We all know what's at stake here. Can you pitch in?

Many people really HATE to phone others to get the job done. If that describes you, I just have one question: which is worse:

Phoning someone you don't know (and who does not know you) to ask them to vote for a Democratic candidate for the Wisconsin State Senate

OR

Living under Scott Walker's unimpeded reign of error (or should I say TERROR)?

That's where we are, people. Either we elect three additional senators this November, or we continue to enable Scott Walker and his henchmen to ride rough-shod over the state without let or hindrance. It's your choice!

Grassroots North Shore is teaming up with the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee to assist the campaigns of strong candidates who have a real shot at winning. Please join us. Go to our CALENDAR and volunteer for one or more dates. Help Wisconsin rise up again.

Mark your calendars: We're holding our Annual Picnic this year on Sunday, September 18, from 4pm until it's time to get home to watch the Packers!

Grassroots North Shore chefs will be supplying the pulled pork and chicken, the sodas and water, and the plates and cutlery. You bring sides or desserts to share.

It's always a great occasion to renew fellowship with our North Shore progressives, especially in a campaign season. A number of local candidates will be on hand. Don't miss this opportunity to talk to them personally.

Do us a favor, though, and RSVP so we know how much food to make.

Here we are again.  How unfortunate it is that we can now probably recite gun violence statistics from memory. Some of the all too familiar numbers, thanks to NBC News:

• Every year in the U.S., an average of more than 100,000 people are shot, according to The Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence.
• Every day in the U.S., an average of 289 people are shot. Eighty-six of them die: 30 are murdered, 53 kill themselves, two die accidentally, and one is shot in a police intervention, the Brady Campaign reports.
• Between 2000 and 2010, a total of 335,609 people died from guns -- more than the population of St. Louis, Mo. (318,069), Pittsburgh (307,484), Cincinnati, Ohio (296,223), Newark, N.J. (277,540), and Orlando, Fla. (243,195) (sources:  CDF, U.S. Census; CDC)
• One person is killed by a firearm every 17 minutes, 87 people are killed during an average day, and 609 are killed every week. (source: CDC)

The NRA Arguments Debunked

That bastion of liberty and freedom, the NRA, wraps itself in the American flag and, wielding the Constitution as if it were a sword, fools the public into believing that the organization is really only interested in a person’s rights, but we all know their real agenda is to maximize the profits for gun manufacturers.  Be reminded that the right of the individual to ‘bear arms’ does not go back to the Founding Fathers:  it is the result of the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008).

One of the NRA’s primary tactics is to instill fear, and convince people that the only way they can protect themselves and their families is to possess one or more guns, the more powerful the better.   There is, however, evidence that just the opposite is true.  From Statistics on the Dangers of Gun Use for Self-Defense:

Want to know what a Nichols event is like? Just watch five or ten minutes of this video and then hasten to RSVP for the event:

Nichols is headlining our annual fundraiser with a talk titled "Is Democracy Dead in Wisconsin?" RSVP for this special occasion.

Part of the answer to sustaining a vibrant democracy is sustaining the civic organizations, of which Grassroots North Shore is one. This all-volunteer organization doesn't need tens of thousands of dollars a year to stay in business, but we do need a modest level of support to keep our office running, to provide informative and educational programming four to six times each year, and to participate in electing progressive candidates.

Even if you have to miss seeing John, your donation would be deeply appreciated.

On May 24, 2016, a three-judge panel in Federal Court will address the question of whether the Wisconsin legislatureʼs 2011 redistricting plan is unconstitutionally partisan. Twelve Wisconsin democrats have sued the Wisconsin Department of Justice alleging that Republican state redistricting was unconstitutionally partisan and “one of the worst gerrymanders ever.”

Gerrymandering is the manipulation of district boundaries for the political advantage of a particular party. The word was coined in 1812 when Massachusetts Governor Eldridge Gerry redrew district lines in Boston to favor his party. The district created had a bizarre shape that resembled a salamander. Gerry and salamander combine to form Gerrymander.

Over the last 200 years gerrymandering has been a tried and true political method. Many strangely shaped districts, not only salamanders, have served the interest of partisan politics. Until recently North Carolina Congressional District 14 was over 80 miles long and in places only as wide as the interstate it followed. The saying was that “If you drove down the Interstate with both car doors open youʼd kill most of the people in the district.”

How district lines are drawn can influence election results in many ways. Common methods are packing and cracking. In “packing” similar voters are packed together in a single district, removing their influence from other districts. In the illustration above, the fourth map shows how packing can work. Notice that most of the blue squares are bundled into two districts, each of which has only one red square in it.

In “cracking” blocks of voters are broken apart and distributed in other districts to dilute their voting strength as much as possible. You can see the effects of cracking most clearly in the third map above. Red squares are broken up into blocks of four, diluting their voting strength in every district.

Political boundaries are usually redrawn every ten years in response to census data. In most states the state legislature controls the redistricting process. Manipulating district boundaries for partisan purposes, or gerrymandering, is not illegal unless the plan violates the Voting Rights Act.

In 2011 Wisconsin Republicans controlled all branches of state government — the assembly, the senate and the governorship. They thus had complete control of the redistricting process, which was carried out in strict secrecy using private lawyers. Only one public hearing was held before the map was passed by the legislature and signed by Governor Walker.

The redistricting map was greeted by a torrent of objections and spawned myriad lawsuits. A large number of documents were lost and a hard drive with redistricting data was destroyed. A judge who had unsuccessfully tried to access documents chastised “the all but shameful attempt to hide the redistricting process from public scrutiny.”

A Latino district that had been split (as a result of cracking) was restored by court order, but otherwise the district lines drawn by the legislature in 2011 formed the basis of the electoral districts for the 2012 and 2014 elections. The map was attacked by Democrats as an example of extreme gerrymandering. Although the districts it created lacked bizarre shapes, the districts were drawn so as to strengthen the Republican hold on government. For instance, the liberal suburb of Shorewood was removed from the state senate district of conservative Alberta Darling — in a clear example of cracking — to strengthen her against a possible recall election. Kenosha and Racine, both Democratic, were packed together, enabling a strong Republican district to be formed to the west.

The origin of the phrase ‘lame duck’ had nothing to do with politics.  It started out (1761, UK) as London Stock Exchange slang for someone defaulting on his debts, then was reapplied (1863, US) to mean an ineffectual politician in any office.  In this country, the first public usage with respect to a sitting President seems to date back to May of 1926, when the Wisconsin newspaper, the Appleton Post-Crescent ran a piece titled, ‘Making a lame duck of Calvin Coolidge’  (CBS News November 29, 2013).

Currently, the phrase is most commonly used to refer to a President who is either not running or has been defeated for another term; and the period usually refers to the time between the November elections and the swearing-in ceremony in January (10 weeks).  Arguably, the GOP has been trying to make President Obama a lame duck president since before he was inaugurated for his first term.  And now they are deceptively trying to convince the public that because the President is in his last year, he is, in fact, simply a lame duck and should not bother doing anything.  This boils down to saying that, even though the President was elected to serve a four year term, it is really only three years because the last 25% should not matter.  Using an extension of this logic, does the person who works an eight hour day have a legitimate claim that for the last 25% of their day, they should not be doing anything?

The Wisconsin Supreme Court: Another Chapter

The Wisconsin Supreme Court — known for decades as a paragon of honesty, ethics, and integrity for decades — has run into less glorious distinction in the last ten years.  The following statements contrast the judgement of the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court with that of the Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court:

“Judges are not politicians,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., wrote in the majority opinion in a 5-4 decision [Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar], “even when they come to the bench by way of the ballot.” He went on, “Simply put, Florida and most other States have concluded that the public may lack confidence in a judge’s ability to administer justice without fear or favor if he comes to office by asking for favors.” 

Justice Roberts’s opinion makes the connection between campaign contributions and the appearance of corruption or favoritism clear. But in Wisconsin, new recusal rules adopted in 2010 make recusal a matter of personal discretion. Each judge or justice decides for him or herself whether in a given case recusal is warranted. In defending the new recusal rules, Justice Roggensack took a position quite different from the one expressed by Chief Justice Roberts.

Patience Drake Roggensack, now the Chief Justice [of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin], wrote for the conservative majority in a 4-3 vote in favor of the rule, “We elect judges in Wisconsin; therefore, judicial recusal rules have the potential to impact the effectiveness of citizens’ votes cast for judges. Stated otherwise, when a judge is disqualified from participation, the votes of all who voted to elect that judge are cancelled for all issues presented by that case."

Justice Roggensack’s opinion reveals that she and her fellow conservative justices consider themselves to be representatives of the people who voted for them. Not impartial judges of the facts and the law, but partisans beholden to their supporters, including especially those who funded their campaigns!

Interestingly, when considering changes to the rules, the court rejected ones proposed by the League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan group, and instead adopted the extremely weak rules submitted by the Wisconsin Realtors’ Association and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, two right-wing groups who heavily supported the elections of the right-wing justices as well as the election of Governor Walker.

The recusal rule changes are only a fraction of what is troubling our Supreme Court, but they represent the direction the court has taken.  Money, Eric O’Keefe, Wisconsin Club for Growth, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, Citizens for a Strong America, among other outgrowths of the same movement have aggressively taken control of all branches of our state government.  There may be several avenues of recourse.  The people are our best hope.  Educate, talk to other people, vote, repeat.

Continue on to the next section where the basic responsibilities and procedures for the court are briefly explained.