The People vs. Scott Walker

Thanks. Tuesday was easily the busiest day of my life. Everything since hasn't been much easier, but my operation here has been making progress working through some growing pains.

Quick timeframe:

Nov. 1: I attended my county Democratic Party meeting, which was in tandem with a petition circulator training session. Filled out some volunteer forms, basically said I was willing to help out in a similar capacity (in terms of activities/hours) to what I did in the Madison office this summer.
Nov. 7/8: Five of us in my town get an email that basically says "Here's the names/contacts of five of you we want to be team leaders. Here's the pledge list (UnitedWI collected 200K signatures pledging to sign in advance of the actual recall) with ~300 names for you to call for volunteers. Meet up together with these strangers & call all these people, you have about a week to get the whole shebang up and running in your town."
Trust me when I say those aren't optional circumstances.
That's what happens when you say you have the most time to offer to the most activities; working on the summer recalls sure didn't help.
Along the way, I helped another volunteer working out of the county office file the sixth recall not being done by the Dems/UnitedWI effort. More madness there.

My days are filled with operating signing locations, delivering petitions to volunteers, local team meetings, county office meetings, daily petition runs/submissions, correcting mistakes on petitions (which has to be done by their circulator, which means tracking people down & having them do it,) scheduling signature collection locations, dealing with the police (Walker supporters call them on us just about daily...) and - when I'm lucky - gathering signatures myself.

During the protests and summer recalls, yeah, I had no problem telling you I would get weepy from time to time. These days, it's more like wanting to just bawl curled up in the fetal position in a dark room with a bottle of whiskey.


I wish I could vent, but I simply don't have the time.

There is a recall kickoff rally at the capitol square tomorrow - in about 6-7 hours. Tens of thousands, possibly fifty thousand, are expected. It's going to be like a big family reunion for the capitol protests, and after the week I've been having I could really use some friendly familiar faces and some encouragement. I will be working a Recall Fitzgerald (the independent recall) table with the woman I helped with some of the filing requirements. I'm hoping on the other side of this, week two goes better than the first.

Recall Walker, Day Five

Rally around the flag, boys, rally once again, shouting the battle cry of "Freedom!"

Today was the best day I've had since my trip to the Northwoods in August defending WI14 Sen. Jim Holperin's seat in the final summer state senate recall elections.
Lots to talk to about.


I got home from work around 3am. First order of business then was to print up some things for the Recall Fitzgerald tent. I decorated my coat with buttons (of which I have many) I acquired during the protests and working the summer recalls. That was a nice trip in and of itself. I went to bed around 4-5am.

Woke up at 8:30, got myself to Madison around 10am. My first order of business was to attend Wisconsin blogger Blue Cheddar's "Pre-Rally Caffeination Meetup" at a coffee shop a block from the square. On my way there, I walked past one of my three county coordinators (the ladies to whom I report at the office) who grabbed me by the arm and stopped me. She had some encouraging numbers to share, which I am not at liberty to report. Let's just say there's a possibility the "20__" field on our forms might consist only of -11s. (Our deadline is Friday, January 13th.) It was outside Ian's Pizza on State Street, the place which closed its doors to regular business and fed the capitol occupation with donations from around the world. (Thanks again to those who donated - here's looking at you, Superbek, LLL, Holls & any of you who haven't identified yourselves as giving to that part of the cause.)
She introduced me to Mary Carol, a Madison talk radio host with whom she has a weekly appearance. I had been listening daily up until the recall began, but I'm usually outside my local library with a clipboard during her time slot these days.
I may even have a podcast link for you sometime soon; coordinator Erin has been nudging me to have some media availabilities. I'm not particularly interested, but if it's asked of me I will. I don't want the attention; I just want to run Walker & Co. out of office for its own sake.

I was at that event until around 11am, when the rally began. I only saw one familiar Democracy Addict's face there, but it was great being able to walk in there and have people greet me by name on the basis of my Forward cheesehead alone. I got to meet Blue Cheddar the hostess/blogger I've been reading and tipping off in advance about the Recall Fitzgerald effort, the woman who discovered discrepancies in vote tally rolls in the April Prosser-Kloppenburg recount, and one of the site's other writers named Jane from the north-central part of the state who's been one of my biggest champions/retweeters on Twitter. I also got some much-needed caffeine after the lack of sleep after working until bartime.

This was the first big planned/scheduled rally since WI14 Sen. Jon Erpenbach told supporters that he didn't want to see us there anymore, but out working on recalls around the state, around six months ago. I missed the Democracy Addicts pre-rally meetup, but ran into a handful of them on my way up to the square a block away. Ran into a couple of my Watertown team leaders and spent some time with them. We went to a coffee shop about a block from the square for more caffeine and bathroom breaks before things really got going. My counterpart Mandy & myself were waiting for our third to exit the coffeehouse.
Down State Street came walking MSNBC's Ed Schultz with Mahlon Mitchell, president of the state firefighters' union. I said hello to Big Ed, he saw my Forward cheesehead and said "How about them Packers?" to the elation of onlookers, but there wasn't much more to meeting him than that.

I got a phone call shortly after that point. It was Erin, wanting me to grab some slices of Ian's from across the street and bring them to the press/party tent near the rally stage. Looking like I did (I had my Forward cheesehead, 35 buttons on my person, and some slices of Ian's "This is what democracy tastes like" Pizza) I was a walking photo opportunity - I had my picture taken 12-15 times just trying to get across the street. I got to take them up there just as the rally was picking up, and wound up with a prime viewing location of the entire rally. All three of my county coordinators were up there, as were Mary Carol, the state Democratic Party chair, the mayor, my friend/photographer Phil, and a fellow Democracy Addict. I was also sent to find Lori, the woman who filed the independent recall effort against Sen. Fitzgerald, for some media availability. At some point in there, I had a couple people tell me they saw me on the internet on account of my Daily Kos appearance. Go cheesehead.

Speakers included the state's AFL-CIO president, a UW professor, and Julie - the woman I report to who filed the petition - as the headline speaker. She rocked it. I think my personal highlight of her speech was when she asked everyone who had recall petitions to identify themselves to those who had yet to sign by raising them in the air, at which point the crowd broke into chants of "This is what democracy looks like!" She announced that the attendance at the rally was upwards of 40K and approaching 50K (with a small contingency of Walker supporters roaming the fringe of the crowd, to whom she led chants of "Shame!")

She then announced some breaking news: 105K signatures were collected between 12:01am Tuesday through midnight Friday. Again, the threshhold to trigger a Scott Walker (and Rebecca Kleefisch) recall election is 540,208 valid signatures within 60 days.
If it was 50K on Tuesday/Wednesday, it picked up a bit the following two days. I have heard rumors that the total including today is up to 150K. If we can get 105K on four weekdays, and ~45K on a weekend day, we will surpass 200K before this recall effort is one week old. For comparison purposes, it took about 160K signatures in sixty days to trigger the six state senate summer recall elections in which we unseated two Republican incumbents. I have a feeling we're going to wind up going for the full million as far as signatures go...

At one point, I ducked into the capitol to use the facilities and ran into Jane and got to roam Our House talking with her. That was nice.

The rally closed with the Solidarity Singers, whose set included the classic "Solidarity Forever" as well as "Scotty, We're Coming for You." They closed things with "Roll Out the Recall," to the tune of the "Roll Out the Barrel" polka. (This is Wisconsin, after all.) I believe it was Solidarity Sing-Along #216, but if I'm wrong about that I'm in the neighborhood of the right number.

I helped Lori work her Recall Fitzgerald table as the rally began to clear out. If I hadn't, she would have been alone. We both gathered signatures; I entered addresses of those who were uncertain of their state senator into a "Who Are My State Legislators?" website to ensure they were eligible to sign against Fitzgerald. More importantly, she got a lot of support. Her son has been getting bullied at school because his mother filed the petition and there's a pro-Walker Facebook page encouraging people to harass her. (It can't help that her home address is listed as the place to mail petitions.) She was in tears when I went into the office on Thursday, and that was hard to see, because what she did was extremely brave and very David vs. Goliath. Hell, I'm getting a bit teary just thinking about the shit she has to put up with for doing this. A lot of people couldn't sign, but she got a lot of encouragement, and she needed that. She even gathered more signatures than she had been expecting. We can't call this place FitzWalkerstan without doing anything about Fitz, and she's a hero to a lot of people. She needed that. I think this rally was rejuvenating for her more than perhaps any individual there.

After things slowed down and I helped Lori pack up the table, I had another mission. I was going to track down Scanner Dan. Scanner is a Madison icon. I hate to say it, because he's not a bad guy, but "man-child" is a good word to describe him. He is in his fifties, with the mental/literacy capacities of roughly a first grader. He is well known around town for sitting at his familiar hangout, a bench on State Street near UW campus, with a police scanner and saying whatever he pleases - often not appropriate. The job I quit at the protests was at a convenience store next door to his apartment building; I would help him read his mail, I knew how much assistance (Social Security disability, housing assistance, medical coverage, a social caseworker) he receives that is at stake here. I knew he wanted to sign this, but he had trouble doing so. I'm not going to lie, I was afraid to go into his place. I knew it would be filthy. The one time I did do him a favor and drop something off for him after work, I saw his balls hanging out from under his t-shirt. But I knew he wanted to sign a petition, and I knew he couldn't do it by himself, so I went there.

I ran into my county coordinators Julie & Sarah, and Julie's son Dan, on my way to Scanner Dan's. They recognized me by my cheesehead and gave a democrabeep to get my attention. Mary Carol had given them tickets to the Furthur show in town, which I had totally forgotten about. I guess I missed my shot at them by helping Lori out, but she definitely needed the support more than I needed to see a show.

I went to see Scanner Dan. I helped him fill out his form. As a circulator, I am allowed to fill in and/or make corrections to every section on a signer's form - with the exception of the signature box. I know his writing skills didn't account for cursive, but I knew that "X" is a legally valid signature on these forms. I got his information off of his mail and filled it all out for him except the X. I worry about him, because the way he is makes him a bit of a pariah and he can't do anything about it. He was particularly upset because his father died on Halloween, and his mother had pretty much disowned him some years ago and wouldn't talk to him. I read to him from the program from his father's funeral. I also - finally - let him know that it was me who had signed him up for that gift subscription to Playboy last Christmas and had recently renewed it. He had it sitting on the table in front of him while I was helping fill out his forms.

I left there for dinner and a drink with my best friend Phil, who had been working photography with a local media outlet. He had with him a packet of what might be described as manifestos given to him by a Walker supporter who has made a habit of harassing the Solidarity Singers in the capitol rotunda on a near-daily basis. I thought the plan at that point was to get drunk and crash on his couch. I was told by a coordinator our numbers were good enough thus far not to push myself, and that I didn't have to work on anything else tonight after the rally. Hell, the three women I report to went to concerts tonight and I didn't. Something's off there.
We went to Phil's place for a beer, and plans changed. In the course of things, he had forgotten his girlfriend's brother was in town. There went my plans.


I went up to the capitol a few blocks away. I walked a lap around the square, texting and tweeting people to try to get a Plan B. I finished my lap and sat down under Lady Forward at the head of State Street to have a smoke and try to figure it out. I usually don't get Saturdays off of pizza delivery duty, and I'll be damned if I'm going to be given a free night from both paid employment and recalling without making the most of the opportunity. Thought about going to Furthur, but had spent enough on food, drink & merchandise for the day.

A man walking by struck up a conversation about my buttons. I looked at his. One of his buttons was promoting Iraq Veterans Against the War. I asked about that one, asking him who he knew in the group. The second name Steve mentioned turned out to be a mutual friend whom I first met when another mutual friend invited him to Bonnaroo. Steve asked if I had any petitions, and I showed him my DPW bag. (I keep that thing within arm's reach at all times these days.)
I had been thinking about going home and doing data entry, or maybe just knocking off early. Instead, we had ourselves a signature collection point underway on the capitol square. It turns out that Steve was the owner of a couple large peace signs (both the circular logo and a hand with two fingers raised) and 12-15 smaller signs in the back of his station wagon. We set it up but good.

Does anyone remember my August story, where I pulled up at a stoplight and a car with a triangular topper and protest decorations pulled up beside me? Where the driver gave a democrabeep, I gave a democrabeep, then the passenger pulled out his vuvuzela to do the same - before I surprised them both by grabbing my own vuvuzela from the backseat and returning the favor before we had a vuvuzela cheers before driving off laughing?
That car pulled up. Its driver knew the peace signs and wanted to say hi to their owner Steve. I repeated that story to the guy, whose name was Elias, and he remembered it. He noticed we were collecting signatures, had petitions on him, and joined in. There was enough interest from passersby that we were picking up recall signatures from just about everyone who walked past. Another friend, Jenna, the one I hadn't seen since I saw her off to Occupy Wall Street with a care package, noticed us and came to join in. She had petitions as well. We went from me sitting there bored and alone to a four-circulator signing station in the course of about 15-20 minutes, and there was enough traffic to justify four of us.

I have pretty strong reason to believe that one of the signatures I collected was from ESPN's Packers beat reporter, which I would've loved to have brought up but didn't want to do it with observers nearby. I follow his Twitter feed and know how much crap he took in this state for even subtly supporting labor causes during the NFL lockout. I bit my tongue while he was signing, but five minutes later sent him an email (to his ESPN account, not the one he listed on the form) with my petition signing picture in the cheesehead attached, asking him if the guy looked familiar. We'll see if it was him or not.

Somewhere along the line, because they knew I was a team leader elsewhere, someone asked if I could get them more petitions. I worked with the Dane (Madison's) county coordinator and one staffer in each of two Madison field offices, and tried getting in touch to rustle up some more petitions for them. I couldn't, but then told them I would try my coordinators, but then realized that wouldn't work... because they were at the Furthur show.

A light bulb went off over my head. There was a Furthur show in town. We thought about the signature collection potential and agreed to disband and rendezvous an hour later. The four of us parted ways, with three of us agreeing to return and Jenna picking up a couple more friends to join us. We were going to canvass the parking lot at the Furthur show for recall signatures.

That was interesting. Think about what it would be like trying to get signatures on a political petition on Shakedown Street. It's about what you'd imagine. Julie's son Dan grabbed some hot cocoa and joined us in collecting signatures, and another couple people wound up joining us to collect autographs on recall petitions. There seemed to be at least as many people from out of state as from Wisconsin. Most of the locals had attended the rally and already signed. I followed balloons to that familiar "crack-pssssh" sound because that's where people were. Yes, I canvassed for signatures from people waiting to get their N20 on. I canvassed for signatures from people who clearly weren't sober. I canvassed for signatures in the line to buy grilled cheese sandwiches. I had people wanting to bum cigarettes, wooks seeking rides, was asked to help calm down a guy who was freaking out. I did have a lot of out-of-state people curious about what was going on with the recall and why, and had a lot of good conversations. I got maybe 20-25 signatures being out there two hours, but I'll be damned if that's not the most interesting political canvassing I've ever done.

I got dropped off near the capitol, went to get my car from Phil's apartment's guest parking lot, and found out he was asleep and I was locked out of the complex without him. I went to a bar nearby, mostly because I needed a bathroom, and ran into my boy DGP from the summer recalls. That was a pleasant surprise. We got to touch base and catch up over a beer before I went back to Phil's and just waited (about 45min) for another resident to arrive who could let me in.

At that point, I drove home and wrote this post.

I had a damn good day. Those of you who are my Facebook friends can see me thanking about three dozen people for making my day awesome. You saw how just a day ago I was talking about wanting to curl up in a ball with a bottle of Jack Daniel's. Today provided a big turnaround in that department. I love Madison, I've been missing Madison, I got rejuvenated and remotivated rallying and roaming the capitol for the first time in months. Today was like a big family reunion for all of us protesters, and I loved it. It was exactly what I needed, and it was exactly when I needed it. All that negative energy has been cleansed, I feel I've got more wind in my sails, and I'm ready to kick more ass next week than we did this first week.


I know this was a lengthy, lengthy post... but trust me, you'd rather be reading this than reading me complain about how my Thursday phone bank fell apart & turned into a two-team-leader-and-hostess gripe session because one of my single mother fellow team leaders the task had been delegated to came home from our meeting to find her 16 year-old son watching porn on the internet and had to deal with that in lieu of getting in touch with the extremely-helpful woman from the local teachers' union.


I have plenty of pictures from today, which I hope to get to, but I definitely want to share at least one before I go pass out. I'm at the 22-hour mark right about now.


This is how the rotunda of Our House was decorated today:


Today was probably the best day of this recall I'm going to have until we deliver all the completed petitions to the Government Accountability Board to submit for review and eventual certification.

Yes, I said eventual certification. I have no doubt we'll get the requisite number of valid signatures at the rate things are going.

Scott Walker WILL be recalled.

Solidarity, my friend! Nice tattoo, but I warn they can be addictin'.

From what I've been told (I have none), once you get one you can't stop...

This photo was taken of me on March 9th, the day we stormed back into the capitol, but did not find its way to me until just tonight on Twitter. (Also worth noting: my boy Phil to the right of the metal detector.) Turns out the guy who'd taken it wound up being a volunteer (and smoke break buddy) in my office on the summer recalls. He just found that photo and shared it tonight.
This is at least the third time someone has met me some time after photographing me at the capitol etc. and later shared a picture of myself with me.


The guy who sent me that picture is working on archival project for capitol picture protests. Talk of archiving makes me realize that I will need to do my own project. I arranged months ago to donate Forward Cheesehead to the state historical society, but not until this is over. I told them that I am fine with donating it, but not before this is over. As you saw above... this is closer to over.
Archival talk makes me realize that I am closer to the day I hand over Forward Cheesehead to the historical society than the day I created Forward Cheesehead, in preparation for day three of the protests. It is my favorite material possession I have ever had and probably ever will have, and it is going to be a gift to Wisconsin. I already know I'm going to cry when I part with it. I can just tell.


This is my photo of the sign I am making in the picture above, which I posted on the flip side of the metal detector of the security checkpoint I commandeered:

What I've been working on the past week or so:

On Tuesday, as I said, I helped staff the office and wound up coming home with an unexpected tattoo.

On Wednesday, we had a county-wide effort focusing on interstate rest stops. I staffed one of them before I had to go into work.
I'm particularly proud about this effort. This one didn't come from above... this one was my idea. I pointed out that the day before Thanksgiving is the statistically the biggest travel day of the year, that rest stops are public property, and had restrooms and snacks available for circulators. I-94 runs about 10-15 miles south of my town. My county coordinators loved the idea, and it was arranged so that all the towns & cities in the county sent volunteers to staff both the eastbound & westbound rest stops.
Me and my "brilliant idea" even got a shout-out on Madison talk radio's Out Loud with Mary Carol
My county chair's segment begins about 30 minutes into the show, and my mention starts around 38:45. She even asks to extend her segment to work in the plug ;D
It was kind of funny how many people from Illinois on their way up north thought they could get away with signing. They seem fairly used to it, but we're resisting that kind of encroachment into our state politics if we can.
We got a lot of honks of support, even from interstate traffic. My favorite recall supporter was the guy who drove through the rest stop for the sole purpose of giving us a thumbs up - without stopping. My favorite recall opponent walked up to our table and said "You're all crazy," to which one of our women replied "You too, Happy Thanksgiving!"

On Thanksgiving Thursday, I had the luxury of only asking people I knew for their signatures. My manager at work wanted me to stop by at Packers halftime, so her whole family could sign at once. I had to call it an early Thanksgiving, squeezing in a quick nap before I had to do midnight Black Friday.

On Black Friday... ugh. You read what I mentioned above about the crap I have to put up with. I worked at Wal-Mart in high school, and it was an "all hands on deck" day there. The last time I took part in one, I was eighteen and working there. I have avoided it for the entirety of my adult life since then, and having been out to witness one for the first time since the late 90s, I remember why. I did a midnight-3am shift of three people, had a break to eat & check in at the office, and went back for the morning shift.
I was supposed to be done at 9am. I was entrusted with the keys to the office by Erin (the county chair & radio guest above) to let the 9am volunteers in. We had three of them scheduled. There was a first-timer who hadn't had a petition training, and a married couple who had experience staffing the office. I was supposed to hand things off to the three of them, but the married couple never showed up. That left me in charge of the county office unexpectedly, with but a single untrained volunteer and only one shift (and summer experience) under my belt myself. Those three hours took forever, between all the phone calls, walk-in signings, and whatever else came up. Took another nap, worked from 4pm-2am, and then slept for 10-11 hours straight.

Saturday, I took a day off from circulating petitions. I'm a team leader, and as such I have responsibilities above and beyond simply circulating clipboards to get signatures. I've discussed some of them above, but a few other things came up.
We have a metal workers union who wants our team to give them a petition circulator training at their union tonight, in a rented back room of a bar owned by someone who wouldn't be friendly to the recall part of their meeting. I had to check in with the county and the union and my team on that.
I had to deal with the volunteer who is a bit of a renegade and considers himself a team leader even though the county won't allow it. I don't have time to even scratch the surface of that situation now.
I met with a retired judge who still operates a law practice in town with lots of protest posters in the window. He is willing to let us use one of the back rooms of his office during the recall process, and I had to set that up.
That was all before work. Once I got to work, I got a call from a volunteer who said he'd talked to other volunteers. They want to rent for our team a vacant auto shop which would be perfect for a drive-through signing location, but is a big hassle for so many other reasons.
Oh, AND, someone tipped me off during Black Friday that the state senator who is subject of the independent recall effort... he's got a mistress, he likes to dine with her in such-and-such city, and a vague suggestion that it might be good to talk to "legislative staff" to learn more. As if I didn't already have enough on my plate. Not just for the work involved, but for the moral dilemma. I didn't know the bastard had a mistress when I agreed to be part of the committee, and I don't know what we're going to do with it. The woman who filed the petition is vehemently against doing anything with that information, but I'm not so sure about it...

So today, Sunday, I had to run everyone's outstanding petitions down to the county office. I had at least a dozen things to check in about with the county chair, and only got through a handful of them because so many other team leaders were in and out.
Then I went to work. Ugh. Just let me make a long story short... the pizza place where I work had ten employees at the beginning of Saturday, and is down by (probably five/possibly four) employees at the end of Sunday. I don't know whether I want to stick around for the ensuing shitstorm that's going to come of all that. I might just quit, focus on the recall full time, and hope that I can live off the roughly $1000 I'm worth until the last day of circulation on January 13th.

So yeah... there's a glimpse of what a week in my life looks like these days. I hope this recall kicks Scott Walker's ass as much as it's kicking mine.

Recall Walker, Day Twelve total: Over 300,000 signatures!

(I will not be sharing any numbers from this point forth which have not already been officially announced to the media.)

One of my volunteers left me a voicemail today. He said that Mr. Kempen wanted a Recall Walker yard sign. This excited me greatly. I was happy to see his name come through a petition on our first day of signature collection; I was disappointed I missed my chance to see him then.

Mr. Kempen was my eighth grade social studies teacher. He was the best teacher I ever had in two decades of formal education, without a doubt.

He was strict, undeniably. None of the thousands of students who passed through his classroom over the decades will dispute that. He expected a lot of us, but it made us better. He had us do projects like simulating a family budget for an entire month with randomly-drawn occupations & salaries or competing to see whose mock stock portfolio could perform the best. Every Monday, he would split the entire class up into teams and quiz us on current events, with the previous week's winning team drafting their own team for that day. He had us do a mock trial. When you didn't know an answer in class, he had his routine - usually standing behind you, crouched over you, pointing his finger, quite animated - of saying Un, deux, trois... mushy mushy! if you didn't answer in time. (That first part is 1-2-3 in French, the latter I could be spelling wrong but was some Japanese word for "hurry.") The only decorations in his classroom were the American flag and a Top Gun poster.
He embodied a phrase we've been using around the office the past couple weeks: militant perfectionism.

If not for him, I might not have gone on to win my graduating class' social studies award, done four years of Mock Trial & Model UN as extracurricular activities, won my county's constitution contest and finished above average at state, major in political science, and everything beyond.

I don't know if words can fully explain the impact this man had in defining the course I would take in life.
I hadn't seen him since 1995, when I ceased to be his student.


I got a voicemail from one of my volunteers while I was gathering signatures outside the local Wal-Mart, telling me the volunteer wanted a sign and referring me to Mr. Kempen, who also wanted a sign. I was happy to pay him a visit, to say the least.
I felt like young Luke Skywalker seeking out Yoda on Dagobah.

I got a chance to tell him a lot of the laudatory things I mentioned above. I flat-out told him "You are the best teacher I ever had, and I can't thank you enough." We talked for 20-30 minutes, about Walker, about our state senator, about No Child Left Behind, about how he was the negotiator for the teachers' union here. He told me how the teachers' contract within the district was 30 pages when he started and 80 pages when he finished. He told me how, under his tenure, students in this district tested better on civics than in any other subject. I'm living proof.

The quote that still rings in my ears: "When he signed that bill, 33 years of my life went down the tubes."
I have a feeling I'll be fighting this fight even harder after talking to him.


If any of you know an educator who has had a similar impact on your life... find them and tell them so.
They'll be glad you did.
Odds are, so will you.

Time to chime in here since most who don't agree with this waste of tax payer money on inforoo are threatened when they do speak out.

Let's take a small step back and look at the national news. AMERICAN AIRLINES has filed for bankruptcy protection. You may ask yourself why did they do this.?? EASY enough they were being held hostage by the unions that represent the employees. Bottom line the employees made a lot more than american airlines competition and thus they couldn't compete. AA tried to work with the unions but of course they are greedy and wouldn't move. In the end AA was left with no choice but to file for bankruptcy.

This now allows AA to cancel the old contracts and start over with the union leaders to negotiate a pay rate that will allow AA to emerge from Bankruptcy.

This same issue is happening all over this great nation. I for one and clearly the vast majority of the Wisconsin residents also agree that what walker is doing will help the state.

The same thing will be happening in Illinois very soon.

When people are broke, when they lost all their retirement savings and Yet you have greedy teachers and public workers who have cadillac pensions that pay them 60, 70, 80 THOUSAND a year they are NOW the rich ones.

The private sector doesn't get such grand over the top pensions and healthcare benefits. It's time for them to get with the plan

I think we all agree teachers are needed and play a big part in shaping our future. The union leaders need to be reasonable. Instead they are greedy and happy to force a profitable company to it's knees before they make any change

Lets the union busting begin!

In a world according to Chicagoroowhatever, we'd all be making about two bucks an hour and be happy to have that.

Woowoo, all aboard the train to the bottom!

Not really, unions were founded back in the 30s when class action lawsuits were unheard of and kept the little man from getting fucked. Now you have lawyers and class action lawsuits which helps the little man from getting fucked.

In reality, I think the whole thing started when bad teachers in Wisconsin didn't want the union breaking up so they would have to teach. In reality, over 70% of teachers nationwide are not part of the union, so what's the need?

The Walker administration enacted a law which instituted caps on legal fees and pays about 1/4 of the interest on settlements to individuals who initiate lawsuits against corporate entities... but not vice versa.
So please, defend your argument a bit more. I'm not buying it just yet.

Possibly the time when you told everyone that if he got enough negative awesome points you would use your pull to get him banned?