Who Poisoned Wisconsin?

I like “Who do its” mysteries to tickle our deductive processes, the thrill of trying to solve the crime before the end of the book or the TV program or movie. But a “who done it” where you can’t find out the culprit, the poisoner, the bad guy is frustrating. There are slew of websites describing such unsolvable “who done its” right now. The culprit in this piece is Wisconsin, but it is going on throughout the country and people seek to find out about “dark money” and who is behind it and for what purposes?

One of the sleuths on the Wisconsin case is Mike McCabe who has an office in Madison called Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. He has searched the money trails in Wisconsin political campaign history and found some very interesting things. He predicts there may be about $80 million spent on the recall here is the cheese state. Big money, most of which we do not know where it originates, probably most outside of the state.

McCabe talks about the good old days when the late Bill Proxmire, a U.S. senator for 31 years who declined campaign contributions and never spend more the a couple of hundred bucks in any of his 6 campaigns. He just campaigned and met people all over the state proud of his blisters and calluses from hand-shaking. Republican Lee Dreyfus, governor from 1979 to 1983 was known for his beat up red bus and traveling band to campaign.

Big money did not enter the picture until the mid 1990s and the 2000s with governors Tommy Thompson and Jim Doyle. As late as 1995 you could track down every dollar donated.

And, of course, now we have the Supreme Court 2010 Citizens United decision and the dams have been broken for big money to dominate elections. The dark money, money from unknown sources pours in enriching the media.

So be careful of the cheese you eat it may be tainted with the poison.

At little data for you:

Total raised by super PACs (so far): $218 million 
Ratio of spending by conservative super PACs to liberal super PACs: 7.7 to 1 
Total raised by Barack Obama: $217.1 million 
Total raised by Mitt Romney: $97.9 million 
Total raised by congressional candidates: $639.4 million 
Total raised by state candidates: $378.6 million

Sources: Center for Responsive Politics, National Institute for Money in State Politics

And then we have the ravings of big money billionaires whining about being found out in their giving, if they are found out. i.e. “This idea of giving public beatings has been around for a long time…You go back to the Dark Ages when they put these people in the stocks or whatever they did, or publicly humiliated them as a deterrent to everybody else—watch this—watch what we do to the guy who did this.”
— Frank VanderSloot, CEO of the direct-marketing company Melaleuca, speaking to Politico about the public humilation of being a Romney megadonor.

And we learn that $1 billion planned to be spent by conservative groups for the White House. Politic reports that $400 million from Koch brothers dark-money efforts.

Half of Scott Walker’s comes from out of state Dark money according to Mother Jones.