Midwestern Republicans Try To Kneecap New Democratic Governors

Lame-duck Republican legislatures in two Midwestern states where Democrats seized key state offices in November are trying to kneecap the incoming leaders and change election rules, aiming to consolidate GOP power despite the election results.
In Wisconsin, Republicans aim to limit early voting, change the date of the state’s presidential primary to help a conservative member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court win re-election, limit the governor’s ability to make certain appointments and block Gov.-elect Tony Evers from eliminating a state economic development agency.
To the east, Michigan’s GOP legislators are looking to limit the power of the state’s attorney general and secretary of state over lawsuits and campaign finance reforms. Democrats will take over from Republicans in the two offices.
In both states, the lawmakers are mimicking what happened in North Carolina in 2016, after Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, ousted Republican Pat McCrory. Before Cooper took office, the GOP-dominated Legislature moved to limit his power to make appointments, and it has since consistently tried to alter election rules to help Republicans.


More at: https://www.yahoo.com/news/midwester...002316310.html

Republicans in the Wisconsin state Senate rushed to approve 82 of Gov. Scott Walker’s appointees, a month after voters chose not to reelect the Republican.

That’s 82 confirmations in one day, just weeks before a new governor, of a different political party, is set to take office. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has the full list of these appointees here.The appointees include two members of the board that oversees the state’s public universities. One of those positions has been vacant for more than a year, but Walker just nominated his choice this week. He also made one of his top aides, Ellen Nowak, who is currently Department of Administration secretary, the new head of the state Public Service Commission.

Walker also recently gave the outgoing attorney general a seat on a court in Waukesha County ― a position that doesn’t require state Senate approval.

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/wisconsin-rep...222717009.html

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Like little kids, if they can no longer play with their toys then they'll try to break them.

Unfortunately those toys are all paid for by our taxes.

In Michigan the lame duck proposals to modify the just voted in Marijuana ballot changes would require a super majority and the GOP doesn't have that in both houses. Still they are busy with many last minute things that don't require a super majority.

Republican legislators in Michigan are moving swiftly to weaken public-sector unions before a Democrat takes over the governor’s mansion next year — part of a series of brazen legislative maneuvers this week undermining Democratic victories in last month’s elections.
Unions say that the two bills are part of a lame-duck power grab aimed at reducing their membership and political clout while GOP leaders have the chance. Once Gov.-elect Gretchen Whitmer (D) assumes office in January, she will wield veto power over the Republican majorities in both chambers of the statehouse.
One of the bills passed out of a state Senate committee this week would require unions representing government workers to hold and pay for recertification elections every other year.
Under the proposal, if the union doesn’t win votes from a majority of workers in the bargaining unit, regardless of how many workers vote in the election, it would lose its status as the workers’ designated representative, a process known as decertification.


The other bill would ban what’s known as union release time. As in other states, Michigan law allows unions to bargain an allotted amount of time in which certain members can handle union business during normal work hours. For instance, the president of a large local teachers’ union might spend part of her day teaching and part of her day managing the union.
Union critics have targeted release time ― known as official time in the federal government ― for years, arguing that tax dollars shouldn’t go toward union administrative work.

More at: https://www.yahoo.com/news/michigan-...205137589.html

Republicans pushing to hang on to power in Wisconsin and Michigan aren't stopping at curbing the authority of incoming Democratic governors. They're also trying to hamstring Democrats who are about to take over as attorneys general.The moves underscore how attorneys general have become powerful partisan weapons on both the state and national levels.
Republicans in both states say they need to reduce the powers of their Democratic attorneys general and strengthen their own authority to preserve GOP initiatives such as voter ID and to prevent more litigation challenging President Donald Trump's policies.

Wisconsin's attorney general-elect, Josh Kaul, campaigned on promises to pull the state out of a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act and to get tougher on polluters. His counterpart in Michigan, Dana Nessel, vowed not to defend state laws she considers unconstitutional and pledged to sue the Trump administration "all day, every day."
Groups of Democratic attorneys general have filed dozens of multistate lawsuits against the Trump administration. This week Democratic attorneys general planned to file subpoenas seeking records from the Trump Organization and the Treasury Department as part of a lawsuit accusing Trump of profiting off the presidency.
The midterm election results put the GOP on the defensive. Within weeks, anxious Republican lawmakers started meeting to seek ways to weaken all four offices in lame-duck legislative sessions.
The bills they proposed followed the lead of North Carolina, where Republicans adopted similar legislation over the last two years. In 2016, state GOP lawmakers passed lame-duck measures reducing incoming Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's powers. Last year, they included language in the state budget that gives final decision-making in lawsuits challenging state laws to legislative leaders rather than Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein.


In an all-night floor session, Wisconsin Republicans this week approved sweeping legislation to eliminate the state Justice Department's solicitor general's office, a tool the defeated Republican attorney general, Brad Schimel, used to join highly partisan lawsuits such as the ACA challenge. The move ensures Kaul cannot use the office to attack Republican laws.
Lawmakers could intervene in any lawsuit, setting themselves up to defend their policies if Kaul does not. Kaul also would need legislative approval before settling cases. The bills await outgoing Republican Gov. Scott Walker's signature.

In Michigan, Republicans are advancing their own measure that would also allow GOP lawmakers to intervene in lawsuits, ensuring they could step in if Nessel will not defend laws. The bill could win Senate approval as early as next week.

More at: https://www.yahoo.com/news/gop-tries...-politics.html

Quote:

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Originally Posted by aGameOfThrones

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NEUTER was the word in other headlines about this...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed a sweeping package of Republican-written legislation Friday that restricts early voting and weakens the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general.

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/walker-signs-...230358640.html

Michigan Republicans moved Wednesday to curtail ballot initiatives by advancing a measure limiting how many signatures could come from any one region of the state, the latest proposal assailed by critics as an unconstitutional, lame-duck power grab from voters or incoming Democratic officeholders.The House passed the bill 60-49 along mostly party lines in a late-night session hours after hundreds of activists rallied at the Capitol. The new legislation was sent to the GOP-controlled Senate for consideration next week.
Republican lawmakers are trying to make it harder to mount ballot drives after voters last month legalized marijuana for recreational use, overhauled the process of redrawing district lines that the GOP dominated in recent decades and expanded voting options. It is seen by critics as the newest attempt to diminish the left's influence before Democrats come into power in Michigan and Wisconsin, moves that have gained national attention and have sparked protests in both states.
The bill to tighten requirements for ballot proposals initially drew opposition from across the political spectrum at a committee hearing, though the House then made changes to placate Right to Life of Michigan.


The legislation would affect ballot committees initiating constitutional amendments, bills and referendums by capping the number of signatures that could come from an individual congressional district at 15 percent. There is no geographic threshold currently, and the measure could dilute the ability to circulate petitions primarily in more heavily populated Democratic-leaning areas. Petition circulators also would have to file an affidavit with the state if they are a paid signature gatherer.
The bill was backed by business groups and Republicans who said it would add much-need transparency and accountability to the petition-gathering process and ensure statewide input earlier on regarding ballot drives often funded by out-of-state interests.
"As a member from a more rural area, it's not very often that people come to our area of the state to locate signatures and place these types of measures on the ballot," said the sponsor, Rep. James Lower of Cedar Lake. "I think voters — whether they are in the U.P., Marquette or in Alma or Greenville in my district or down in Detroit — all deserve a fair shake in this petition-gathering process."

The House vote, which occurred during a marathon session, came a week after GOP legislators maneuvered to significantly scale back minimum wage and paid sick time laws that began as ballot initiatives. At the behest of the business lobby, the Legislature preemptively adopted the wage and leave measures before the election, rather than let them go to a public vote, so it would be easier to change them after — an unprecedented strategy that is sure to spark lawsuits if Republican Gov. Rick Snyder signs the bills. GOP lawmakers also have advanced bills that would strip or could dilute the authority of Democrats taking over the secretary of state, attorney general and governor offices — though it is uncertain if they will win final approval before legislators adjourn next week.


Regardless of whether the latest Michigan measure is enacted into law, it already will be tougher to qualify measures for the ballot in 2020 and 2022 because of high turnout for November's midterm election. The minimum number of valid signatures needed in Michigan is tied to the number of votes for governor. A group pushing a constitutional amendment will now need roughly 425,000 signatures — the most ever — and well above the 315,000 that were required in 2016 and 2018.
Also Wednesday, the House voted to prohibit petition circulators from misleading voters about their initiative and to require paid circulators to wear ID badges that say they are paid signature collectors and that identify the person or entity paying them.

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/michigan-gop-...-politics.html

Who were the Governors before the Governors were Republicans?

Let's see, is Minnesota being mentioned in the mix? No? Then that must mean:

IT WAS DEMOCRATS.

And was the legislature likewise switched from Dem to Rep when the governorship did? Yes, in most cases that's exactly what happens.

And so WAS THERE A LAME DUCK SESSION AT THAT TIME?

Oh.


Umm.


Yeah there was.


And they did the exact same things.


But there were no news articles about it, were there? We didn't have bizarre things like the minutia of the Wisconsin dairy land becoming national news at that time, when the Wisconsin Democrats were doing their lame duck session, did we?

And, sidenote: they weren't just confirming nominees like the AWFUL Repos. What did they do? Oh, they literally sprung a guy from prison so he could vote to pass a new union contract to try to prevent the new governor, Walker, from being able to do anything about the out-of-control unions. Like, that's actually interesting enough it could have legit been national news. But wasn't.

Just shows, here's the decryption key to all stuff like this; all media and news in fact:

We have one party in this country.

The Democrats are the Inner Party. They are in the main-stream, the central flow of the social river, and

The Republicans are the Outer Party. They serve as a kind of hapless punching bag for the Inner Party.

The Inner Party will always be in control, because they are Inner. They aren't trying -- stupidly -- to fight the logic of the system. They embrace the system, are embraced by it, and are one symbiotic whole.

The Outer Party will always be impotent and laughable. Unless..... unless something changes.

One potential change: someone realizes this one day. Someone who doesn't like the game, who doesn't agree with it, and wants to destroy it. This someone having immense amounts of money and power would be helpful.

Another potential change is if the Inner Party and their Main Stream decides to direct society in a direction that nobody seems to, well, like. If they get so unhinged and detached from reality they are devoting themselves to issues that no normal man is ever going to be able to relate to, like making the world a loving haven for chopping off one's genitals and using the wrong bathroom, well then, the entire society may decide to dump them.

So... there's some thoughts.

On Friday, Wisconsin’s conservative-leaning Supreme Court said the Republicans had behaved within the law, ending, at least for the moment, a chapter that had roiled Wisconsin.
The state’s fierce partisan tug-of-war was being watched closely by political analysts, in part because the state, which Donald Trump narrowly won in 2016, is considered a critical battleground in the 2020 presidential race.
After Scott Walker, the former governor and a Republican, lost his bid for re-election last November, his colleagues in the state legislature pushed through a series of measures in a special session just before the incoming governor, Tony Evers, a Democrat, was to take office.
The laws were sweeping, and they cut deeply into the powers Democrats thought they won when they prevailed on Election Day. The Republicans limited the new governor’s ability to withdraw the state from lawsuits and his administration’s rule-making authority, and they cleared the way for lawmakers to hire outside lawyers to intervene in certain lawsuits.
As a series of lawsuits was filed objecting to the provisions, a circuit court judge had delayed their implementation. But the Supreme Court reversed that decision, saying that the Republicans had carried out a perfectly legal exercise of legislative power.

Other legal challenges to the laws passed during the lame-duck session remain. But a liberal justice will exit the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the coming weeks, and she will be replaced by a conservative.

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/republican-la...093104790.html

Wisconsin Republican state lawmakers are suing the Democratic attorney general, arguing that he's not complying with laws passed during a lame-duck legislative session in December that limited his and the incoming governor's powers shortly before they took office.Republicans who control the Legislature filed the lawsuit Thursday against Attorney General Josh Kaul with the conservative-controlled state Supreme Court.
It's the first lawsuit related to the lame-duck session filed by Republicans who called the session and supported it. Democrats and their allies have filed four other lawsuits fighting the laws.
The Supreme Court in June ruled the session was legal, and nearly all of the laws enacted remain in effect while the lawsuits are pending. Republicans filed their lawsuit directly with the court on the day that Justice Brian Hagedorn took office, increasing the conservative majority to 5-2.
Republicans argue that Kaul isn't following provisions of the law requiring him to get permission from lawmakers before settling lawsuits and giving the Legislature control over settlement money.
"It is egregious that Attorney General Kaul is playing a game of political keep away with potentially up to $20 million in funds that belong to hard-working Wisconsinites," Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said in a joint statement announcing the lawsuit.

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/wisconsin-rep...123417798.html