I’ve only seen bits and pieces of MTV’s “Punk’d” where celebrities were duped on camera in various ways and at the end of the prank a member of the cast would proclaim “you just got punk’d!” and as laughter erupted all around, the celebrity target would stand there looking completely dumbfounded. A real life version of “Punk’d” played out in the Governor Scott Walker versus the public employee unions of the state of Wisconsin saga. Governor Walker spent 20 minutes on a telephone conversation with someone he thought was billionaire businessman David Koch, co-owner and Executive Vice President of Koch Industries. He and his older brother Charles Koch are founders of Americans for Prosperity, financiers of the national Tea Party and have strong roots in the uber right wing John Birch Society. The Koch Brothers contributed $43,000 to Governor Walker’s successful 2010 gubernatorial campaign and millions more to Republican campaigns throughout the country. According to a report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Koch Industries will be spending $342,000 on advertising to persuade Wisconsin voters to back Governor Walker’s plan. So in the middle of a budget stalemate that includes a blatant attempt to bust public employee unions in his state (an action that has brought law making to a halt because Democrats of the Wisconsin legislature have fled the state in protest), Governor Walker, fully aware of where his political bread is buttered, took time out of his duties as Wisconsin’s CEO to speak with a major Republican campaign donor. Or so he thought.
There are many alarming things about this surreptitious conversation. In an interview on MSNBC's "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnel" Jeffrey Sachs, the Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University eloquently and passionately explained what is going on in America. In short, the wealthy are positioning themselves to not pay any taxes at all. Sachs goes on to explain that when the wealthy pay little or no taxes, that creates the budget deficits that seemingly every state in the Union has. The federal and state governments are then put in a position where services that many of the poor in the United States depend on have to be cut. In short, a cruel war against the poor in order to ensure the wealthy get wealthier. It IS criminal. Moreover, with his busy schedule in trying to run his state in the middle of a budget crisis and unable to legislate because of the absence of Democrats who left the state in protest to avoid voting on the proposed union busting legislation, why would the governor take time to speak with a campaign donor who doesn’t even live in his state? Would he have taken a call from a Wisconsinite during such a crisis? How could any elected official knowingly engage in a conversation over the phone with a supposed Republican heavyweight and openly discuss his strategy for breaking the public employee unions of his state? Was it the height of arrogance? Or … was it something else altogether?
Is Scott Walker a NINCOMPOOP?
Peace, peace in the Middle East.
Craig Riggins
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I hope all liberal journalist and pundits use that recorded conversation to the utmost because the Gov is a pretty smooth character. No one is going to catch him off guard again. I was stunned to hear him say that he thought of causing a disturbance, in what has been shown as a peaceful protest. Now that is really revealing. That should be grounds for impeachment.
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