Scott Walker Sure Is A Tricky Dick

See? Of course Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was lying when he claimed his zeal to rescind public employee collective bargaining was a matter of budgetary life or death. He stripped it from his "budget repair bill" tonight and the Koch-addicted Wisconsin Senate GOP rubber stamped it right away.

Republicans in the Wisconsin Senate voted Wednesday night to strip nearly all collective bargaining rights from public workers after discovering a way to bypass the chamber's missing Democrats.

All 14 Senate Democrats fled to Illinois nearly three weeks ago, preventing the chamber from having enough members present to consider Gov. Scott Walker's so-called "budget repair bill" - a proposal introduced to plug a $137 million budget shortfall.

The Senate requires a quorum to take up any measures that spend money. But Republicans on Wednesday split from the legislation the proposal to curtail union rights, which spends no money, and a special conference committee of state lawmakers approved the bill a short time later.

And?

The lone Democrat present on the conference committee, Rep. Tony Barca, shouted that the surprise meeting was a violation of the state's open meetings law but Republicans voted over his objections. The Senate then convened within minutes and passed it without discussion or debate.

Spectators in the gallery screamed "You are cowards."

Before the sudden votes, Democratic Sens. Bob Jauch said if Republicans "chose to ram this bill through in this fashion, it will be to their political peril. They're changing the rules. They will inflame a very frustrated public."

Stay tuned...

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Is That An NBC News/WSJ Poll Up Scott Walker's Ass?

Rachel Maddow mentioned the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll on her show tonight.

From MSNBC:

Strong majorities of Americans say they are comfortable with states requiring their employees to pay more for their retirement and health care to balance state budget deficits, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

But the public is adamantly against eliminating public employees' collective-bargaining rights -- as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) is pursuing.

In the poll, a whopping 68 percent find it acceptable requiring public employees to contribute more of their pay for retirement benefits; 63 percent are fine with requiring these employees to pay more for their health-care benefits; and 58 percent are OK with freezing public employees' salaries for one year.

But just 33 percent say it's acceptable -- and 62 percent say it's unacceptable -- to eliminate these employees' collective-bargaining rights as way to deal with state budget deficits.

In addition, 77 percent believe that public employees have the same collective-bargaining rights (when it comes to health care, pensions, and other benefits) that union employees who work for private companies have.

Video here.

Even the Wall Street Journal admits:

The results don’t bode well for Wisconsin’s newly elected Republican governor, Scott Walker, who is locked in a standoff with statehouse Democrats and unionized state workers over these rights. Many of the Republicans gearing up to take on President Barack Obama in 2012 have seized on the budget battle in Wisconsin, a crucial swing state, as evidence the country wants to dramatically scale back government spending.

Hmmm...will Gov. Walker continue to claim "the people" are with him on this? And just which "people" would they be, anyway?

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Scott Walker Gets Some Bad Koch

Jason Linkins at HuffPo has this:

Here's something for your "can this possibly be for real" file this morning. Over at the Buffalo Beast -- the former print alt-weekly turned online newspaper founded by onetime editor Matt Taibbi, typically best known for its annual list of "The 50 Most Loathsome Americans" -- there appear to be recordings of a phone call between Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and current editor Ian Murphy. Now, why on earth would Scott Walker want to talk on the phone with the editor of an online site in Buffalo? Well, he wouldn't. But what if said editor pretended to be David Koch of the famed Koch Brothers? Well, that's a different story altogether, apparently! And so Walker, believing himself to be on the phone with his patron, seems to have had a long conversation about busting Wisconsin's unions:

More here.

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