No sense going into a long post about a couple of recently-released reports. I'll have plenty of time the next few days to do that.
The obvious media story is the historic recall elections being called today. Not a huge "new news" headline in itself, but when you realize only 3% of Walker signatures got tossed (when most figured it would be 10-15%), it shows how good a job the Dems and United Wisconsin did in weeding out suspect and duplicate sigs. And now they have all those signatures and names on file for May 8 and June 5 to find and get out to the voting booth.
But then you get alleged Walkergate criminal Kelly Rindfleisch getting slapped down in court and forced to stand trial in Milwaukee County...instead of her home in Columbia County (where she illegally kept her residence while being paid by Milwaukee County). So far, not so bad.
And then you have more news that the FBI is on the heels of Herman Cain's "Smoking Man" Mark Block and seeing if he and his Koch-funded front groups violated the tax code as they made campaign contributions to Walker and other Wisconsin GOP candidates in 2010. Then you remember that Tim Russell's criminal complaint mentions Walker's buddy/campaign worker flying down to Atlanta to meet with Block and Herman Cain after Walker's election, and the pieces seem to fit quite well, don't they?
Oh, and now the worst nightmare for Scott Walker and Kathy Falk jumps into the guv's race (not named Feingold, of course). And Tom Barrett doesn't have to run on "not being another Jim Doyle" this time, he now can run on "not being Scott Walker." If Tom runs hard, brings fact and truth abut Walker's record, and brings the honesty we know he has, he'll be in good shape. Note, this is not an endorsement of Barrett, because I have no assurances he'll run harder than the defensive, half-assed campaign he ran in 2010. But I also think things have changed a bit, for him, for Wisconsin Dems, and especially for the now-exposed failure that is Scott Walker as Governor. If that's true, these next 67 days should be a lot of fun, culminating on June 5.
And there will be less of Act 10 to repeal once Walker gets replaced. The parts that were struck down include the state's withholding of union members' dues and the absurd standard that required unions to have 51 percent of all members (including those not voting) to recertify every year, and to make the unions pay for those elections. In addition, the decision notes that the politically-motivated decision to leave out the police and firefighters' unions were a big reason behind the change in the now-unconstitional rules so now any attempt to reinstate these measures will have to include those public safety unions. Good luck with that, GOP.
You know, I like living in this state on bad days, but when a day like this comes around, it becomes even more amazing than usual.
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