In Madison: Scott Walker Packed His Budget Address With Ringers

[kpete]

In Madison: Scott Walker Packed His Budget Address With Ringers
by Abe Sauer on March 2nd, 2011

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's budget address was delivered beneath a dead and stuffed eagle. His address made commitments to a better educated Wisconsin, even while offering almost guaranteed decreased funding of the state's schools. He criticized the state's wasteful use of "our tobacco settlement," and then minutes later praised, for his "bold new ideas and strong leadership," former Republican Tommy Thompson—the state's key architect of that tobacco settlement spending.

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One possible reason for why the doors remained locked to Wisconsin citizens nearly six hours after a judge ordered them open soon became clear. The assembly gallery had been packed with ringers.

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By noon, as chants of "Let us in" at the King Street entrance to the Capitol grew, none of the police officers I spoke with knew what was happening. Everyone had heard a judge had ordered the doors open, including the thousand or more demonstrators outside, but nobody knew who actually would say "open the doors." One sheriff's deputy guarding access to the west wing said he only knew to do what the DNR officer in charge told him to do. Later, just after Walker's address finished, I found myself face to face with grim-looking Madison Police Chief Wisconsin Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs. "What's going on here?" I asked. "We're still debating," he said. I tried to follow up; "Later, later," he said. I never saw him again.

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Reporter Kristin Knutsen found evidence that many of these ringers may have entered through the capitol's access tunnels, noting the presence of the Division of Criminal Investigation—the same officers I saw upstairs outside the Assembly chambers following the address escorting unidentified men.

http://www.theawl.com/2011/03/in-madison-scott-walker-packed-his-budget-address-with-ringers?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheAwl+%28The+Awl%29

[Blue Owl]

1. Sign the Dear Leader loyalty oath and don't think

n/t

[Hannah Bell]

2. fascists need planted audiences for their rantings, because real people won't

respond like good little drones

[elocs]

3. So I've heard. n/t