In Scott Walker's Wisconsin, the First Amendment Only Applies to Certain People

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Our semi-regular weekly survey of what's goin' down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin' gets done, and where half-wracked prejudice leaps forth.

We begin in New York, where there is a fine battle brewing between New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo, whose picture you will find if you search the catechism of clichés for the phrase, "Too Cute By Half." The issue is the fact that New York City has mayoral control over the public schools. Some folks in the charter industry find this less than convenient and have been working Albany to get their way. From Gothamist:

The Democratic majority in the state Assembly had sought to take the management structure of the city's schools out of consideration, because Republicans have used the issue of mayoral control as a way to extract concessions for the charter school industry, by tying it to routine tax extensions. Senate Republicans, tacitly aided by a group of rogue Democrats who bucked the extender plan, played chicken with mayoral control, trying to link its approval to greater allowances for charter operators, even though no legislators have seriously argued for a return to the old Board of Ed system.

Naturally, Cuomo feels most strongly both ways.

The Independent Democratic Conference and Governor Cuomo have both wanly said they support mayoral control while declining to fight alongside Heastie to dissociate the issue from bargaining over charter school regulation. State Republicans, the IDC, and Cuomo, have all reaped large campaign contributions from financiers and corporate bigwigs who support charter schools. There are currently over 200 charter schools in New York City.

The IDC is a collection of putatively Democratic state legislators, the only apparent function of which seems to be helping Cuomo not to be too much of a Democrat himself. The only thing I can think of that would guarantee to unite the squabbling factions of the national Democratic party would be to have Andrew Cuomo run for president.

Against all odds, let's scoot on down to Mississippi for some good news. No kidding. Seems there was a clean coal plant that Mississippi didn't know what to do with, largely because clean coal is an industry myth and because it's a ridiculously expensive one. (Maybe there was something that kept it from being suitable for a prison. I kid! I kid!) So here's what they did: They eliminated…the coal! ThinkProgress takes it from there.

Conceived over a decade ago when natural gas and renewables were both more expensive, Southern Company's Kemper plant was originally supposed to cost $2.4 billion. It broke ground in 2010 and, like most clean coal projects, was plagued from the very first by mismanagement, delays, and cost overruns. By 2015, the 582-megawatt plant was running primarily on natural gas because the coal-to-gas part of the scheme had proved too challenging. Last summer, the New York Times published a scathing expose on the project, run by Southern Company's Mississippi Power unit. Internal emails, documents, and secretly recorded conversations provided by a whistleblower "show that the plant's owners drastically understated the project's cost and timetable and repeatedly tried to conceal problems as they emerged." On Wednesday, the Mississippi Public Service Commissioners passed a motion telling its lawyers to draft an order requiring a solution "that eliminates ratepayer risk for unproven technology" and that would "allow only for operation of a natural gas facility at the Kemper Project location."

OK, so a lot of money went up the stack before Mississippi tumbled to this solution. This reminds me of the story of the mule and the two-by-four. Sometimes, you have to get their attention first.

Sliding northwards into the newly insane state of North Carolina, we discover that the state legislature there (Art Pope, proprietor) is still monkeying around with the powers of the state's Democratic governor. Winning While Democratic (WWD) was not supposed to happen, dammit. Here's Slate with the latest shenanigans.

Cooper sued to block the new laws, and the state judiciary has mostly sided with him, striking down a slew of measures that restricted his ability to govern the state. Now, the state GOP believes it has devised a solution: stop Cooper from filing suit against unconstitutional laws in the first place. This week, the General Assembly's Republican leaders released their final budget, which includes a brazen plan to thwart the governor in several ways. First, the budget prevents Cooper from using the governor's office attorneys without the General Assembly's permission. Second, the budget prevents Cooper from using "lapsed salary savings"—money saved when the state pays an employee less than it had budgeted—to hire outside counsel. These provisions effectively prevent Cooper from suing the legislature to halt unconstitutional laws. In order for him to do so, the General Assembly would have to give its permission to be sued, or Cooper would have to pay private lawyers out of pocket.

The North Carolina legislature is the counter-argument against the story of the mule and the two-by-four. No matter how often you hit them over the head, and various courts have done it 12 times in the past year, you still don't get their attention. Sometimes, the mule is just dumb.

From there, we skip up to Wisconsin, where the state's university system remains stubbornly unimpressed with the Republican legislature and with the leadership of Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage this particular Midwest subsidiary. You may have been following the various fights on college campuses regarding "controversial" speakers and the reaction against them. (If you're a regular reader of right-wing media, you believe that mere anarchy has been loosed upon the world. Just lie down with a cold compress for a while.) There are "free speech" advocates on both sides of the big ditch here, exercising their First Amendment rights at the top of their lungs and, occasionally, exercising their First Amendment right of assembly in a fashion thought to be too vigorous.

Luckily, the Wisconsin Republicans have a solution: Throw out the latter group. From The Capital Times:

The controversial legislation has drawn criticism from those who say it would curb free speech rather than expand it and that it would stand in the way of the UW System's authority to manage its own campuses. Its supporters say its goal is to encourage free expression and to ensure all viewpoints can be heard at public universities. "Today we are ensuring that simply because you are a young adult on a college campus, your constitutional rights do not go away," said bill author Rep. Jesse Kremer, R-Kewaskum.

Watch now as Kremer deftly ties his own shoes together.

Under the measure, students who repeatedly engage in "violent or other disorderly conduct that materially and substantially disrupts the free expression of others" would be subjected to discipline that, on a third incident, would result in expulsion. The bill requires UW System campuses to launch investigations and hold hearings the second time a student is alleged to have interfered with the expressive rights of others. The hearings and their outcomes would be reported annually to a newly formed Council on Free Expression.

You see the joker in the deck there, right? "Other disorderly conduct." As defined by what—"a Council On Free Expression."

A what? Thought police! Somebody wake up Ben Shapiro. There's work to be done in Madison! Of course, Wisconsin is not the only test case.

Rep. Terese Berceau, D-Madison, said the country has faced free speech struggles throughout its history, but they have been resolved without legislative intervention. "This is really part of a political program," Berceau said. "It's part of the continuing effort to really establish a conservative stronghold in our country on every institution, and now they're going after or universities." The bill is similar to others being considered throughout the country, modeled after sample legislation prepared by the conservative Goldwater Institute, and takes some pieces from a provision members of the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee removed from Gov. Scott Walker's budget proposal.

Of all the techniques of artificial victimization common to modern conservatism, the whole "political correctness" thing is one of the most threadbare, and this attempt at legislating away the parts of the First Amendment you don't like is the best evidence of that we've seen in a while.

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, where Blog Official Derelict Oil Well Artist Friedman of the Plains brings us the tale of Rogers County Sheriff Scott Walton, who is not working and playing well with others, as the Tulsa World explains.

The telephone exchange stemmed from a May 25 incident in which a deputy with the Rogers County Sheriff's Office drove past Officer Craig Heatherly, who attempted to flag down the deputy for backup in a gun-related traffic stop, according to an internal police email. However, dash cam video allegedly shows the deputy driving past without stopping to help… In the cellphone audio, Walton can be heard telling Heatherly that he "handled it wrong" and he "owe(d) the man an apology" in reference to the deputy. Heatherly responded that he and Walton would have to "agree to disagree on that one." "We'll agree to disagree," Walton said, "but I do agree that you're a f---- — coward. OK."

I have to agree with FOTP here. What makes it art is "We'll have to agree to disagree…you fcking coward!" From NPR to Deadwood in one complex sentence. Awesome.

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.

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Charles P. Pierce

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.