Scott Walker knows he's going to lose control of the Wisconsin State Senate so he's planning to rush through years of right wing legislation in the next 8 weeks.
This jaw-dropping Associated Press story is like another Walker Bomb Drop. In addition to his plans for union stripping (still tied up in the courts) and a 2 year budget proposal that will devastate the state, he plans to ram through legislation that will legalize concealed weapons, require state issued photo ID to vote, deregulate the telephone industry, among other items on the right wing ideological agenda.
"Everything's been accelerated," said Republican Rep. Gary Tauchen, who is working on the photo ID bill. "We've got a lot of big bills we're trying to get done
Just like Walkers blitzkrieg introduction of a Budget Repair Bill late on a Friday with a hearing scheduled the following Tuesday and vote that Thursday, these bills are also being fast tracked with hastily scheduled hearings with rapid votes.
The blitz has created an almost frantic atmosphere in the Capitol.
Major bills, like the one to legalize concealed weapons, were introduced just days before public hearings. A major revision to the photo ID proposal was released late on a Friday afternoon, just four days before a committee passed it, prompting complaints from the nonpartisan board that oversees elections.
They're planning to rush through their redistricting plan as well which will affect legislativie districts in Wisconsin for the next 10 years. There are hints that they might try to pass union stripping legislation that is currently tied up in the courts because of legal challenges to the way it was originally passed.
If the Legislature votes again on Walker's plan stripping public workers of their union negotiating rights, it can sidestep the legal challenges to the first vote, which came after 14 Senate Democrats fled to Illinois to deprive the Senate of a quorum. Unions and Democrats claim the original vote violated the open meetings law and the state constitution's quorum requirement. The case is pending before the state Supreme Court.
None of this is good news for us in FitzWalkerStan. It was hoped that the massive protests in Madison and elsewhere, the drop in polls for state Republicans, and the recall efforts would have shocked them into sanity, but apparantly not. It looks like we're going to have a repeat of the FitzWalker radical extremism all over again. Perhaps they realize that they have pissed off most of the state and will never be in the majority for a generation so they are going to go full blast while they still have power.
Walker has been very quiet in recent weeks with speculation that public statements would fuel recall efforts against Republicans (6 of 8 such petitions were submitted). Now that the recall period is over, Republican silence is ending in a rush to get legislation passed before the Special Elections that are scheduled for July 12.
I'll update this as I get more information.
Thanks for all your support and interest.
Update: Local Media Fails Again Edition: I've been looking through local media sources and, of course, this is totally not being reported. Why is our media even failing to report on what is now a national story from the Associated Press.
Update: Memory Lapse Edition: H/T to zephyr108 for reminding me about the May 14 rally in Madison. In my rush to get this information out to you, I forgot to post this information.
Update: What I'll Be Doing Next Week Edition: Last night I got another call from Joanne Kloppenburg thanking me for working the Milwaukee County recalls. She also asked if I had time to go to Waukesha County and observe the recalls there. So I will be there on Monday anxious to observe first hand.
Update: Thanks for the Subscription Edition: My thanks again to Kossack cassandracarolina for the gift subscription she provided for me. This is my first diary without slogging through ads with an old puter. I don't mind ads (Kos has to eat, too), but it's so much easier this way. On my pension (and with $4 gas and the need to drive all over for recalls, recounts, rallys), a subscription was a luxury I couldn't afford. Thanks again.