Tag: Wisconsin

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

They say liquor is quicker.

Wisconsin Recall Fight Heats Up As Democrats Complain Of ‘Shots For Signatures’ Deals (AUDIO)

by Amanda Terkel

WASHINGTON — In an effort to gather enough signatures to trigger recall elections of state senators in Wisconsin, some backers are turning to peculiar, unconventional and, it appears, even intoxicating means.

The Wisconsin Democratic Party is planning to file a complaint to the state Government Accountability Board alleging that a Republican signature-gatherer offered alcoholic beverages to a group of women to get them to sign a recall petition against a Democratic state senator.

Although that’s not illegal in Wisconsin, it is strongly discouraged and, Democrats argue, evidence that Republicans don’t really have enough grassroots support for their recall campaigns.

Wisconsin Democrats Laugh Off “Republican Recall Racket”

by David Weigel

Today, a bit less than a week before the deadline, recall petitions are being filed against three Wisconsin Democratic senators. State Democratic party spokesman Graeme Zielinski has given me the party’s response to the petitions, which can be summed up as “ha, ha.”

Without any real enthusiasm on the part of the citizens of the districts to support the anti-Wisconsin Walker agenda, the Republican recall racket was forced to rely on road agents from a Colorado firm and elsewhere, mercenaries from out-of-state who came in and were paid money per recall signature. The only real press that this practice got was the reporting on a Colorado canvasser with a dangerous felony record who was was preying on visitors to Lambeau Field and taking stolen items to a motel room paid for by Republicans. But that dangerous Colorado felon employed by the Republican Party was just the tip of the iceberg.  At the heart of the Republican effort from the start was a mercenary spirit that naturally used deception and fraud to gain signatures.

snip

The Republican recall racket used unethical practices to gain signatures. In Burlington, for instance, a Republican canvasser offered patrons of a tavern shots of liquor in exchange for recall signatures against Sen. Bob Wirch. And in Green Bay, Republicans left recall signatures unattended with a sign that said, “Out to lunch,” an unethical and forbidden practice.

Crossposted at Daily Kos and The Stars Hollow Gazette

Gov walker Cutting State Expenses???:

embattled Gov. Scott Walker spoke at an invitation-only event

And how does he arrive at this ‘invitation only’ tepublican fund raising event:

Walker arrived in a convoy of six unmarked police cars that pulled up at 5:45 p.m. to the Steak Pit for a Republican Lincoln Day fundraiser.

This turkey is taking the bush ‘it would be easier if a dictator’ to heart and he thinks he’s the Pres. apparently!!

This is going to be short.  I have a clear and succinct point to make.

Wisconsin unions can now either give it all they’ve got, or they’re done for.

Right now, after Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Senate Republicans have pushed through this step in the decades-long corporate assault on labor, the unions really have their backs against a wall.  Membership has declined, manufacturing has gone oversees, the national Democratic Party has abandoned them, and the cancer of the corporation has metastasized over not just government, but society.  If the unions don’t rediscover their past, if they don’t turn around their more recent history of capitulation and infighting, they’ll die soon enough anyway.  It’s their choice:  militancy or death.

I’m enraged.  Wisconsin’s union workers this evening were temporarily outflanked by a legislative maneuver of questionable legality.  And of despicably sleazy intent. The Senate decided that, as everyone in opposition to it has been saying for months, the union busting bill really wasn’t a fiscal measure, the previous pronouncements that it was be damned.  No, it wasn’t a fiscal measure.  It was a union busting measure.  And therefore, the bill didn’t need a quorum in the Senate.  It could pass the Wisconsin Senate with no democrats voting.  Or even appearing.  So there. This wonderfully disingenuous piece of legislative legerdemain has– let’s call it what it is–  temporarily screwed Wisconsin’s public unions by withdrawing their right to bargain collectively.

And now.  And now, amigo@s, comes the real test.  Will the unions and their supporters and the demonstrators and you and I all throw up our hands in defeat and despair and slink home?  Will we say in words or actions, “Oh, we lost, it’s over, let’s just forget about it and move on?”  Or will we stand up now and fight on (nonviolently) with ever renewed dedication to overturn this evil, unpopular, antidemocratic, antiunion measure?

I hope that hundreds of thousands of people show up in Madison tomorrow to demonstrate against Governor Walker and the Koch funded Teapublicans.  I hope an equal number will show up in Lansing.  And in Union Square, New York.  And in San Francisco.  And Chicago.  And in every town and city in America that recognizes the dignity of workers and their right to bargain collectively.  I hope the recall efforts will be redoubled.  I hope that the demonstrators inspire a nationwide high school strike tomorrow at 2 pm.  And I hope the demonstrators will invite farmers to show their support, to come to Madison, to ride their tractors to and surround the capitol.  And I hope that across Wisconsin and across America teachers and nurses and garbage collectors and firemen and bureaucrats and policemen will all link arms with other workers, students, progressives, anyone who supports the unions and sees that the withdrawal of public unions’ collective bargaining rights is a step back, a regression into the darkness of the Nineteenth Century.

Yes, I’m enraged.  But I’m also hopeful.  I’m hopeful that we, you and I, amig@s, will not let Walker and the Koch funded Teapublicans get away with this.  I’m hopeful that this is the beginning not of a demonstration, but of an actual, popular movement.  I hope that the movement will continue with increased strength and focus to preserve the rights of workers to organize and to bargain collectively.

Yes, I’m idealistic.  And maybe pretty unrealistic.  And not particularly practical.  That doesn’t matter.  I believe that what we are about to see is a real change.  Coming from an organic movement.  And that we will now begin in earnest to link arms and stand in Solidarity in the struggle for what I believe is the survival of the middle class.  Here’s John Lennon:

cross posted from The Dream Antilles  

See my Comment at the end for Update!  Unfriggin’ real!

(cross-posted at Firefly-Dreaming.com)

I make no bones about it!  I totally love Michael Moore!  

Well, a few nights ago, Michael sat down around 12:00 midnight to do some writing and then, said to himself, why am I doing this, why not just go to Madison, Wisconsin?  Well, he did just that and spoke to the huge crowds in Madison, on Saturday, March 5, 2011.  He shared his humility and gratitude with those crowds, as well as cheered them on in solidarity!  

Transcript of Michael’s speech: