Another chapter in the continuing serial on how the Republican Party is taking private this thing we call the USA.
Many of you may have missed the fact that, in his brief, disastrous run for the GOP presidential nomination, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's campaign incorporated itself, just like the George W. Bush campaign did before him. Not to overstate the point, but the increasing Republican push to find congruence between the public and private sectors is spelled out in this one little move.
Political campaigns, you see, are no longer temporary, informal, short-term, volunteer efforts to elect a candidate for public office. Nope, they're permanent, full-time businesses, with fleets of accountants and lawyers and highly paid staffers. And even though they are incorporated -- which in the real business world makes financial statements subject to public and government scrutiny -- these corporate campaigns increasingly maintain a secret set of books.
That's true nationally as a result of the Citizens United and associated "dark money is free speech" high court rulings. And soon, in Wisconsin, under pending GOP laws that proclaim the overriding importance of maintaining campaign donor privacy. God forbid voters find out that a small group of billionaires from other states is largely bankrolling your candidacy.
What will those Repubs think of next? For now we have increasingly secret GOP corporations, formerly thought of as political campaigns. Their products are political officeholders espousing the "free" market, privacy for elites (but not for Joe Sixpack) and few if any regulations. These campaign corporations in many cases pay six-figure salaries to guys whose job it is to sell you a candidate exactly in the way that, say, Lever Brother sells you a bar of soap.
The obvious inconsistency here is that Wall Street would crash in weeks if that level of permissiveness and lack of public oversight pertained to traditional corporations. Oh, wait, that already happened in 2008 and 1987 and 1929 and ... .
But wait, there's more. Speaking of congruence and the growing Republican mania for treating all things public -- including your local schools -- as some sort of private assets to be manipulated for political and even cash profit, check out this other development in Wisconsin: When you visit the state's official web page, you'll find this indicia at the very bottom:
"Copyright ©2015, State of Wisconsin"
Aside from the statement's uncharacteristic redundancy (two mentions of copyright, one a symbol, in case you may have overlooked one), this statement, too, tells us where "public" governance is going.
Now, perhaps that indicia exists because some overcautious or even overzealous state lawyer decided that affixing a copyright notice to a public web site couldn't hurt and might come in handy some day. Let's hope that's all this is about. Because the other explanation is far more disturbing.
Never mind that Wisconsin's official web site, including its layout and all the documents it offers plus many, many more that it doesn't, are by definition PUBLIC documents. Such documents are, with rare exceptions, such as certain court records, freely available to anyone and can be used by anyone.
There's special irony in this. Conservatives themselves used the state's Open Records law to seek and obtain Walker recall petitions from 2012, which were official, public, state documents. Conservative groups then turned the petitions, formerly available for public inspection only on paper into private, interactive, online databases that amount to permanent political black lists of anyone in Wisconsin who signed such a petition.
Utterly cynical. But apparently legal, according to the Government Accountability Board that Republicans are now busy dismantling because, well, it's just too anti-Republican.
See how that works? Documents that embarrass or possibly even indict Republicans, such as evidence collected in the John Doe case implicating Walker's violation of campaign coordination laws are bad and should be kept secret because ... free speech! [I know, I know. That argument doesn't make sense, but let's carry on.] Meanwhile, cocuments that are useful in denigrating anyone besides Republicans should be freely available and even manipulable, because ... blue meanies!
And then there's that State of Wisconsin copyright marker that, whatever its original intent, now serves to bolster GOP efforts to hide, massage and withhold public documents, including the party's efforts to greatly weaken or gut Wisconsin Open Records and Open Meetings laws.
You are transparent. They, on the other hand, are cloaked in the raiments of self-righteousness.
Arguably, Wisconsin government under GOP control is now a business, where, for instance, the state's top environmental agency now focuses on clearing the way for new business developments in wetlands or other sensitive places. Now, this is not a very profitable business for the shareholders (that would be all the residents of Wisconsin), especially under Walker's watch (long-term debt is way up, product quality way down, cash flow is impaired).
But, hey, your State of Wisconsin business represents one hell of a tax write-off if you're a corporation or a campaign contributor who supports the prevailing regime. And if you're a member of that regime, it's been a very profitable business, indeed.
For most of Wisconsin's residents, the implicit message is: Be careful. The government has copyrighted all this public information you paid for them to create, just in case you might want to collect and use it yourself. Don't forget, the GOP has got one of their own in the state attorney general's chair, and he's a law 'n order type who's not afraid to go after people who don't toe the line. The line being whatever the GOP says it is. No, that was yesterday's line. This is today's line. Tomorrow you may walk the line.
Basically, Wisconsin government functions on a need-to-know basis. And you don't need to know.
By the way, all mentions of Wisconsin, the Walker campaign and the GOP in this diary, and other revelations, including leaked Doe evidence, in others? Arguably fair use, under the Creative Commons license. Too bad politicians haven't figured out -- or have figured it out but prefer to ignore -- that handy alternative. Copyright is no small thing, and when it comes to government -- even quasi-corporate government -- it's way, way over the top. The truth is: You, me and everyone else who lives in this country has a right to copy information produced by your government. Knowledge is power.