Good Read

A Blueprint for a Takeover: Wisconsin Republicans Lied While the Kochs Schemed” at The Awl.

Update: The video below is a townhall meeting in Wauwatosa, WI, a community of about 46,000 people a few miles northwest of Milwaukee. The politicians are a U.S. congressman from Wisconsin, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, a Republican, and state Sen. Leah Vukmir, a Republican.

Whatever they’re selling, people ain’t buying it.

Think Progress explains that people were protesting Sensenbrenner’s endorsement of the GOP House budget proposals. Think Progress also points out that in 2009 Sensenbrenner was telling Democrats they should listen to the teabaggers being bussed around to disrupt Democratic town hall meetings.

The crowd’s greater wrath seems to be aimed at Sen. Vukmir, however.

10 thoughts on “Good Read

  1. I dont know how you can read this stuff – it’s so depressing. It’s like seeing the Nazi battle plan for the conquest of the world.

  2. Yes, this is pretty depressing stuff, but not really a surprise. On most days I get the feeling that the futre is all gloom and doom, but sometimes I get really optimistic and I think we might just get a dark, protracted gloom.

    On the hopeful side, looking at the business community’s reaction to Rick Scott blowing off the high speed rail. It may be that the proverbial chickens will come home to roost and Scott’s policies will contract the economy in Florida to the extent that genuine small businesses really get hit along with some bigger players. The “conservative economic miracle” will be exposed for the nonsense that it is. Unfortunately, it will be too late for the vast majority.

    A lot of my old friends in Florida were/are public employees. None of them have anything you could describe as a cushy life. They’re just working folks approaching retirement. The “pension adjustments” which amount to stealing money out of their pockets will hit them hard because, contrary to the noise machine, there isn’t much to hit. And of course, a lot of people bought houses with the idea of downsizing and adding to the retirement fund. We all know how that turned out.

    I remember Ronald Reagan making a catchy soundbite to the effect that “Once people lose their freedom, thy seldom, if ever get it back.” I hope he was wrong. I saw a bagger holding a sign that said “Collective bargaining is not right” presumably because it was not specifically listed in the Bill of Rights, but merely implied by the rights of freedom of assembly and association. But it IS a right, just not one the other “right” is very fond of.

    We should have let them secede when we still had the chance.

  3. Pingback: Around the Horn: March 8, 2011 | Comments from Left Field

  4. And all the money the Koch brothers are investing in these scheems, is tax deductable.

  5. She, of coure, will take this as if they’re cheering her on.

    A politician new to an area was trying to get elected.
    As he gave his first speech, people started yelling “Hoozanga!”
    After ever point, people would yell “Hoozanga!”
    They yelled “Hoozanga!” louder and louder each time. The politician reveled in the cheers.
    Later, after the speech, he drove out and met with a political donor to look at the mans cattle ranch. As he was about to step into the pen to examine the ranchers prize bull, the rancher said to the politician, “Watch out where you walk. You don’t want to step in any hoozanga.”

    “HOOZANGA!!!”

  6. The crowd is reminiscent of last year’s teabaggers (in that they are angry, though seemingly justified this time), I wonder will the media invent a new political party based on these people? Doubtful.

  7. goatherd …I don’t see good things for Florida..I think Scott bought himself a governorship but doesn’t know what to do with it once he got it. In his recent speech before the legislature he touted Disney World and the Kennedy Space Center as accomplishments of Florida’s business model..Both of them well over 40 years in the past and both of them being the result government money and special tax breaks and give aways. He’s talking wonders and job growth well beyond anything that has ever transpired in the best of times. I think we in Florida are in for a rough ride… Like at Disney..Mr Toad’s wild ride!

  8. In our area, the Kock brothers own a coal mine and have bought a private ranch (they acquired all the mineral rights to the ranch, too, which is unusual). They are also buying up land on a mesa down the road, in order to open another coal mine. When a friend of mine who runs a non-profit environmental group (which plays well with the other mines) suggested that the forest service do a thorough environmental impact study on the new mine site, misinformation was disseminated among the miners that my friend was trying to shut the mines down. Now the board director of the non-profit had to resign because her day-job as a dental hygienist was threatened by all the miners’ wives calling to cancel appointments with her.

    There is another dirty deal they are involved with here, which cost Representative Salazar his job. They are evil.

  9. FYI – Washinton Monthly (Political Animal) is reporting that David Broder has died. I’ll reserve any thoughts until later.
    RIP, Mr. Broder.

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