Tonight in Wisconsin

Are Wisconsin GOP senators getting the “wobblies”? Stephen Moore writes in the Wall Street Journal that conservatives are worried that three Republican senators may defect to the Democrats’ side to kill the governor’s union-busting bill.

If there’s any solid evidence Republican resolve is about to crumble, Walker doesn’t say. But Greg Sargent writes that an NBC Wisconsin affiliate is reporting that “four moderate Republicans are wavering and could break with the GOP and vote against Walker’s budget repair bill.”

When even Rasmussen polls show Republicans are losing ground, and with recall efforts underway, some senators must be thinking hard about their political futures and whether they want to be chained to Scott Walker if he goes down like the Titanic.

Last week, conservative apparatchiks like Jennifer Rubin were gushing about Scott Walker’s future as a presidential candidate. This week, Americans for Prosperity (e.g., David Koch) is trying to whip up support for Walker by sending a bus around the state. A Wisconsin ABC affiliate reported,

Americans for Prosperity brought a bus tour to Ashwaubenon Friday morning, looking for people to sign petitions in support of Governor Walker’s budget proposals.

High turnout at the “Stand Against Spending — Stand With Walker” campaign forced organizers to move from Perkins restaurant to the Holiday Inn next door.

Organizers say more than 100 people showed up to give their support.

Wow, that sounds so … rinkydink. And news stories say the bus tour is being met by protesters all around the state, also.

Rick Ungar writes at Forbes that Gov. Walker’s overreach already has cost him and Republicans dearly.

The Wisconsin governor’s desire to be at the forefront of his perceived GOP revolution may not only have doomed the anti-union effort, but it may forever label him has the man who gave the democrats the gift that keeps on giving – the return of the union rank and file into the arms of the Democratic Party.

The governor may be facing the downside of drawing media attention. Isthmus newspaper and the Wisconsin Associated Press today filed a lawsuit over Walker’s failure to respond to a request for access to emails. Scott had bragged that he had received 8,000 emails telling him to stand firm on his budget bill. So, let’s have a look, said news media. Um, we’ll get back to you, someday, said the governor’s office.

But those are The People’s emails, and under the state’s Open Records law, Walker is obligated to cough them up. Stay tuned.

Walker sent out layoff warnings today, although I thought he had promised layoff notices. Is he starting to blink? Or is he about to hit the iceberg?

BS Call: Wisconsin Claims Protesters Did $7.5 Million Damage

That’s right; the state government of Wisconsin (no doubt on orders emanating from the governor’s office) is claiming it will take $7.5 million to restore the state capitol to its pre-protest condition.

All together now: Bullshit.

Most of the damage, the state says, was to the marble in the building. People taped stuff to the marble, and it’s going to cost the state big bucks to restore it.

They should talk to Steve M.

I found this company in Michigan offering to do marble restoration for commercial customers at a rate of $1.20 – $1.80 per square foot. For $7 million, even at his top rate of $1.80, this guy would apparently restore nearly 4 million square feet of marble. How big is this Capitol Building, anyway? (By point of comparison, there are 4 million square feet of event/exhibit/meeting space for conventions in the entire D.C. metro area, which covers nine major D.C. convention spaces, plus several in the surrounding suburbs.)

As for the trash pickup, Steve found that the 2008 “ticker tape” parade in Manhattan after the New York Giants Super Bowl win cost the city around $331,000 for floats, added police protection, and clean-up. The clean-up included picking up 36 tons of paper. That’s, um, a lot of paper. And the work was done by those “overpaid” union goon sanitation workers Councilman Dan Halloran was complaining about.

Steve also found that the cost for cleaning up New Orleans’ annual Mardi Gras mess runs about $1.5 million total, or about $100,000 a day.

David Dayen writes,

A Dane County court judge, John C. Albert, [ruled] all Capitol access restrictions must be lifted by the Department of Administration. This allows open access to the Capitol for the public, including protesters, during business hours. Albert gave a deadline of March 8 at 8am (next Monday) for full implementation; if Gov. Walker and the DOA do not comply, they can be held in contempt of court. Albert also said in his ruling that there have been, based on his investigation, “no injuries or damage to personal or government property,” which is a direct shot at the bogus claim of millions of dollars in damages.

So the $7.5 million damage is just bare-assed propaganda. Even some righties expressed skepticism, although they still blame unions for the expense.

This reminds me of the claims from 2001 by bushie staffers that the outgoing Clinton administration staff had “trashed” the White House. The GAO investigated and found the amount of “trashing” was minor and about what it had been after the Bush I administration had cleared out. Not that righties ever acknowledged the debunking. More from an old Salon article.

Tonight in Wisconsin

Protesters have left the Wisconsin capitol building after a judge ruled that it be temporarily closed to be cleaned. But the same judge also ruled that “the state violated constitutional protections for free speech and assembly by restricting access to the building,” MSNBC says. I just heard on the Ed Show that the protesters left peacefully once they were reassured they would be allowed back in after 48 hours.

Gov. Walker is threatening to send out layoff notices tomorrow if the impasse he created isn’t resolved, and I can’t see how it would be. He’s basically trying to blackmail the Dems, telling them that 1500 state workers will lose their jobs if the Dems don’t return.

Meanwhile, the Republicans in the state Senate passed a resolution holding the absent Dem senators in contempt. Some of those same Republican senators may face recall, however.

Possibly the most interesting news tonight is that even Rasmussen’s polling is finding that Gov. Walker is losing public support to the Democrats and unions in Wisconsin. Even more interesting, the poll finds that younger voters are siding with the Dems, big time, more than older voters.

In relatively recent times, it has been more common for older voters to be more pro-union than younger voters. But as Steve M. points out, younger voters these days have little memory of unions doing much of anything, especially wielding power. They don’t remember Jimmy Hoffa (senior); they probably don’t even remember the air traffic controller strike that Reagan busted. “How do you sell younger people on the notion of ‘greedy unions’ and ‘union thugs’ when all they’ve ever seen is union shrinkage and union givebacks?” Steve asks.

See also: Palm trees found in Wisconsin; Bill O’Reilly vindicated!