Walker: I mean-you know, amazingly there’s a much smaller group of protesters-almost all of whom are in from other states today. The "they're all out-of-state protestors" line was bullshit from day 1, and anyone that was on the ground would know that. ...The state Senate still has the 14 members missing but what they’re doing today is bringing up all sorts of other non-fiscal items, many of which are things that members in the Democratic side care about. And each day we’re going to ratchet it up a little bit. Walker thought they'd cave and that the people would turn on the Dems. No one outside of 262 trailer-trash did. The Senate majority leader had a great plan he told about this morning-he told the Senate Democrats about — and he’s going to announce it later today, and that is: The Senate organization committee is going to meet and pass a rule that says if you don’t show up for two consecutive days on a session day, in the state Senate, the Senate chief clerk-it’s a little procedural thing here, but-can actually have your payroll stopped from being automatically deducted-
Murphy: Beautiful.
Walker: -into your checking account and instead-you still get a check, but the check has to be personally picked up and he’s instructing them-which we just loved-to lock them in their desk on the floor of the state Senate. Again, Walker thinks this little maneuver will be all that's needed to make the Dems cave. No clue what he was up against.
This shows the underhandedness (and arrogant stupidity) that he and Scott Fitzgerald operate by, thinking they could bully and embarrass them Dems into returning. The "ratcheting up" included a stunt Fitzgerald pulled a few days prior to the Koch call when he sent state troopers to the Monona home of Senate majority leader Mark Miller. That didn't work either, and like most of Fitzy's little whiny tantrums, only have succeeded in making WisGOPs look like petty bullies.
Let's have more, including who Walker was talking to from the Dems.
Murphy/Koch: Now you’re not talking to any of these Democrat bastards, are you?Walker has no intent of coming to an agreement, he just wants to use Tim Cullen to talk up his toughness, which he thinks will make the Dems back down, and then Walker will say "SUCKER!" and power through the bill anyway. Didn't quite work out that way, did it? Also, the fact that Cullen would be considered so lame and gullible to be used like this is exactly why his run for governor as a "reasonable moderate" never got off the ground.
Walker: Ah, I-there’s one guy that’s actually voted with me on a bunch of things I called on Saturday for about 45 minutes, uh, mainly to tell him that while I appreciate his friendship and he’s worked with us on other things, to tell him, well, I wasn’t going to budge.
Murphy/Koch: Goddamn right!
Walker: Mainly, because I thought he’s about the only reasonable one (meaning the one Walker could pull one over on) over there and I figured if I talked to him, he’d go back to the rest of the gang and say, you know, ‘I’ve known Walker for 20 years, he’s not budging.’
Murphy/Koch: Now, what’s his name again?
Walker: His name is Tim Cullen.
Murphy/Koch: Now who could we get to budge on this, uh, collective bargaining?
Walker: Well, I think in the end, a couple of things are one, if the, uh, if the — I think the paycheck will have an impact. Secondly, one of the things we’re looking at next, we’ll probably announce in the next day or two, we’ve been working with our Republican leaders in the Legislature is, we may, we’re still waiting on an opinion to see if the unions have been paying to put these guys up out of state, we think there’s at minimum an ethics violation if not an outright felony. The irony of Walker trying to string someone up on an ethics violation for third-party help is overwhelming. Can you say "John Doe" or "Michael, Best and Friedrich?" ....
Walker: ....people can pay for protesters to come in like we do with Koch buses and that’s not an ethics code, but, I mean, literally if the unions are paying the 14 senators-if they’re paying for their food, their lodging, anything like that, uh, we believe at minimum it’s an ethics code violation and it may very well be a felony misconduct in office because, see, technically, it’s not just a political contribution it is, if they’re being paid to keep them from doing their job, we think that’s an, uh, legally an obstruction, not an obstruction of justice, but an obstruction of their ability to do their job. Just like the GOP's lame arguments in the redistricting suit, Walker has no fucking clue what he's talking about and is throwing shit against the wall. ... So we’re trying about four or five different angles, so each day we crank up a little bit more pressure. The other thing is I’ve got layoff notices ready. We put out the at-risk notices. We’ll announce Thursday, and they’ll go out early next week. And we’ll probably get 5 to 6,000 state workers will get at-risk notices for layoffs. We might ratchet that up a little bit, you know.
Yes, the old "let's make up layoff notices as a negotiating tactic." A callous and disgusting lack of respect for everyday workers, and again, a miscalculation of whose side the people would take. In addition, people like me were already noting that there was no budget crisis and that many state employees were already retiring, making layoffs an idle threat. Walker even tried to give notice of "unspecified" layoffs the next week (without any plan saying which areas would be laid off) , and then comically backed off of it a week later.
There’s a bunch of recalls up against them. Which all failed. Miserably. But Scotty seemed to think recalls were just swell at this time. They’d really like to just get back here and get it over with. So the paycheck thing, some of the other things threaten them. I think, collectively, there’s enough going on and as long as they don’t think I’m gonna cave — which, again, we have no interest in — an interesting idea that was brought up to me this morning by my chief of staff, we won’t do it until tomorrow, is putting out an appeal to the Democrat leader that I would be willing to sit down and talk to him, the assembly Democrat leader, plus the other two Republican leaders — talk, not negotiate — and listen to what they have to say if they will in turn — but I’ll only do it if all 14 of them come back and sit down in the state Assembly.... The reason for that is, we’re verifying it this afternoon, but 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 a quorum because they started out that way. [Rambling for a the next few lines]....But I’m not negotiating.What a delusional fool. Just like with the Cullen mention, Walker never intends to act with a modicom of decency or negotation, but instead intends to trick the Dems and pass it anyway. Proof you can't trust this weasel to be straight-up on anything other than begging for money.
Murphy/Koch: Bring a baseball bat. That’s what I’d do.
Walker: I have one in my office; you’d be happy with that. I got a Slugger with my name on it.
Murphy/Koch: Beautiful.
Walker: So it’s, uh, this is ground zero, there’s no doubt about it. But, uh, I think, you know, for us, I just keep telling, I call, I tell the speaker, the senate majority leader every night, give me a list of the people I need to call at home, to shore ’em up. The New York Times, of all things, I don’t normally tell people to read the New York Times, but the front page of the New York Times has got a great story, one of these unbelievable moments of true journalism, what is supposed to be objective journalism. They got out of the capital and went down one county south of the capital to Janesville, to Rock County, that’s where the General Motors plant once was.Big problem Scotty. Turns out the story was bullshit as the guy turned out to be non-union and the UAW had no record of him being a member. But it made for a good confirmation of what Walker wanted to believe, which is the way righties operate.
Murphy: Right, right.
Walker: They moved out two years ago. The lead on this story is about a guy who was laid off two years ago, uh, he’s been laid off twice by GM, the same shuttered GM plant that would have a pro-Walker "Creating Jobs for Wisconsin" sign in it a year later? who points out that, uh, everybody else in his town has had to sacrifice except for all these public employees and it’s about damn time they do, and he supports me. Um, and they had a bartender, they had, I mean, every stereotypical blue-collar worker type they interviewed, nice to know he respects the little guy, doesn't he? and the only ones that weren’t with us were people who were either a public employee or married to a public employee. It’s an unbelievable story. So I went through and called all these uh, a handful, a dozen or so lawmakers I worry about each day and said, “Everyone, we should get that story printed out and send it to anyone giving you grief.”
Walker: I want to stay ahead of this every day, tonight I’m actually doing a fireside chat, which the state TV stations are picking up and I guess a bunch of the national ones are, too, One year later Walker can't even appear in his own ads because he invites such disgust, let alone do a propaganda chat. and, uh, in the last couple of days when I do the TV shows, I’ve been going after Obama because he stuck — although he’s backed off now — but he stuck his nose in here. Hilarious, because we all know the most dangerous place is somewhere between Scott Walker and a national media camera. And I said, you know, he asked me what I thought about it and I said the last time I checked this guy’s got a much bigger budget deficit than we do, wait, I thought our deficit was untenable and you had "nothing to negotiate with" maybe he should worry about that [Murphy laughs] and not stick his nose in Wisconsin’s business. But you know, we’ve had, uh, you know, all the national shows, we were on [Sean] Hannity last night, I did “Good Morning America,” the“Today” show and all that sorta stuff. I was on “Morning Joe” this morning. We’ve done Greta [van Susteren]. We’re gonna, you know, keep getting our message out. Because we have control of talk radio and Faux News to allow us to spread our unchallenged propaganda Mark Levin last night. And I’ve gotta tell you the response from around the country has been phenomenal. I had Brian [Sadoval], the new governor of Nevada, called me the last night he said-he was out in the Lincoln Day Circuit in the last two weekends and he was kidding me, he’s new as well as me, he said, “Scott, don’t come to Nevada because I’d be afraid you beat me running for governor.” That’s all they want to talk about is what are you doing to help the governor of Wisconsin. The next question, you know, I talk to Kasich every day-John’s gotta stand firm in Ohio. I think we could do the same thing with Rick Scott in Florida. I think, uh, [Rick] Snyder-if he got a little more support-probably could do that in Michigan. You start going down the list there’s a lot of us new governors that got elected to do something big. Yeah, a list of governors who got their marching orders from ALEC and other "think tanks" over their constituents. Coincidence?
Here comes one of my favorite parts, and this is certainly prophetic.
Murphy/Koch: Yeah. Now what else could we do for you down there?And hey, what do you know? The Kochs did just that. Heck, they just dropped $700K to try to prop Scotty up 2 weeks ago. And the real David Koch admitted last week that he's "spent a lot of money in Wisconsin" for Walker in Wisconsin, adding "We've gotten pretty good at these things." What Koch really means is that he uses his fake think tanks and "non-coordinated" ads to give support to candidates who turn around and give them favors in return.
Walker: Well the biggest thing would be-and your guy on the ground [Americans for Prosperity president Tim Phillips] probably seeing this (if you didn't know that "Americans for the Prosperity" is the Koch Brothers, there it is) is the, well, two things: One, our members originally got freaked out by all the bodies here, although, I told them an interesting story when I was first elected county executive in Milwaukee of all places, the first budget I put through was pretty bold, aggressive, the union went nuts on me and I got all sorts of grief. But a couple of weeks later I’m in a Veterans Day parade and I’m going down the line and usually unless you’re a veteran or, you know, marching with a veterans group, politicians all get polite applause but nobody gets up. I come down the line, 40-50 people in a row, hands up, thumbs up, you know, cheering, screaming, yelling, ‘Way to go, hang in there, Walker!’And then after about 40-50 people like that, there’s a guy flipping me off [Murphy laughs]. By Veterans Day, do you mean "Operation Freedom," Scotty? You know, the event you put Tim Russell in charge of, and the one where he funnelled veterans money for his personal use and for YOUR CAMPAIGN WEBSITE? Walker always makes stories like this up, trying to claim "the real people" support him.
Walker: ....The people who know it’s right will cheer you, will applaud you, they’ll run through a wall for you. And the people who don’t like it, they’re gonna flip you off. But stop worrying about, you know, them because — the other day, there were 70,000, probably two-thirds were against the bill, one-third were for, 70,000 people at the Capitol. WHAT COMPLETE BULLSHIT. Even when they tried to organize a pro-Walker rally, they were outnnumbered at least 10 to 1, and anyone being honest on the ground knew that. All week there’s been, you know, 15-30,000 a day. But I remind all our lawmakers, that there’s five and a half million people in this state. And just because a bunch of guys who can jump off of work ’cause of their union rules, doesn’t mean the rest of the people in your district aren’t with them. Again, no idea who the protestors are, trying to lump them in as all union folk. They still try this with recall signatures, despite the fact that there aren't close to 1 million union members in Wisconsin. So one thing, per your question is, the more groups that are encouraging people not just to show up but to call lawmakers and tell them to hang firm with the governor, the better. So fire up the Heartland Institute-type Astroturfers and nickel-a-post bloggers to make it look like we have support in-state, will ya? Because the more they get that reassurance, the easier it is for them to vote yes.
Murphy/Koch: Right, right.
Walker: The other thing is more long-term, and that is, after this, um, you know the coming days and weeks and months ahead, particulary in some of these, uh, more swing areas, a lot of these guys are gonna need, they don’t necessarily need ads for them, (please run some ads for us through Americans for Prosperity!) but they’re gonna need a message out reinforcing why this was a good thing to do for the economy and a good thing to do for the state. So to the extent that that message is out over and over again, (through lots of Americans for Prosperity ads!) that’s obviously a good thing.
But wait, wasn't Walker complaining about possible union and Dem coordination at the start of this conversation, and trying to make up some kind of ethics charge based on it? (Look above, he was).
Dang, this is getting long. Let's cut this part off here, and get the second part in another post, which will include KILLERS to Walker given what we know now.
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