Kockenstein Monster Thread

[boutons_deux]

Scott Walker Says His Presidential Bid Is 'God's Plan'

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/scott-walker-says-his-presidential-bid-gods-plan

[boutons_deux]

How Gov. Scott Walker Is About to Decimate Wisconsin’s Public Schools

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is expected to do two things in the next few days: Formally announce his candidacy for for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination and sign Wisconsin’s biennial budget. The first may receive national attention, but it is the second that will disastrously affect Wisconsin if the budget isn’t changed — and that should receive national play.

Buried within the budget are 135 non-budget policy items — a toxic cocktail of attacks on public education, democracy, environmental protections and labor rights.

For Wisconsin’s schools, the budget is a blueprint for abandoning public education. In Milwaukee, in addition to insufficient funding, the budget includes a “takeover” plan that increases privatization and decreases democratic control of the city’s public schools.

The budget was passed by the Republican-controlled Senate a few minutes before midnight Tuesday, with all Democrats and one Republican voting “no.” The Assembly is expected to pass the budget and send it to Walker by the end of the week.

The attack on the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) is in the context of a frontal assault on public education across the state. The budget cuts $250 million from the University of Wisconsin system, holds overall K-12 funding flat in the first year with modest increases in the second (which, given inflation, means cuts). And while programs promoting privately run charters are expanded, the budget eliminates Chapter 220 — a metropolitan-wide program designed to reduce racial segregation in public schools and improve equal opportunity for students of color.

The budget is also expanding the statewide voucher program, under which tax dollars are funneled into private, overwhelmingly religious schools. (The program is modeled after Milwaukee’s private school voucher program which began in 1990 and which now includes 112 schools and 25,000 students.)

The “takeover” plan for Milwaukee, where nearly two-thirds of the state’s African-American population live, was proposed by two suburban legislators, Sen. Alberta Darling (R) and Rep. Dale Kooyenga (R). Because the plan was inserted into the budget rather than proposed in a separate bill, there was never a public hearing.

The plan empowers the Milwaukee County Executive to appoint a “commissioner” who will have parallel power with the elected school board overseeing MPS. The commissioner can privatize up to three of the city’s schools the first two years, and up five every year thereafter.

The take-over plan is replete with problems that are indicative of Walker’s approach to public policy and the public sector. These problems include:

1) Expanding failed policies.

The notion of improving public schools by turning them over to private charter or voucher operators has been tried before — and failed.
For 25 years, voucher schools in Milwaukee have been a conservative’s dream – no unions, no school board, no state-mandated curriculum or regulations – and what has been the result? Vouchers schools on the whole perform worse than the Milwaukee Public Schools. In the last quarter century, vouchers schools have drained over a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money away from Milwaukee students who depend on the public schools. This under-resourcing of public schools means larger class sizes, less individual attention and greatly reduced access to art, music libraries and physical education compared with suburban counter parts.

2) Undermines democracy.

Elected school boards and lack of choices are not the problem with our schools. Milwaukee arguably has more publicly funded school options than any urban system in the country, from citywide and neighborhood-based public schools, to MPS charter schools, to city-controlled charter schools, to charters run by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, to private voucher schools, to open enrollment that includes suburban districts. The rhetoric around governance is a smokescreen to get rid of democratically elected school boards and publicly controlled schools. Yes, democracy can be messy, but the alternative is worse. If we decide to abandon every democratic institution that is not up to our hopes and dreams, why not get rid of the U.S. Congress? Or the Wisconsin Legislature?

3) Exacerbates inequality.

Data show that privately run charter and voucher schools serve significantly fewer students with special needs, English language learners and more difficult to educate students. Students are counseled out and pushed back into traditional public schools. The “takeover” plan will only increase this problem.

4) Continues Milwaukee’s plantation mentality.

Milwaukee is the most segregated metropolitan region in the nation. It should give pause when two white suburban legislators propose having a white county executive appoint a “commissioner” who can pluck schools away from the democratically elected school board of an overwhelmingly nonwhite district.
No one denies that the Milwaukee public schools need to do a better job. Yet the state budget expands a disturbing history of abandonment, which will only makes matter worse.
Despite its problems, the Milwaukee Public Schools is the only institution in the city with the capacity, commitment and legal obligation to serve all our students. Our schools are the foundation of our democracy and of our future.

When we abandon our public schools, we not only abandon democracy, we abandon our children’s future.

Walker has the most far-reaching budget veto powers of any governor, and can literally change the budget line by line. How he uses that veto pen will foretell his national plans as he enters the Republican presidential primary.

In Wisconsin, where we have four years of experience with Walker, we expect him to continue his policies of abandoning public institutions and undermining the middle class. Hopefully, national observers will see through Walker’s rhetoric and analyze the realities of his state budget.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/07/10/how-gov-scott-walker-about-decimate-wisconsins-public-schools

[DarrinS]

Can't this be filed in one of your other echo chamber mega threads?

[boutons_deux]

Can't this be filed in one of your other echo chamber mega threads?

echo is what goes on between you ears.

[boutons_deux]

4 Horrifying Things Scott Walker Did in Wisconsin That He Could Impose on All of America

1. Leads all-out war on workers, but fails to generate jobs and higher wages:

In recent months, Walker has intensified the assault on workers, the poor and most vulnerable with punitive new laws and provisions of his new two-year $73 billion state budget. Since taking office, Walker has been staging this relentless war on worker rights and wages, despite already-declining household incomes—especially sharp in Wisconsin-- and the shrinkage of union power.

• Walker’s attacks on union rights build upon his 2011 “Act 10” which simultaneously abolished almost all collective bargaining rights of public employees to union representation and drove down the take-home pay of public employees by over 10%. These attacks on public employees clearly carried a sub-text of white antagonism (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07393148.2015.1022959) [5] toward African-Americans and Latinos, argue professors Hannah Walker and Dylan Bennett because of minority workers’ concentration in the public sector and the economic anxieties of whites.

• This spring, Walker’s signed a new anti-union “right-to-work” bill—contradicting previous promise to labor leaders and the public—that will surely further weaken (http://inthesetimes.com/article/17735/scott-walker-strikes-again) [6] the already-limited bargaining power of private-sector unions. The aim of this bill, with deeply racist roots, is to drive union membership in Wisconsin to Southern-style microscopic levels.

• Walker’s new state budget severely weakens “prevailing wage” protections for construction workers on public projects, outright elimination of the living wage concept which had been central to setting the state’s minimum wage, and the erosion of tenure and layoff protections for UW faculty.

• Walker’s anti-worker attacks and lavish corporate subsidies handed out by his newly-privatized and scandal-wracked Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation have failed to produce the family-sustaining jobs long promised by Walker. WEDC has been involved in providing funds for major firms shipping family-supporting jobs to offshore sites (http://host.madison.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/at-least-companies-have-outsourced-and-received-state-funding-award/article_d63b41ff-8956-574e-9d84-11e879a3eda6.html) [7], along with aiding major Walker donors. (http://process.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/scott-walker-handed-out-124-million-businesses-some-owned-donors-without-any-staff) [8]

• He also has attacked the ‘living wage’ concept in state law. The new budget eliminates entirely a requirement that the governor consider
what constitutes a “living wage” (http://thinkprogress.org/election/2015/07/06/3677107/scott-walker-uses-holiday-weekend-sneak-controversial-provisions-state-budget/) [9] in working to establish an appropriate minimum wage for Wisconsin. Wisconsin’s minimum wage in the Walker years has been stuck at the $7.25 federal-set level, while 29 states and numerous cities have enacted far higher minimums ranging as high as $15 an hour.

The results have not helped the public. Examining both job gains and losses, Wisconsin’s drop in middle-income jobs have meant that only “low-wage” jobs have been increasing 2010 to 2013, according to Census Data. Even these undesirable jobs have been slow in arriving, with Wisconsin ranking 35th in job creation under Walker, as Politifact reported (http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/article/2014/oct/16/latest-look-wisconsin-jobs-tally-shows-improvement/) [10] that the total number of jobs created under his administration was just 111,295, despite a 2010 pledge of generating 250,000 jobs in his first four years, which was central to his 2010 campaign.

Notably, state income growth has been terrible. Perhaps most painfully-experienced has been Wisconsin’s drop in household income as outlined in a Pew Research report released in March. Summarizing the findings, Capital Timesreporter Mike Ivey noted, “Wisconsin ranks worst among the 50 statesin terms of a shrinking middle class, with real median household incomes here falling 14.7 percent since 2000.
Wisconsin’s loss of household income amounts to more than double the national average drop of 7.2% according to the Pew report. While Walker cannot be held responsible for all of the trends underlying the fall in household income, Wisconsin’s economy has consistently lagged behind both Midwestern states and the nation, as Prof. Marc Levine has documented.

2. Undermining Wisconsin’s prized public education system.

Public education in Wisconsin has ranked as among the best in nation, where it is widely viewed as a foundation of a democratic society. However, since in office, Walker has sliced funding for K-12 schools while consistently boosting funding and loosening standards for privatized voucher schools. He has also widened his attack by orchestrating a “hostile takeover” of powers held by the democratically elected Milwaukee Public School board, by usurping and transferring them to neo-liberal (http://shepherdexpress.com/article-permalink-26076.html) [11] County Executive Chris Abele. He has also lowered the standards for teachers, with the new state budget eliminating qualification requirements for hiring teachers.

Walker hasn't stopped there, however. He's taken his anti-union agenda to the state university system, where he has tried to recast it as a narrow pathway serving ould-be employers and not a center of academic inquiry. He's tried to replace a century-long university mission of the search for truth and public service with a narrow, pro-corporate new vision of “providing state workforce needs.” While Walker initially claimed that he and his staff had no role in this proposal, media investigations showed the direct intervention of his staff in pushing the new budget language.

Walker also is imposing $250 million in budget cuts on the highly-esteemed University of Wisconsin system, ranked 19th best in the world. Other provisions call for virtually eliminating tenure and strengthening university administrators’ power over faculty, which is pandering to the long-held right-wing gripe that universities are hotbeds of liberal thought. Among the already-emerging results are older faculty seeking to flee UW and promising young professors steering clear of UW because there is no guarantee of tenure.

3. Less accountability and transparency.

Walker's latest gambit to impose government secrecy has ignited a furor. Some of the most controversial features of the budget were prepared secretively (http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/a-declaration-of-secrecy-that-runs-counter-to-american-values-b99531765z1-311591891.html) [12] and quickly rammed through by Republican allies in late-night meetings of the GOP-dominated (12-4) Joint Finance Committee. Even far-Right Republican Attorney General Brian Schimel denounced the tactic and substance, which include narrowing open record laws. He said, "Transparency is the cornerstone of democracy, and the provisions in the budget bill limiting access to public records move Wisconsin in the wrong direction.”

Walker, meanwhile, has acted with impunity, by insisting on secrecy for his records, as if the provision were already in effect. Yet, a near-universal wave of opposition forced withdrawal of this proposal tucked into the budget.

4. Humiliating and harming the vulnerable:

The meaning of a Walker presidency was vividly made clear by his budget and recent laws he has signed. Looking at elements section by section reveals his harsh values and the agenda he would seek to impose in the nation if elected president.

• Attacking environmental protection. Numerous Dept. of Natural Resources scientists will be laid off, thereby silencing highly-credible analysis and criticism of his policies on air and water safety.

• Rolling back abortion rights. A key new item added to Walker’s right-wing checklist is a draconian 20-week limit on abortions without regard for rape, incest, or health of the mother.

• Humiliating public assistence recipients. He has required drug testing for food stamps and unemeployment insurance recipients. The federal government has moved to block such testings. Experiments in South Carolina and Florida showed a miniscule rate of drug use by aid recipients. Yet Walker persists in promoting this humiliating and insulting proposal.

Viewed as whole, the Walker-Republican budget combines a set of highly-regressive economic shifts benefitting corporations and the wealthy at the expense of workers with a host of anti-democratic measures ranging from weakening faculty involvement in university decision-making to re-shaping non-partisan state agencies to give them a profoundly Republican tilt.

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/4-horrifying-things-scott-walker-did-wisconsin-he-could-impose-all-america

iow, Walker is the wet-dream President for the VRWC/Repugs/1%/Kock Bros.

[Clipper Nation]

The only "kockenstein monsters" I know of are the ones OP sucks.

[boutons_deux]

"The left claims that they're for American workers and they've just got just really lame ideas — things like the minimum wage," Walker said.

"Instead of focusing on that, we need to talk about how we get people the skills and the education and the qualifications that they need to take on the careers that pay far more than the minimum wage."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/07/14/scott-walker-calls-minimum-wage-one-of-many-lame-ideas-from-democrats/

Education? Walker is destroying public education in WI, says HS teachers don't need college degree, and cut $300M from U Wisc budget.

And WI under Walker is infamous for its job destruction, lack of job creation, no matter how qualified. Esp compared with the booming BLUE state Minnesota next door.

Wisconsin job creation rank falls to 38th in U.S.

http://www.jsonline.com/business/wisconsin-job-creation-rank-falls-to-38th-in-us-b99464770z1-296876421.html

[boutons_deux]

this asshole is 100% disaster

Scott Walker's latest anti-worker move will risk shoddy construction but won't save money (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/14/1402247/-Scott-Walker-s-latest-anti-worker-move-will-risk-shoddy-construction-but-won-t-save-money)

One of the anti-worker pieces of the budget Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed over the weekend partially repeals the state's longstanding prevailing wage law. Prevailing wage laws set a floor on what construction workers on publicly funded projects can earn, according to typical local wage levels. But repealing them doesn't just hurt workers—it hurts the communities that end up with shoddy work and it hurts high-road business owners who value their skilled workers. Oh, and it doesn't save money (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/07/14/3680019/wisconsin-prevailing-wage-repeal-scott-walker/), Alan Pyke points out:


School construction costs in Kansas didn’t drop at all (http://www.faircontracting.org/PDFs/prevailing_wages/kansas_prevailing_wage.pdf) compared to nearby states after the 1987 repeal of the prevailing wage.

A 2004 study (http://buffalotrades.com/wp-content/uploads/MISSOURI_PREVAILING_RATE.pdf) in Missouri found that prevailing wage projects cost about $78 per square foot, compared to $75 in states without the safeguards – a statistically insignificant difference.

And a followup study (http://cas.umkc.edu/economics/resources/prevailingwagestudy.pdf) in 2011 found that costs were actually about $10 lower per square foot with prevailing wage laws than without them, thanks to the productivity gains and workmanship quality that higher wages produce. [...]Repealing a prevailing wage doesn’t just fail to lower taxpayer spending for public works.

It can actually harm public coffers. Less income for construction workers means lower tax collections for the state and reduced consumer spending in the private economy.

The Missouri studies estimated that between lost income to workers, lost tax revenue to the state, and lost economic activity for everyone, repeal would have taken at least $324 million (http://cas.umkc.edu/economics/resources/prevailingwagestudy.pdf) out of the Missouri economy every year – and maybe as much as half a billion dollars annually.


Under Wisconsin's new law, cities and towns are barred from passing their own prevailing wage laws (just as, under Walker, Wisconsin cities and towns have been barred from passing sick leave laws), though some state projects will continue to go by the prevailing wage. That's bad news for construction contractors who want to keep using the skilled labor their projects require:


If somebody wants to undercut Dairyland, there isn’t much Martinez can do to stop them. Both contractors might know that the work required on a given project needs a $65 an hour mechanic. But there will be plenty of competitors willing to tell the buyer it can be done for $30 an hour instead. [...]\

Standards slip across the whole of a system as a result – and not always in the kinds of egregious ways that a school district will notice and raise a stink over.

“Will my lights turn on? Well, yeah, but they didn’t wire it properly, so if you need to change something down the line it’s going to cost you a whole lot more,” Martinez said.

“Because the person who’s going to do that change properly has to first figure out what the other guy did improperly.”


But the reality of the prevailing wage isn't enough to stand against Scott Walker's desire to brag about all the ways he screwed Wisconsin workers.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/14/1402247/-Scott-Walker-s-latest-anti-worker-move-will-risk-shoddy-construction-but-won-t-save-money?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos %29#

Walker epitomizes the VRWC/Repug/ALEC/Kock/US CoC War on Employees

[m>s]

Boutons when are you going to tell us why Kurds get their own ethnic state and not French, British, German, etc?

[boutons_deux]

The Disappearance of John Doe

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has been under investigation since his first day in office. But before a national audience even becomes aware of the fact, it will all be over. This week, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is likely to quash an investigation - run by a veteran Republican prosecutor - into allegations that Walker's team broke campaign finance laws during the 2012 recall elections by working in concert with dark money groups.

The prosecutor has asked two justices with ties to these same groups to recuse themselves from the case, but they have refused.

And the court will rule behind closed doors, having eschewed oral arguments or even a full accounting of the case.

Wisconsin has come a long way from the days when its public financing of elections and model open records, open meeting, and ethics laws made it a bastion of good governance.

Walker put the nail in our post-Watergate system of public financing in his first budget bill.

His latest budget bill attempted to destroy the open records law, a sneak attack repulsed only by a fast and furious public outcry.

Wisconsin watchdogs, including the independent state elections board (http://www.commoncausewisconsin.org/2015/07/another-unwarranted-attack-on-clean.html) and the nonpartisan state audit bureau, are under constant attack.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31910-the-disappearance-of-john-doe




Wisconsin Supreme Court Gives Good News To Scott Walker

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that Governor Scott Walker's campaign and conservative groups did not break campaign finance laws during recall elections, clearing the Republican of an issue clouding his run for U.S. president.

The court ordered a special prosecutor to cease an investigation into whether Walker's gubernatorial campaign and conservative advocacy groups such as the Wisconsin Club for Growth unlawfully coordinated efforts during recall elections in 2011 and 2012, court documents showed.

"The special prosecutor's legal theory is unsupported in either reason or law. Consequently, the investigation is closed," the court wrote.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/scott-walker-campaign-finance_55a7d1aae4b0896514d079b9

WI is VRWC-wet-dream prototype of where America is headed when Repugs control Exec, Congress, and SCOTUS.

[boutons_deux]

Scott Walker Has Some More Problems. (http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/12/23/1463234/-Hahahahaha-Scott-Walker-Has-Some-Problems)

http://images.dailykos.com/images/130435/story_image/wormywalker.JPG?1446946516

This summer, the Wisconsin Supreme Court took up the question of whether to stop the investigation into alleged coordination between Walker's 2012 recall campaign and conservative outside groups that receive unlimited donations from undisclosed donors. The problem was that the election campaigns of two justices on the state's top court had benefited significantly from spending (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/05/scott-walker-wisconsin-supreme-court) by those same groups accused of illegal coordination with Walker. The special prosecutor overseeing the investigation, along with legal ethicists (http://www.brennancenter.org/press-release/brief-legal-ethicists-urge-wisconsin-justices-consider-recusal-gov-scott-walker), asked the two justices with conflicts of interest to recuse themselves. But no justices stepped aside.

The court shut down the investigation by ruling that the type of coordination at issue was actually legal—that campaigns and outside dark-money groups can coordinate as long as they don't produce ads that explicitly say "vote for" or "vote against" a candidate. And that was supposed to be the end of the story.

As soon as it became evident that Republican John Doe Chief Prosecutor Francis Schmitz was looking towards appealing the State Supreme Court decision to end the John Doe Probe to the US Supreme Court, the RW majority on the State Supreme Court took swift action; they removed him as Chief Prosecutor.

Republicans in Wisconsin just abolished (bill signed by Scott Walker last week) the nonpartisan Government Accountability Board (which was a party to the John Doe Probe) and will replace it with a partisan board of political hacks appointees.

they also gutted the John Doe Probe laws exempting all but felonious criminal activity from secret investigation (and all John Doe Probes of elected officials, as well).

3 county prosecutors signaled that they want the case to be heard by the US Supremes. (http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/chisholm-two-other-das-seek-to-move-john-doe-to-us-supreme-court-b99636792z1-362956011.html)

... the state justices gave the district attorneys until Friday to seek to intervene in the litigation, which gives them a chance to step in for Schmitz and ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the state rulings.

Friday's motion to intervene comes only a day after the state's elections and ethics agency reached a settlement without financial penalties or admission of wrongdoing with the Wisconsin Club for Growth and one of its directors, Eric O'Keefe, who were among the targets of the John Doe probe.



the lack of recusals from State Supreme Court Justices that benefitted from the huge spending of the same groups under investigation, is rising up to bite them in the ass.

Just as they thought the John Doe was dead and buried …..

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/12/23/1463234/-Hahahahaha-Scott-Walker-Has-Some-Problems

WI Repug govt is the Kock Bros govt.

[boutons_deux]

20,000 Protesters Oppose Scott Walker's Immigration Bill

http://readersupportednews.org/images/stories/alphabet/rsn-O.jpgn Thursday, 20,000 demonstrators (http://milwaukee.suntimes.com/mil-news/7/121/270205/whats-going-on-isnt-fair-a-day-without-latinos-demonstrators-return-to-milwaukee) took to the Wisconsin capitol to oppose Governor Scott Walker’s Arizona-style immigration bill. The bill, Assembly Bill 450 (http://fusion.net/story/270441/day-without-latinos-wisconsin-capitol-building/), represents a broadside assault on the civil rights of undocumented workers: Walker’s bill would allow police throughout the state to investigate people’s immigration status, arrest undocumented individuals, and ultimately deport them. How this bill would necessitate racial profiling was captured by one white protester’s sign

Another less expansive bill, SB 533, which protesters also opposed, would block counties statewide from giving out local ID cards to people who cannot obtain state IDs. The protest included business closures, work stoppages, and student walkouts across the state.
Luz Sosa, a professor at Milwaukee Area Technical College, told Fusion (http://fusion.net/story/270441/day-without-latinos-wisconsin-capitol-building/) this protest was important because it would “let people know how much Latinos contribute to this state.” Wisconsin’s large dairy industry relies heavily (http://www.jsonline.com/business/wisconsin-dairy-farmers-worry-about-impact-of-a-day-without-latinos-rally-b99671884z1-369128961.html) on Latino workers, and yesterday’s walkout was expected to have a large impact on the industry.

The protest was given the name “A Day Without Latinos” by Voces de la Frontera (http://vdlf.org/about-us/), the Milwaukee-based immigrant rights group that organized the protest.

The vast majority of demonstrators were themselves Latinos, carrying homemade signs saying things like “WISCONSIN IS NOT ARIZONA” and “SEPARATING FAMILIES IS LIKE TERRORISM.” In Spanish, they chanted things like “Yes we can!” and “The people united will never be defeated!”

Despite the protest being so large that police blocked off the entire Capitol square, there was surprisingly little media coverage. RSN observed only one media vehicle.

The passage of the two immigration bills in the Wisconsin lower house follows calls from Republican front-runner Donald Trump to deport 11 million undocumented people, many of whom are Latinos. In July, Trump doubled down on his discriminatory rhetoric by saying that many Mexican immigrants to the US are criminals, rapists, and drug smugglers.

Then on August 25, Donald Trump booted well-known Mexican journalist Jorge Ramos out of a press conference when Ramos asked him about his plan to deport 11 million undocumented people. Mr. Trump told Ramos, “Go back to Univision,” which struck some as sounding similar to “Go back to Mexico.”

Professor Aviva Chomsky of Salem State College came to similar conclusions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_illegal_immigrants_in_the_Unite d_States): “Early studies in California and in the Southwest and in the Southeast [found that] immigrants, legal and illegal, are more likely to pay taxes than they are to use public services. Illegal immigrants aren’t eligible for most public services and live in fear of revealing themselves to government authorities. Households headed by illegal immigrants use less than half the amount of federal services that households headed by documented immigrants or citizens make use of.”

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/35290-focus-20000-protesters-oppose-scott-walkers-immigration-bill

[boutons_deux]

Scott Walker’s Favorite Queer-Hatin’ Judge Will Hate Queers On Wisconsin Supreme Court

http://img.wonkette.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/bradley.png

Rebecca Bradley, (http://wonkette.com/599386/scott-walkers-favorite-judge-was-a-real-queer-hatin-hoot-in-college) the judge Walker loves so much he’s appointed her THREE TIMES now? The one who wrote this in college?


[H]omosexuals and drug addicts … essentially kill themselves and others through their own behavior deservedly receive none of my sympathy.


She was elected (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rebecca-bradley-wisconsin_us_5703d7dce4b0daf53af0e1f3?ir=Queer+Voi ces&section=us_queer-voices&utm_hp_ref=queer-voices&) to a full 10-year term on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, because YAY and OBVIOUSLY and why wouldn’t Wisconsin voters want a lady who once wrote things like that in college?

Bradley had the full support of the conservative movement behind her. She has risen through the ranks during Walker’s tenure with the support of groups like the Wisconsin Club for Growth. The governor first named her to the Milwaukee County Circuit Court in 2012, and then he elevated her to Wisconsin Court of Appeals in May 2015. In October, when a vacancy arose on the state Supreme Court, Walker again gave her a plum appointment.


How nice. And to be fair, Bradley did say she was very sorry for being so awful back in the day, assuring everyone that she’s SO not like that anymore, and she even said if some of those queerboners who deserve none of her sympathy wanted her to do their gay wedding, she would perform it.

But also to be fair, she’s an insane Federalist Society lady, (https://www.justicerebeccabradley.com/about/) and there’s that whole thing about Scott Walker LOVING HER SO MUCH, so we can be pretty sure she sucks.

We told you in March SOME of the fun things Judge Bradley said about the gayqueersexuals in her columns, written while she was at Marquette. Want more? Here’s what she wrote (http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/scott-walker-declines-to-condemn-bradley-anti-gay-college-writings-b99683523z1-371400881.html) about ‘bortion:


Writing for the Marquette Tribune in 1992, Bradley equated abortion to “a time in history when Jews were treated as non-humans and tortured and murdered,” and “a time in history when blacks were treated as something less than human.”

Bradley also compared the “handful of deaths” of pregnant women while abortion was still prohibited to the lives of “millions of babies that are murdered every year at the hands of abortionists.”

Where does any difference lie between mutilating a baby in the womb (a legal act) and murdering one’s child outside of the womb (an obviously illegal act)?


Gah, don’t you just want to hug her and have her read you bedtime stories about the the Little Abortion Holocaust That Could?
Here’s another one, (http://onewisconsinnow.org/press/rebecca-bradleys-published-writings-reveal-opinions-that-cross-line-into-hate-speech/) a riff on the classic we quoted at the top:

Perhaps AIDS awareness should seek to educate us with their misdirected compassion for the degenerates who basically commit suicide through their behavior.

But remember, you guys, she is sorry for saying all these things.

Hillary Clinton spoke out (http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/hillary-clinton-to-attack-rebecca-bradley-saturday-night-b99699074z1-374380631.html) against Bradley Saturday night, in advance of Tuesday night’s primary:

“There is no place on any Supreme Court or any court in this country, no place at all for Rebecca Bradley’s decades-long track record of dangerous rhetoric against women, survivors of sexual assault and the LGBT community.”


But we guess enough people in Wisconsin were feeling that sexy, sultry CruzMentum, so congratulations, Judge Bradley, we guess. Oh, and congratulations, Wisconsin, you get to have this lady for 10 WHOLE YEARS!

http://wonkette.com/600415/scott-walkers-favorite-queer-hatin-judge-will-hate-queers-on-wisconsin-supreme-court

====

It was also revealed this week that Bradley sympathized with Camille Paglia (http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/rebecca-bradley-in-camille-paglia-legitimately-suggested-women-play-role/article_28cb63fe-d647-5ce3-b558-3497c8f6f418.html), who had blamed rape victims for the crimes committed against them. On top of that, Bradley had a few choice words about feminists which revealed just how deep her hate goes:

"I intend to expose the feminist movement as largely composed of angry, militant, man-hating lesbians who abhor the traditional family," Bradley wrote, arguing that the feminist movement had been hijacked by the political left, abandoning its role as a defender of women's rights.


http://crooksandliars.com/2016/03/more-wit-and-wisdom-wi-justice-rebecca

Repugs: the scum and shit runs wide and deep.

[boutons_deux]

Court strikes down Walker’s ‘right-to-work’ law in Wisconsin

Working with a Republican-led legislature, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has had considerable success passing practically anything he’s wanted, taking the Badger State in a far-right direction while Wisconsin Democrats have struggled to slow Republicans down. The courts, however, have posed a far greater obstacle for far-right shift.

Walker’s voter-suppression tactics ran into some resistance in the courts, as did the governor’s restrictions on reproductive rights. The latest hiccup came late Friday, when a Wisconsin court struck down Walker’s anti-union “right-to-work” law, ruling that that the measure violates the state constitution. The Associated Press reported (http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/judge-rules-wisconsin-right-work-law-unconstitutional-n553286):

Three unions filed the lawsuit last year shortly after Walker signed the bill into law. Right-to-work laws prohibit businesses and unions from reaching agreements that require all workers, not just union members, to pay union dues. Twenty-five other states have such laws.

The unions argued that Wisconsin’s law was an unconstitutional seizure of union property since unions now must extend benefits to workers who don’t pay dues. Dane County Circuit Judge William Foust agreed.

He said the law amounts to the government taking union funds without compensation since under the law unions must represent people who don’t pay dues. That presents an existential threat to unions, Foust wrote.


Not surprisingly, Walker, GOP state lawmakers, and Wisconsin’s Republican state attorney general condemned the ruling, and vowed to appeal. Should the case reach the Wisconsin Supreme Court, as seems likely, the anti-labor forces will have reason for optimism: the governor has already helped move (http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/judge-faces-voters-judgment-in-wisconsin-659656771991) the state high court to the right.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/court-strikes-down-walkers-right-work-law-wisconsin?cid=sm_fb_maddow

WI Repugs have raped the SCOWI, so certainly the Kock Bros right-to-work-for-less War on Employees will move ahead after a short hiatus.

[boutons_deux]

Justice Rebecca Bradley’s victory bodes well for Wisconsin’s right-to-work law

conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley defeated liberal Madison appeals court Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg (http://watchdog.org/261579/rebecca-bradley-voters-supreme-court/) in one of the most contentious state Supreme Court elections in Badger State history.

Bradley’s victory maintains the 5-2 majority conservatives hold on the high court, and gives hope that, despite the usual liberal circuit court detour, government-reform laws will ultimately prevail.

http://watchdog.org/261851/rebecca-bradley-right-to-work-dane-county/

[boutons_deux]

Rebecca Bradley in 1992: 'Queers' with AIDS, addicts merit no sympathy

Newly appointed state Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote in a student newspaper 24 years ago that she had no sympathy for AIDS patients because they had effectively chosen to kill themselves, called gays "queers" and said Americans were "either totally stupid or entirely evil" for electing President Bill Clinton.

In one piece, she wrote people would be better off getting AIDS than cancer under Clinton because it would get more funding.

"How sad that the lives of degenerate drug addicts and queers are valued more than the innocent victims of more prevalent ailments," wrote Bradley, who then had the last name of Grassl.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/rebecca-bradley-called-gays-queers-who-opted-to-kill-themselves-b99682686z1-371276861.html

Such charming people, you Repugs

[boutons_deux]

The quiet, vicious racism of Scott Walker’s Wisconsin

With a voter-ID law passed by the GOP-controlled legislature and signed by Walker and threatening to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of mostly minority voters in this election, the last thing the Koch brothers’ favorite governor wants is people who are going to say the quiet parts out loud.

Which is why Walker on Monday was condemning (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/scott-walker-condemns-white-nationalist-robocalls-trump) the robocalls from the American National Super PAC and its white nationalist founder William Johnson that have been flooding landlines in Wisconsin over the last few days. The call — narrated (http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/374498011.html) by an elderly woman in the soothing tones of your racist grandmother complaining over Sunday dinner about her new black neighbors — assures listeners that Trump “will respect all women and help preserve western civilization.” In the world of white nationalists, this is code for “Will keep the hordes of Latino immigrants and black welfare cheats from stealing your tax dollars and destroying America as you know it.”

it is worth noting that Walker’s upset, if only for the irony. After all, the lightning rod of a governor, a man so dull his idea of spicing up his food probably means pouring castor oil on it, built his power base in the state in the almost-exclusively-white suburbs of Milwaukee, one of the most racially polarized metropolitan areas of the country.

chairman of one county’s Republican Party could still refer to one mostly African-American neighborhood in Milwaukee, in 2014, as “the colored section.”

he has spent his entire career deeply slicing budgets for programs that benefit inner-city African-Americans, such as public transportation. He has also pushed for private-school vouchers that decimate public education and advocated for privatizing prisons, all while cutting taxes to ensure that funding levels for these civic outlays are unlikely to be restored anytime soon, if ever.

Talkers like Sykes (who regularly refers to Michelle Obama as “Mooch”) have grown rich spewing racial divisiveness. And one of their most regular guests, throughout his long career in Wisconsin politics, has been Scott Walker, who would verbally wink at Sykes’s listeners while talking about policies that would never harm the host’s mostly white audience.

The Wisconsin law could disenfranchise as many as 300,000 mostly minority and student voters who want to cast votes today. Since this law is only possible because the Supreme Court eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, which was first passed to protect the voting rights of minorities, it is impossible to see it as a colorblind act that, as defenders of voter-ID laws so often tell us, is only here to protect against nonexistent voter fraud.

http://www.salon.com/2016/04/05/the_quiet_vicious_racism_of_scott_walkers_wisconsi n/

[boutons_deux]

Scott Walker's Wisconsin may disenfranchise 300,000 Americans in blatant voter fraud scheme (http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/4/5/1510915/-Scott-Walker-s-Wisconsin-may-disenfranchise-300-000-Americans-in-blatant-voter-fraud-scheme)

Wisconsin, one of the country’s most important battleground states, is one of 16 states with new voting restrictions in place since 2012. The five-hour lines in Arizona were the most recent example of America’s election problems. Wisconsin could be next. [...]Others blocked from the polls include a man born in a concentration camp in Germany who lost his birth certificate in a fire; a woman who lost use of her hands but could not use her daughter as power of attorney at the DMV; and a 90-year-old veteran of Iwo Jima who could not vote with his veterans ID.

And that doesn't even get into the specific efforts to disenfranchise student voters by declaring that almost no existing student IDs are good enough to satisfy the requirements.

That means many schools, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, are issuing separate IDs for students to vote, an expensive and time-consuming process for students and administrators. Students who use the new IDs will also have to bring proof of enrollment from their schools, an extra burden of proof that only applies to younger voters.

All of this to solve a problem of "voter fraud" that nobody anywhere in America has been able to find evidence of even after a decade of (supposed) feverish looking.

So let's just be honest about this law—it's crooked. It's legislature-backed corruption for the sake of making it much, much harder for the "enemies" of those legislators to vote them out of office. It's putting financial barriers between American citizens and their polling booths for the purpose of discouraging as many of them as possible, especially the poor and the young, from voting at all.

About 300,000 residents of Wisconsin alone are going to be subjected to voter fraud perpetrated by the state's Republican Party—the fraud of saying that even though they're American citizens and have voted all their lives, they're not allowed to do itanymore.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/04/05/1510915/-Scott-Walker-s-Wisconsin-may-disenfranchise-300-000-Americans-in-blatant-voter-fraud-scheme?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos %29

[CosmicCowboy]

homosexuals and drug addicts … essentially kill themselves and others through their own behavior deservedly receive none of my sympathy.

I suspect this statement was taken out of context in a discussion on HIV. With all the public interest massages about not sharing needles and or not having unprotected stranger ass sex I don't have much sympathy either for those that get sick by choosing to ignore all the precautions.

[boutons_deux]

I suspect this statement was taken out of context in a discussion on HIV. With all the public interest massages about not sharing needles and or not having unprotected stranger ass sex I don't have much sympathy either for those that get sick by choosing to ignore all the precautions.

of course you don't, until one of your kids gets addicted to crack or heroin, where "precautions" would simply not be in their consideration.

"out of context" :lol

nope she was a rotten, sanctimonious little bitch (iow, the ideal Repg) through and through

http://www.jsonline.com/news/rebecca-bradley-called-gays-queers-who-opted-to-kill-themselves-b99682686z1-371276861.html

[boutons_deux]

Wisconsin soccer players leave game in tears after racist taunts, 'Donald Trump, build that wall!' (http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/4/11/1513764/-Wisconsin-soccer-players-leave-game-in-tears-after-racist-taunts-Donald-Trump-build-that-wall)

Elkhorn Area School District administrators in Wisconsin are investigating after some of their students reportedly chanted racist taunts at the soccer players from Beloit Memorial High School, a diverse school where more than half the student population is either black or Hispanic. (http://www.schooldigger.com/go/WI/schools/0105000146/school.aspx)
According to Beloit soccer coach Brian Denu, Elkhorn students began chanting “Donald Trump, build that wall!” The girls from Beloit were devastated: (http://m.channel3000.com/news/district-investigating-racist-chants-directed-at-beloit-soccer-players/38950592)


Denu said the chants affected some of his players to the point they had to leave the game.

"They came off the field and weren't able to finish the game because they were too upset and distraught over what happened to them," Denu said. "One of the girls was cradled in the arms of one of our assistant coaches for a good 15 to 20 minutes.


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/04/11/1513764/-Wisconsin-soccer-players-leave-game-in-tears-after-racist-taunts-Donald-Trump-build-that-wall?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailykos%2Findex+%28Daily+Kos %29

[boutons_deux]

Scott Walker confronts alarming new allegations in Wisconsin


Gov. Scott Walker and the GOP-controlled Legislature approved a measure aimed at retroactively shielding paint makers from liability after a billionaire owner of a lead producer contributed $750,000 to a political group that provided crucial support to Walker and Republicans in recall elections, according to a report released Wednesday.

Citing leaked documents gathered during a now-shuttered investigation into the governor’s campaign, the Guardian U.S., an arm of the British newspaper, reported that Harold Simmons, owner of NL Industries, a producer of the lead formerly used in paint, made three donations totaling $750,000 to the Wisconsin Club for Growth between April 2011 and January 2012.


The provision intended to help the Republican donor’s business, the article added, “was inserted in a budget bill in the middle of the night despite warnings about its constitutionality.”

To briefly recap (http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/court-clears-way-investigation-wisconsins-walker) what the “John Doe” controversy was all about, Wisconsin election laws prohibit officials from coordinating campaign activities with outside political groups.

There was, however, ample reason to believe Walker and his team were directly involved in overseeing how outside groups – including some allegedly non-partisan non-profits – spent their campaign resources during his successful recall election.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected the allegations, adopting a rather extreme approach to campaign-finance laws, giving Walker a free pass.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/scott-walker-confronts-alarming-new-allegations-wisconsin?cid=sm_fb_maddow

Repug sociopathic, screw-citizens/protect-donors MISgovernance in red, slave states.