Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Consistently wrong since 2002

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

The willow is too close to the house.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

He really is that stupid.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

You are here: Home / Economics / Free Markets Solve Everything / Mr. Walker Goes to Washington

Mr. Walker Goes to Washington

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And gets owned by Dennis Kucinich:

KUCINICH: Let me ask you about some of the specific provisions in your proposals to strip collective bargaining rights. First, your proposal would require unions to hold annual votes to continue representing their own members. Can you please explain to me and members of this committee how much money this provision saves for your state budget?

WALKER: That and a number of other provisions we put in because if you’re going to ask, if you’re going to put in place a change like that, we wanted to make sure we protected the workers of our state, so they got value out of that. […]

KUCINICH: Would you answer the question? How much money does it save, Governor?

WALKER: It doesn’t save any. […]

KUCINICH: I want to ask about another one of your proposals. Under your plan you would prohibit paying union member dues from their paychecks. How much money would this provision save your state budget?

WALKER: It would save employees a thousand dollars a year they could use to pay for their pensions and health care contributions.

KUCINICH: Governor, it wouldn’t save anything. [Goes on to present letter from LRF and is denied unanimous request for it to be placed in the public record by Issa]

Noticing a trend here? Ryan’s deficit reduction plan doesn’t really reduce the deficit, either. But it sure feels good, and it rewards the right people, and shits all over the right ones as well.

Reader Interactions

79Comments

  1. 1.

    RosiesDad

    No real surprises there, John. Stripping collective bargaining rights was never about reducing the budget deficit, it was all about empowering the state so they could fuck the state workers down the road.

  3. 3.

    Bob Loblaw

    Something, something, Kucinich, useless, firebagger, something, something.

    Whoever would have thought six months ago that the Wisconsin GOP would be the unifying force for Democratic revival?

  5. 5.

    kdaug

    So – Kucinich using facts: Right or wrong strategy? Or do we need a countervailing narrative?

    Just asking, ’cause the facts don’t always seem to work.

  6. 6.

    KG

    @joeyess: It’s a shame we can’t have a campaign finance law that says, very simply: if you can’t vote in the election, you can’t donate to the candidates/nominees. This means no corporate money, no union money, no out of state money, no 16 year olds “making donations”, and all the other bullshit that goes into it. But I guess that would be too logical.

  11. 11.

    Martin

    Well, bottom line is that time was that public sector workers were considered part of government and could be called on to step up when government needed them. Now public sector workers are a cancer to be excised. Remember when government did things like establish the notion of civil service, to protect government and employees from politicization of the labor force. Well, once the unions are dealt with, expect that to go as well. President Ryan wants to be able to fire every mail carrier and replace them with loyal tea party supporters, because that’s responsible and meritorious.

  13. 13.

    Uncle Clarence Thomas

    @Dr. Squid:
    .
    .

    How dumb do you have to be to get pwned by Kucinich?

    As dumb as President Obama, according to you.
    .
    .

  14. 14.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    @Felonious Wench: Maybe she’s a super string butt kicking martial artist that fell in love with him because he was the geek who loved her for who she was.

    Sorry, been reading a lot of Japanese Manga recently.

  15. 15.

    Martin

    @Linda Featheringill: Oh, I think Kucinich is pretty broadly popular on the left and among people here. The problem is that he’s too often trotted out by his supporters as an example of the the line that Democrats should draw in the sand. They expect that Kucinich would put forward a budget that would be as realistic as Ryan’s. If he did, then independents and moderats would flee the Democratic party in droves as being ideological and loony, and if he didn’t then the base would erupt in open revolt that they were betrayed and the he was worse than Bush.

  16. 16.

    Jay in Oregon

    @kdaug:

    Just asking, ‘cause the facts don’t always seem to work.

    I think the countervailing narrative needs to be (and is) that Walker’s actions are not about being fiscally responsible, but about screwing over the people of Wisconsin for his gain and the gain of his backers.

  17. 17.

    gwangung

    President Ryan Bush wanted to be able to fire every mail carrier and replace them with loyal tea party supporters, because that’s responsible and meritorious.

    I think that’s more accurate.

  19. 19.

    Bob L

    @Radon Chong: Dear god, I am jealous of Kucinich. He’s living every guys dream getting to slow dance with a hot red headed lady a full foot taller than themselves. lol

  21. 21.

    Spaghetti Lee

    I don’t want to sound like I’m overcome with nostalgia, but I’d love to see the result of putting Walker in a room for five minutes and having him interrogated by Alan Grayson.

  23. 23.

    RosiesDad

    @Spaghetti Lee:

    I don’t want to sound like I’m overcome with nostalgia, but I’d love to see the result of putting Walker in a room for five minutes and having him interrogated by Alan Grayson.

    For us, it might be a glorious moment. (Thinking back to Grayson’s interrogation of Ben Bernanke.) But I’m not sure that Scott Walker has sufficient contiguous functioning neurons to appreciate what Grayson had done.

  25. 25.

    Dr. Squid

    Well, he certainly ain’t dumber than Uncle Clarence Thomas up there, who would get pwned by Walker.

  26. 26.

    burnspbesq

    As Brad DeLong titled a post on his blog today,

    “Republicans Lie. All the Time. About Everything.”

  27. 27.

    FlipYrWhig

    @RosiesDad:

    But I’m not sure that Scott Walker has sufficient contiguous functioning neurons to appreciate what Grayson had done.

    Scott Walker has one of the most obviously stupid-looking faces I’ve seen from a politician. He just doesn’t seem to be all there.

  28. 28.

    kdaug

    @Jay in Oregon: Agreed, but I’m not sure it’s pushing through the “he said-she said”.

    WI was a start, but the money doesn’t want it broadcast.

    How do we shoulder the zeitgeist into MSM?

    From where I sit, the ground is rumbling, the proles are stoked. The last to know will be our media overlords.

    Twitter, Facebook, blogs, blah blah blah. You’re talking a miniscule proportion. How do we get it in people’s faces?

    ‘Cause there’s a shitload of old folks who understand – and feel – what class war is.

  30. 30.

    FlipYrWhig

    @kdaug: I’m still convinced that Wisconsin was only as big a story as it was because of Egypt. The media was primed to cover “people power.”

  31. 31.

    Uloborus

    @Bob L:
    I like ’em short and adorable.

    @Linda Featheringill:
    A good line is a good line. Heckling the GOP’s obvious bullshit and lies is a good thing. I’m cool with leaving it at that and letting other debates be other debates.

  33. 33.

    montana

    That beat down must have Walker remembering all those wedgies the other boys and girls gave him in high school.

  34. 34.

    JCT

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Scott Walker has one of the most obviously stupid-looking faces I’ve seen from a politician. He just doesn’t seem to be all there.

    No joke — he looks like it taxes him to button his shirt.

  35. 35.

    kdaug

    And before any of you idiots goes off fibbling on your lips:

    1) Protests don’t have to be covered by the news
    2) Violence is self-evidently counter-productive

    What I’m saying is that I’ve gotten six different variations of this post on my FB page in the last two days:

    “Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in TARP money, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?
    __
    Yeah, me neither.”

    THAT’s what I’m talking about. What’s the secret viral sauce?

    Like I said, people are coming around, at least in my circle.

  37. 37.

    gnomedad

    Walker is too modest. It’ll save tons of money once public workers’ wages a benefits are slashed. No idea why he didn’t point out the big picture.

  38. 38.

    wheaton pat

    Who’s “LRF” that Dennis had in his letter and what a dick to “object’ to it being placed in the record.

  40. 40.

    Jay C

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Disagree: I’m not sure whatever had or hadn’t gone down in Egypt would have made much of a difference to our (lame, inadequate, incurious and biased) domestic media – I think that the Wisconsin protests got the shit-ton of coverage they did because:

    A) These were Americans protesting an American State government’s policies

    B) The protests were just too damn big, and too protracted to be ignored.

    C) It went against the political “CW” the Mainstreamers love to lazily regurgitate (i.e. Republicans were awesomely unstoppable and unstoppably awesome, especially their Teabagger paladins)

    D) The protestors looked like they had won something, which triggered the MSM’s idiotic “horserace” memes; which they just love.

  42. 42.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Jay C: True, but they didn’t try very hard to cover antiwar protests or immigration protests. The Tea Party screaming was about the only protest they had ever taken the time to cover since, what, the Million Man March? Something about WI caught the zeitgeist. I think it was the “Cairo comes to America” angle.

  43. 43.

    eemom

    I think it should be possible to say that Kucinich KICKED ASS today without pimping him as primary-bait.

    He did kick ass, I heard it on C-Span. And Walker sounded every bit like the arrogant shitwad he is.

    Also too, I fucking hate midwestern accents.

  45. 45.

    demz taters

    @joeyess: The retweets are priceless. some samples:

    DonaldFagen @GOPLeader You want to cut 700k federal jobs, revise your tweet: “If you’d listened to us, over -222k jobs created since Jan!” #GOPMajority

    SeanCamoni I thought government doesn’t create jobs, Mr. Cantor? RT @GOPLeader Over 478,000 Jobs Created Since January, #GOPMajority = #hypocrites

    akpierce RT @pnuts_mama: ARE YOU SERIOUSLY TRYING TO TAKE CREDIT FOR THIS?!?! RT @GOPLeader: Over 478,000 Jobs Created Since January, #GOPMajority

  47. 47.

    slag

    @Elia Isquire: I’m with MikeJ on this, but I will admit that Freddie’s opening salvo deserved to be followed up with some factual foundation. I kept expecting it and haven’t seen it so far. Even Cole would have gone with less bluster and more base after being addressed directly.

  48. 48.

    R-Jud

    @eemom:

    I fucking hate midwestern accents.

    Having just got back from Chicago, I agree wholeheartedly. I don’t know how I missed it during the six years I lived there. The Black Country accents I’m surrounded by are like butterflies’ wings brushing gently past my ears compared to the buzzsaw that is a Midwestern short a.

  52. 52.

    Dennis SGMM

    @eemom:
    I agree. Kucinich Did Good today and it made me smile to see him slap Walker. OTOH, he was dealing with just one flagrant Republican asshole while the Prez has to deal with a few hundred of them with some Democratic assholes thrown in for good measure.
    Also, too, I remember the 2004 and 2008 campaigns fairly well and the Kucinich campaign does not stand out in my recollection. I’m no fan of Bill Clinton but that man, and Obama, know how to campaign. If Gore and Kerry had possessed even a a good fraction of their skills then we might have been spared eight years of Bush.

  54. 54.

    Elia Isquire

    @slag: Yeah I agree with both of you. I think it’s pretty obvious, actually, that both are wrong but I don’t get why Yggy played to type so hard in that email…

  56. 56.

    Phil

    Still bitter John? Don’t worry, when public union government employees fuck up (like the FAA Air Traffic Controllers who recently fell asleep on the job), your friends in the federal government have elected to hire new Air Traffic Controllers. You mean to replace the ones that fell asleep on the job putting people’s lives in the air in danger?

    No silly! To work alongside the other ones and wake them up in case they fall asleep!

    http://www.hipstertravelguide.com/archives/13176

    Anyways, as to Kucinich, the dumbfuck who nearly bankrupted Cleveland when he was mayor there, here’s the fun part for us conservatives. Since we control redistricting in Ohio and the Cleveland area is shrinking because Democrats are incapable of running things, one of the two Cleveland area seats is going to be redistricted away.

    We get to choose which seat we eliminate – it could be Dennis’ seat, it could be the adjacent one. If we want to force Dennis to run for the adjacent House seat in order to stay in office, we can. Just takes a snap of the fingers. Maybe we’ll do it for shits and giggles.

    Here’s the best part: there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about that John Cole.

  57. 57.

    Jay C

    @FlipYrWhig:

    Well, when I used the tern “biased” in my comment #40, believe me, I wasn’t referring to its “left-wing” slant.

    It’s been – in this Century, anyway – the media’s typical tack to ignore, dismiss or disparage virtually any mass demonstration – however large – which has even the remotest tinge of “liberalism”, or “leftism” about it.

    Antiwar demonstrations? DFHs and dupes of Stalinist peacenik radicals! (in the millions, but never mind)

    Immigration rallies? Grubby little foreigners waving foreign flags – feh!

    Tea Party convocations? Real Americans! Really Real Americans really really concerned – seriously concerned – about “government spending” (which they’d heretofore ignored, but never mind) – and ticked off about Obama’s Evil Death Panels and government interfering with their Medicare and all…

    The Wisconsin protests, I think, jarred the real (i.e., non-Fox) media out their complacent little bubble about what political/economic issues truly motivate people (and Ordinary Real Americans, at that!) to get out and monkeywrench a political system out to screw them. They’ve had to scramble to cobble up a new narrative and they’re still flailing a bit (e.g. Fox’s palm-trees-in Madison FAIL).

    As the Bush clowns used to say, though: “making your own reality” CAN sometimes be rewarding.

  58. 58.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Elia Isquire: I think Yglesias, like most philosophy majors (and/or Harvard grads), is convinced he’s a lot smarter than he really is. His blog is interesting in that he touches on so many topics, but he’s so arrogant and so little willing to reconsider things once he’s already thought them.

  59. 59.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Phil: Is there anything that motivates the embrace of political conservatism _besides_ the desire to wallow in assholishness for its own sake?

  60. 60.

    Mnemosyne

    @Phil:

    Yeah, why should safety workers have any backup? What’s with the FAA requiring a co-pilot on airliners? If the pilot would just do his job, airlines wouldn’t need to waste money on a co-pilot!

    And what’s with these firefighters needing a “crew”? Why can’t one guy fight the fire by himself? After all, those guys spend most of their time hanging around the stationhouse stuffing their faces on the taxpayer’s dime, so clearly there’s not enough work to keep all of them busy.

  61. 61.

    Shalimar

    @Phil: “Sadism for shits and giggles” should be the conservative mantra. Do you have any other core values, or is inflicting pain on people you don’t like the only one that matters?

  62. 62.

    gwangung

    Still bitter John? Don’t worry, when public union government employees fuck up (like the FAA Air Traffic Controllers who recently fell asleep on the job), your friends in the federal government have elected to hire new Air Traffic Controllers. You mean to replace the ones that fell asleep on the job putting people’s lives in the air in danger?
    __
    No silly! To work alongside the other ones and wake them up in case they fall asleep!

    That’s kinda standard safety procedure in a lot of industries. And the military. Redundancy, you know? Something engineers like to design in, but Republicans like to take out?

  63. 63.

    Dennis SGMM

    @gwangung:
    Only a Republican would bitch about ATCs sleeping on the job and then bitch about it when the gov comes up with a solution.

  66. 66.

    Dennis SGMM

    @Mnemosyne:
    Well, hell, let’s just give them some of that meth that the DEA is always confiscating. Then they could work 48 hour shifts and we could fire a bunch of them as surplus to need. Communications might get a bit garbled after a while but ya’ can’t make an omelet without breaking some heads.

  67. 67.

    Hal

    @Phil

    You forgot the evil cackle at the end of your post. hahahahahaha, no more Dennis Kucinich…hahahahaha…followed by dum dum dum

  68. 68.

    Splitting Image

    @Phil:

    Here’s the best part: there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about that John Cole.

    Are you aware John doesn’t live in Ohio? The legislature there could issue free porn for everyone and there’s not a goddamn thing he could do about that either.

  70. 70.

    WaterGirl

    You guys are engaging with this Phil guy? Seriously? Digging a hole and then filling it again would be a better use of your time.

  71. 71.

    Turgidson

    I love how these rightwing assfaces always say they’re protecting or saving the very thing they seek to destroy. Actually no, I don’t love it. I hate that they do that. Because they get away with it.

  72. 72.

    Spaghetti Lee

    @Phil:

    You’re right, not a damn thing! That’s why all those gerrymandered districts in Texas and Louisiana and Georgia from the last round are still around today.

  73. 73.

    agrippa

    @Phil:

    Phil:
    There is an election in 2012.

    You got work to do. And, that work will not be done here.

    Nice rant though.

  74. 74.

    Jebediah

    @Phil:

    Here’s the best part: there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about that John Cole.

    Either you forgot a comma, or you mean that there is nothing to be done about “that John Cole.” I’m going to go with that, since there really isn’t much an arrogant, ignorant conservatard fuckwit can do about our blog host.

  75. 75.

    mb

    Kucinich aside, I do not ever remember a request to put something in the record being refused. Ive watched hours and hours (years?) of cspan. Never seen it before.

  76. 76.

    TooManyJens

    @wheaton pat:

    Who’s “LRF” that Dennis had in his letter and what a dick to “object’ to it being placed in the record.

    LRF = Wisconsin’s Legislative Reference Bureau. LRF is its library code, apparently.

  77. 77.

    Paul in KY

    @Phil: Don’t you worry, Phil. You & your band of evil little grinches will get yours. Remember what I wrote & know I’ll be laughing my ass off.

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