Reclaim Democracy!

Wisconsin’s Spring Election Decides Pivotal Supreme Court Seat, Voting Rights

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On April 4 Wisconsin voters will determine the ideological balance of the state Supreme Court in an election certain to impact critical state issues and the potential to impact national governance. Conservative justices have held a 4-3 majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court since 2008, but with one of those four retiring, the open position is a “swing seat” potentially shifting control when the new justice takes a seat this summer.

Thanks to one conservative judge refusing to join a scheme to overturn 2020 election results election-deniers on the bench, the court declined (4-3) to disqualify more than 200,000 ballots from Wisconsin’s two most populated and diverse counties. But the court has repeatedly issued anti-democracy rulings enabling voter suppression, including a 2022 ruling that outlawed the ballot drop boxes used by 40 percent of all voters in 2020. The court also enabled legislators to ban voters from having someone else mail their absentee ballot or hand it to an elections clerk. 

The court upheld blatant gerrymandering by Republican legislators that virtually guarantees them a legislative majority in an evenly split state. While citizens statewide re-elected Democratic Governor Tony Evers by more than a three percent margin last year, gerrymandering helped the GOP take 64 of 99 legislative seats.

Abortion law is another issue the court may address in its next session. An 1849 Wisconsin law criminalizes abortion and subjects healthcare workers to prosecution and prison for assisting one. The law went back into effect as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v Jackson ruling last year and a lawsuit seeking to overturn the ban will almost certainly reach the supreme court this year or next.

Once elected, justices serve 10-year terms. While the elections are formally nonpartisan, political parties and PACs are fully engaged in the race, which has demolished the previous record to become the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history. 

The candidates are progressive Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Janet Protasiewicz and conservative Dan Kelly, who previously served four years on the supreme court after former Governor Scott Walker (R) appointed him to complete the term of an outgoing justice, then lost his bid for election to a full term. Kelly personally promoted election fraud lies and the scheme to nominate fake electors to vote for Donald Trump in 2020.

Here’s the essential information for Wisconsin voters and a news report on the sole debate between the candidates (with video).

Can a Deadly Storm Again Spark Progress for Justice?

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Hurricane Ida Exposes the Urgency of Equitable Infrastructure

By Jeff Milchen
September 8, 2021

“If you have already evacuated, do not return,” declared Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards on Tuesday, instructing residents who fled coastal communities before Hurricane Ida’s landfall. Edwards’ advice seemed healthy for an area enveloped by flooding, a heat/humidity index exceeding 100 degrees, and no electricity to help stay cool or sustain fresh food.

Yet many evacuees felt compelled to return home, even under dangerous and uncomfortable conditions. The states absorbing Ida’s first U.S. impact and storm surge: Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi are among the poorest, ranking 3rd, 4th and 5th in percentage of residents receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP) benefits. 

About 73% of SNAP recipients in these states reside with children and 36% are with family members who are elderly or have disabilities, making any homeless span especially difficult even without economic stresses. Governor Edwards offered no guidance on how those folks might pay for scarce lodging, transportation, and feed themselves away from their kitchens with an average SNAP benefit of $1.40 per meal. (Benefits will rise nationally in 2022 under new rules helping recipients meet current standards for a healthy diet.)

These factors clearly contributed to needless deaths during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. When researchers examined why many Black residents did not evacuate New Orleans before that storm, they found lack of resources and fear of discrimination away from home were two of the top four reasons.

The New England and Mid-Atlantic states hammered by Ida on her northward journey are wealthier, but regardless of location, low-income residents are most likely to lose their homes or lives. Less wealthy individuals are more likely to live in low-lying areas, rent or own less sturdy structures, and have inadequate neighborhood infrastructure that can become lethal in severe weather events.

Among those who died in Ida’s Northeast impact zone, many drowned in basement apartments in the Queens borough of New York City, as rapid water pressure build-up thwarted their attempts to escape through doors or windows. It could have been far worse, since thousands of low-income residents, including many new immigrants, crowd into basement dwellings subdivided for rent by Queens homeowners. Many units feature hazards like improvised electrical wiring and windowless bedrooms.

As in New York, our heating climate and accompanying severe weather disproportionately injure people of color. Structural racism often underlies economic vulnerability, while direct racism compounds problems in crises. Nearly paralleling state poverty rates, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama rank 1st, 2nd and 5th in Black residents as a percentage of population. Seemingly reinforcing memories of police denying passage to people fleeing Katrina, reports emerged of Black visitors being refused entrance to nearby communities. 

South of New Orleans, LaFourche Parish Sheriff’s Department helpfully offered pre-filled sandbags to residents of the overwhelmingly white community, courtesy of free labor by people in jail awaiting trial, posting of bail, or release. Detainees remained in jail after public evacuation orders, despite the barbaric consequences of this practice during Katrina (and more than 3,000 detained people being killed by COVID).

While we don’t know the real-time population of the LaFourche jail, Louisiana leads the nation in jailing its citizens and, like many states, Black people are vastly over-represented in detention. Such injustice fuels the growing number of organizations working to radically reduce instances of cash bail.

Lefourche Parish Sheriff's Office now-deleted post
This Twitter post from the LaFourche Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana was deleted after online commenters pointed out coercing involuntary labor is a federal felony.

Despite some repetition of injustices observed during Katrina and public outrage and activism sparked by that tragedy, we should celebrate progress and use those successes to drive more. At the forefront, many of the most vulnerable neighborhoods in and around New Orleans survived Hurricane Ida’s wallop, thanks to a post-Katrina investment of $14.5 billion in flood-prevention infrastructure. Such projects exemplify the public investment needed in the pending federal infrastructure bill.

Yet many levees outside the spotlight of New Orleans were left unimproved and failed to protect communities from Ida’s flooding. When an Army Corps of Engineers cost-benefit analysis deemed the Indigenous community of Ile de Jean Charles would not be included in a regional new levee-building project, it rendered destruction inevitable. As a UCLA Law Review article noted, “This was essentially a decision to flood out Isle de Jean Charles in its entirety in order to mitigate flood damages in the regions protected by the levee. The areas immediately outside of the protected zone will be inundated by the flood waters diverted from the protected area.”

Of course, rising seas invariably will require hard decisions that sacrifice some homes and communities, but we should err on the side of protecting the most vulnerable people first — even if that means using funds to help them relocate, rather than to fortify. 

Returning to the success of work to secure New Orleans, could the forest fires, hurricanes, and other climate-related disasters of 2021 catalyze efforts as Katrina did? Might we finally jolt policy-makers into real action to slow global warming, protect vulnerable people, and prioritize environmental health? It’s an open question, but one we have power to influence. As debate rages on the infrastructure bill in Congress, let’s recognize people of color are those most often harmed by failing or absent infrastructure and ensure whatever legislation emerges makes increasing equity a priority.

Most Americans recall how Katrina exposed injustice and vulnerabilities in the Gulf region, but experiential learning is far more powerful than observing through media. While other hurricanes have struck the Northeast, this storm brought unprecedented rain and damage to the New York City metro — our most populous region. More people now viscerally understand climate change is not just a problem for others, but a threat to themselves. It’s a “teachable moment” we should seize to turn awareness into action and public policy to advance justice in many forms. 

Jeff Milchen (JMilchen on Twitter) founded Reclaim Democracy! and serves as a volunteer. 

A Leap Forward for Democracy Is Within Our Grasp

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But Our Chance to Preempt Voter Suppression Could Expire at Any Moment

Editor’s note: for more recent reporting on pending federal voter protection bills, see this update.

March 17, 2021

When the U.S. House of Representatives passed the For the People Act (H.R. 1 in the House, S. 1 in the Senate) on March 3, all but one Democrat voted in favor. Every Republican vote opposed it. 

Passing the voter protections of the For the People Act is the only path for democracy advocates to halt many of the 250-plus voter suppression bills stacked up in state capitols around the country. Republican vote suppressors have an easier task: they need only delay passage of S. 1 while more of those state bills become law — putting the onus on voting rights defenders to overturn laws in court, even if S. 1 passes. 

Each passing day also brings another chance for Senate control to flip back to Republicans. Many Democratic elders hail from states where, in the event of their death, a Republican governor would select their replacement or the seat would remain vacant until a special election is held. Such an event would almost certainly flip Senate control to Republicans by at least a 50-49 margin and doom strong voter protection. Democrats don’t have the luxury of moving methodically.

The urgency also comes from the potency of the For the People Act. If passed, S. 1 would be the greatest forward leap for democracy in generations. While voting rights are central to the bill, it also would secure election processes and take vital steps to neutralize the power of big money to determine our choices and control politicians. This includes a 6 to 1 match for small donor candidate contributions, giving candidates a huge incentive to increase time spent engaging normal people, rather than courting megadonors. 

Regarding the 2010 Citizens United v FEC ruling, the For the People Act says, “The Supreme Court’s misinterpretation of the Constitution to empower monied interests at the expense of the American people in elections has seriously eroded over 100 years of congressional action to promote fairness and protect elections from the toxic influence of money.” S. 1 backs up the words with tough controls over corporate electioneering. Corporate executives would be barred from using shareholders’ money for political spending without first demonstrating shareholder support — a step few corporations would attempt.

Filling hundreds of pages, the For the People Act is vast, largely due to its thoroughness. The Brennan Center for Justice created an excellent guide to the Act for those who want to dive deep. To help understand what the Act would do, we summarized the provisions and placed them in 3 groupings.

Preventing Disenfranchisement & Making Voting Easier
  • Establish two weeks of in-person early voting, including Sundays and during non-business hours;
  • Require states to create nonpartisan redistricting commissions (for US Congressional districts) and quantifiable criteria for district drawing (addresses district gerrymandering);
  • Ends prison gerrymandering by counting people as residents of where they last lived for apportioning representation, not where they’re incarcerated;
  • Make it a crime to mislead voters with the intention of preventing them from voting;
  • Allow 16 and 17-year olds to pre-register so they’ll be on voter rolls when they turn 18;
Increasing Election Integrity
Reducing the Power of Money Over Candidates & Elections
  • Improve campaign finance disclosure rules;
  • Ban corporations from spending on campaigns unless they have a process to determine the political will of shareholders;
  • Require presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns;
  • Provide public financing for House campaigns by matching small donations at a 6:1 rate, so your $10 donation yields $70 for the candidate. This measure would incentivize candidates to seek out small donations from every constituent, rather than focusing on the wealthy. It also would lead to a more diverse candidate pool since access to wealthy donors would no longer be a prerequisite. The program would not use tax revenue — it will be funded by a surcharge on criminal and civil penalties paid by corporations to the federal government.

What the Act Leaves Undone
The For the People Act does not fully eliminate the need to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and fix earlier damage to the Voting Rights Act by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Washington, D.C. Admission Act (HR. 51) is needed to grant full political rights to citizens in our capital and The Vote at Home Act advances vote-by-mail protections. Enacting the For the People Act also will not eliminate the need to drive an affirmative right to vote into our Constitution. Finally, the bill passed by the House needs cleanup to purge overly prescriptive language re election administration (e.g. micromanaging local election officials).

But the For the People Act would transform U.S. elections for the better. It will improve security, transparency, voter access, and protect citizens from the barrage of voter suppression bills encompassing more than 45 distinct tactics across 43 state legislatures.

To be clear, there are some unnecessary, inappropriate and potentially unconstitutional provisions in HR. 1, as passed by the House. Making Election Day a holiday would undermine the importance of opening a two week window to spread out voting and diminish the opportunity to disrupt voters. And the service workers most challenged for time to vote don’t get a day off just because it’s a holiday. The bill also contains measures unrelated to voting (e.g. new ethics rules for the U.S. Supreme Court) that, regardless of merit, should be expunged to remove easy lines of attack from opponents. Election law expert Rick Hasen wrote (Wa. Post account required) the best good-faith critique of HR. 1 we’ve seen. Jessica Huseman critiques the timeline for demands thrust upon election administrators in the bill (as passed by the House) and the Brennan Center published a thorough response to these critiques.

While expanding democracy should be a non-partisan cause, Republican Senators also have signaled their opposition. So passage of S. 1 will depend on the 48 Democratic and two Independent Senators valuing our voting rights enough to reform (or eliminate) the filibuster and force a vote on the merits of the bill. Democracy advocates received a boost on March 16 when President Biden announced his support for filibuster reform after months of proclaiming Republicans were capable of good faith negotiation.

Failing to pass the For the People Act will enable a wave of state-level voter suppression laws that could lock Republicans into control of (at least) the House of Representatives and many state legislatures for years to come. Let’s contact our Senators’ offices to urge reforming the filibuster and demand that S. 1  receive a hearing and vote. Along with direct communication to Senators, sending a letter to the editor of your local paper and calling in to talk radio shows are key ways to influence your Senators.

By Reclaim Democracy! staff. Research by Brittany Trushel.

Thanks to Stephen Wolf’s Voting Rights Roundup newsletter from Daily Kos for helping follow and understand state and federal voting rights bills. To fully grasp the scope of voter suppression tactics in play, see 50 Ways to Disenfranchise and Suppress Voters.

Pass For the People Act., HR1

Related Reclaim Democracy Resources

The Multiplier Effect of Local Independent Business

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By Jeff Milchen, with thanks to Stacy Mitchell.

Clearly communicating the importance of the local economic multiplier effect or “local premium” is a key part of effective “buy local” public education campaigns. The multiplier results from the fact that independent locally owned businesses recirculate a far greater percentage of revenue compared to absentee-owned businesses (or locally owned franchises). In other words, going local creates more local wealth and jobs.

The multiplier consists of three elements — the direct, indirect, and induced impacts.

  • Direct impact is spending done by a business in the local economy to operate the business, such as inventory, utilities, equipment, and employee pay.
  • Indirect impact happens as dollars the local business spent at other area businesses.
  • Induced impact refers to the additional consumer spending that happens as employees, business owners, and others spend their income in the local economy.

Private research firm Civic Economics has executed many studies quantifying the difference in local economic return between local independents and chain businesses. One such study in Austin, Texas showed an independent bookseller and music seller returned 3x as much money to the local economy as a proposed Borders Books and Music outlet would. The Austin Independent Business Alliance successfully used the study to rally opposition against a City-planned subsidy to attract a Borders Books and Music store.

Those results have been mirrored by subsequent studies (ten years of studies are summarized here), each showing a much greater local multiplier for spending at independent businesses than chains. These studies measured the direct and indirect impacts to determine the base level local economic activity of a purchase made at a chain and a local independent business.

On average, 48% of each purchase at local independent businesses was recirculated locally, compared to less than 14% of purchases at chain stores.

Civic Economics: Benefits of local business vs chains
Civic Economics: Benefits of local vs chains

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance conducted a study of the local multiplier effect in several small Maine communities in 2003. The study examined how much of a dollar spent at a local independent store is re-spent in the local area as payroll, goods/services purchased from area businesses, profits spent locally by owners, and donations to area charities. The study found that every $100 spent locally generated $45 of secondary local spending, compared to only $14 for a big-box chains — nearly identical to later results across the decade of Civic Economics studies.

Key Points

One study by Civic Economics has been the source of much confusion misrepresentation, to the detriment of many organizations. The study of Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood found a total economic impact (i.e., direct, indirect, and induced) of $0.68 for each dollar spent at 10 local independents, compared to $0.43 for chain competitors. However, the projection of indirect and induced impacts does not mean $0.68 of each dollar spent at a local independent “stays” in the local economy, a widely spread inaccurate claim. It means $0.68 of additional local economic return is generated after additional spending cycles. Citing the higher numbers without including an explanation is wrong.

The Andersonville study examines just 10 businesses in one neighborhood of a large city, so we discourage extrapolating its findings too broadly. Businesses in smaller cities and towns typically have less ability to source many goods and services locally.

Be careful not to undermine the credibility of your group or campaign by presenting apples as oranges or statistically insignificant samples as a general truth! To gain respect as an authoritative voice within your community, we suggest you guard your credibility by checking your materials to ensure they convey verifiable, accurately worded information and only rely on primary sources. 

Stickiness

In addition to being accurate, make sure your message is memorable. Saying, “Independent retailers return more than 3x as much money per dollar of sales than chain competitors,” is more memorable than talking in terms of percentages or comparing $0.48 to $0.15. For restaurants, consider messages such as, “Per dollar of revenue, locally owned independent restaurants return twice as much to our local economy than chain restaurants.”

Buying remotely on the web creates almost no local benefit, only minutes of work for a delivery person. Calculating the added local wealth that would be generated by a 10% shift to local independents is one tactic successfully employed by several communities.

How much of each $100 stays in your community?
The local benefit of an online, remote sale depends on local driver wage, the size of the area (number of stops per hour), and distance to processing centers.

Study Variants

The size of the local premium varies depending on the type of business. Restaurants and service providers generate a large multiplier because they are labor-intensive and more of each dollar of revenue goes to local payroll. Most retailers, unless they source an exceptionally high percentage of their goods locally, also create a more modest multiplier than restaurants.

This is not to say restaurants are better for economic development than retail. May retailers have sizable revenue and professional job opportunities, which are important to any local economy. It’s just helpful to be aware of these differences because the mix of businesses involved in a particular study will influence the results.

Land Use

In 2009, Stay Local! in New Orleans commissioned Civic Economics to evaluate economic return per square foot of retail space used by both local merchants and Target Corporation. The local merchants studied generated twice as much sales activity per square foot and nearly quadrupled the local economic return per square foot compared to projections for Target. 

Quantifying Shifts in Spending

To gauge the overall impact on your local economy of shifting 10% of purchasing from absentee-owned to locally owned businesses, you would need to know the local multiplier for each category of spending and the percentage of peoples’ spending in each category. (e.g., 20% goes to groceries and the grocery multiplier is 0.15 or 5% goes to books and the local multiplier is 0.32).

Nike – Just Don’t Do It

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By Jeff Milchen and Jeffrey Kaplan
First published by TomPaine.com April 26, 2003

If big business hopes to regain the dwindling trust of Americans, claiming the right to lie is hardly the way to do it.

Yet, Nike Corporation lawyers argued just that claim to U.S. Supreme Court justices in Nike v. Kasky. They hoped the court would overturn a California Supreme Court decision denying Nike’s privilege to “plead the First” (Amendment) when charged with violating state anti-fraud laws. The case was settled out-of-court, failing to rule on the constitutionality of misleading statements made by corporations.

In the face of increasingly unfavorable publicity in 1996 and 1997, Nike conducted a public relations blitz to convince people it had cleaned up its subcontractors’ notorious “sweatshops.” But Californian Marc Kasky didn’t buy it. He claimed Nike continued lying about its practices and sued the corporation under California consumer protection laws.

Rather than refuting Kasky’s charges, Nike instead challenged the legitimacy of the truth-in-advertising law itself. The corporation’s attorneys argued the PR campaign was about more than the company’s practices, did not promote specific products, and should be considered fully protected political speech and not less-protected commercial speech. Furthermore, to hold Nike liable for false information, they claim, would unconstitutionally snuff the company’s “speech.”

But corporations already are legally obliged to issue accurate statements to investors. Experts at a Bitcode Prime official UK company confirm that when companies withhold important information or lie to investors, they can be sued and the officials involved can be held personally liable. If Nike executives contested the constitutionality of those standards, Wall Street and the mass media would laugh at them. So why should deception in non-financial communications be exempted?

Corporate officials can make mistaken predictions, like how a new product will sell or an upcoming merger will strengthen the company, without fear of being sued — as long as they don’t intentionally deceive (for example, by concealing evidence that a product is malfunctioning). This is a reasonable standard for all non-financial issues.

But Nike went out of its way to legally cement its ability to speak deceptively, a claim for which no Constitutional justification exists.

Corporations should not enjoy the same rights as humans. The word “corporation” is entirely absent from the Bill of Rights and Constitution; and for good reason. People should be held in higher esteem than companies. We have rights because we exist whether or not we create governments.

Corporations, on the other hand, are creations of the state and have privileges, not rights. The privileges of incorporation, such as unlimited lifespan and limited liability, permit corporations to amass power far beyond what an individual can attain.

Corporations are not people.

So some counterbalances to the excesses of corporations are necessary. Without such controls, corporations can threaten the functioning of democracies, like dominating ballot initiatives. If the Supreme Court ruled corporations enjoy fully protected political rights, the already-weakened powers of democratic governments and their citizenries would be further eroded.

We should also limit corporate “freedom,” as corporations can and do use their privilege to harm people for profit. For years, tobacco company officials claimed, even in testimony before Congress, that smoking wasn’t a serious health risk. As it turned out, they were blatantly lying and as a result, were hammered with massive class-action suits.

In Kasky v Nike, Nike’s lawyers framed the debate as if the company was sued for misleading people about broader issues of economic globalization. But Kasky accused Nike of lying in verifiable statements about production practices.

Corporations need not be perfect, but they must be held accountable to standards of truth — especially because corporations are nothing more than legal entities created by (and regulated by) our governments. Businesses should earn the public trust by showing the same respect for everyone else as it does investors.

The Supreme Court had an opportunity to reject the extreme judicial activism Nike encouraged, as well as clarify the Bill of Rights protects human liberty and doesn’t shield corporations from public accountability. Instead, the Supreme Court punted this decision, sending the case back to a lower court.

It’s only a matter of time until the next corporation challenges the limits of free speech. Now, with a court increasingly filled with big-business allies, we should all worry.

Jeffrey Kaplan and Jeff Milchen are a volunteer and founder, respectively, with Reclaim Democracy!

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