What's New

August 11, 2008

Updated state senate and assembly challengers (through A73 only, I'll get to the rest of them soon, but you can see the state list HERE)

February 19, 2008

State Senate passed SB171 public funding of judicial campaigns

July 16, 2007

Updated Legislative pages to include the vote for/against Healthy Wisconsin

March 21, 2007

Updated all assembly and senate pages with the SB1 Ethics bill votes:

 

November 11, 2006

As you can well imagine, many changes in the assembly and senate races:

Senate: wisconsin_state_senators.htm

Assembly: wisconsin_state_representatives.htm

 

September 29, 2006

Updated all assembly and senate pages to include only the winners of the primary.

No further changes are expected between now and the November election.

 

September 18, 2006

Updates to individual assembly and senate pages have been taking place, but unfortunately I haven't been updating this page. I'll try to do better. As soon as the Elections board releases the results of the primaries I'll update the complete list.

 

August 19, 2006

Updated all legislative and Governor pages with late answers to the League of Women questionnaire.

 

August 16, 2006

Updated assembly pages

 

August 1, 2006

Updated all state legislators with the survey results of questions posed by the League of Women Voters, Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and other reform groups. It's not a pretty sight. Interestingly, Republicans failed to participate much more than Democrats, but given the sensitivity of the questions on ethics and reform, and their desire not to answer them, that is understandable. See all survey questions at the WDC web site.

 

July 31, 2006

MARK GREEN ON STEM CELL RESEARCH

Read the complete article from this excerpt from The Capital Times

But for out-and-out lying to voters, it's hard to top Green's statement supporting Bush's veto in which Green said, incredibly:

"Stem cell research holds the key to treating some of the most debilitating diseases of mankind, which is why I have strongly supported expanding research into this exciting new medical frontier."

Everything Green said about the promise and excitement of stem cell research revolutionizing medicine and curing diseases was absolutely true. Everything he said about his support for such research was absolutely false.

Not only did Green vote against the bill Bush vetoed that would have expanded stem cell research, but Green voted seven times previously to ban and even to criminalize stem cell research.

Governor Doyle's Firewall is broken How many times can he declare innocence?

Future Generations Deserve a Democracy; Not a Plutocracy WisOpinion.com
 

July 23, 2006

Updated all incumbent pages with new challenger information. Excluded those that did not complete the filing of papers.

Added: Project Vote Smart Interest group ratings to US Congressmen

July 10, 2006

Added to Taxes:

All income should be taxed the same (wages, capital gains, interest from savings, investments, etc) and the current caps on social security and FICA taxes should be totally removed.

July 9, 2006

Added to main page:

Also understand this: We are simply not going to get our politician's
attention until we start affecting their jobs at the polls. We must
throw them out of office, and we must start with those who
have decent challengers in November!

July 4, 2006

Added to Doyle:

Doyle and ethics: The Republican assembly voted to kill SB1 Ethics bill, and Governor Doyle seems to like that just fine. While he has the option to force a special session to take up the bill, he refuses to do so claiming that the Republicans will just gut the enforcement provisions anyway. So what? Let them do it and face the consequences at the polls in November. But at least Doyle should do his job correctly. But perhaps he (and other Dems) likes the weak ethics laws just as they are. Can anyone say "Travelgate?"

June 27, 2006

Added to US Rep Pages:

Line Item Veto votes: All Republicans voted for it (bad), all Democrats voted against it (good).

Permanent Estate Tax: All Republicans voted for it (bad), all Democrats voted against it (good).

The above judgment is made because the Republicans voted in favor of the moneyed interests in both cases, while the Democrats voted in favor of the public's best interest.

June 25, 2006

Added to Sensenbrenner page:

And this from some unhappy Sensenbrenner folks (clearly left wing, but judge for yourself)

 

June 24, 2004

Added link to rebuttal letter by Lohman regarding Kaufert's stance on SB1 ethics bill (that he first supported then voted against)

 

June 23, 2004

Added to Governor's page: Green's ties to Tom DeLay

Added new link: All Reforms

MONEY!!! Click here to see who's running the state.

 

June 18, 2006

Added: Political Money Line profiles to all Congressional pages

 

June 15, 2006

Added to Rep. Dean Kaufert page:

Incumbent Dean Kaufert invokes the Kerry Defense. He really, really, really didn't mean to vote against the SB1 Ethics Bill since he really did support it. He was just trickin' us. On June 15 he tried to cover his blatant vote against SB1 with this editorial in the Appleton Post Crescent. Give me a break, Dean. You voted against it, now stick with your convictions even if your constituents did get screwed by your vote. But be honest about it; you simply don't want "legitimate" oversight! (See Kaufert's editorial here).

 

June 9, 2006

Added to main page:

Radio Interview: Lohman on WRJN Racine (.mp3  8.1mb) 47 minutes

Added eNewsletter #14

 

June 5, 2006

Added to Sensenbrenner page:

Bankruptcy Laws:

In 25 years in business I've eaten thousands of dollars of other people's debt, so I understand the flippant attitude of those who spend money like it's going out of style and then file for bankruptcy. But the bankruptcy law authored by Sensenbrenner is heartless and one-sided. Harvard University found that over 90% of bankruptcies involve heavy debt because of health issues and our out-of-control health care system, unemployment or divorce. Over 50% involved high medical bills.

Thanks to a government hands-off policy, credit-card companies have total freedom to charge whatever interests rates suit their fancy, and reach 30% frequently and have been reported as high as 600%. All while the CEOs in these industries pocket $200 million per year and more in salaries and perks. No, they are not hurting. Nor is Sensenbrenner or those of us who do not carry a credit-card balance. But special provisions should have been included to handle these cases and those of our soldiers who had to take a drastic salary cut when they went off to serve our country. But the people who won this issue are the industries and their lobbyists.

Most of us could accept even bad laws if we knew that money was not changing hands at the political level, but over $200 million per year in lobbying and campaign contributions are spent by these industries to ensure that our federal representatives protect and enhance their bottom line.

Or that the politicians did not own stock in the industries involved. Sensenbrenner owns over $250 million stock in the banking and health care industries, which is likely to give him a vested interest in the outcome of the bankruptcy law he authored.

The Democrats did not show any better on this, as enough of them crossed the political divide to avoid a Senate filibuster (most notably Joe Lieberman). Both parties are addicted to campaign cash. It's funny how that works.

Added to Ethics page:

Spivak & Bice, Story on Scott Jenson and his "part time" job working for a lobbying group which paid him $114,000 last year. That the state ethics commission approved this without calling it a conflict of interest is amazing. Just what does it take for legislators to step over the line? See the complete story here. This is clearly the best reason imaginable as to why we need an ethics commission that does not report to the state legislature it is charged with overseeing.

 

June 4, 2006

Added to opening page:

Why should you care?

Disclosure: I am a center-right Republican that voted for Bush twice (though at this point I wish I could have a do-over). But the Republicans look worse here because they are in power and the party blocking reform. Next year it may be the Democrats taking center stage. Were I to have a political choice it would be for a strong third-party reform candidate in all seats. I do not like our very costly and ineffective duopoly. Jack Lohman

Added: Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters scorecard to all state senators and representatives pages

Added: US Public Interest Group's scorecard to all US Reps pages

 

June 3, 2006

Added: Sensenbrenner supported a Bush tax cut of $264 billion in 2004, at the same time he voted against extending unemployment benefits by six months at a time more jobs were being outsourced. The tax cuts were 40 times the cost of the benefits, but Jim came through for the corporate campaign contributors.

 

May 31, 2006

Expanded Sensenbrenner page

Added Wisconsin's Piglets

 

May 30, 2006

Added: Sensenbrenner should first work to clean up the political system

Added: In Taxes:

Frankly, a better system would be to put corporate taxes on a sliding scale depending on the ratio of their highest-paid executive to lowest-paid worker compensation. If it remains below 100-to-1, the taxes are zero. As the ratio increases so does the tax rate, maxing out at a minimum of 30% when the ratio exceeds 300-to-1, as it frequently does today. That would surely give the Boards something to think about when setting CEO salaries. Of course, safeguards would be needed to prevent management outsourcing to circumvent the process, and all compensation would have to be included (like benefits, stock options, bonuses, pensions and severance packages). If the company is making gobs of money and can afford to pay windfall CEO salaries, they can also afford to pay higher taxes.

 

May 25, 2006

Softened the intro (okay, it's not 100% that are undeserving, just 94%)

Described the grading system on the list of senators and representatives.

 

May 24, 2006

Updated and expanded Governor Doyle's page with Project Vote-Smart data

Updated Tammy Baldwin's page

 

May 21, 2006

Finished Wisconsin Senators pages

Added CommonDreams.org scores to Sensenbrenner, Ryan, Baldwin and Green pages

 

May 20, 2006

To each US Rep's page

To each state senator and assemblyman's page

Added much to US Rep Sensenbrenner page

Added links to the Health Care page

Added  Lohman's testimony AB626 at www.ThrowTheRascalsOut.org/testimony_ab626.htm

 

May 19, 2006

 

May 17, 2006