Recall Scott Walker

[Valerian]

http://mirrors.5nines.com/stream/

This is a link to the Government Accountability Board's webcam, which is live streaming the checking and counting of the recall signatures.

It's about as exciting as watching C-Span, but I'm glad they did it.  It's a very refreshing change from the Republican/Tea Party attitude of keeping everything hidden and hurling accusations and lawsuits at anyone who wants to find out what's really going on.

[itsbeenfun2000]

My point was we have 1 million signatures. Granted some are not legitiment, however it is more then union members signing the petitions.

[Valerian]

http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_19796738

The GAB is scrambling to check all the signatures -- Walker got about 1.1 million, but adding in the recall for Lt. Governor Kleefish and all the senate recalls, it's about 1.9 million signatures all together -- and it's especially hard since the GOP was able to move to ultra-conservative Waukesha County to get a judge to order the checking to be more stringent than the law actually requires.  There's a hearing scheduled for Wednesday to see if the GAB gets the extra 30 days they requested, making a total of 60 days.

As the article at the top mentions, the GAB is making a database by scanning the petitions into a handwriting recognition program. (Considering all the Polish surnames around here, I shudder to think what that program will make of a name like Pryzbylewski.)  The Democrats made their own database as signatures were collected.  Walker's campaign group is making a database.  And the Tea Party volunteers are making yet another database.

This is going to be the most checked petition in the entire history of petitions.



Amusingly, there was a rally in support of Walker over the weekend, and they're now bragging about having gotten about three times the number they expected, or about 3,000 people.  Why they're boasting about having gotten 3,000 people to stand in the cold for three hours, when the Madison rallies topped out at 100,000 and huge numbers of people camped out for months in the cold, I have no idea.

[Callie Del Noire]

http://www.twincities.com/localnews/ci_19796738

Amusingly, there was a rally in support of Walker over the weekend, and they're now bragging about having gotten about three times the number they expected, or about 3,000 people.  Why they're boasting about having gotten 3,000 people to stand in the cold for three hours, when the Madison rallies topped out at 100,000 and huge numbers of people camped out for months in the cold, I have no idea.

Spin spin spin.. they 'forget' the huge crowds while pimping the 'groundswell' of support to the media. After all the Madison rallies were in the PAST don'tchaknow? I REALLY hope that someone catches them playing reindeer games that can get the feds involved.

[itsbeenfun2000]

They also reported the ralley was in Milwaukee when it was actually in Wawatosa a Republican suburb of Milwaukee

[Valerian]

I didn't hear a word about it until after it was over, so despite all their talk about how wonderful social networking is for getting the word out, I'm not sure they're using it right.

Considering that Walker cost Milwaukee alone a few thousand jobs and a couple of million dollars (the state as a whole is out around $60 million due to contractual obligations that couldn't be broken) because of cancelling that high-speed rail line deal, I don't think they'd allow any pro-Walker rally within the city limits anyway.

[Valerian]

http://www.wispolitics.com/index.iml?Article=259245

The John Doe investigation has gotten two more of Walker's former staffers arrested -- Darlene Wink (also former first vice chair of the Milwaukee County GOP) admitted to posting pro-Walker messages online (after newspapers got hold of the story) while being paid for working for the county.  She resigned over it and now faces misdemeanor charges over the comments and also for having written press releases and done fundraising work on county time.

Kelly Rindfleisch faces four felony counts of misconduct in public office.  She also did fundraising work and told a friend in a chat during work hours that "half of what she was doing was policy for the campaign."  She sent and received over a thousand emails relating to fundraising during office hours.  One charge relates to the fact that she was working for Milwaukee County while not living in Milwaukee County, as required by law for anyone with a county job.


Wink, at least, is swearing up and down that Walker knew nothing about any of this, as have the others arrested over campaign corruption, generally.  That's nice and loyal and all, but really, the way these incidents are piling up, to keep insisting that he knew nothing about any of it is starting to amount to an accusation of total cluelessness on his part.  If he isn't corrupt, then he's an idiot... though my opinion for a long time has been that he's actually both... and neither one exactly qualifies him for public office. 

[Callie Del Noire]

Wow.. watch while the staffers throw themselves in front of the train hoping to slow it's runaway mass bearing down on Walker.

Its' scary how loyal these lemmings are.

[Trieste]

That's unfair to lemmings. :(

[Oniya]

These might be more appropriate:

[TheGlyphstone]

These might be more appropriate:

That's also unfair to Lemmings. Because Lemmings was kickass.

[Oniya]

However, you could easily get those Lemmings to sacrifice themselves for some futile cause (because there was always the next level...)

Oohh nnoooooo!  *pop*

[Valerian]

http://host.madison.com/daily-cardinal/news/documents-show-wisconsin-republicans-pledged-secrecy-during-redistricting-process-voces/article_a0689e28-5165-11e1-8fb2-0019bb2963f4.html

The redistricting lawsuit is under some serious fire.  First there was that blistering federal ruling calling the Republicans out on their tactics.  (The Republicans were, according to the 11-page ruling, "flailing wildly in a desperate attempt to hide from both the court and the public the true nature of exactly what transpired in the redistricting process."  Best. Ruling. Ever.)

Now a Milwaukee-based immigrants rights group, Voces de la Frontera, has uncovered documents signed by nearly all Republican legislators swearing secrecy about anything relating to the redistricting process -- even though this process is supposed to be open and all the information publicly available.  Voces has filed a lawsuit claiming that the GOP has violated both the state constitution and the Wisconsin Open Meetings Laws with this pledge of secrecy.


And, in a last-ditch effort to shield their golden boy, the Tea Party is starting up a campaign to write in Walker's name in the Democratic primary for the recall election.  Shades of the "fake Democrats" the Republicans threw in to the senate recall elections... which didn't really work, but hey, anything they can do to try to mess things up, apparently.  I'm sure they're hoping that if they just drag their feet long enough, people will forget to be outraged, or at least be too worn out to be outraged.    As it is, the recall election probably won't happen until April.

[Oniya]

There's a problem with that, though.  As it's a recall election, Walker is already on the final ballot as a Republican.  On the remote chance that this write-in campaign nets him a majority, he can't legally become the Democratic candidate (since he's already the Republican candidate).

[Callie Del Noire]

Seriously? Can these people see that any short term gains will bite them in the ass? Not to mention that this reeks of conspiracy and possible fraud charges?  Do they honestly think HIDING after the antics of the last year could possibly work?

[Valerian]

As for the write-in campaign, I'm guessing they just assumed that if there's only the same name twice on the ballot, he'd automagically win.  I can't see them pausing to think about silly things like legalities.  According to the article, a GAB spokesperson turned away from the signature counting long enough to say that legally, they need to have a write-in line and they can't speculate beyond that.  Too bad they didn't just shoot it down and get it over with. 

I keep thinking that they're just scared enough that they can't really focus on anything beyond the short-term gains.  They just want to try to fix what's immediately in front of them, patch up the holes somehow, and worry about the fallout later.  It seems ridiculous if you stop to think about it for even a moment, but it just seems like they're incapable of thinking beyond the moment.

[Callie Del Noire]

I meant the redistributing pledge specifically.  That has to be clearly illegal to anyone with two functioning neurons.

[Valerian]

My fault -- I meant to address your point more specifically in that second paragraph, but I didn't make that clear.  You're absolutely right; anything that requires signing one's name to anything like a pledge of secrecy is almost certainly political suicide in Wisconsin right now, even aside from the legal repercussions.  If any of the senators being recalled signed that -- and I imagine they did -- this could seriously change the outlook on those recalls.  They don't have dates for those elections yet, though they're talking sometime in June.

They've announced Democratic candidates to run against three of those four senators, by the way, so I'm a little surprised those elections won't happen sooner, though I can understand wanting to get the big election done first.

[Callie Del Noire]

I really have to wonder about the party leadership. Are they involved with this or are they in some back room pounding their head on a wall in frustration? I honestly can't see whatever happened in the last couple years as being the outlook of folks who lead the party. Did they get ignored by the elected people or are we looking at a new leadership making a move?

[Oniya]

From delving through the comments, it looks like a grass-roots effort - http://www.facebook.com/WriteInScottWalker

It's only got a little over 1600 'Likes' so far.

EDIT:

So, I decided to ask the question that's been bugging me, even though the 'page rules' say 'No Liberals!'.  *snrk*

Me:  Out of sheer curiosity, what happens if the write-in wins? He can't run as a candidate for both parties.

Operation: Write in Scott Walker in Democrat primary.: the effort is to show the amount of sigs for SW. As the recall sigs are showing,there are about 500 of SW in tthe state.



My first thought was that they were saying that there were 500 people who would vote for Walker.  My second thought was that they were saying that 500 signatures on the recall petition were 'Scott Walker'.  Either way, last I heard, both the number of recall signatures and the population of Wisconsin at least 1,000,000, which makes that number less than 1% of either.

[Zakharra]

 Whoa. The Republicans in Wisconsin are definitely stuck on stupid.

[Callie Del Noire]

Whoa. The Republicans in Wisconsin are definitely stuck on stupid.

Yup..definitely drinking the cool aid huh?

[itsbeenfun2000]

As of yesterday a former aide has pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud. She was actively campanging while at work in Milwaukee for Walker. She has done a plea deal for no jail time if she cooporates in the investigation.

[Callie Del Noire]

As of yesterday a former aide has pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud. She was actively campanging while at work in Milwaukee for Walker. She has done a plea deal for no jail time if she cooporates in the investigation.

I imagine there will be many pleas.. lots of pointing and in the end whoever takes the final fall will take a 2 year charge up front rather than wait for the big cases to be closed. Just like Mike Easley did in NC..he plead down to a $1000 'community penalty' and as part of the plea the feds had to stop the investigation.

[Avis habilis]

MoJo gives us a rundown of the investigation to date: http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/scott-walker-john-doe-investigation-explained