Scott Walker should feel right at home in Springfield, Illinois this morning where he is scheduled to speak before the Illinois Chamber of Commerce.
Up to 2,000 labor demonstrators have assembled outside the Abraham Lincoln Hotel and Conference Center Tuesday morning ahead of Gov. Scott Walker's speech to the Illinois Chamber of Commerce.
"We have enough problems in Illinois, we don't need him here," Doug Cycholl, 46, a local leader with AFSCME said of Walker's visit.
Met by protesters everywhere he goes here, our soon to be replaced Governor gets met by protesters everywhere he goes in the nation.
There are about 250 people attending the speech which means protesters outnumber the audience 4:1. Says a lot, doesn't it?
Scarce posted a picture in his comment.
Another picture:
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Kudos to Scare for posting it in the comments.
On top of 2,000 protesters, Illinois Democratic State Senate President John Cullerton thanked Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker:
"It’s great to have Governor Walker once again helping Illinois. First, he created so much chaos in Wisconsin that he made Illinois look normal. Now he’s helping convince the business community that his system of graduated tax rates is the way to go,” Cullerton said in a press release issued before Walker's speech.
"I must say, I really did not expect Governor Walker to work this hard to make Illinois look so good. Once again, I’d like to thank Governor Walker for his ongoing efforts to market Illinois as a great place to live and work,” Cullerton said. “First he let everyone know how much lower our tax rates are than his, now he's focusing on how much more stable Illinois is than the chaotic Wisconsin he's created. I can’t wait to hear how he’ll help us next."
Yes, Scott, they "love" you in Illinois as much as we "love" you in Wisconsin.
So, thank you, Illinois, for helping remind Scott Walker why the people of Wisconsin are trying to remove and replace him. Your efforts are much appreciated.
Walkers speech is scheduled at 10 AM Central Time. I'll post more as it becomes available.
This douche is up in the air flying around the country more than most pilots, yet I'm sure he'll still be complaining today about all that "outside influence" and "outside money" and Big Gubmint Union Bosses that are against him.
Update: The Speech Edition: Of course, the corporate bozos gave Governor Snotty a standing ovation - he's their guy and looks out for their best interests.
"We're going to try to take our state forward instead of backward," he said.
Yeah, he lives in upside down world. Frankly, I think he's taken us back to about 1850 right now. We're trying to replace him so we can get back to the 20th century.
Walker reflected on the choice Wisconsin voters face in the recall, a constant theme of his campaign as he talked of going backward to budget deficits or forward to balanced budgets.
"Wisconsin couldn't wait, we had to take action," Walker said, explaining his move to push for reforms in a special legislative session.
He talked of tort reform and streamlining government regulations and touted the creation of 17,500 new private sector jobs in the first two months of the year.
Strange he didn't mention that Wisconsin is #1 in job losses for 6 consequitive months.
"We understand, it's not the government that creates jobs, it's the people who create jobs. The best thing we can do is get government out of the way ..." he said.
"We're turning things around, we're heading in the right direction, we're moving Wisconsin forward but we have a long way to go," Walker said.
"The simple reality is, Illinois and Wisconsin, like nearly every other state had big deficits to deal with. In our case it was a $3.6 billion deficit ... And we looked around, other states are going to make poor decisions, we want to avoid that in Wisconsin," he said.
"We avoided a tax increase," he said.
He is right about one thing - no tax increase. So much was peeled away from school kids, senior citizens, public employees, farmers, the poor, disabled and vulnerable to pay for his huge corporate tax break that he didn't have to raise taxes at all. Of course, robbing poor Peter to pay rich Paul makes you popular among the rich, but citizens have a tendency to notice those kinds of things and get angry.
He also pointed out how Wisconsin didn't lay off public-sector workers compared to other states.
Plenty of public workers got laid off despite a record setting number of retirements to escape Walkers public employee peel offs. He just can't bring himself to admit it.
"We put in place long-term structural reforms that helped us balance not just our state government but our local governments," he said.
No matter how many times you say "reforms" people see "cuts". And you didn't "help local governments". What you did was ensure that they'd peel away from their local programs and public employees by prohibiting them from raising local taxes to offset your massive cuts.
Considering how much BS Walker laid out, the room might need fumigating.
Update 2: More Edition: Yuck. The Government Accountability Board unanimously ruled that fake Democrats can be on the ballot forcing all 4 Democratic candidates in the recall elections to face a primary.
State elections officials Tuesday said that six fake Democrats could remain on the ballot in the upcoming recall elections, ensuring that all the races would hold primary elections on May 8 and general elections on June 5.
The Government Accountability Board voted 6-0 to leave in place the protest candidates who filed paperwork to run in the recall elections against Gov. Scott Walker and five other GOP officials. The effort was devised by Republicans to ensure that their state Senate candidates didn't face general elections on May 8, the day that Democrats will hold a real primary in the governor's race.
Jeremy Levinson, an attorney for Democrats, said that the Republicans filing to run as Democrats should have been booted from the ballot because they had given false information to voters. Levinson, who had filed a complaint against the fake Democrats on behalf of six citizens, said Republicans had openly acknowledged that they were running their own candidates in the Democratic primary.
"There is no question that in this instance these six candidates knowingly filed false information with the GAB on a number of documents . .. The First amendment does not require the government to ignore an admitted lie and that is what we have here," he said.
State elections staff said it would be unacceptable and unconstitutional for the state to start deciding who was a legitimate representative of a given political party.
Republicans, sheesh, still digging deeper to find more bottom to sink to. Unfortunately, they're being enabled by cowardly oversight agencies.
Update 3: Awesome Ad Edition: H/T Scare for finding a new ad for Barrett. It's awesome:
Here's his other ad:
Full disclosure: I am not supporting any Democratic recall primary candidate for Governor at this time. Ads and information I post about candidates running is to provide information only..
Update 4: H/T GeoffT for finding and posting Doug LaFollettes ad in the comments.
Here it is:
Update 5: New ad from Kathleen Falk:
Update 6: Crying Towel Edition: Governor Snotty needs a crying towel:
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Gov. Scott Walker had to give $170,000 back to the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce after the business group improperly passed the money onto him.
Sniff.
MMAC's political action committee was fined $500 for the infraction in February. MMAC spokesman Steve Baas said Tuesday the situation occurred because the group misunderstood guidance it had received from the Government Accountability Board, which runs state elections.
The Republican governor has been raising large sums in recent months because the normal limits on campaign donations do not apply from the time recall petitions are circulated until the accountability board orders a recall election to be held. That has allowed Walker to accept as much as $500,000 from one donor -- 50 times the normal limit of $10,000.
However, the usual limits still apply to political action committees and others during recalls. That is what created the problem for MMAC.
MMAC received three donations last year totaling $200,000 -- $100,000 from Ted Kellner, executive chairman of Fiduciary Management, $50,000 from Patrick English, the chief executive officer of the same firm, and $50,000 from William Nasgovitz, president of Heartland Advisors.
MMAC then passed on $175,000 in December to Walker's campaign.
Those donations couldn't be passed along to Walker because they exceeded the donation limits to a political action committee.
Update 7: Ill. Gov. Quinn Responds Edition: He has a message for Scott Walker, visitor to his state:
Well they had some tough times up there since he got elected governor," Quinn said "They have the worst job record in the whole country, dead last. And we certianly don't want to follow his prescriptions when it comes to economic growth."
"He promised 250,000 jobs and he's way behind," Quinn said. "Since the recovery began our state has created over 130,000 jobs. Our focus is not on any other state. We believe in cooperation with our midwestern neighbors. Every single one of those states we want to have good relationships with. But our focus is on Illinois."
Ouch. That's gonna leave a mark.
Update 8: OMG This is as Long as a Friday News Dump Edition: Wisconsin State Supreme Court David (The Choker) Prosser has turned in another demand for recusal from his ethics trial in front of the the State Supreme Court.
Prosser's attorney, Kevin Reak, sent a letter Tuesday to Justice Patience Roggensack asking her to recuse herself from the case because she witnessed the incidents at the heart of the complaint. The request follows ones Prosser made last week to Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson and Justice Ann Walsh Bradley.
So far, no justice has stepped away from the case.
The case appears stalled at the moment before the high court. Normally, the Supreme Court would tell the court of appeals to create a special three-judge panel to hear the case. The panel would then make recommendations to the Supreme Court, which would discipline Prosser if a majority believed he had violated the ethics code.
But so far, the Supreme Court has not issued its pro-forma order to create the judicial panel.
His goal, IMHO, is to empty the bench so the case dies from lack of anyone to hear it.
Update 9: Walker Needs a Bigger Crying Towel Edition: Public officials and candidates who owe more than $5000 need to report their debt in an annual statement. This is the reason we now know that Scott Walker owes his defense lawyers over $50,000.
Gov. Scott Walker personally owed the law firms for his two criminal defense lawyers more than $55,000 at the end of 2011, according to his recently filed financial disclosure statement.
But the first-term Republican governor must have retained the pair long before he made it public.
As of Dec. 31, Walker owed more than $50,000 to Sidley Austin, a large Chicago-based firm that employs Gallo. Walker also disclosed that he owed between $5,000 and $50,000 to Terschan, Steinle & Ness, the Milwaukee firm where Steinle is a partner.
The state requires public officials and political candidates to disclose in the annual statement any creditor to which they owe more than $5,000. Wisconsin officials and candidates then must say whether the debt is greater than or up to $50,000.
In addition, Walker's campaign fund has paid two law firms - Michael Best & Friedrich of Milwaukee and Patton Boggs of Washington, D.C. - slightly more than $115,000. Walker said the campaign retained former U.S. Attorney Steve Biskupic of Michael Best after prosecutors subpoenaed campaign email in November 2010.
Note that the debt disclosed does not cover any bills generated this year including his 2 criminal defense lawyers hired in February.
