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The counter till the days of recall began somewhere around 260. Now it is just 4 days till the recall action begins!

What about Kleefisch?

Fundamentally Kleefish

Republican Attorney General Van Holen informed us that Rebecca Kleefisch was a “separate political entity” from Governor Walker. As a result, a separate recall sheet for Rebecca will be passed (if not paper clipped) to the recall Walker signature sheets.

Who is “separate entity” Rebecca?

Well for starters she is married to Representitive Joel Kleefisch a Republican representing the area of Oconomowoc. Joe authored the bill AB237 with language that would give arrest powers to law enforcement officials over, well…anyone.

“violating a law that constitutes a civil forfeiture if the law enforcement officer has reasonable grounds to believe that the person is violating or has violated the law”

Read about the bill to give the State Patrol “reassurance” in the legality of arrests in the assembly gallery.

But what about Rebecca. She is a comfortable spokesperson for herself, since she was a talking head on WISN-TV in Milwaukee and has railed against health care reform in front to tea party gatherings, and anywhere else she can find a microphone and red part of the state to espouse her fundamentally “christian” message of no government help for the ne’er do wells. Kleefisch talks about her successful cancer treatment, which was diagnosed, treated and financed through the access she has to health care as the spouse of an state elected official (Rep. husband Joe). Kleefisch supports a plan that would cut 400,000 working families off the state’s successful BadgerCare plan. I guess it is fundamentally not christian to offer affordable health care to working adults and children whose employers don’t offer health care benefits and who can’t afford for-profit health care plans. Kleefisch and health care

Should Dog’s be Allowed to Marry?

The fundamentally christian Kleefisch was at her fundamentally self righteous best when she made a remark on a christian broadcast station WVCY. The context was the very thought stretching the commandment of the Lord Jesus Christ – Love they neighbor as thyself – to mean allowing gay domestic partners to share benefits.

“We can’t at this point afford to just be handing out money to anyone. This is a slippery slope in addition to that — at what point are we going to OK marrying inanimate objects? Can I marry this table, or this, you know, clock? Can we marry dogs? This is ridiculous. Can we marry dogs?

She apologized some days later for her “insensitive” remarks, but not even her own uncle Chris Pfauser (pictured in video below) doubted the sincerity of the gesture. He and his partner Rob Gow consider themselves to be married. They’ve been together for 18 years and would get married, except same-sex marriage is against the law in Michigan where they live. Pfausere – Apology insincere

Please view and share the 1 min 14 sec video of “Fundamentally Kleefisch”

Those present at a debate find themselves caught up in the same sort of pulsing energy as any mob, and sometimes the core truth of the mob escapes in the words of a single statement.

In the instance, of the Tea Party Sponsored debate of the Republican Candidates, the statement “Let him die!”was scary enough, but when it was followed by the burst of laughter it was downright psycho. It began to carry an eerie resemblance of the kind of almost gleeful cruelty of racist mobs in history that lynch, torture, and abuse their victims as they feed off each others hateful energy.

Does this crowd or Congressman Paul really believe that most people who can afford health insurance choose instead to go without it? Has it been that long since they sat at an American kitchen table and tried to figure out how to keep their benefits after a layoff? Or how to get care when they’ve never had insurance, ever? Or even how to schedule an appointment with an overbooked doctor in an HMO system? Maddow Blog

Senator Ron Johnson and Paul Ryan Do they seriously not know anyone who has struggled with those questions, even if they themselves have not?

Is Poverty a Hilarious Death Sentence? If so, Are You Ready for the Really Big Joke?

A new census report:
The United States has both the highest overall poverty rate and the highest childhood poverty rate of any major industrialized country on earth.

More Opportunities for GOP Tea Party Laughter

You see the posters, and fliers in all the restaurants, convenience stores, and community centers, and you see them all the time. Not a week goes by when you don’t see a poster for yet another benefit to ask for help for a loved one who is deathly ill and can’t afford further treatment. Sometimes you even see an “update” note of the current condition of the person. For most of us, it is really heartbreaking to read the specific and personal messages, but for the tea party crowd it is another opportunity to laugh at the irresponsibility of the poor sucker getting himself in such a situation and expecting his fellow citizens to take care of him.

Back in October, if you drove around the county roads and byways you couldn’t miss the dominating presence of signs to vote for Johnson or Walker. The signs were in the same people’s yards who called the health care bill “Obamacare” and want it repealed. I know some of these people well enough to expect they do not agree with psycho tea party “Let Him Die” laughter that chilled my spine.

I hope they were watching the Tea Party death panel of clowns last night, laughing and laughing.

Why is it important to know who the Koch Bros are? Ask Bernie Sanders the Senator from Vermont who stood on the floor of the Senate for most of a whole day to deliver a good, old fashioned filibuster, which has become known as “The Amazing Speech”, to stop the action that would extend tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. His speech opens with “There is a war in America” and goes on to tell us that 1% of the people in this country now earn close to 25% of the dollars spent on any given day.( You can click here to watch his amazing speech) So, what is this war all about and why should we be concerned about it? The battle between rich and poor is as old as money itself, why is it any different today? Isn’t it a bit alarmist to call this age old imbalance a war, Mr. Sanders?

The answer is “no”. In fact, the class war has been waging behind the scenes for some time. An ambush has been carefully planned and financed without much notice or defense from the sleeping giant. Until, somewhere around last Valentines day, when the giant was rudely awakened in the middle of a Wisconsin Winter.

Since the ironic turn of events on a Valentines Day in 2011 we not only have awakened to an ambush, but have come to recognize the Generals of the battle as the Koch Bros.; David H. Koch and his brother Charles are lifelong libertarians and have quietly given more than a hundred million dollars to right-wing causes. Read more New Yorker article

They are the the Generals in this war. They are the ultra wealthy pair who are troubled by the bargaining rights of workers, teachers, and firemen. It is their hands that have carefully stacked the deck and left Wisconsin to draw Scott Walker as their trump against working families in Wisconsin. But Scott is small fry when compared to the other larger fish in the net.

I wish this were some crazy conspiracy theory, but no. This is who the REAL Koch Bros. are:

Did you get an invitation?

The invitation says you will, “develop strategies to counter the most severe threats facing our free society and outline a vision of how we can foster a renewal of American free enterprise and prosperity.

Who attends the conferences at swank locations like the Rancho Las Palmas Resort and Spa? (pictured below) Who are the recipients of these invites by the Generals Koch?

Last year, for example, some of the guests included just about every heavyweight conservative figure we have come to recognize as Majors and Captains in the war including:

• Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas
• Govs. Haley Barbour (R-MS) and Bobby Jindal (R-LA)
• Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Tom Coburn (R-OK)
• Reps. Mike Pence (R-IN) and Paul Ryan (R-WI)
• Media figures Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck
• Major Republican donor Fred Malek, a founder of the American Action Network
These top-shelf conservative leaders mingled with Koch Industries executives as
well as oil industry executives from Aspect Energy, LLC; Murfin Drilling Co., Inc.;
Anschutz Company; and GeoPark Holdings Ltd.; alongside several members of
Koch’s various subsidiaries.
You can read much more about the Generals Koch tentacles of influence from the American Progress Action Report

Read about the cozy relationship of the Supreme Court Justices with the Koch Bros.

What are the strategies being discussed “to counter the most severe threats facing our free society”?

Fighting collective bargaining

The Koch brothers have participated in the fight over collective bargaining taking
place across the country. The Koch network donated $1.2 million to help elect
conservative Republican governors last year, including Wisconsin’s Scott Walker
and Ohio’s John Kasich, both of whom are trying to take away collective bargaining
rights. During the fight in Wisconsin, Americans for Prosperity ran an ad and
orchestrated protests to support Gov. Walker’s union busting and orchestrated
pro-Walker protests. Americans for Prosperity also started a website urging people
to “Stand with Governor Kasich.”

What are the tactics?

The tentacles of the Koch war machine are many, but some of the more secretive and clandestine activities are orchestrated by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which has come to light recently with the attempt to gag a University of Wisconsin history; Professor Conan. They received one of the more generous contributions from the War Generals to the tune of $668,858.

ALEC became nervous with an entry Professor Conan made in his blog in order to better understand the actions in various states with new Republican governors whose radical legislative proposals are remarkably similar to those developed and shared by ALEC. Since “the lady doth protest to strongly” to this seemingly harmless posting, it might be worthwhile paying attention to the secretive machinations of the Koch Generals supported, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

For nearly forty years the American Legislative Exchange Council has been providing conservative legislators with the tools to undo the New Deal piece by piece.
Interestingly, as of May 2010, Wisconsin’s long-serving Republican Sen. Scott L. Fitzgerald, now the state’s Senate Majority Leader, the man who has led the charge in the Wisconsin state senate against the state’s workers on behalf of Governor Scott Walker, was listed as an ALEC State Chairman. This year, ALEC lists Assembly Rep. Robin J. Vos as its Wisconsin State Chairman. Vos is the co-chair of the Wisconsin budget-writing Joint Finance Committee.

Why was Cronon seen as a threat to ALEC?

Cronon pointed out that despite the enormous contributions – financial and ideological – the Koch brothers have made to the conservative movement, he didn’t “find it plausible that two brothers from Wichita, Kansas, no matter how wealthy, can be responsible for this explosion of radical conservative legislation.”

He went on to note that he is “pretty sure” that “the most important group” behind the current spate of anti-labor legislation is ALEC. “If you’re as impressed by [its legislative successes] as I am, I’m hoping you’ll agree with me that it may be time to start paying more attention to ALEC and the bills its seeks to promote.”

Read the full article about ALEC here

Here is a link to an article that details the influence of ALEC on past Wisconsin legislative actions.

Did you ever wonder how and why the campaign spending dollars keep rising to unimaginable levels? The Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court of the U.S.A. has opened the flood gate for corporations to spend unlimited amounts to influence the laws under which you live. The Walker Administration came to power as the first beneficiary of the Citizens United ruling. Do you like what you see?

The picture below is an altered version of the Norman Rockwell print February 21, 1943. It held my fascination as a young boy and has always been my favorite. I apologize for replacing the blackboard in the background with a flow of money that comes from another kind of board equally as black.

The Supreme Court has determined that a corporation is the same as person under the Constitution of the United States and they have been awarded the same rights to contribute money to the political process as living and breathing human beings. This seems an obvious stretch to many. Shall we agree to pretend that average citizen has the same political clout as a utility corp. or a banking corp? The Supreme Court ruling seems to think so, thus tilting an already unlevel playing field much further in favor of big money and corporate control of government at all levels.

Here is just one example of how this influx of big dollars effects just one small facet of your state government. The Assembly Republican caucus draws a disproportionately greater amount of special interest contributions than the Assembly Democrats because they have the power to give wealthy special interests what they want.

This is readily seen in the difference in per capita special interest contributions between Assembly Republicans and Democrats in the first six months of 2005 and the first six months of 2007. In between those two periods, the 2006 elections reduced the GOP majority from 61-38 to 52-47 (see Bar Chart below).

Six-Month Per Capita Special Interest Contributions
To Assembly Democrats And Republicans

6 Month Per Capita Special Interest Contributions To Assembly Democrats And Republicans

Now is the Winter of our discontent – Just wait till SPRING!