Good morning on the Rolling
Roll Show.
Earl's not in today.
I'm 7th form.
I'm Matt Rothschild.
I used to be over at the Progressive Magazine Wisconsin Democracy campaign and my guest co-host again today is Angela Lang, who I really enjoy hosting on Civic Media with.
Angela, how are you this morning?
there you go.
Angela Lang is the founder and executive director of Block, Black Leaders Organizing for Communities.
and block and a whole lot of other people did a lot of great grassroots work during this huge election we had on Tuesday and I still got a buzz from it I gotta say Angela and I'm wondering what your take away was from the huge Wisconsin Supreme Court victory.
You know I'm gonna be honest I um I was holding this in a lot but it started to come out but like I felt a lot of pressure right like I felt like the movement
was the resistance movement was looking at Wisconsin to see if we were going to be able to stop big money and Elon Musk in the through line to the Trump and to buy our courts.
I was like, if we don't do this, you know, this is take out the momentum or the hope of the rest of the resistance movement.
And it goes to show that Wisconsinites, no matter what side of the aisle, and I said this on the show before, that like, no matter what, people do not want to.
to have outstate people and billionaires to buy their courts.
And I think that was shown.
And like you said, a lot of Canvas operations, a lot of grassroots organizations, myself with the team at Block.
They knocked on a ton of doors and they were hard and spring elections are difficult with the weather.
And so I feel good.
And I think, you know, I know there's protests and stuff happening in the next few days.
Hopefully this, you know, kind of puts a battery in some folks a little bit.
Yeah, there are big protests all across the state tomorrow at noon, and I'll give some of the details about where those protests are in Madison.
Of course, it's at the Capitol at noon, and I know there's one in Milwaukee at the Federal Building, 517 East Wisconsin Avenue.
There's one up in Wausau on Rib Mountain Drive between Michael's Crafts and Hobby Lobby.
There's one in La Crosse.
on Lose Boulevard and State Street.
I hope I'm pronouncing that right.
Eau Claire at the Phoenix Park, Farmers Park Pavilion, and Green Bay at Lake Memorial Park on Doosman Street.
So all across the state and all across the country, tomorrow at noon, people are expressing their disgust at what Donald Trump is doing to this country, to our democracy, to our economy.
And so I do encourage everybody to protest because one of the great ways to
stop authoritarianism in its tracks is get out in the streets in protest.
They want us to be passive.
They want us to be silent.
They want us to be compliant or complicit.
And we can't be either compliant or complicit at this point.
So I encourage people to go to those protests tomorrow.
And you can always get more information online at handsoff 2025.com.
That's hands off 2025.com.
Angela, you mentioned Musk.
I think Musk was a net negative for Schimel, despite what Ron Johnson has to say about that.
The spin afterwards, right?
Yeah.
Well, the spin afterwards was ridiculous because Musk, you know, two days before the election said the dynasty of humanity hangs in the balance in Wisconsin, which was hyperbole squared.
And then afterwards he said, I knew we were going to lose.
I just wanted to go to ID to pass, which was just a ridiculous backtrack.
And then, of course, Ron Johnson has to be his usual sycophantic self.
The funniest thing I saw a week was from John Stewart making fun of Elon Musk and putting on the cheesehead.
And Cardi, if we have that clip, let's play that funny little clip because it just makes me laugh every time.
So aside from the president saying, I'm not leaving, is there any other image of the shambolic state of our democracy, perhaps something that looks like
what you might get if you fed the destruction of democracy into an AI meme generator?
All right, Elon Musk, okay.
The richest and most fertile man in the world went to Wisconsin where he came out in a cheese hat before giving million dollar checks to voters in an effort to influence the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin.
Hey, hey, you know what that's about?
You know what that's about, Elon?
Their culture is not your costume, Musk.
Their people do not appropriate their dairy shepherds.
Our culture is nutty.
Not for you to just bandy about on your silly little head.
I love that except the word shambolic.
I don't know why people are ever throwing that word around.
That's not a word I say in public.
It just means chaotic.
But you know, why use that ridiculous word?
When three cores to 99% of the audiences know what it is.
But anyway, I found that very funny.
And yeah, Musk finally got taken down a couple notches, which was quite nice.
X
He's branding.
I
I'm changing the name to X is
are the
I don't know
So crazy.
I want to invite listeners here to the Earl Ingram show all across the Civic Media Radio Network to join our conversation.
Call us at 855-752-4842.
That's 855-756.
You know the 855, the rest is 752.
48 42 give us a call tell us what you thought about the election what you're lingering Euphoria feels like right now.
I'm still feeling myself And you know for all that money Elon Musk threw into this race between 20 and 25 million dollars, which is unbelievable Didn't didn't amount to anything and the end The people of
It
it's so early.
Yeah.
And I'm used to the.
I'm used to these early decisions coming out and being bad like when Hillary Clinton lost or when Trump won the first time or you know when Walker won the recall is just like don't give me another early we got defeated kicking the teeth please and I was worried for days and weeks leading up to this election because I just you know I knew people were devastated still from November and I didn't know whether we had the energy to bounce back so it was so exciting to see that people understood it
Felt it rose back up and took Elon Musk and Brad Schimel down and told everybody in the country that we don't like the direction Donald Trump's going I was getting calls from my brothers and sisters One sister in Cleveland a couple brothers in Illinois saying, you know, how are you guys doing?
Are you gonna win this sister in California?
I come from a big family
eight kids, biggest Jewish family this side of Haifa.
Anyway, they were all wondering what was going to happen here.
And I know people all over the country had their eyes on us.
And it was a shot in the arm, not just for us here in Wisconsin, but as you mentioned, Angela Lange, a shot in the arm for the resistance movement in this country.
And that's what we need to keep building a resistance movement that is not going to let Donald Trump tear down our democracy and our country.
And so that was very exciting.
And then
On the court itself, it was nice to see yesterday that the liberal justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court made Ann Walsh Bradley the Chief Justice.
Ann Walsh Bradley is the one who is retiring, which is why, of course, Susan Crawford will be on the bench soon.
But Ann Walsh Bradley has served tremendously on the Wisconsin Supreme Court for many, many years.
I was just wondering why it took so long because the Liberals had a majority.
I thought I think they could have gotten rid of the conservative Chief Justice anytime they wanted to.
And they didn't do it.
They held off until now.
And then they're giving Ann Walsh Bradley the Chief Justice Chair and gavel for a couple months.
And Susan Crawford in her beautiful
victory speech.
One of the best victory speeches I've ever heard.
She was extremely gracious toward Ann Walsh Bradley and Ann Walsh Bradley has brought to the court and anyone who sat in on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
hearings, arguments, or who has read Ann Walsh Bradley's rulings, understands that she is a woman of not only tremendous intelligence, but tremendous grace too.
She doesn't engage in vitriolic attacks on her fellow justices who are on the other side.
That's not how she plays.
So she does deserve a lot of praise for her role.
And I'm glad she's going to be able to enjoy being Chief Justice for a couple of months.
Yeah, and then also like conversely I saw a clip of the other Justice Bradley the Bradley that's not aligned with
our values, who I believe, if I remember correctly, will be up next year.
She was at the the Schimmel election watch party and she was saying, I do not look for, you know, to working with Susan Crawford and I don't appreciate how she slandered a good man and she kind of just like any type of, you know,
media training.
You don't really bash your opponent.
You can be disappointed, right?
But you want to act a little gracious.
And that clip, I think, kind of went a little viral locally and with other folks, people talking about how she does not want to work with Susan Crawford.
So definitely a bit of a sore loser.
And she let that be known.
And I think that also was very distasteful.
And it was just very interesting that she was talking about all this out-of-state money that was coming in when we had Elon Musk literally writing million-dollar checks, but she wants to talk about big money.
So interesting.
Absolutely.
And I'm glad you brought that up, Angeloling, because she's in no position to talk about
the problem of big money because she ruled on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2015 to allow unlimited expenditures to dark money groups and allowed candidates to then coordinate with those dark money groups, which just, you know, makes any limit on campaign finance donations immaterial.
And you're also correct in that, you know, she doesn't play well with others.
Not a lot of class there with Rebecca Bradley.
And not only did she signal that she's not going to play nicely,
with Susan Crawford.
She doesn't even play nicely with Brian Haggadorn, another conservative justice on the court.
So looking forward to seeing the liberal majority continue on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
You're listening to the Earl Ingram show on the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Matt Rothschild co-hosting with Angela Lang this morning.
Please join our conversation 855-752-4842.
We'll be right back.
Welcome back to the Earl Ingraham show on the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Matt Rothschild.
Subbing in for Earl is off today.
He'll be back on Monday.
And my guest co-host is Angela Lang of Block.
And we're talking about the week there was the great exhilaration that many of us still feel after the tremendous victory by Susan Crawford on Tuesday.
And we'll be talking, of course, about what Trump is doing to our economy and our democracy in a little bit, too.
You can join the conversation anytime you'd like at 855-752-4842.
That's 855-75 Civic.
Angela Lang, right before the break, we were talking about campaign finance and the odd complaint from the bad Bradley, Rebecca Bradley, about all the money that was here.
I just want to give a little more context for why we had so much money here.
Of course, some of it is because of the U.S.
Supreme Court decision in Citizens United or in the McCutcheon decision in 2014 that said there can't be aggregate limits on what any single individual, rich individual can spend during elections because who else can spend extraordinary amounts like Elon Musk.
But also a lot of responsibility.
falls on the shoulders of Scott Walker and the gerrymandered Republican legislature which in 2015 rewrote our campaign finance law.
At the time I was the executive director at the Wisconsin democracy campaign and the Wisconsin democracy campaign has spent
a lot of its life trying to get big and dark money out of our politics.
So I brought myself to the state capitol up in the Senate gallery on the evening that they were discussing rewriting the campaign finance law.
And I was there when they just totally destroyed it.
They took out all the rhetoric about the importance of placing limits on huge individual donations and having disclosure.
The Republicans didn't want any of that high-minded rhetoric in there.
On top of that, they
doubled the amount that rich people could give directly to Wisconsin's Supreme Court candidates from $10,000 to $20,000 and who's got that change in their pocket.
But even worse, they tore down all the ceilings on donations to the political parties.
and to the outside groups.
And so why even have a $20,000 limit if Elon Musk can give $20 million or if J.B.
Pritzker can give $2 million or George Soros can give money to the Democratic Party and then the Democratic Party can just shuffle that over to Susan Crawford.
So Democratic state senators like Mark Miller, like Chris Larson were raising a stink on the Senate floor that evening when I was there.
And no one was in the gallery except a cop and a 21 year old page Really was empty when this huge change in our campaign finance law was brought about because the limit used to be $10,000 Elon Musk could have in 2015 or in 2014 spent only $10,000 total whether to his funky outside groups or whether he wanted just to give $10,000 to the Republican Party or Wisconsin or directly to Schimel that would have been it.
He could have spent another dime
But because of this change that they wrote in the legislature, you know, he can spend what, 2,000 times what the legal ammo was or something ridiculous.
So, I mean, who is Rebecca Bradley?
Who are
Republicans now to be complaining about all the money that Susan Crawford or Ben Wickler, if you will, helped bring into the state.
And I hated the commercials.
I, you know, I think everyone in Wisconsin, including Susan Crawford's mom, hated the commercials.
Susan Crawford said that in her speech.
And and and the commercials were horrible and I want to talk to you about that a little bit But the money itself the responsibility for the money falls squarely on the shoulders of the Republicans make no doubt and on the Roberts US Supreme Court and we got to change all that there is a movement in Wisconsin To do that and across the country in Wisconsin the group that's working on that is called Wisconsin United to amend and in 179 communities in Wisconsin people have voted that we want to overturn Citizens United and put reasonable limits on
what all this mud that's splattering our screens during election time.
But Angela Lang, you wrote a piece about about the commercials and the commercials.
What I'm talking about is these these crime commercials that were indistinguishable one from the other.
You didn't know if Susan Croft if you didn't have the volume on you didn't and just we're looking at the images.
You want to know if it was you know against Susan Crawford or against Brad Schimmel.
Both of them were saying you know this candidate is horrible on sexual abuse, horrible on sex offenders, horrible on terrible violent criminals.
Don't vote for this candidate.
And what does that do to our politics?
And especially to these are like traumatic commercials.
These are not warm and fuzzy commercials.
And so I think they, you know, they're meant to get a reaction.
But also if you look at the state Supreme Court.
It has nothing to do with these tough on crime ads.
And yes, there was something to be said about being able to talk about someone's record.
But when that is the focal point and you are no longer talking about judicial philosophy or the issues at hand or your own values, then people are like, why am I even discussing this?
And I also think while they're traumatic as well, I've seen some folks say that they had to shield their kids or process some things that
They were triggered by and go back to therapy because of these ads.
And yes, like I said, I think it's important to highlight someone's career, but that should not be the focal point.
And if that is driving people to turn out because they're being misinformed or misled to believe that the state Supreme Court is going to solve their community break ends, they're going to show up and then be disappointed when nothing happens with their issues.
And so I think it's not sustainable in the long run at all.
I also think, and we've got a couple of callers, I'm hoping you'll stay on the line after the break, because I just want to finish this conversation with Angela first.
I also think that those ads didn't help Susan Crawford.
I mean, Susan Crawford won because there was tremendous turnout in Milwaukee, Milwaukee County, Madison, Dane County, and other, every county in the state, the activists got out and voted.
The progressives and the Democrats who are just
disgusted by what Donald Trump is doing to this country.
They turned out in astronomical numbers.
And it wasn't that they were turning out because they saw a Susan Crawford ad that said Brad Schimmel's bad
not what happened.
And
anyway.
Instead, you know, there's all this poison just circling.
around the body politic because both candidates and the outside money funneled in all these ugly ads for us.
You're listening to their ol' Ingram show on the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Matt Rothschild, sub-hosting for a roll along with Angela Lange of Block, and we'll be right back with your calls and your comments, 855-752-4842.
Looking forward to talking with you.
Good morning.
It's a beautiful day here in Wisconsin.
I'm Matt Rothschild.
I'm guest hosting along with Angela Lang, the Earl Ingram show.
Thanks for being with us.
You can join our conversation at 855-752-4842.
Love Earl Ingram, love his voice, not just his beautiful deep voice, but his powerful moral voice.
And Angela Lang's powerful moral voice.
for that matter.
Both Earl and Angela are getting awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
Earl's getting one for the best regular scheduled radio program, and Angela's getting one for the second year in a row for the best editorial column.
So congratulations, Angela.
There you go.
Thank you.
Also shout out to Dan Schaefer from the Reconvobulation area who I believe also got like four or five where all the thing I am getting he's also nominated in the same category so it's funny to be up against quote-unquote your own editor but
Yeah, I was thinking about this.
I was like, I'm probably going to announce these after the election.
And Dan texted me, and I was like, oh, back to back.
OK, was last year just a fluke?
Could I do it again?
So I'm very proud and very excited.
And shout out to Dan for always letting me have a platform to say what is on my mind.
A lot of times, Dan would be like, hey, you had a lot of thoughts on this particular issue on Twitter.
Would you like to write an op-ed about
it?
him push me.
I've seen, you know, my writing grow with his support too.
So huge shout out to Dan and Dan is also everywhere.
Like we saw him on election night with a special election coverage and everything.
So it's been really cool to see how the recombobulation area now part of civic media has grown just in the last several years too.
Yeah, he's doing a great job as the political editor over here at Civic Media.
I enjoy his one minute commentaries that air on the network.
And, you know, I was just doing those Facebook Reels the other day and there was Todd Alba and Dan Schaefer announcing the victory and saying how early the victory was for Susan Crawford.
So that kind of made me laugh too.
Just tremendous work by all of you.
And it's just fun to be here with you.
We're talking about the election on Tuesday.
We're talking about the need for campaign finance.
We have a couple of callers.
If they're still with us, Cardi, let's take the callers right now.
Gotcha.
We have Jim from Brookfield.
Jim, you're on there.
What's up?
Okay.
Good morning, Matt.
Good morning, Angela.
Angela, congratulations for a second time getting the press award for the editorials.
I'll have to make sure I read them.
But congratulations.
And Matt, it's good to hear you again on a Friday morning.
I go back to your Wisconsin public radio days with the weekend review with Joy Cardine.
You would so graciously.
Debate Margaret Farrell.
I really enjoyed those conversations.
So it's good to hear your voice again.
I
enjoyed those.
Yeah, you did really well.
You were so gracious with Margaret Farrell.
She was kind of clueless on some things, but you were very diplomatic and always polite and professional, you know, as opposed to some of the guests that Joy would have on there.
But anyway, I want to circle back to the bad Bradley to Rebecca Bradley.
I don't think it's too early to start talking about her upcoming election a year from now.
That's going to come faster than we think and the ads will probably come out sooner than we ever want to see them.
But I just want to say a couple of things.
I think it should be pointed out that her career and rise to power is strictly due to the appointments of Mr. Scott Walker, our former governor.
He handed her everything and he appointed her after a judgeship to the Supreme Court after
There was a death on the court, and she had the huge advantage of running for reelection as an incumbent.
And she did get in, you know.
It wasn't anywhere near as what we just saw, a larger victory we just saw with Susan Crawford, but she did sneak in, even though some very racist posts that she had written in college had surfaced.
And I'll never forget how some of the conservative commentators
dismissed that and said, well, you know, it was 21 years earlier when she was at market law school, 21 years, but they said, oh, that was more than a quarter of a century ago.
You know, they put a positive spin on that, you know, as if in 21 years they're going to quote unquote, grow up, become real and fair minded.
Anyway, she has turned out to be nothing but what she railed against Tuesday night on the election, nothing but a.
you know, Republican mouthpiece and spewing the, the far-right mantra and voting that way.
So, um, I, I want to ask two questions to you, Matt and to Angela.
What type of candidate do you think, um, should be, you know, go up against her?
You know, I think it should be somebody bare knuckles who can take her on, but also in today's Markey Journal Sentinel, they mentioned that she's looking at replacing Diane Sykes for that appeals seventh court appeals court.
And if she takes that, you know, there would be an open seat.
But my question on that is, does Donald Trump, could Donald Trump appoint her to replace Diane Sykes?
Could that be a possibility that she won't even run for reelection because she'll get a nice job on that seven circuit court of appeals?
So my two questions are what type of candidate and it's a possible, you know, it could be an open race.
Well, Jim from Brookfield, thanks so much for
the call and your
nice comments.
I do think, you know, she could leave the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which I would welcome.
I know the appellate court would not welcome her coming down there, but it'd be nice to get her out of here.
She is a bad remnant of the Walker days.
Who would run for that spot?
I know.
Former Assemblywoman Chris Taylor was thinking about running last time.
Maybe she'd run again.
And there are other good candidates who've run before who could run again.
Angela, what do you think?
Now, I think because of her comments on election night, people are like, is she going to run again?
Knowing how these Supreme Court elections have gone for the conservative candidates, does she basically have a chance next year?
So I think there are some folks that are wondering, does she see the writing on the wall?
Is she going to get this appointment?
And it is my understanding that Trump could appoint her to that court, which would leave an open seat.
And I have not said, I mean, I think it's not a surprise.
I'm going to say who I would like to see run.
I did not vet this through this person.
So please don't be mad if you're listening.
Huge fan of Everett Mitchell and the way he ran and some of the challenges that he had in the primary against Janet Perosewicz.
And I think.
the way he inspired a lot of people, our ambassadors.
He inspired a new group of folks that aren't traditionally engaged in a Supreme Court election.
And I think a lot of times the reason, some of the racism and the electability, quote unquote, dog whistle, I think kind of prevented him because if it was control of the court, people were like, you're great, but I don't know if we can elect a black man statewide.
And so if you don't kind of have that dynamic of the balance of power hanging in the looms of this election, would people feel?
I guess more comfortable taking a chance on a black man, whether that's Judge Everett Mitchell or someone else too, which I kind of talk about a little bit in the piece about the tough on crime ads.
So I haven't talked to him about it.
So sorry if this is a little kind of just overstepping, but I don't think it's a secret huge fan.
I have a lot of deep respect for Everett Mitchell and would love to see him run again.
Yeah, so there are two candidates Chris Taylor Everett Mitchell both would be good candidates.
Yeah, Angela Lange has written powerfully in her editorials on Everett Mitchell We have Mary Schneider who Texan saying I love Everett Mitchell So there's two votes for Everett Mitchell right off the bat
Yeah, I mean both are
Both would be great candidates.
So Jim, thanks for that call.
Cardi, do we have another caller still with us?
Yes, we do.
We have two callers.
We have Tom from LA next.
Beautiful.
Tom, you're up.
Yeah.
Hey, Matt.
Well, I have decided to really start a organization that's not going to be for profit.
It's not going to be for a nonprofit.
It's going to be for a labor of love.
And that is gonna be get money out of politics.
It's gonna be getmoneyout.net.
I'm tired of sitting on the sideline with going to move to amend and all of these other organizations, which really have been in place for a long time, but I don't see that they're getting the job done.
And I think we don't need to be talking about move to amend, amend, amend.
No one knows what amend means.
The average person out there knows, get money out of politics,
The average person is sick of commercials.
The average person is sick of text messages.
The average person is sick of emails.
The average person is sick of go to this website to put your name down.
But hey, we're going to ask you for a donation afterwards.
I know I'm sick of it.
And the thing is, I can't just sit back anymore.
So if any of your listeners out there know anything, I know Cam does from Appleton and other people about
websites and putting together something to really get money out.
Please contact me because I am sick of this.
We just ran a campaign for $100 million.
Yes, the right puts 50 million in, but you know what?
The left was forced to put 50 million in.
This is ridiculous.
We need to restore government back to we the people.
and stop letting the oligarchs and the corporations run this country.
We need to make sure that when we go out in the streets and we march and we make a statement that they just don't wait us out because they're going to get another commercial buy that's coming out.
This means attacking the media.
This means attacking the corporate media because they get the dollars from the advertising that they get from all the
different ads that happen.
They are just as much of the problem as anybody else.
So anybody out there that wants to join me and getting money out of politics, please let me know.
It's tomadler.com.
You can go to my website or you can go to gayandlesbianpages.com to contact me.
But I am so sick of getting money out of money being in politics and influencing
Every aspect when I go to a rally You guys I actually Matt when I go to a rally and that's for a woman's right to choose or whatever I'm always for the last 20 years carrying my son get money out because you know that is the thread that actually Handles every other issue that's out there is money in politics and we have got to get it out
Totally agree Tom.
Thanks so much that for
that passion
Yeah, and it's just a crucial issue.
Uh, we've got one more caller.
The Cardi tells me, so who's
up to
bat?
Hey folks, um, I just want to mention the response that last one, I've been heavily involved in local politics out here, ran for assembly twice and county board as a progressive and the Democrats are just as responsible for money in politics.
And during entering, it didn't accept in 09 the idea of a iOS style situation when we had the assembly
the Senate and the governor.
And so when we talked about changing all this stuff, we got to remember so our best friends are involved in making it the way it is.
I was told not to talk about getting money out of politics when I was there.
But the direction I would like to see us go in is more a community organizing approach.
Elections come around, you know, we do our thing for them.
But in between, do you think back to the Black Panthers, they were a militant face of the men walking around in leather jackets and berets and looking really rough.
But behind the scenes, the women did an incredible job of
child care and after school activities and food banks and that's the kind of stuff that we organize around the things that are not being met because they're being taken away, that politics will happen.
It's like we have developed a community and that takes more than a election strategy.
Absolutely, Tom from Richland Center and that's the work that Angela Lang does every day and her team does every day at Block, Black Leaders Organizing for Communities.
So Angela, why don't you talk about how important that grassroots work is?
Because especially in a state like Wisconsin where, thank goodness, we do not have another election for 10 months, assuming that there's going to be some sort of primary in February of next year.
So what are we doing in that downtime?
10 months goes by really, really fast.
And it doesn't, to me and I think a lot of other organizers, it doesn't make sense to completely get rid of your organizing infrastructure and kind of just be dormant until the next election cycle.
especially when it's only 10 months in between elections.
How are we talking to folks?
How are we talking to people about this moment right now as well?
So I'm here for it year round organizing.
We need to always have conversations, especially in Wisconsin, when every five minutes there's no action.
Yeah, thanks so much, Tom from Richardson Center for that call.
You can join the conversation 855-752-4842.
You're listening to the Earl Ingram show on Civic Media.
I'm Matt Rothschild with Angela Lange here, co-hosting as Earl's out today.
Please give us a holler and join our conversation right out of this bump.
This is be me
Hey, good morning, Wisconsin man, Rothschild here.
I'm subbing in for Earl Ingham on the Earl Ingham show here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
And my guest co-host is Angela Lang, the executive director and founder of Block, Black Leaders Organizing for Communities.
And I always enjoy working with Angela co-hosting together whenever there is someone who can't make it.
You know, I'm just, I've told the folks at Civic Media, you know, I'm out in the bullpen.
I'm ready to go whenever you need me.
Just
right hander.
But I'm a lefty.
I couldn't believe it.
Angela, within about 10 seconds, says, yeah, let's go.
So here we are.
Please join our conversation.
If you'd like to talk about campaign finance, the Wisconsin Supreme Court race politics here in Wisconsin, 855-752-4842.
And at the start of the next hour, we're going to talk about Cory Booker a little bit in the amazing.
speech that he gave 25 hours, holy smokes.
And what that means for the Democrats and the resistance movement going forward.
And also we'll talk a little bit about Trump just lighting up our economy and throwing it in the trash.
And so if you want to join that, please join us right after the hour break at 855-752-4842.
But I wanted to continue on this conversation a little bit on campaign finance.
And then take a couple callers that we have because yeah Tom from Richland Center was correct the Democrats could have solved a part of the problem of campaign finance when they had the power in 2009, but they didn't do that And Ben Wickler has been able to you know beat the Republicans at their own game here for a while But I don't think that's a long time solution because look they're more
Billionaires on the right than there are on the left, you know and Elon Musk himself could instead of putting 25 million could have put 250 million I don't know if it would have done any good, but you know when the sky's the limit and the sky's being polluted by all this money and the folks on in the billionaire class tend to lean right
Having this guy be in the limit isn't the answer.
So there are some Democrats in the state legislature right now who've been working on this problem.
Senator Chris Larson from Milwaukee has been working on it
years and years.
Every session of the legislature, he's introduced a package of campaign finance reform, which would do a whole.
lot of good, including putting a ceiling on donations to political parties and to the outside groups.
And then I see at the State Journal today, the Wisconsin State Journal that killed a Royce, another state senator on the Democratic side is also
considering introducing a couple bills, one would bring back public financing for Wisconsin Supreme Court.
We had that for all of one year and one
And as soon as Walker got in, they got rid of that.
So, you know, tell me who's to blame here.
And she also would require a bill that would require more disclosures.
There's a lot of reforms that we can do here in Wisconsin to help rectify the problem.
But also we need to overturn Citizens United.
And it's not just Citizens United, of course.
Citizens United is a short
hand for 140 years of bad court decisions on money is money in politics.
The two false equations, of course, that corporations are persons and money is speech.
Those are fallacies.
So we've got two more callers.
Cardi tells me who's up to bat, Cardi.
We have Mike from Kenosha.
Mike.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
We miss you, Earl, but you guys are doing a great job.
Thanks.
Thanks,
Mike.
Yeah, real quick.
When it comes to restoring good government in our electioneering, you know, I think we need to break it down to simple terms, very common sense approach.
First of all, whose election is it?
And I would have to reply, obviously, was it's we the people's election.
It's not the media.
It's not the donors.
It's not the special interests.
It's not K Street.
It's be the people so first thing in my mind when when when we need to approach a very difficult subject is take ownership and Who's
is whose responsibility is it and it's nobody else's but we repeat number one number two is It's our election since it's our election we ought to be able to dictate you know the laws and in the
is the procedures of our elections, not the money's interest.
There's nobody that I know that feels good about what we call now, which is normalized, the donor class.
That is so anti-UF Constitution that just curls my stomach thinking about it when I say it.
So again, first thing we have to do is realize that our election
It's not the corporates, it's not the media, it's not the special owners, it's ours.
And we have every right to run it as we deem necessary.
Number two, even the 1976 Buckley and 1970 Berlotti Supreme Court cases, which first opened the door for corporations or people in money's speech, those were not court decisions.
When I researched this deeply, I looked back and what I learned is some clerk hand wrote a note on the document.
Hand wrote the note, corporations are people money's peace.
There is no legal basis for it.
No, I just wanted to thank you for your call.
We're running out of time, but you're right.
Mike's referring to a clerk at the US Supreme Court in 1888 in a case called Santa Clara County versus Southern Pacific Railway.
where no justice is said corporations are persons but the clerk put that there that corporations are persons and that how that that's how that precedent started so it's still crazy so we'll be back please join the conversation we'll take more of your calls 855-752-4842 this is the Earl Ingram show I'm Matt Rothschild joined by Angela Lange we'll be right back