the phonecall has been verified. it was Walker. Weigel was one who verified. Mother Jones also verified.

PLEASE tell me the 'Liberal media' is all over this.

Jay Bookman
A call for armed counterprotesters to Atlanta labor rally

10:02 am February 23, 2011, by Jay

SEIU, the Service Employees International Union, is holding rallies at state capitols around the country to demonstrate solidarity with public employee unions in Wisconsin. The union has scheduled an event at the Gold Dome in Atlanta at 4 pm today.

This has been posted on the far-right Free Republic site, under the headline:
“Atlanta Tea Party and Many Other Groups, Facing Off the SEIU Thugs Wednesday”

“RTC” is an acronym for “Right to Carry” firearms. The advice that “attendees are requested to be flexible in your attire” is apparently a suggestion to keep firearms concealed. The original author goes on to claim that “the lefties are idiots who are very good at running their mouths… and also very good at keeping their distance from an armed American”.

RT @AFLCIO: BREAKING from Indiana: Right to Work Withdrawn http://ow.ly/422EB #p2 #phnm #teaparty #tcot #wiunion #in #indiana #tcot #sgp

The Indianapolis Star reports that Republican lawmakers have withdrawn a so-called “right to work” bill that drew thousands of Indiana workers to the Capitol in protest this week and spurred Democratic lawmakers to boycott state Senate proceedings to prevent a vote on the anti-worker bill.

But it is unclear if the senators will return, because the Star reports:

Last night they issued a statement saying they had concerns about 11 bills, including other labor-related bills, education reforms and the proposed next state budget. They singled out two in particular: the right-to-work bill and one which lets state tax dollars pay for private school tuition for some families.

RT @matthewstoller Providence, RI just issued layoff notices 2 all of its teachers. All of them http://bit.ly/gZ2xBv #p2

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The financially troubled city of Providence on Tuesday issued layoff notices to all its nearly 2,000 teachers because city officials say they must make an unknown number of cuts in the budget, and they want "maximum flexibility."

State law requires school departments to notify teachers by March 1 if they will be laid off the following school year. The notices do not mean that the teachers will lose their jobs, just that they could at the end of the year.

School Superintendent Tom Brady on Tuesday wrote to teachers that the school budget outline for the next academic year is dire, with a projected deficit of nearly $40 million.

Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith told The Providence Journal the decision was "beyond insane" and creates chaos and anxiety among teachers.

RT @motherjones: UPDATE: "Use live ammunition" deputy atty gen'l in Indiana is fired. Following up now: http://su.pr/9ZktwF #p2 #wiunion

Doug Latimer Says:
February 23rd, 2011 at 11:08 am

Peter, here's a little more useful intel from yesterday's DEMOCRACY NOW!:

[L]et me read a sentence from a recent paper by Dean Baker, who concludes, "Most of the pension shortfall using the current methodology is attributable to the plunge in the stock market in the years 2007-2009. If pension funds had earned returns just equal to the interest rate on 30-year Treasury bonds in the three years since 2007, their assets would be more than $850 billion greater than they are today."

And this—he quotes David Cay Johnston of tax.com: "The average Wisconsin pension is $24,500 a year, which is hardly lavish. But what is stunning is that 15% of the money contributed to the fund each year is going to Wall Street in fees," which is why we now ask the question, "Why isn’t Wall Street in jail?"

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/22/m ... all_street

MATT TAIBBI: Governor Kasich, yeah, and he was intimately involved with selling—getting the state of Ohio’s pension fund to invest in Lehman Brothers and buy mortgage-backed securities. And of course they lost all that money. And this, broadly, was really what the mortgage bubble and the financial crisis was all about. It was essentially a gigantic criminal fraud scheme where all the banks were taking mismarked mortgage-backed securities, very, very dangerous, toxic subprime loans, they were chopping them up and then packaging them as AAA-rated investments, and then selling them to state pension funds, to insurance companies, to Chinese banks and Dutch banks and Icelandic banks. And, of course, these things were blowing up, and all those funds were going broke. But what they’re doing now is they’re blaming the people who were collecting these pensions—they’re blaming the workers, they’re blaming the firemen, they’re blaming the policemen—whereas, in reality, they were actually the victims of this fraud scheme. And the only reason that people aren’t angrier about this, I think, is because they don’t really understand what happened. If these were car companies that had sold a trillion dollars’ worth of defective cars to the citizens of the United States, there would be riots right now. But these were mortgage-backed securities, it’s complicated, people don’t understand it, and they’re only now, I think, beginning to realize that they were defrauded.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what the crime is. Who has profited? Who should be on trial?

MATT TAIBBI: Well, you know, again, the broad crime in all of this was just fraud. They were taking—these banks were taking, again, these subprime mortgages, and they would have these billion-dollar pools of mortgages where, in some cases, 70 or 80 percent of the loans were to people who had no identification or no jobs or who had put no money down into the mortgage. And then they were taking these loans and applying this phony baloney, hocus pocus math, these derivative instruments, and turning them into AAA-rated investments. And they were marketing, again, these securities to, say, state pension funds as AAA-rated investments, which means credit risk almost zero. So they took the stuff that they knew was very, very risky and very, very likely to default, and they were going to the state of Wisconsin, the state of Ohio, the state of New York, and saying, "Hey, this is almost as safe as—or in fact, it is as safe as United States Treasury bonds. You should buy this, and you’ll earn a little bit more than you’ll earn if you buy T-bills." The reality was, they were just taking absolutely worthless stuff and sticking it with these people and then fleeing the scene. This is no different than drug dealers who take a bag of oregano and sell it to you as, you know, a pound of weed. That’s exactly the same scam.

Democrats agreed to limit further amendments to just 38 with a 10-minute time limit on each one. If they take the maximum time for each, with no breaks, that would put the vote around noon.

Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan says democracy is being limited with the agreement and Democrats still plan to strenuously make their arguments over the last hours of debate.

Today the Indiana Attorney General’s Office announced that Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Cox is no longer employed by this agency.

The Indiana Attorney General’s Office conducted a thorough and expeditious review after “Mother Jones” magazine today published an article attributing private Twitter postings and private blog postings to Cox.

Over at Democracy Now Matt Taibbi tells us thast Governor of Ohio, Kashic, used to work for Lehman Brothers.

I wonder if the U.S. Attorneys in Wisconsin and Ohio are interested in the corruption and conflict of interest that has arisen from the Koch Brothers' employees -- the newly-elected governors of those two states -- taking their orders from and being more concerned about these billionaires than the people who elected them.

This played large in the 2010 election in Ohio. Kasich refused to reveal how much his bonus was from Lehman Bros the year it collapsed. He was a senior VP but claimed " oh, I was just a worker in a little 3 man office in Columbus, pay no attention". The thing about Kasich was even his internal polling showed the more he talked the less people liked him, so for the last 6 weeks of the election, he didn't make a lot of appearances and since he's a walking dumb and mean comment gaffe machine, he stopped answering off the cuff reporters' questions. Two weeks ago he told a meeting of all Ohio EPA workers that a state patrol officer who ticketed him in 2008 for not yielding to an emergency vehicle was "an idiot". When the cell phone video came out he had to walk it back, then apologize to the officer. The man is reckless and mean-spirited. Fun times if he speaks off the top of his head in the Ohio SB 5 debate. I think Ohio is already feeling the buyers' remorse.

What's happening in Wisconsin and spilling out to other
states across the nation is part of a leftist strategy
to fuel and expand their statist agenda ...

And fanning those flames is President Obama's Organizing
for America -- his grassroots organization that supports
his statist agenda.

Let's be clear. The Left WILL NOT TOLERATE ANY CUTS IN
GOVERNMENT SPENDING, and they are employing a new "statist
uprising" strategy in an attempt to intimidate and
ultimately defeat those who are calling for fiscal
responsibility and cuts to spending!

Patriot, a form of what is happening in Wisconsin
could bubble-up on Capitol Hill next week when the
Senate begins debating the deep cuts made in the House
budget bill.

February 23, 2011 09:45 PM
Former Wisconsin AG to Recommend Walker be Investigated for Ethics Violations to Accountability Board
By Heather

Looks like Scott Walker's prank phone call may end up getting him in some trouble with their Government Accountability Board and his remarks about bringing in agent provocateurs to cause trouble at the rallies isn't sitting too well with the voters. Ed Schultz discussed Governor Walker's conversation with the fake Koch brother with The Nation's John Nichols who filled Ed in on some of the latest developments in Wisconsin.



Ed Schultz asked Nichols if the Republicans running the state would allow the investigation to go forward.

Wis. Assembly passes bill taking away union rights, sends measure to Senate
By TODD RICHMOND , Associated Press
Last update: February 25, 2011 - 5:20 AM

MADISON, Wis. - Republicans in the Wisconsin Assembly took the first significant action on their plan to strip collective bargaining rights from most public workers, abruptly passing the measure early Friday morning before sleep-deprived Democrats realized what was happening.

The vote ended three straight days of punishing debate in the Assembly. But the political standoff over the bill — and the monumental protests at the state Capitol against it — appear far from over.

The Assembly's vote sent the bill on to the Senate, but minority Democrats in that house have fled to Illinois to prevent a vote. No one knows when they will return from hiding. Republicans who control the chamber sent state troopers out looking for them at their homes on Thursday, but they turned up nothing.

"I applaud the Democrats in the Assembly for earnestly debating this bill and urge their counterparts in the state Senate to return to work and do the same," Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon, said in a statement issued moments after the vote.

WI Assembly GOP Passes Walker Budget In Surprise Vote -- Dems Chant "Shame!"
Eric Kleefeld | February 25, 2011, 3:27AM

MADISON, WI -- The Wisconsin State Assembly has just passed Gov. Scott Walker's budget repair bill, including its controversial provisions to eliminate almost all collective bargaining rights for public employee unions as well as many other provisions to weaken union organizing.

After much buildup in the 61-hour debate -- of Republicans wanting things to be over, and Democrats railing against Republicans who they said would cut off debate -- at about 1 AM Speaker Pro Tempore Bill Kramer (R) announced that he would hear a voice vote for a roll call on final passage. Immediately, the majority Republicans shouted their ayes, and the Democrats were booing, as they tried to be recognized to demand a separate motion to cut off debate.

Then Kramer called the vote. Within seconds, the digital vote system on the wall announced 51 ayes and 17 nays, and voting was suddenly closed. With a total of 96 members, that got to a majority for the bill but left 28 members who hadn't had a chance yet to vote.

At that point, the Democrats got up, chanting "Shame! Shame! Shame!" and similar exclamations, as the Republicans filed out of the room.

Mysterious Conservative Poll Of Walker's Budget Plan Hits Wisconsin
Evan McMorris-Santoro | February 24, 2011, 6:15PM306

A poll purporting to show broad support in Wisconsin for Gov. Scott Walker's (R) budget proposal made the rounds today, popping up on at least one Wisconsin news site and getting a mention on MSNBC.

"BREAKING: Poll Shows 71% of Wisconsinites Think Walker's Budget Changes are 'Fair'," screamed the release from the poll's sponsor, the conservative-leaning Franklin Center For Government and Public Integrity, based in Alexandria, VA. More on all that from TPM's Eric Lach here.

The poll was quickly picked up, making an appearance on the WisPolitics.com news site and getting a shoutout on MSNBC dayside.

There's only one problem: the poll actually shows more Wisconsin voters are on the side of the pro-union protesters and their Democratic allies than back Walker and the Republicans.

Walker At Press Conference: I Said That 'Crushing The Bastards' Wasn't A Good Idea
Eric Kleefeld | February 24, 2011, 8:34PM

MADISON, WI -- Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) just finished a press conference early this evening, in which he continued to warn about the specter of layoffs of government workers if his budget does not pass, and called upon the absent state Senate Democrats to return to the state. Predictably, he continued to face questions over the biggest story of the last two days: His phone call with blogger Ian Murphy, who was posing as Republican financier David Koch.

Walker took five questions in total. The first two questions were both about the "Koch" call, followed by three questions about the budget bill itself and his efforts to end collective bargaining for public sector workers.

In his initial speech, Walker said he had spoken to a small businessman in Wisconsin, who was concerned about the strife going on in the state, and who asked why Walker did not simply take the deal of the increased contributions by public employees to their health care and pensions.

"You look at what's happened at the local level over the past two weeks with this measure...actions speak louder than words," Walker said. "Over the past few weeks we've seen in cities and counties and schools in a rush to pass contracts that don't have a 5 percent and 12 percent contributions. In fact, what I've seen, they have no additional contributions for pensions and health care costs for government employees. In fact, in some cases they've rammed through contracts that have an increase in the salaries."

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