Then There Were Two, or, I’ve Got a Mind to Sue
Wisconsin’s Highest Ranking Lautenschlager has spent ten-thousand Wisconsin taxpayer dollars to commission a report about national oil industry trends. General Lautenschlager is fresh off one of the more bizarre cases of the year—she had filed suit as both a private litigant and, in the same case, as the State of Wisconsin Attorney General before Dane County Judge David Flanagan dismissed the State from the case—and apparently wants to expand her AG role in other ways too.
In this instance, she seems to want to be an avant garde public policy agenda setter, rather than boring ol’ law-enforcer. The report, thankfully, at least suggests national legislative responses to the allegedly unethical oil profiteering, rather than state-led litigulatory responses. But we can’t shake our hunch that Wisconsin’s AG will soon begin to play a higher profile role in the national energy policy story. Local political grandstanding has an odd way of derailing national markets.
Luckily, this AG spawning incident has confined itself to Wisconsin state politics. We get cold sweats at the prospect of AGs doubling spontaneously and suing globally. The effect on national commerce would be terrifying.