If you want to read a detailed transcript of the call is right here.
2. He admits what the end goal is, and it has absolutely NOTHING to do with 'FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY'
From Salon.com:
Ian Murphy, editor of the Buffalo Beast, just did something wonderful. Murphy, pretending to be billionaire industrialist and secretive conservative political activist David Koch, called Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, currently in the midst of attempting to crush the public employees' unions. "Koch" got through to Walker (who hasn't been taking calls from the Democratic state Senate minority leader). He taped the call and put it online.
So Walker will happily take a call from a Koch brother. He says that he considered "planting some troublemakers" among the protesters. He is convinced that everyone is on his side. Like most people who only watch Fox, he has a skewed impression of the popularity of his union-crushing proposals. (His plan is, nationally, roundly unpopular. Except on Fox.)
When "Koch" calls Mika Brzezinski "a real piece of ass," Walker does not respond by saying something awful, which is a bit of a disappointment.
Walker does reveal that he is planning to trick the Democrats into coming back into town for a "talk," despite his lack of interest in compromising anything. He will ask them to open a session in the Assembly, and then take a recess for this talk. At that point, the Senate Republicans would hold the vote on the bill while Walker distracts the Democrats with this entirely pointless discussion:
They can recess it ... the reason for that, we're verifying it this afternoon, legally, we believe, once they've gone into session, they don't physically have to be there. If they're actually in session for that day, and they take a recess, the 19 Senate Republicans could then go into action and they’d have quorum because it's turned out that way. So we're double checking that. If you heard I was going to talk to them that's the only reason why. We'd only do it if they came back to the capitol with all 14 of them. My sense is, hell. I'll talk. If they want to yell at me for an hour, I'm used to that. I can deal with that. But I'm not negotiating.
So, get that through your mind. I mean, we had already guessed that the threatening to fire the workers in order to force the Democrats back was a bunch of bullshyt, but now we have confirmation from his own mouth.
The benefit from the Democrats' stance is that all the hidden crap that Walker tried to sneak through in the bill is being brought to light...like him being a tool for the Koch Brothers, his attempted takeover of Medicaid, the no-bid contracts, etc. Before, nobody was paying any attention to the depth of the bill that he tried to ram through.
From the Reid Report:The National Journal this morning uncovers another possible wrinkle in the Scott Walker union busting saga: whether his plan for balancing his state’s budget is actually a multiple bait and switch.
From the National Journal:
while Walker argues that his budget-repair legislation must be passed soon to avoid job cuts, the most controversial parts of his bill would have no immediate effect.
The state’s entire budget shortfall for this year — the reason that Walker has said he must push through immediate cuts — would be covered by the governor’s relatively uncontroversial proposal to restructure the state’s debt.
By contrast, the proposals that have kicked up a firestorm, especially his call to curtail the collective-bargaining rights of the state’s public-employees, wouldn’t save any money this year.
“What we’re asking for is modest, at least to those of us outside of government,” Walker said in a televised address Tuesday night.
In January, the Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau reported that the state would face a $137 million shortfall before the end of the fiscal year on June 30. The governor’s budget repair bill proposes a debt restructuring that would save the state $165 million in the near term, more than covering the shortfall.
The legislation would also borrow money from a federal welfare program to cover further state shortfalls, and it includes a provision that would allow the sale of the state’s public utilities without a bidding process or public oversight.
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The bill also employs “emergency” powers that would allow the governor’s appointed health secretary to redefine the foundations of the state’s Medicaid program, Badgercare, ranging from eligibility to premiums, with only passive legislative review. The attorney in the legislature’s nonpartisan reference bureau who prepared the bill warned that a court could invalidate the statute for violating separation of powers doctrine.
The legislation, the lawyer wrote in a “drafter’s note” about the bill, would allow the state Department of Health Services to “change any Medical Assistance law, for any reason, at any time, and potentially without notice or public hearing… in addition to eliminating notice and publication requirements, [the changes] would leave the emergency rules in effect without any requirement to make permanent rules and without any time limit.”
Like I said, the longer this goes on...the more you see what Walker is REALLY about...and it's not about any 'Fiscal Responsibility'.
Rachel Maddow did excellent work on the bringing this roach's garbage to light.
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Ed Schultz had an interview with one of the Wisconsin State Senators on the lam:
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