Nothing wrong with big money in politics!

For all the good it does!

We don’t know if too much money was spent on Tuesday’s WI Supreme Court race — but it was a lot. Karl Rove says Elon Musk and Republicans spent $53 million on Brad Schimel to the $45.2 million Democrats and their billionaires spent on Susan Crawford. She won anyway. 

Whatever the final tab, it was the most ever spent on a court race, any time, anywhere. Uncle Joe Biden would call it economic stimulus. Better than how Hungary, France, Russia, China, and the State of New York hold down campaign spending — by jailing (or attempting to jail) their opponents. 

The good gummint goo goos are singing that most trite of tunes — that political campaign spending must be “reformed.” They are “alarmed,” the Wisconsin State Journal reliably reports. But aren’t they always? These guys remind us of Beaker, Dr. Honeydew’s assistant among the Muppets — more agitated than a Maytag washing machine.

Here’s our brief against campaign finance reform: the cures are worse than the supposed disease.

Spring election turnout never approaches November elections but Crawford trailed Kamala Harris’ presidential numbers statewide by 367,101 votes whereas Schimel trailed Trump’s numbers by 634,382 — almost twice the gap.

A wild thought: If the Tesla dealership case comes to the high court, will Crawford recuse?

 Putin limits campaign spending

Jim Doyle once proposed publicly funding campaigns in exchange for holding down spending to some arbitrary figure. Aside from using our tax dollars to finance attack ads on behalf of vanity candidates, it would do nothing to prevent third-party, nominally independent expenditures.

The richest man in the world spent more money than most people will see in a lifetime to lose a state supreme court race by 10 points. And the fact that his $25M was a drop in the bucket compared to what he spent on other elections is why we must overturn Citizens United. — Obama Labor Sec’y Robert Reich

The speech police abhor that U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling. Citizens United overturned a ban engineered by Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold on certain political speech right before an election — when that speech is most precious. Can the avocado lobby be permitted to advocate against Trump’s tariffs? Newspapers would have been exempt from McCain-Feingold — freeing up the NY Times to pillory Republicans but not Elon Musk to advocate for them. News flash: the news industry has no more First Amendment protection than the basement blogger. (Cough.)

There is no precedent supporting laws that attempt to distinguish between corporations which are deemed to be exempt as media corporations and those which are not. We have consistently rejected the proposition that the institutional press has any constitutional privilege beyond that of other speakers. — Citizens United

 Even Soylent Green is people

Progressives prattle about how corporations are not people. Neither is the AFL-CIO, the City of Madison, or the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel — all are corporations; all are comprised of people, not polar bears, as Justice Scalia helpfully observed. Former Green Bay congressman Reid Ribble is a good man, gone wrong on this issue. The WI State Journal quotes him:

“I would be very supportive of some type of campaign finance reform that would give candidates more ability to be direct with the public. I don’t know how you do that … but it’s definitely a challenge.“

Blaska’s Bottom Line: We don’t know how you do that either, Reid — except that every “solution” turns unelected government bureaucrats into hallway speech monitors.

Want to get the money out of the supreme court race? We say again, amend the constitution so that the governor appoints for some lengthy but defined term, with confirmation by the legislature. And bring Public Instruction to the table as a gubernatorial cabinet appointee. Evers can’t veto a constitutional amendment.

After 04-01-25, think voters might go for it?