and good-government groups across the country are celebrating and advocating for open government.
Sunshine Week, which started Sunday, highlights the need for public officials to be transparent when conducting the public’s business.
Krug and Brostoff are instead being sneaky, something their constituents of all political persuasions should find offensive.
Krug received a request from Bill Lueders, managing editor of The Progressive, for any correspondence with constituents on water and wetlands issues over about four months. Krug is vice chairman of the Assembly Environment Committee.
Lueders, who is president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, asked for the documents in an electronic form, such as a flash drive, email folder or compact disc. Krug’s staff responded by offering to let Lueders review more than 1,500 printed pages of emails in person or take home copies for 15 cents per page. That would mean a bill of about $225.
Lueders paid the tab but continued to request electronic files. Krug stubbornly refused, as if he hadn’t moved into the 21st century yet and didn’t know how to use a computer.
In late January, a judge ruled Krug must release the documents electronically, though he appears eager to appeal that decision, which would further waste taxpayer resources.
Brostoff similarly has been playing tiresome games with a straight-forward request for emails from the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. A WILL researcher asked for emails about occupational licensing changes. Brostoff serves on the Assembly Regulatory Licensing Reform Committee.
Like Krug, Brostoff arrogantly refused to release the emails in a modern and electronic form, seeking $3,239 in fees for printing reams of emails onto paper. Brostoff is now facing a lawsuit, too.
Krug and Brostoff presumably ride to the state Capitol in motor vehicles, not on horseback. We know they have electricity in their state offices and don’t read by candlelight.
They should stop acting like Luddites to avoid public scrutiny, and politely turn over the public records in a digital form as requested.
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The Capital Times, March 7
Wisconsin’s Gordon Giampietro is entirely unacceptable federal court nominee
Even by the low standards that President Trump has set for selecting his judicial nominees, Gordon Giampietro, the president’s pick to fill an open federal judgeship for Wisconsin’s Eastern District, is an exceptionally bad prospect.
Giampietro, an assistant general counsel at Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance, has displayed a shocking disregard for mainstream judicial thinking. On issue after issue after issue - from civil rights to marriage equality to reproductive rights - he has rejected conventional conservatism to express opinions that place him on the fringe of American political discourse.
Giampietro’s comments regarding same-sex marriage in particular and gay rights in general have raised concerns not just in Wisconsin but nationally.
The Trump nominee has described marriage equality as “an assault on nature” and attacked Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and the majority on the high court for effectively affirming the right of same-sex couples to marry. In a radio interview, Giampietro suggested Americans could “ignore Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion, because it’s not really legal reasoning.”
Giampietro once ripped Kennedy, a Ronald Reagan appointee who generally sides with the court’s conservatives but sometimes breaks with them to provide a “swing vote” on social issues, as a jurist who “went off the rails” in 2003, when the justice wrote a majority opinion that struck down archaic anti-gay laws.
That decision, in the case of Lawrence v. Texas, was decided with a 6-3 majority, and has been widely complimented and embraced by members of the legal community from across the ideological spectrum.
“Sadly, Gordon Giampietro manages to stand out among a number of unfit, anti-LGBTQ judicial nominees put forward by the Trump-Pence administration,” said Wendy Strout, who serves as Wisconsin manager for the Human Rights Campaign, a national civil rights organization that advocates on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer equality. “Giampietro’s extreme anti-LGBTQ rhetoric is deeply disturbing and should not be rewarded with a lifetime judicial appointment representing Wisconsin on the federal court. If confirmed, Wisconsinites could not count on Giampietro to uphold their civil rights.”
But Giampietro is not merely biased against LGBTQ rights.
The Alliance for Justice reported that Giampietro has openly disparaged the Civil Rights Act of 1964, claiming that “calls for diversity” are “code for relaxed standards.” He has harshly criticized the public school system, which is committed to providing opportunities to all children. His comments showing hostility to legally established reproductive rights for women and to marriage equality have been widely reported. His failure to fully disclose aspects of his record to Wisconsin’s nominating commission, as well as his overt hostility to the rights of millions of his fellow members of society, calls into question his ability to execute the job of a federal judge with fairness and integrity.
The outcry against Giampietro’s nomination has intensified as his sordid record has been revealed.
Last week Todd Cox, the policy director for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said, “The Civil Rights Act of 1964 enshrined unprecedented protections against discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin in so many facets of American life. The idea that a judicial nominee would disparage this essential law, born from centuries of resistance and sacrifice, is insulting. We need federal judges who understand the inherent value of every American, regardless of the color of their skin. Unfortunately, Gordon Giampietro does not meet this basic standard.”
Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said: “Gordon Giampietro has a history of bias and bigotry that renders him unfit to serve as a fair and neutral judge. He has made intemperate remarks about Supreme Court precedents, and he has demonstrated a hostility to LGBTQ equality, diversity, women’s reproductive freedom, and the value of public schools. It is also disconcerting that he failed to disclose some of his past remarks to the Wisconsin bipartisan federal nominating commission that considered his suitability for the bench. A member of that commission has publicly stated that they would not have forwarded Mr. Giampietro’s name to their senators had they been aware of his extreme views. Mr. Giampietro should not receive a lifetime appointment as a federal judge.”
Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin has raised concerns about Giampietro’s extreme stances and about the nominee’s failure to be frank with the Wisconsin Federal Nominating Commission during the vetting process for potential nominees to the federal bench. “Both what was said and the fact that it was not disclosed to the commission raise serious questions about whether this nominee would be able to serve as a fair and impartial judge on a federal court,” explained Baldwin’s spokesman.
Baldwin is right.
Serious questions about the Giampietro nomination have been raised.
To our view, because Giampietro’s controversial statements have been so recent and so frequent, and because they have attacked sound judicial precedent, he has disqualified himself.
Gordon Giampietro should withdraw his own nomination. If he does not, every effort should be made - by citizens and senators - to prevent this biased nominee from getting anywhere near the federal judiciary, which he has so aggressively disparaged.
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Kenosha News, March 8
Trump’s chilling rhetoric
Donald Trump carried Wisconsin and Kenosha County - just barely - in the 2016 election. In the aftermath, pundits nationwide opined his victory over Hillary Clinton was a mandate for a new way of doing things in Washington. Drain the swamp, Trump said repeatedly on the campaign trail.
Trump declared it a historic victory, one of the largest in American history. It wasn’t. His predecessor, Barack Obama, Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush and Bush’s predecessor Bill Clinton all received more Electoral College votes than Trump in their elections.
Trump’s spokesman, Sean Spicer, proudly claimed from the press room the new president’s inauguration crowd surpassed that of Obama’s in 2008, and photos showing otherwise had to be doctored. From the starting gate, the hyperbole was off and running. It hasn’t stopped.
Trump has gone out of his way to attempt to quiet his critics. If he doesn’t like a news story, it’s “fake news.” He’s suggested the Federal Communications Commission could potentially revoke licenses of broadcast networks critical of him. The FCC can’t do that - the networks don’t have a license, the affiliate broadcast stations do - but that didn’t stop Trump from making such a chilling suggestion.
Trump’s bombastic rhetoric is nothing new. One needs only check his near daily early-morning Twitter messages for proof. Most of the time, we can shrug it off. But last Saturday, the president said something out loud that should give us all pause.
In a meeting with Republican donors, Trump commended Chinese President Xi Jinping for consolidating power. “He’s now president for life. President for life. And he’s great,” Trump said, according to a recording obtained by CNN. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. He then added: “Maybe we’ll give that a shot someday.”
It was Trump being Trump. The president has shunned traditional presidential protocol since taking office. In the same meeting with donors, he once again blasted Hillary Clinton. He’s been president for more than a year. He needs to get past Clinton. Governing should be his focus.
But it is the suggestion that “maybe we’ll give that a shot someday” coming out of the mouth of the leader of the world’s most powerful, democratic nation that is troubling.
For a president to even utter such a thing isn’t just un-presidential, it’s dangerous.
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