Don't stop Capitol cleanup now

The conviction of former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen on three felonies, and Republican stalwart Sherry Schultz on one, must be the beginning of the cleanup of corrupt political behavior, not the end.

A jury has spoken up on their involvement in a series of illegal activities that involved spending taxpayer's money on political campaigning.

Now the public must speak up to eradicate the corrupt but not necessarily illegal thinking that got Jensen and Schultz to where they are today: convicted felons awaiting sentencing.

The corrupt thinking is an "us" v. "them" philosophy that pervades state politics today. What politicians do is assemble enough special interests in the "us" column to win an election or win a majority in their house of the Legislature.

It doesn't make any difference how wacky one of these groups is, or how contrary its views are to those of the citizens in general. Citizens in general don't vote -- or at least enough of them don't vote so they're ciphers in the cynical calculus of election strategy as practiced by Scott Jensen and his cohorts.

The caucus scandal merely moved the cynical calculus of "us" v. "them" politics out of legislative offices and into the private sector. Sherry Schultz, for example, got a $94,000-a-year job with the State Republican Party. This says tons about the ethical sensitivity of the State Republican Party. Maybe Schultz can stay on the payroll if she is sent to prison.

Of course, the Wlisconsin Republican Party is not alone. The number of ethically disabled people who tromped through Judge Steven Ebert's courtroom was truly amazing. At the top of the list was Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, who demonstrated in his testimony that he doesn't know the difference between right and wrong, between character and charlatanism (if that's a word), between the public trust and betrayal of the public trust. Prosser should resign from the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

But, most of all, everyone associated with the abuse of power Jensen's conviction represented should resign from office. Not because they're all a bunch of crooks, but because politics should be about the best and the brightest, not the crassest, most servile and dumbest.

People who serve in public office should consider it the highest honor of their lives, not an opportunity to pay back political allies and plot the next political victory.

The sad thing about Jensen is that a brilliant human being who led a blessed life didn't have anything better to do with it than play Machiavelli. The tragedy is that he squandered the opportunity to do things for the state of Wisconsin that (I know it's hard for political animals to believe this is possible) cross party lines.

It's time for Jensen's colleagues who didn't get caught, and even for those who didn't do anything illegal, to turn over a new leaf and to start working for the people who pay their salaries, not the people who finance their campaigns.