Here's to the losers on ethics reform

State Rep. Mark Pocan reviews winners and losers in the battle over ethics reform in Wisconsin. You can read about the winners here. The losers are always more fun:

Losers

The Public - The “business-as-usual” approach of legislative Republicans means no real reform will be in sight in 2006, with a strong likelihood that the practices by legislative leaders that occurred under Scott Jensen will continue by the GOP in the Wisconsin legislature. Once again, the GOP chooses the special interests over the public.

Assembly Republicans - A whole lot of Republican incumbents are going to have to explain why they killed ethics reform at the same time their legislative leadership was being sentenced to jail and prison. My guess is that at least a half a dozen GOP legislators lose this fall just on reform, largely due to their lack of passing a real reform bill. Good riddance.

And, the five GOP members that did vote with Democrats to allow SB-1 up for a vote may have a hard time too. How is it that they voted against letting the bill come to a vote in closed caucus, then voted for debate on the floor, then voted THREE times against the bill as it was amended to other “ethics” bills? Fool me once, shame on you…fool me twice, go find another job.

Speaker John Gard - One of the final acts of Gard’s tenure as speaker was to kill ethics reform. No wonder he’s getting his behind kicked by one of his Democrat opponents. Advice to Gard: You might want to see if there’s a Wal-Mart near Peshtigo hiring next January.