This is really unbelievable totally believable. From Karoli at Crooks and Liars:
A big thank-you to xoff at UppityWisconsin for this find. Remember that power plant provision? It wasn’t in the document passed by the Senate on Wednesday. But guess what! It was changed before the Assembly vote on Thursday to include it.
Librarian
Excuse me, but isn’t that, you know, fucking totally illegal? Don’t both houses have to pass the exact same bill, or else it has to go back to the senate? Or maybe WI doesn’t have the same rules as the rest of the country.
Violet
Are they really nuclear plants? Not sure those will be as popular given what’s happening in Japan right now.
Alex S.
Just when you think it can’t get any worse…
Jay in Oregon
@Librarian:
If the
President of the United StatesGovernor does it in the name of “Fixin’ Tha Economy”, it cannot be illegal.Martin
Can Walker give them the Fukushima-Daini plant instead?
PeakVT
“Power plant” doesn’t necessarily mean nuclear power plant. There’s only one in Wisconsin anyway, and it’s owned by Dominion Resources. Other types of state-owned power plants are still fair game, apparently.
Mark S.
What’s the principled conservative rationale for no-bid contracts? If there isn’t one, will Fonzi and the rest of the gang at Reason denounce this?
matryoshka
@Mark S.: No-bid contracts grease the wheels of the free market.
Stillwater
Isn’t this the very definition of ‘meritocracy’? Is it some other word I’m thinking of?
freelancer
@Stillwater:
Cronyism. That’s the word you want.
GregB
It’s a national effing fire sale.
Chop it all up and divvy off to the lowest scumbag plutocrat.
Then carp about bad service and buy it back at a premium when it goes to shit.
dslak
Just in case Glenn Greenwald says something about this, remember that he lives in Brazil.
singfoom
@Stillwater: Maybe you’re thinking of a phrase instead of a word.
Try Privatize the Profits while Socializing the Risk
Dennis SGMM
Coming soon:
Allow the Department of Administration (DOA) to sell any state-owned park, facility, real property, or any other asset with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount the Department determines to be in the best interest of the state.
Suffern ACE
I’m sure the terms of the sale will be made transparent to all.
Kryptik
Stunning.
And 2012 is probably the soonest we can undo this piece of shit, at minimum? Why do I get the feeling that this is gonna end up lingering like a festered wound for much longer, considering the way the politics of the US has operated recently (i.e. whatever punches the most Hippies)?
Scott
Ya never know, Walker may get removed from office before 2012. If he gets arrested for breaking the law, the Repubs in the Lege will have to choose between kicking out the blatant crook, or siding with the blatant crook and eventually sharing his punishment…
Dennis SGMM
@Kryptik:
Because if anyone sane tries to undo it the Republicans will start braying about “the sanctity of contracts, agitating the markets, and killing jobs.”
Mark S.
@GregB: @Dennis SGMM:
British neocon psuedo-historian Niall Ferguson is way ahead of you guys.
dslak
@Kryptik: True enough. It’s hard for some people to pursue their own self-interest when there’s a chance to watch some hippies get punched. There’s just something so satisfying about it, especially when the hippy is non-white or non-Christian.
MikeTheZ
I have taken to simply chanting “USA! USA!” anytime I read something about this. The sardonics makes me feel mildly better and it ensures I pass the patriotism test for any wingnuts in earshot and won’t actually get shot.
Kryptik
@Dennis SGMM:
Ahh, that’s why. Thought it was something similar, but then I convinced myself that ‘Nah, people can’t be that awful and hypocritical.
Then I laughed through the tears.
burnspbesq
Believable?
It’s the object of the entire exercise.
General Stuck
Well why the fuck not?
This wasn’t an election for Governor, it was an Iraq style invasion, but without assault weapons. Look at it, they topple the existing government, disband the opposing union army, and start handing out no bid contracts to the American Chalabi.
There will be another election some day, but there won’t be anything left to govern. I expect the State Capital Building will be soon occupied by Koch and Haliburton, just like with Saddam’s former Palaces.
A few well placed predator drone strikes should dampen any oppo.
Martin
OT: Shit, there are *two* failing plants in Japan. Fukushima-Daini has failing cooling systems on 3 reactors. Fukushima-Daiichi has a failing cooling system on one reactor. They’re 7 miles apart.
I thought they were talking about one plant all this time. The latter one, with the one reactor problem is the one with the pressure issue, and seems to be in worse shape than the former with the 3 reactors.
Bullsmith
Be interesting to see how it plays out if Wis does in fact sell power plants to Koch and simply get away with it. This shit is astoundingly blatant as is, but that’s just so nakedly transparent I’d have to think of it as a tipping point. The point of tipping into the void.
Dennis SGMM
@Mark S.:
Ferguson is an ass. He specifically mentions Governor Brown stopping the sale of state buildings. When Schwarzenegger proposed the idea some people did studies on the proposal and found that it would cost the state a shit-ton of money over the life of the buildings. What we ought to do is take all of the right wing shills, bundle them together and sell them to the highest bidder. We ought to get at least eighty five cents for them.
Roger Moore
I guess I’m mostly surprised that the Republicans are willing to be this blatant. Yes, they’re a bunch of corrupt assholes, but they usually feel the need to be at least a little bit stealthy about the corruption so the rubes don’t catch on. A massive giveaway like this is just way too blatant.
The Dangerman
So, if Walker sells off a power plant to the Koch’s for, say, $1, can Obama nationize the plants to clean up that crime?
Bullsmith
@Dennis SGMM:
I’ll give you a buck fifty if you toilet train them first.
MikeTheZ
@Roger Moore: People forgave them within 2 years of the Bush Debacle. Do you see any reason for them to not be blatant?
jwb
@Roger Moore: Which suggests to me that they know something. I’m just not sure what. That they are likely to be hounded out of office in 2012 so they are grabbing what they can before they spend their years in the wilderness? Or that the fix is in, they have the money from Citizens United on the one hand and the Diebold machines on the other and they are ready and willing to run them both wide open in 2012?
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@freelancer:
more like a pimp turning his whores out.
walker, corbett, et al, they were nothing before pimp daddy koch et al found them, took them in, broke them down, chained them to a radiator for their own good, and built them up in the vision of what he could have them do for him.
now they are out on the streets making it pay for big daddy.
D. Mason
@Roger Moore: The tin foil hat wearing voice in my head says it means the hammer is about to fall.
Martin
And now they’ve lost the ability to control containment pressure at Fukushima-Daini. I think they may lose that plant.
The 10km evacuation order covers 45,000 people, and it reaches to the other plant that’s having trouble.
Mark S.
@Dennis SGMM:
What I want to know is how Britain is able to export all of their shittiest pundits over here. Along with Niall, there’s Sully, Hitch, Tony Blankley, Derb, and a few more I can’t think of off the top of my head. I’m all for immigration reform if it means sending those clowns back.
JC
You know, with this hitting everywhere, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, I really don’t think this is haphazard. The monied interests did their little analysis, and decided that THIS year – a very Republican year, it must be said – they would push to ‘private the profits, publicize the risks’, everywhere.
Again, it’s pretty clear that plutocratic government,by the monied, for the monied, with the public sector as just another resource/asset, is all these guys care about.
Martin
@JC: Of course it’s not haphazard. This is governance by tea party. They’re trying to establish a new GOP baseline.
Roger Moore
@jwb:
Or maybe they’re just seeing how far they can push the envelope. Yes, Gov. Walker and the Republican legislators are risking getting thrown out of office, but that’s a risk the Koch brothers are willing to take.
Stillwater
@jwb: Or this: the whole purpose of the GOP from the pov of its sponsors is a means to an end, to achieve the dismantling of the welfare state and democratic restrictions on profit-seeking. In that sense, they’ve achieved their primary, perhaps ultimate, goal. The politicians will be handsomely rewarded with think tank appointments, lobbying positions, corporate sinecures, or campaign contributions should they choose to run again.
To frame this exclusively in terms of politics, while forgetting the point of politics, unnecessarily confuses things.
Brazilian Rascal
Impossible! The Kochs are just funding politics they believe in! Reason Magazine and Sully both told me that’s perfectly alright and anyway, Soros is way worse!
Martin
@Roger Moore: No, they’re trying to establish who is in charge – the tea party, or the GOP. The GOP is not happy with this stuff, they know that it’s backfiring, but the don’t dare come out against the agitated, and reliably voting tea partiers. They saw what happened in the DE primary.
These new tea party governors are looking to draw a bright line between themselves and previous GOP leaders, and that’s why they’re reaching so far, and the moderates are paralyzed to do anything to oppose them because all of the money and energy exists on the far right. That’s why they need to keep backing Give-A-Handgun-To-A-Schizophrenic bills and the union busting, etc.
Corner Stone
@Stillwater: They want to tap/control any monies existent in the public sphere and remove any strictures to monies in the private sphere.
It’s all about the rents and always has been.
cathyx
People are withdrawing their money out of M&I bank of Wisconsin because that bank, which took taxpayer bailout money, funded Walker in his election. They closed some branches early to stop a run. Here’s a list of who you can boycott if you are so inclined:
http://scottwalkerwatch.com/?page_id=979
JC
That is one thing that I have to start doing more of. Making sure that EVERY SINGLE DOLLAR that I spend, goes to a product maker with some form of social conscience, or rather, knowing that capitalism is good – provide a good service/product, you should be rewarded with my business, if better than competing products – but also know that there are certain civic duties that companies I do business with, must have…
Tsulagi
So when does the WI Senate vote to rename the state Kochistan?
Difference between rich and powerful controlling/heavily influencing politicians in the States and South America where I am now? Not a whole lot. Maybe their accents.
Martin
State of emergency declared at that 2nd nuke plant I mentioned. They’ll likely do the 3km evacuation soon, which is partially covered already by the 10km evacuation from the first plant.
Hungry Joe
What they’re doing is the economic equivalent of paving over wetlands: A lot of it is pretty much irreversible. Once public services, not to mention public land and public facilities, e.g., power plants, are privatized, it’ll be damn near impossible to get them back. And to re-build unions from scratch … This really is a turning point. If we don’t wake up and organize, wake up and ACT, descent into a semi-benign fascist state seems inevitable. (“Semi-benign” because repression is unnecessary — just keep folks fed, big-screen TV’d, and Charlie Sheen’d. Balloon Juice, Rachel, Kos, et al? Let ’em post. We’ll laugh all the way to the bailed-out bank.)
Stillwater
@Martin: What’s the worst case scenario there?
Calouste
@Mark S.:
I don’t think export is the word you are looking for. Exile might be more appropriate. Unreconstructed Thatcherism hasn’t really been selling well in the UK over the last two decades or so.
MattMinus
Walker’s the political version of one of those retarded kids that Hamas was strapping bombs to.
gbear
Question: Now that this ‘discrepancy’ between the senate and assembly bills has become known and the voting rules have gotten so loosey-goosey, could Fitzgerald reconvene the senate tomorrow when the democratic senators are marching on the capitol, ‘arrest’ the democratic senators, and force them to appear in the chamber while a new vote passes the assembly version of the bill (and just so happens to include all of the fiscal items too)?
As crazy as things have been going in Madison, I wouldn’t put it past the Fitzgerald boys.
jayjaybear
@gbear:
That’s astonishingly less folksy and warm than “them Duke boys.”
liberal
@Corner Stone:
Exactly. It’s not about profit-seeking, but rather rent-seeking.
Parasites.
Mnemosyne
@Martin:
The next time someone tells me we need to build a nuclear plant near Los Angeles, I am going to punch them in the throat.
Stillwater
@liberal: It’s not about profit-seeking, but rather rent-seeking.
Both?
Jebediah
@Mark S.:
Isn’t the British press less lap-doggish than ours? Is it just that the clowns get called on their bullshit more often over there, got tired of it, and came here where their farts would be called “insightful and not smelly at all?”
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Roger Moore: Once they managed to get old people to complain about the government aiming to provide more and better health care, they didn’t have to mask their intentions anymore. The base is actively cheering for their own economic ruin.