One of the greatest contradictions in politics today are those who declare themselves “pro-democracy” while seeking to gerrymander election districts, support FBI crackdowns on speech, attack reporters and whistleblowers, and defend censorship. One of the most vocal in expressing his pride in “being pro-democracy” is Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, who just used a partial veto power to negate legislative authority in his state.
Evers was given a bill that increased funding for the 2024-25 school years. Using his partial veto authority, Evers crossed out the “20” and the hyphen. In doing so, he changed the law to allow K-12 schools to raise their revenue per student by $325 a year until 2425. It was never intended nor contemplated by the Republican-controlled legislature.
No one is seriously arguing that this was an intended use of the partial veto authority. Indeed, after prior governors used the partial veto to create new words in legislation, it was barred in 2008. However, Evers is now doing the same thing by eliminating digits and punctuation to create new numbers.
Evers has been a recidivist in such manipulation of legislation, issued 51 partial vetos, including three struck down by the state Supreme Court.
Yet, this is arguably the most offensive to anyone who values the democratic process. Evers is completely ignoring the language and intent of the legislature and committing the state to increases in funding for hundreds of years. It guts the defining power of the purse exercised by state and federal legislatures.
Evers has long put the hype into hypocrisy as a politician who continually portrays himself as a “defender of democracy” while routinely engaging in executive overreach. His favorite tagline is “I’m not going to back down when it comes to defending our democracy.”
Evers clearly approaches saving democracy like the generals approached saving villages in Vietnam when they insisted that they had to “destroy the village in order to save it.”
According to Evers, defending democracy means undoing democratically enacted legislation and unilaterally imposing his own agenda.
Notably, the state school superintendent, Jill Underly reportedly expressed gratitude for the sleight of hand but immediately asked for more money.
This should not be a difficult question legally. No reasonable interpretation of a partial veto power would include the ability to change numbers anymore than changing words. However, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has long been a political battleground in the sharply divided state. The result are elected justices who are regularly accused of partisan agendas.
This case could prove a test of the court’s integrity. To support Evers is to dispense with any pretense of democratic process.
Of course, Evers can insist that the legislature can always override his partial veto if it can muster the two-thirds vote in the divided legislature. However, that misses the point. Regardless of any override, the governor’s actions are still anti-democratic in changing the meaning of a law in this way.
Evers is not the first to use what is called the Vanna White veto of flipping around words or numbers. Republicans governors like Scott Walker and Tommy Thompson also took such liberties. They were equally wrong.
Yet, there is no hue and cry from those who have cloaked themselves in the democratic cause when convenient. Instead there were celebrations. Former Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle said “everybody will shout and scream but he’s got ’em.”
He also “got” democracy.
It is true that Wisconsin has the broadest — and most ridiculous — veto power in the country. However, it was reduced to avoid this type of manipulation of the meaning of laws. Moreover, this is not a change within the confines of the law. The law was designed to appropriate funds for a one year period and Evers turned it into a four century appropriation.
Just as the Washington Post proclaims that “democracy dies in darkness,” it can also die in the daylight. The test of principle is to stand faithful to it when it is not to one’s own advantage. Evers clearly failed that test. However, judging from the gleeful celebrations, he is not the only one.
Democracy isn’t practiced by the U.S. military, either, but it does a good job of defending it.
Of course not.
The military cannot function as a democracy. It needs a chain of command, with the delegation of assignments or tasks down to the lowest levels.
The NCOs are what make the military function.
Ukraine should be the leader of NATO. Ukraine has more experience at fighting Russia and killing Russians than any other NATO member, since NATO’s creation. War with a Russia is a good thing if it gets rid of Putin, just like how war with Germany was a good thing when it got rid of Hitler.
If you are so gun-ho about going to war, why is it not you are not down at the recruitment center enlisting in the Army in a combat MOS and volunteering to be the first on the battlefield?
If not you, your children or grandchildren.
People like you are all about war, as long as it is the poor or minorities that go and die while you sit back and virtue signal.
So, man up. Get your sorry butt down to the recruitment center. And if you are too old, you better be driving you children or grandchildren there.
That’s it, let’s risk war with a nuclear armed country over another country most could not find on map 2 years ago and know even less about.
And I know, the above statement makes me a really “bad” person…
I’m tired of the endless neocon sponsored wars which are none of our business.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
How have the last several worked out? Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria…
And I’m tired of the endless comparisons to “Hitler” for any leader disliked by America.
I can promise the ukraine war has very little to do with supporting “our democracy”.
antonio
At a public event Biden revealed that 155mm shells are running short.
That information would be highly classified.
According to the LEft presidents can not just declassify information at whim.
They are required to go through a formal process to do so – not just blurt out classified information at a press gaggle.
Yet Biden just did that. Do we prosecute him ? Impeach him ?
The answer is NO. Because the power to classify and declassify like ALL executive powers is fully vested in the president.
And the current president can declassify anything they want – without going through ANY formal process.
Anything that a president does while president that removes classified information from its secure protection – such as blurting it out to the press, handing it to the Russian ambassador, giving it to someone without proper clearance or carting it off to his home DECLASSIFIES IT.
From the Trump indictment we actually learned that Once Again the War Mongers in our government sought to start a War with Iran in the waning days of the Trump presidency, and Once Again Trump stopped it.
While Biden made every stupid move possible that made the Russian invasion of Ukraine likely,
It should also be considered that the Military itself, as well as american arms manufacturers – as they ALWAYS do,
Wanted this war.
I have worked in defense. I developed software for AEGIS, Predator and other projects I do not even know what they were for. I had a TS/SCI but not the “need to know” what project I was working on.
Our defense industry is excellent and well paid. They are good people. But I have little doubt that they are doing extremely well profiting handsomely over the war with Ukraine.
WE should take to heart the advice of presidents such as Washington and Truman and Eisenhower,
And Always take care about entangling ourselves in foreign conflicts. There will always be powerful forces that WANT us to.
John Say,
This is how bad things have gotten,
Raytheon Calls in Retirees to Help Restart Stinger Missile Production
https://www.defenseone.com/business/2023/06/raytheon-calls-retirees-help-restart-stinger-missile-production/388067/
I listened to an excellent Tucker Carlson speech recently. I beleive it was a few years old.
Regardless, it was incredibly good. One of the points he makes was with regard to NAFTA – though he applied it more broadly.
He noted that he knew something was wrong regarding NAFTA when the pundits were saying EVERYONE will benefit.
There is absolutely no public policy that always benefits everyone. Just as there is no policy that is universally harmful.
While I do think that NAFTA was hugely NET positive. And Unlike Carlson I do NOT think we have an obligation as a nation to compensate those “harmed” by Free Trade and free markets. I completely aggree with Carlson that someone is ALWAYS harmed and some ALWAYS benefit.
There are many many many good results from the Ukraine War. Ratheon employees and shareholders absolutely benefit.
Buring through US stockpiles of oders munitions is actually a GOOD thing. Much of what is going to Ukraine is OLDER technology. We as an example – while touting “smart bombs” in GWI used up our stockpiles of old dumb iron bombs.
Making room for more smarter weapons in GWII.
The US Military si learning alot – and nut just about Russia, but about new ways to fight foreign conflicts from this.
We are building a new intervention model that allows us to provide allies with advanced weapons that they can use effectively.
AND at the same time just turn off the switch so that they are near impossible to use outside our wishes.
Nearly all targeting in Ukraine is being done using US resources – advanced drones, and satelites – especially that farther behind the front lines. We can provide Ukraine with Himars to target 400km beyond the front lines. And still make it impossible to use those weapons
All these and many many other positive benefits of the War in Ukraine
DO NOT change the fact that risking nuclear war is a BAD idea ONLY to be engaged int he most serious of instances.
NOR a justification for the horrible foreign policy decisions that resulted in this war.
Just because some people benefit does NOT justify a government policy.
I am GLAD that raytheon and its employees and shareholders are benefiting from this.
That does NOT mean that I Want them pushing us into future wars.
That would have been a good article if you hadn’t brought in the Vietnam analogy. No general ever said such a thing. That quite came from Leftist Peter Arnett, who claimed “some major” said it. He never identified the alleged majors and the majors there that day said they said no such thing.
Good to know. I’ve heard that quote countless times.
You must first understand democracy before you can practice it, or save it! In January 2021 The Economist Intelligence Unit published a Democracy Index 2020 which downgraded the United States from a “Full Democracy” to a “Flawed Democracy”, which in and of itself, is problematic, but it failed to recognize that in fact that the United States belongs on the bottom of their scale as an “Authoritarian Regime”. If we look at what we call “American Democracy” what we will find is an “Autocracy” wrapped in an “Oligarchy”, which isn’t a democracy, or any form of democratic or republican government.
And it’s also strangely funny some of the characteristics of Democracy, or antidemocratic, that Turley keys in on in his first paragraph like gerrymandering and freedom of speech and the press, when voting and first amendment rights don’t in any way constitute a democracy. Even The Economist Intelligence Unit readily admits that even scholars do not agree on what constitutes a democracy, which leaves the definition open to any definition that can be supported by sycophantic partisans who are empowered by their narrow definition of democracy.
This is funny because the principles of democracy and republican government predate the United States in any form, in fact the root which the word democracy was derived comes from the middle of the 5th century BCE, and what it meant then was a legislative assembly of the people directly, which is why even today “A Democracy” is a legislative assembly, “Democracy” is how the legislative body is assembled and how it functions. Today we are trying to make the voting booth the legislative assembly of the People, but we don’t want to adhere to the requirements of a legislative assembly of quorum to operate to identify and rank choices to form a ballot that is then used for the people to vote to determine a consensus choice of ALL THE PEOPLE, which doesn’t mean a majority of the voters who participated, it’s ALL THE PEOPLE, regardless of how many people vote.
If you have a population of 1 million people you may have a quorum requirement of 500,001 to identify and rank choices to form a ballot, and when the people vote to determine a choice, that choice must have 500,001 votes for assent to be adopted, which means it would be next to impossible for that population of 1 million people to form a ballot and determine any choice, especially if there are only 2 choices on the ballot, because even without partisanship to good choices would result in. 50/50 coin flip, where no choice will receive more than 250,000 votes, which is only 25% of the People, which is far from a majority of ALL THE PEOPLE.
If you think this is a flawed analysis then just look at the last two election cycles for President, in 2016 Clinton received 19% of All the People and Trump won with just over 18% of the People, and we declared that met the requirements of a Majority of All the People. In 2020 Biden received 24% of All the People and Trump received 22% of all the people, and it gets worse, Biden only got 51.3% of the votes cast and Trump received 46.8% of the votes cast, which is not a majority of the registered voters which would be only 34.4% for Biden and 31.2% for Trump, so even if the requirement was a majority of all the registered voters, both candidates would have failed that requirement.
We haven’t even begun to address how the ballot is formed, because if you want to make a consensus choice all possible choices must be identified and ranked, then the ballot must have the top candidates on that ranked list to choose from, but not only does the ballot only have two choices, those two choices were not identified and ranked by a quorum of the people of each State, but definitely not by a quorum nationally, in fact caucuses like Iowa may choose the candidates with as few as 0.1% of the people, and the choices they consider are not ranked for the people to make a choice.
And after all that competitive partisan election mess, we then empower the President as our sole leader and decision maker. Where in the Constitution of the United States is that established. Somehow we go from the collective decision making of the States as the Union to autocratic decision making. Good trick, but NO!
American democracy was murdered a LONG, LONG time ago. I don’t know what the proper name is for this government blob we have now, but one thing it is NOT is a representative democracy. How can any of the 435 House members, 100 Senators, and one President enact “laws” that are 2,000 pages in length that they have not even read and say they are representing the people who elected them? At common law there was a doctrine that “ignorance is no excuse” when one was found guilty of violating a law. How can any individual citizen knowingly comply with ONE 2,000 page law? But the blob now enacts laws several thousand pages in length as a matter of course. And Democrats brag about it as an accomplishment when they do it.
Constitutionally, the president’s job is to execute those laws. How does he execute laws he doesn’t read?
But to pretend to comply with the constitutional requirement that he “execute” the laws enacted by Congress a gigunda bureaucracy of literally millions of unelected, technocratic, highly educated functionaries has been built. THAT is the true government. We are supposed to nod and pretend to believe the President “manages” it all. Yet the process to terminate the employment of even one of them is very difficult.
We do not have a “representative democracy”. Everybody knows it. Children often pretend to believe in Santa Claus long after they know it’s a Fairey tale. That’s us. We all pretend we have a “representative democracy” because the elites still let us have elections. And they even encourage us to fight tooth and nail about them to give us the impression we are being represented when they ram through their 5000 page laws and millions of unelected bureaucrats oversee the mess that’s been created. It’s all a giant scam.
We have not had a representative democracy since Democrats exploited the hardship of the Great Depression to impose on the nation the bureaucratic welfare state. Now we have this largely unmanageable, unaccountable, perpetually expanding, bureaucratic welfare state that’s indebted future generations by $30 TRILLION staffed by permanent, unelected technocrats. Literally nobody thinks that is what Aristotle or Plato had in mind by “democracy.” And it is certainly not what the Founders envisioned.
Spot on. Now what?
Massive socio-economic collapse, followed by serious civil unrest and maybe even civil war.
Professor Turley, you failed to acknowledge Scott Walker’s infamous “Thousand Year Veto” in 2017. I agree that this is horrible overreach of executive power, but failing to provide adequate context – namely, that governors of both parties have modified numbers using the partial veto in the past (and in fact did precisely the same thing!) – is misleading.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/06/us/wisconsin-school-funding-400-years.html
Democracy dies in darkness – and darkness occurs when a biased article makes it seem like this move from Gov. Evers is Democratic overreach.
Just look at the responses from your readers! For example, Iowan2 says “This is what the Democrat party consider [sp] enlightened leadership.” His ignorance to the fact that the GOP did the exact same thing only 5 years ago is your fault.
Did you miss this part,
“Evers is not the first to use what is called the Vanna White veto of flipping around words or numbers. Republicans governors like Scott Walker and Tommy Thompson also took such liberties. They were equally wrong.”
Now it is the good professor’s responsibility to go back years to find something a Republican did?
What a dumb comment.
Of course if Turley ever wrote about something the republicans did, he would lose his deplorable base, and his gig at FOX.
Jonathan, I encourage you to spend a year in Wisconsin today.
It has changed since your days in Chicago. In fact The Dairy State Electorate Do Not want Wisconsin to become an Illinois.
“…However, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has long been a political battleground in the sharply divided state. The result are elected justices who are regularly accused of partisan agendas. …”
Milwaukee (and Madison) verses the Rest of the State like Chicago verses the Rest of the State, and I might add, Detroit vs the Rest of the State, Des Moines vs the Rest of the State.
Religious Heritage (Catholic & Amish) is still alive in Wisconsin, People are very proud of this State.
The People got what they wanted, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers is not a 71 year old lunatic.
He’s is trying to be Progressive and Preservationist while being Conservatively Precautious.
Much how his Constituents approach the World.
Mixing Red and Blue together will get you a true Purple color,
I am surprised that not more Midwestern/Lake Michigan States haven’t adopted a more ‘Purple’ approach.
fyi: Look at the demographics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Amish_population
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Counties_with_Amish_settlements_2021.png
Where is the Wisconsin Supreme Court?
@wiseoldlawyer: Where’s the Wisconsin Supreme Court??? You need to update yourself on the legislative history of the diliberations of that ‘disgust’ body since 2016. In particular, their election fraud hearings. Res ipsa loquitor.
They’ll likely rubber stamp it.
Let’s face it, we are living in beyond the dawn of a totalitarian era in this country. It is not a tsunami of change. It is change that at first was imperceptible and people accepted the incremental destruction of our long-cherished liberties. Then covid accelerated it and now it is happening at an ever-increasing pace. Will people wake up when the bottom drops out when soon the UN takes over? I doubt it. God help us. We are doomed.
According to Meryl’s Covid Newsletter on Substack, the “State, Foreign Operations, and Related Appropriations Act, 2024, Full Committee Mark Up, Index of Amendments”, “Adds bill language prohibiting the use of funds to support any international conventionn or related instrument drafted by the intergovernmental negotiating body of the World Health Assembly or any other UN body until such instrument is ratified by the Senate.” So maybe, remarkably, our “public servants” are actually listening for a change.
Unfortunately the Left now embraces hypocrisy as a core value.
I think there is a concept in American politics called the line item veto. You know, where the bill is placed in numbered line items with things placed in that article that all pertain to each other. I believe many of us in the country recognize prohibiting the line item veto in the US Constitution was a mistake.
It would appear that that the people of Wisconsin, who I assume recently amended their constitution (according to Prof Turley, accepted this or failed to make it explicit enough that it should not even need a court case. It appears they wanted the cake and eat it also.
I think Evers action is reprehensible and hopefully will be overturned but the people of Wisconsin have to take their part of the blame. Especially since both parties did it. It’s not as if this concept of the partial veto has suddenly appeared and people were not aware of the danger with politicians. I mean this was actually discussed in High School civics in the 1960’s when I attended.
Of course the people could also go full Roman and decide to install a Plebian Tribune and give him the power to Veto acts of the Governor (Counsel). Then you could have dueling veto’s and the politicians would be at each other’s throats and maybe leave the people alone. We could always hope.
Manly I would hope for a Board of Censors (also Roman) where they could arbitrarily expel Senators and their families rom the senate for years to decades for moral turpitude, criminality, or just not being rich enough (we could eliminate that part). I know it would break all the rules and would collapse under it’s own failures but it might be nice to see for a while.
@oldmanfromkansas: re:”On the broader point, there seems to be little understanding..” The word ‘democracy’ has been forever used inappropriately to describe our form of government, and by those who should,and do,know better. They are the very individuals we raise to high office to run our ‘constitutional republic’. ‘Democracy’ and ‘constitutional republic’ are used interchangeably to suit the argument depending upon whose ox is being gored. ‘No!!” “This is NOT a democracy!!” A solid Civics curriculum in the K-12 should put that right.
Well at least his ambitions fall short of a 1,000 year Reich!
The Teacher’s Unions will take incoming fire for their guy. “I’m saving the children !”. Should get him reelected in Wisconsin by a wide margin.
If all this clown has to fear is being voted out office why not be a tyrant? Get the ropes.
That’s the way…uh hu, uh hu, they like it, uh hu uh hu!!. Let ’em eat cheeeeze!!
“Evers crossed out the “20” and the hyphen.”
Isn’t that clever.
Suppose there’s a law passed under a R governor: “There shall be no death penalty.”
Can that governor “veto” the word “no?”
This is what the Democrat party consider enlightened leadership.
Like censoring social media, slight of hand replaces debate and voting.
Trust the Ends-justify-the-means democrats to be treacherous. You get the democracy traitors you vote for.
*a hundred-fold
If the bill used “$325.00” he could have increased funding ten-fold by striking out the ‘.’ With inflation $325 will probably buy one raisin in about 10 years.
On the broader point, there seems to be little understanding these days of what “democracy” means in the U.S. With student-loan forgiveness it means that issue would be decided by the people’s representatives. Yet, SCOTUS’s decision along those lines was cast by liberals as “undermining democracy.”
oldmanfromkansas,
Watching the BRICS+ and their expected upcoming announcement of a gold backed currency, might not be 10 years.
Invest in gold and chickens.
When they do it, it is “defending democracy,” even when it is clearly not democracy.
Anyone else does it, it is a dictatorship, or tyranny.