(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To This Post)

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what's goin' down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of government' gets done and where the rain man draws circles, up and down the block.

We begin in Wisconsin, where the president* stopped by on Wednesday to boost the Republican candidates for office there. One of those, of course, is Governor Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin. Walker is in a spot of trouble, at least partly because a lot of people who used to work for him seem not to have enjoyed the experience. From The Atlantic:

Even early on, however, I noticed that not everything was as it should be. At more than one Cabinet meeting, the secretary of the Department of Administration, Mike Huebsch, told us never to send him or the governor any electronic documents of consequence, and to avoid the use of our state-issued cellphones. “If you send me an important report electronically, I won’t open it,” I remember him saying, “and if you call me on your state phone, I won’t answer it.” If we had any important documents, they were to be “walked over” and hand-delivered to the governor’s office. As a result, open-record requests by the media or political opponents would be almost futile. This lack of transparency would be a hallmark of the Walker administration...

...Marches were held around the clock, and the capitol rotunda was filled with protesters carrying signs, some pretty clever. My favorite featured a dorky picture of Walker with big, bold letters declaring dred scott! During the protests, Walker usually entered and exited the capitol building via a secret underground tunnel. Later, when Walker titled his 2013 book Unintimidated and bragged about how he “stood up to union thugs and protesters,” I thought back to how he had regularly ducked in and out of the capitol via a tunnel, always escorted by a heavy security detail. Unintimidated is not exactly the word that comes to mind, but Republicans in Washington accepted Walker’s self-image and talked him up as a strong presidential contender.

I have to admit, I bought this line of thought as well. I thought Walker's crushing of the unions in Wisconsin, and his winning the recall election, were wingnut credentials that set him apart from the other 2016 presidential contenders. Of course, I didn't see how far over the cliff the party was willing to go, but I was surprised when Walker didn't even make it to the Iowa caucuses.

Andy Manis Getty Images

I have been surprised even further at how readily Walker's former cabinet members have been willing to give him up this time around.

Others who served in Walker’s Cabinet have also soured on their former boss. Ex–Transportation Secretary Gottlieb said in September that Walker “isn’t telling the truth” about Wisconsin’s roads, and blasted him for “taking a high-risk gamble” when it comes to the state’s infrastructure. In August, ex–Corrections Secretary Ed Wall published a book titled Unethical: Life in Scott Walker’s Cabinet and the Dirty Side of Politics, a clear jab at Walker’s book Unintimidated. Earlier this month, ex–Commerce Secretary Paul Jadin resigned from his $208,000-a-year job in economic development in order to publicly share criticism of Walker, declaring that Walker “routinely put his future ahead of the state.”

Scotty, we hardly knew ye. But the folks who do know ye are pretty sick of ye.

We move along to North Carolina, where the homestretch is starting to get ugly. From WBTV:

According to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, the incident happened around 2:30 p.m. at a voting location in the 11000 block of South Tryon Street. Officers arrived in response to an armed man threatening a campaign worker at a voting location. Officials say when officers arrived on the scene, a black man said he was working at the voting location when he saw the armed man in the parking lot with a camera taking pictures or recording the polling location.

Police say the armed man approached the campaign worker, and began hurling racial slurs, according to a report from CMPD. The report stated the campaign worker said the armed man threatened to assault him before lifting his shirt and displaying a handgun which was in a holster on his belt...Around 9:15 p.m., Jason Donald Wayne, 28, was located and arrested without incident. Police say he was carrying a BB gun in a holster which was located and seized as evidence. Police say Wayne was charged with going armed to the terror of the people, ethnic intimidation, communicating threats and disorderly conduct.

There's going to be more of this as we get closer to Election Day. But what strikes me most is that, in 2014, Tamir Rice was waving a pellet gun around and some Cleveland police rolled up on him and shot him dead without so much as a hello. This is an issue in the campaign, too, but people don't want to talk about it any more than they wanted to talk about it four years ago.

Early voting in Georgia Jessica McGowan Getty Images

From there we move to Georgia, for a special crossover episode of this regular feature with our new fall hit show, What's This Shit, Anyway? A federal judge has ordered the state to stop fcking those rats so hard. From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

May submitted her “proposed injunction” on Wednesday in response to two different lawsuits challenging how Georgia evaluates mail-in absentee ballots and applications. She gave the Secretary of State’s Office and other parties involved in the litigation until noon Thursday to file responses to her proposal. But she wrote that objections should be confined to whether or not any of the “language is confusing or will be unworkable for the implementing officials.” She stressed that she had made the decision to file the injunction and it was not not an issue attorneys should try to argue further in their written responses. As presented Wednesday, the injunction would include ordering Secretary of State Brian Kemp and his office to tell local elections officials to make every effort to count legitimate mail-in votes.

There's going to be more of this as we get closer to election day, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that. We are going to be in Recount Hell for months, and folks are going to be riding every ride in Depositionland. And that's before the White House starts in with whatever the president* has planned, assuming he ever really plans anything.

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, where Blog Official Rugalech Wrangler Friedman of the Plains brings us an update on the Second Worst Idea In American Politics—namely, the elected judiciary. From Oklahoma Watch:

Gibbs is listed as an attorney in four cases that went before Morrissey in the past two years. One is an open case where Gibbs represents a Tulsa bar’s holding company being sued for at least $150,000 for alleged negligence and civil liability. In January, while the case was active, Gibbs made a $2,700 contribution, the maximum allowed, to Morrissey’s re-election campaign, making him one of the judge’s top donors this election cycle.

But that judge-donor relationship didn’t prompt changes in any of the four cases, such as Morrissey recusing herself or Gibbs removing himself from a case. Judges rarely recuse themselves voluntarily or on request because they received money from attorneys arguing before them, according to interviews and a review of court records. That is despite the fact that attorneys represent the largest number of donors to district judges’ campaigns. An Oklahoma Watch review of campaign finance records shows that attorneys’ donations represented more than half of the $1.6 million in contributions from individuals to district judge candidates so far in this election cycle.

As should be obvious from recent events, an independent judiciary is more important now than it's ever been before. Throwing the judiciary into our current cash-sodden politics is even worse than the idea of an elected judiciary is in theory. And, as the Oklahoma example shows, judges aren't any more willing to self-police than the rest of us are.

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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