{"id":182811,"date":"2015-06-02T18:10:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-02T23:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/06\/02\/im-shocked-shocked-to-find-that-gambling-is-going-on-this-establishment\/"},"modified":"2015-06-02T18:10:00","modified_gmt":"2015-06-02T23:10:00","slug":"im-shocked-shocked-to-find-that-gambling-is-going-on-this-establishment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/06\/02\/im-shocked-shocked-to-find-that-gambling-is-going-on-this-establishment\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;m Shocked! Shocked! To Find That Gambling Is Going on This Establishment!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 360px;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"263\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SjbPi00k_ME?rel=0\" width=\"350\"><\/iframe><i><\/i><\/div>\n<p>Scott Walker is under investigation for possible illegal coordination between his campaign, and so-called &#8220;independent&#8221; campaign groups.<\/p>\n<p>Well, the prosecutor who is investigating the matter, it is called a &#8220;John Doe&#8221; proceeding under Wisconsin law, but this is being challenged in court.<\/p>\n<p>The Wisconsin Supreme Court is to here this challenge, but it now appears that <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/justice\/2015\/06\/02\/3665064\/judges-considering-criminal-probe-scott-walker-may-implicated-offense\/\">some of the judges in question appear to be involved in the scheme<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is facing an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jsonline.com\/specialreports\/johndoe\/doe2\">investigation<\/a> into whether his 2012 recall campaign illegally coordinated with nonprofit groups that spent money to support him. Campaign finance laws prohibit \u201ccoordination\u201d because they would allow candidates to run shadow campaigns outside of campaign finance law. The Center for Media &amp; Democracy\u2019s PRWatch <a href=\"http:\/\/www.prwatch.org\/news\/2015\/04\/12816\/scott-walker-GOP-prosecutor-john-doe#sthash.7WQPRut6.dpuf\">said<\/a>, \u201cProsecutors gathered evidence of Walker secretly raising millions of dollars for the supposedly \u2018independent\u2019 nonprofit Wisconsin Club for Growth (WiCFG), with the express purpose of bypassing campaign finance disclosure laws.\u201d The secret donations were revealed to include money from a mining company that received permission to open a mine soon after Walker won reelection. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The investigation is at a preliminary stage, called a John Doe proceeding under Wisconsin law, which determines whether charges are filed. PRWatch said that \u201cWalker and his allies have fought the probe not by denying coordination, but by claiming the rules don\u2019t apply to so-called \u2018issue ads\u2019 that stop short of expressly telling viewers how to vote.\u201d The Wisconsin Supreme Court is considering one of the many <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/justice\/2014\/02\/24\/3319661\/wisconsin-justices-decide-criminal-criminal-probe-involving-campaign-donors\/\">lawsuits filed<\/a> to stop the investigation. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In a newly released <a href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/2085632-2-12-15-redacted-motion-for-recusal-amp-notice.html\">court filing<\/a>, the prosecutor in the case raised the question of whether one or two of the justices hearing the case are implicated in the same kind of scheme. Two groups suspected of coordinating with Walker\u2019s campaign have also spent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.prwatch.org\/news\/2014\/12\/12693\/conflicted-supreme-court-takes-walker-criminal-probe\">$10 million<\/a> to elect the four-justice conservative majority. The prosecutor\u2019s heavily redacted brief also suggests that two justices, or, at least, their campaigns, may have committed the same offense that is at the heart of the Walker investigation\u2014coordinating with dark money groups to get reelected. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Special prosecutor Francis Schmitz\u2014a Republican who voted for Walker in 2012\u2014noted that the groups \u201chad significant involvement in the election of particular justices,\u201d though the document redacts the names of the justices and the groups. (The suspects in a grand jury or John Doe proceeding remain anonymous, unless and until charges are filed.) While the justices are not named, the brief refers to the justices benefiting from money spent by John Doe groups to support the reelection of the justices, and the groups have spent money to support the election of all four members of the court\u2019s conservative majority. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Schmitz\u2019s brief also referred to a \u201chistory of control, collaboration and coordination\u201d between the groups and \u201cpolitical campaign committees that may potentially include judicial candidates.\u201d The brief describes persons who worked for both a supreme court campaign and the John Doe groups. A redacted portion quotes an email that seems to provide evidence that a group was \u201cactively involved\u201d in a justice\u2019s reelection campaign. Other redacted portions seem to describe contacts and \u201cclose connections\u201d between the justice\u2019s campaign and John Doe groups, before concluding:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: blue;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/cLO1sv9.jpg\" width=\"425\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Justice David Prosser was up for reelection in 2011, when Walker faced a  recall election. At the time, the Wisconsin Supreme Court was hearing a  legal challenge to Walker\u2019s controversial law restricting collective  bargaining rights. Both sides in the debate\u2014unions and big  business\u2014spent big in the supreme court election. Two of the John Doe  groups spent around <a href=\"http:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2015\/05\/scott-walker-wisconsin-supreme-court\">$2.5 million<\/a> to reelect Justice Prosser\u2014much more than the justice\u2019s own campaign.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Anyone wanna take money on whether David Prosser, who has been alleged to have physically assaulted a fellow justice in the court offices, is going to recuse himself?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll take 5:1 odds that he won&#8217;t recuse himself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scott Walker is under investigation for possible illegal coordination between his campaign, and so-called &#8220;independent&#8221; campaign groups. Well, the prosecutor who is investigating the matter, it is called a &#8220;John Doe&#8221; proceeding under Wisconsin law, but this is being challenged in court. The Wisconsin Supreme Court is to here this challenge, but it now appears &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1094,970,1051,972],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-finance","category-corruption","category-hypocrisy","category-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182811"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}