FREE SPEECH ISN'T FREE ACCORDING TO WISCONSIN

Wisconsin has enacted a law which makes political free speech subject to fees or jail time.

If you think this can’t happen in America… well… it just did. This law affects liberals, conservatives and those of every political persuasion. It affects every American, both inside and outside of WI, who communicate in any manner about candidates running for office in WI.

Whether you are supporting or opposing a candidate, gathering to demonstrate for or against a candidate, or even if you are using email or the Internet to express your opinion about a candidate, you are subject to fees or jail time.

In the dark of night, behind closed doors, WI enacted the new Government Accountability Board – G.A.B. 128 Rule which silences political free speech 60 days prior to the election. Conveniently, this law goes into effect on August 15, 2010 with little to no time for successful legal challenges prior to the November 2010 election.

The entire text of the G.A.B. 1 Rule can be found here (Sections 1.10, 1.28, and 1.42 are most revealing): http://www.legis.state.wi.us/rsb/code/gab/gab001.pdf

Under this new law, individuals and groups must pay a $100 registration fee to the state of WI if they want permission to use political speech that totals at least $25 “cumulatively in a calendar year.” But it doesn’t stop there…

Individuals and groups must set up a separate depository account and file a report with the Accountability Board and Secretary of State. They then need to provide periodic reports of every communication – explaining the type of communication/action for each and every episode of political free speech.

What WI did by adding G.A.B. 1.28 to the G.A.B. 1 Rule is to define political communication and actions in order to give the government the legal ability to regulate and monitor everything you say and do.

Expenses related to political free speech will include such things as a portion of your Internet bills, your phone bills, signs you’ve made, gas/bus fare to political gatherings, fliers, mailings, etc. These types of communication and action will easily total $25 per year for every American who wishes to exercise their 1st Amendment right to political free speech.

Essentially, WI has now abolished everyone’s Constitutional right to political free speech by enacting a law to ensure free speech is no longer free, and it’s now granted (or not granted), and monitored by the government.

This unconstitutional power grab by the government should outrage everyone on the political spectrum – left, right and everyone in between.

Just as the events of the Gulf Oil disaster unites everyone who cares about our Gulf Coast, this too is an issue that unites all of us.

If this new law stands in WI, it won’t be long before it spreads to other states throughout the country. Ohio is already moving in that direction: Bloggericide: Ohio Officials Charge Blogger With Campaign Violations. Will your state be next?

Here is the list of WI legislators who are responsible for taking away our right to political free speech – you may want to contact them via phone, email or letter before our right to free speech expires on August 15:

With 77% of WI’s elected officials coming from the Democratic Party, clearly it’s been hi-jacked and it’s no longer the party we once knew. Their actions prove that they, AND the complicit Republicans, intend to strip us of our freedom and liberty.

When we allow government to grant “rights” to the American people, we are also granting them the power to take our rights away… and they just did.

It should be pointed out that political speech was the very sort of free speech that the founders of this country were talking about when they crafted the First Amendment.

“And, since the governor is a Democrat and the State Leg is Democrat-controlled, the Republican Congressmen sure as hell didn’t have a hand in it. “

Any Congressman who is silent and not informing the public is complicit in this - so if there are republicans at the state level who have not brought this to the attention of voters, they are complicit.

April 01, 2010
Election Theft Underway in Wisconsin

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/04/election_theft_underway_in_wis.html

More evidence the Obama Democrats are playing by Chicago rules, and rapidly altering the nature of our political regime. Nancy Pelosi’s strong arm legislative tactics have metastasized to the state level in Wisconsin.

According to a Republican Wisconsin state senator, Democrats there plan to change the election rules in November with inadequate scrutiny. In other words, a stealth attack on the integrity of the electoral process. Like ObamaCare, this is a change-the-game legislative proposal that could not withstand scrutiny.

Wisconsin Senator Glenn Grothman alerts us that Democrats are trying to push a radical 72-page bill less than 16 hours after its hearing. He writes:

Senate Bill 640 [is] a bill which radically changes Wisconsin election law going into this year’s election. The 72-page bill was not even introduced until March 23.

Senate Bill 640 makes many changes to Wisconsin election law including the following:

* 1) The bill allows municipalities to set up satellite absentee ballot stations for early voting. These stations apparently could be done in college dorms, outside of bars, or other inappropriate locals.

* 2) The current open government practice of allowing any citizen to challenge individual ballots would end as monitoring of elections of statewide or national significance would be restricted to people who live within that polling district.

* 3) Permanent absentee ballot status would be established in which ballots would be sent to people who historically do not vote in low-turnout elections. Currently, permanent absentee ballot status is restricted to people who are confined because of age, physical illness, infirmity, or disabled infinitely making them unable to get to the polls.

* 4) University IDs could be offered as proof of residence for registration and voting.

* 5) The increased cost of processing and mailing out the additional absentee ballots is an unfunded mandate that local municipalities will not be able to absorb.

* 6) Local municipalities will be forced to hire speakers of a foreign language if at least 5% of the adults in their district are not English proficient.

* 7) The bill proposes to set up a statewide database of voters that the authors said they would hope to link up to a national database.

“This is a shocking power grab some extremist Democrats are trying to change our laws so that more unqualified voters are able to vote and so that we are not able to determine whether or not voting fraud in fact took place,” said Grothman. “That is clearly the motivation behind trying to have a much larger number of permanent absentee voters as well as preventing an individual outside a polling place to object to inappropriate voting.”

“Ironically, the voting change that most Wisconsin citizens request, Voter ID, is about the only thing not included in this far-reaching bill that is being fast-tracked through the State Legislature.”

The far left has taken over the Democratic Party, and is aggressive changing the rules so as to entrench itself in power, regardless of the will of the people. The same Alinskyite mentality that rammed through ObamaCare. Rules are what you make the other guy live up to. (”We make ‘em up as we go along.”)

Now, with the same anti-transparency approach used on ObamaCare, Wisconsin Democrats plan to close down scrutiny while they tailor election practices to benefit themselves.

Chicago rules ruthlessness coupled to a far left structural agenda. Precisely the brew that Saul Alinsky created when he began his work with community organizing on Chicago’s South Side and took up residence in Hyde Park.

Our democratic process is being degraded, moving in a distinctly unpleasant direction: a ruling party rigging elections, paying off its allied groups, practicing predatory governance with regard to the business class, which it regards as pariahs. A compliant media supplies propaganda extolling the leader, and framing the news to portray the governing class in the best light. Workers are kept in line with unions.

Are there any honest Democrats out there willing to denounce this hijacking of the electoral process? Those who claim to be thoughtful liberals ought to take a look at the corruption machines being designed in Wisconsin.

Tyranny creeps in one step at a time.

Hat tip: Richard Baehr

Color me ignorant but can governments just keep passing laws that void the Constitution?

The great minds who formed our government must have anticipated this kind of intrusion.

The Constitution is not written for the faint of heart, but for those who understand what the citizenry of a free state must do to remain free.

Unfortunately for us we have generations that have not been taught what they must do. We have over 50 years of active forms of progressivism brainwashing our youth and consequently adults.

We have now several generations that don't feel the loss. They have been numbed by the lull-a-bye of socialism. Those of us who are not yet sleeping are like you, wondering who and where and how to we stop this? The sunshine patriot will close their eyes and fall into this deep sleep.

We know the answer if we search our head and heart. It is not an answer we take too lightly. Just as our wise founders sought every form of redress, so too shall the free of heart. But, when the redress is done and nothing has changed...we will return to our true First Right. Scribed not in the Constitution, but in our Declaration of Independence.

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