And Now A Word From The “Integrity Committee”
May 16th, 2008 | By Dan Pero | Category: Judicial Elections, State Battlegrounds, Wisconsin |
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Mr. Thomas J. Basting, Sr. is the president of the Wisconsin state bar and creator of something that calls itself the “Wisconsin Judicial Campaign Integrity Committee.”
Basting begins a piece in Wisconsin Lawyer with the customary throat-clearing of a high-minded, impartial observer, who intones that this time he is casting off his famous impartiality, to throw down the gauntlet and write “from my heart.” Send the children from the room!
Basting tells us that as founder of an outfit called the “Wisconsin Judicial Campaign Integrity Committee” he pleaded with Wisconsin’s 2008 supreme court candidates to pledge to “take the high road” in their ads and to “condemn misleading campaign materials produced by independent supporters.” This sounds awfully high-minded. What it meant in practice was to try to force challenger Judge Michael Gableman and his supporters from alerting voters to the horrendous record that earned the incumbent Justice Louis Butler the moniker “Loophole Louis.”
Judge Gableman didn’t bite. A campaign without criticism of the incumbent would have been no campaign at all. A vigorous campaign was waged. The voters listened to both sides and exercised judgment. After weighing the issues, they threw out Justice Butler and elected Gableman.
Now that Basting’s pledge gambit didn’t work, he has decided to propose
“very serious debate about amending the Wisconsin Constitution to create a merit selection process that will ensure that Wisconsin’s tradition of competent, qualified, independent, fair, and impartial court will endure.”
You know, a process of appointments that leads to giants of the judiciary like…well, Loophole Louis, who was appointed, not elected to the high court.
In the middle of his piece, Basting writes, “If the public doesn’t trust the courts, our democracy is threatened.”
He has it backwards. If our courts do not trust democracy, the public is threatened.
A 29 year career “in the bowels of the federal criminal justice system” as a federal prison officer, several decades as a “price gouged consumer” forced to pay the “estate fleecing, ambulance chasing, slip and all, hot coffee in the lap, tired trucker accident, shyster attorneys a “kick back” on every item I purchase has not endeared the lawyers to me. Being a battered veteran of two attorney enriching, malicious, frivolous lawsuits, seeing others being ripped off and defrauded by “self policed, self disciplined” attorneys –, whose “honest colleagues” look the other way hasn’t elevated my trust and respect for the profession either. Letting the attorneys appoint and elect the judges that they will “dance you and I through the nit picking, theatrical, ceremonial charades in front of” -, is like handing organized crime kingpins “machine guns and the key to Ft. Knox”.
The legal profession has already “silenced our vote” as evidenced by what they are getting away with in both the civil and criminal courts as well as in the halls of Congress. The “frivolous lawsuit industry lawyers” legally handcuff, hobble and gag powerless victims and then use the civil courts as a blackjack to beat and bludgeon them to an emotional and financial pulp. Such force fed injustice rammed down our powerless throats “in the name of the law” generates the thirst for revenge -, which is the propellant of most “societal time bombs”.
The same psychology also characterizes the criminal courts as “quick fix, next case plea bargain hucksters” rush poor, low and middle class defendants through the process so the attorney can spend more time and energy “defending the rights” of more well heeled –, and more “grateful” clients such as mobster bigwigs, corporate crooks, corrupt judges, fat cat bankers and politicians etc. And the “God given instinct of survival rage” which results manufactures and fuses more societal time bombs in “poor, low and middle income offenders” who “couldn’t afford a prolonged and expensive, attorney enriching trial.
I find it ironic -, and infuriating that many “civil and criminal justice” attorneys, judges and politicians are ramming the gun control agenda” down the throats of law abiding Americans in order to keep many of the “societal time bombs” that they “manufactured and fused” -, from going on “shooting sprees”.
There is another reason these arrogant, power crazed and greed driven lawyers and judges are pushing for more “gun control”. They know very well that a fed up electorate will “get very militant” at some point if the lawyers, judges and legislators push us to that point. If we still have our guns they have good cause to “respect our wishes” by “not crossing that line”. Considering the sovereign, unchecked and unaccountable power that estate fleecing,ambulance chasing, slip and fall, hot coffee in the lap civil attorneys, criminal defense attorneys and their “black robed bureaucrat colleagues have already rammed down the throat of an electorate which still owns and carries personal firearms -just try to imagine what they will resort if and when they succeed in outlawing or seriously limiting the personal ownership, possession and use firearms.
Our founding fathers knew exactly what they were doing and WHY they were doing it when they wove the Second Amendment into the fabric of our Constitution. They did that as much out of concern for the “rats within” (aka greed driven, power crazed, vote trashing, domestic tyrants like the lawyers and judges) as they did out of concern for outside invaders. Just one brief encounter with a mob enforcer, contract killer’s attorney and another encounter with an estate fleecing frivolous lawsuit case has illustrated for me how deadly to our personal rights, our assets, our safety and our inheritance the lawyers and black robed bureaucrat judges already are. AND how much more “deadly” they will be if they are as successful as they hope to be in “ramming gun control and confiscation down our throats .
If we think that America’s sovereign, self policed and unaccountable, “KMA” legal profession -, which picks our pockets for billions of dollars annually with total immunity is a nightmare now -, you can’t begin to imagine the havoc they will wreak on society if they succeed in breaching our “last line of defense”.The profession HAS NO ETHICS and no sense of restraint! If it did the lawyers wouldn’t be “doing to people what they are doing”. Show me an organization with the unprincipled, unchecked and unaccountable power that the American legal profession has consistently “appropriated unto itself , always grabbing for more -, then factor in the larcenous, unprincipled greed and lust for power which characterizes the profession -, add a “disarmed and defenseless society” and I’ll show you pure,unadulterated tyranny and a cowering, powerless “electorate”.
Show me anyone who would support aggressive gun control and disarming, honest and decent Americans in the face of such an unaccountable, unchecked and untouchable power and I’ll show you an individual or an organization with sinister intent. I’m neither Democrat nor Republican but I find it noteworthy that the Democrats –, who are strongly in the “camp of the American Trial Lawyers” who insist on being “sovereign, self policed and accountable to none but themselves” -, are also the most strident voices demanding immediate, aggressive and broad reaching “gun control” That incestuous alliance alone makes the Democrat Party “suspect” to me and will probably “influence my vote”.
Ivan L. Fail
846 South Linden Ave Sparta, Missouri 65753
Phone 417-634-0173