Walker's embrace of secrecy & stealth are fundamentally anti-democratic, anti-Wisconsin

All signs point to Walker signing most if not all of the secretly-crafted 141-page elevation of legislative power awarded to Republican legislators at the expense of the Governorship from which voters ejected him.

Fitting, isn't it, that the legislators who drafted the proposals they camouflaged as "reasonable" were themselves installed in districts they gerrymandered through maps secretly-drafted behind the closed doors of private attorneys off the State Capitol grounds.

Where, from their artificially-safe legislative seats, and with taxpayer dollars paying both their salaries and their gerrymandering-legal specialists' fees, these GOP legislators awarded privilege after perk after newly-amplified power onto Walker.

Who, you must remember, had ascended to the Governor's office in 2010 with the help of partisan operatives stashed on the public payroll in the Milwaukee County Executive's Office and who could communicate with each other and GOP campaigns through a secretly-installed and operated Internet router in then-County Executive Walker's office suite.

Walker has loved the stealth move, whether dropping the Act 10 bomb on public employees in the early days of his first term, or since his defeat on November 6th by welcoming the final closed-door work of his legislative henchman and delivering a series of sucker punches to incoming Democratic officials chosen by a majority of voters.

Woody Guthrie said some people rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen. And now with late-night, lame-duck, taxpayer-paid law-writing, papered over with a wafer-thin veneer of democratic 'process' rammed through the people's house. 

When lawmakers become lawbreakers. There's a new Wisconsin Idea, which replaces for now the old one Walker tried once to stealthily kill. I guess the second time's the charm. 

It takes an especially perverse figure operating in a democratic environment based on openness and respect for established rules to select secrecy and stealth as his default behaviors.

I don't think we yet know all the reasons why Walker would sabotage any shot at a legacy by attacking the voting majority.

Could be that he doesn't care, could be that everyone he owes called in their markers, could be that he needs this one last power high to mask for the next few weeks any inkling of doubt that can come creeping around the back door.

Along with that rising sense of mediocrity that a cocksure incumbent would feel in his gut when exposed as a loser in an election upset. 

By one of those Act 10 teacher-types Walker thought he'd stamped out.

Or, could be that when all's said and done, the ad copy writers have gone home,  the photography air brushes have been put away and the band has stopped playing that Walker is still that nasty bad loser Milwaukee first saw 30 years ago.

The one with the fragile ego, inflated sense of his own value and even back then was incapable of taking responsibility for a loss at the polls.

The one whose response to losing the Marquette campus newspaper 1988 endorsement for Student Body President over his rule-breaking campaign  - - before he went on to lose that election - - was the tossing away of as many copies of the paper carrying the endorsement pullback that his supporters could grab. 

Details below:

Here's how the Marquette Tribune described that election:

His sophomore year, Walker ran for president of the Associated Students of Marquette University (ASMU, the former title for Marquette Student Government). He was accused of violating campaign guidelines on multiple occasions.

The Tribune reported then that he was found guilty of illegal campaigning two weeks before his candidacy became official. Later, a Walker campaign worker was seen placing brochures under doors at the YMCA. Door-to-door campaigning was strictly prohibited.

Walker initially denied this but later admitted to the violation, which resulted in lost campaign privileges at the YMCA.

In the run-up to election day, the Tribune’s editorial board endorsed Walker’s opponent John Quigley, but said either candidate had the potential to serve effectively.

However, the Tribune revised its editorial the following day, calling Walker “unfit for presidency.” The column cited Walker’s distribution of a mudslinging brochure about Quigley that featured statements such as “constantly shouting about fighting the administration” and “trying to lead several ineffective protests of his own.”

The revision also expressed disappointment in Walker’s campaign workers reportedly throwing away issues of the Tribune after the endorsement was initially made.

Walker dismissed this, saying he had no knowledge of what his supporters did, according to a Tribune article from February 25, 1988.

Bur we do know that Kremlin-style plotting and double-dealing by wannabe Commissars-cum-Wisconsin Republican office holders is something new and foreign and repellent to the Wisconsin of Gaylord Nelson, and to moderate Republicans like businessman and Milwaukee civic icon Sheldon Lubar who minced no words in an open letter Tuesday to Walker & Co.

"I am not proud to read in the Milwaukee newspapers and learn the conniving that Wisconsin Republicans, led by you and certain others, are planning," Lubar wrote.

Let's hope that when Walker departs the scene there's a democratic rebound led by a mass movement too disgusted to ever allow a Walker 2.0 - - and which dedicates itself right now to turning the 2020 elections into Vos and Fitzgerald defeats that make Walker's margin look insignificant.

A suggested Capitol Rotunda reading for Walker, Fitzgerald and Vos

I'd posted a holiday song, but here's a reading:

The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot


Mistah Kurtz - he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy


I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other kingdom
Remember us - if at all - not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer -

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of this tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper. 

WI GOP to remove science from DNR mission, Dems from governing

Team Evers-Barnes & Kaul, and their Democratic voters, just got the latest GOP-delivered 'don't bother with governing after January 7th' message.

Shorter titles: It's follow the money time, and Now we know why Walker was so calm after the election. He had a plan to cancel it.

Having already stripped climate science from the DNR's purview, GOP legislators are quickly moving to remove science from natural resource 'management' and the public interest from broad public policies in the state.

They're doing this at the behest of the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, a leading supporter of GOP campaigns, whose disdain for environmental science was made clear when it helped kill a basic environmental impact statement examination of the massive Foxconn project by channeling Homer Simpson calling it a "book report."

Which would be like telling your oncologist there was no need to trouble with that CT scan ordered up before your surgery, because it's just another stupid selfie.

This latest bought-and-paid for initiative is part and parcel a GOP initiative to make permanent Walker's 'chamber of commerce mentality' government permanent by turning oversight of wetland quality, wildlife survival and clean air and water to the people with the most expertise - - GOP state legislators who are perpetually raising campaign contributions.

All of their special session "reasonable" changes were carefully outlined exactly zero times in GOP candidacies this fall, but just as Walker proved when he sprung Act 10 on voters and public employees after the 2010 gubernatorial election, there's never a bad time to drop a bomb no one knew you were working  if your friends expect it.

Big business wants more control over environmental policies in Wisconsin because its'done such a good job taking care of the land near their enterprises. This dead brookie in the Little Plover River, one of just hundreds of impaired Wisconsin waterways on Wisconsin's greatly-expanding list, could be the new state symbol drawing vacationerss and new residents to a perpetually-directed 'chamber of commerce' state.

GOP rejection of Evers win opens door for more Wi 'reforms'

Now that the GOP majority on the key WI deliberative rubber-stamping legislative committee has OK'ed nullifying Democratic 'votes' that elected Tony Evers as Governor, Republicans can rise and shine at the Madison hotels where they stayed last night on the taxpayers' per diem generosity and take up the remainder of this 'stand their ground' special session agenda, including:

* Changing the score of Sunday's game at Lambeau Field to Green Bay 139, Arizona 0.

* Drafting an official proclamation thanking Scott Walker for fulfilling his promise to create 250 new jobs.

* Affirming the details of Walker's official golden parachute hammock package, including alternate weekend use of the Governor's mansion, joint custody with Evers of the states' airplanes, and a lifetime state sales tax holiday on any purchase of frozen custard, cheese curds, Internet routers, hunting togs or TV sets assembled with Foxconn parts.

Still pending. Choosing between Tinkerbell or Porch Pirate as the new state symbol.

Vos' self-aggrandizes on limiting executive powers

I'd noted the hypocrisies in 

WI GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos' 11th-hour moves to shift powers to the Joint Finance Committee and away from newly-elected Democratic Gov. Tony Evers after having helped give many of those same powers to Walker to make the GOP Governor even stronger. 

For eight years.

Not surprisingly, Vos posted a tweet that suggested some substantial history on his part on the subject, but you can be the judge of whether his claim was merely unconvincing or downright laughable:

MoreSpeaker Robin Vos‏@SpeakerVos 8hICYMI: I have been concerned about the balance of power in state government for some time.

I go for laughable, because all he references is a remark he made to a journalist in 2016, followed by absolutely no remedial legislation.

Say you're the boss in a company, and one of your employees whose 14th anniversary on the job is January 3rd, 2019 wants a promotion.

You ask hm what he'd he done to justify it, and he cites something he'd said two years ago to someone outside the company about how it'd be a good idea to take away some powers from the boss.

In fact, Vos benefited from executive action a few months ago when the federal government gave Wisconsin the $160 million Walker sought to finish the road work so vehicles could get to and from the Foxconn project district in Vos' district.

Does Vos really believe that US DOT, the White House and various congressional offices are going to be as responsive to major funding requests from a group of Wisconsin state legislators filling in for a chief executive?

I can just hear federal officials who are used to dealing with Governors on such natters saying, 'Speaker who is on the phone? Their Joint Committee wants what? Is that their marijuana control board?"

Power-grabbing Fitzgerald rolling out Divide-and-Conquer 2.0

In 2011, Divide-and-Conquer was the true heart of Act 10.

The goal was to strip power from everyday citizens and hand it to the rich, powerful and Republican.

Today, we see another iteration, at the bottom of a bucket of red herrings.

The goal is to keep power in Republican hands so it can be massaged for the rich and powerful. 

You can add separating the wheat from the chaff to the Divide-and-Conquer idiom, the chaff being the GOP throwaways inserted in the bill while Republicans know what makes up their non-negotiable grain.

So do not be distracted by staged worries and hang-wringing feints offered up by  one of the key plotters in the WI GOP Law-and-Order Disposal Caucus, because that group of sore-losing authoritarians has its priorities which they underlined in disappearing ink when drafting the power grab in secret.

Also note in Fitzgerald's 'disclosure' the paucity of absence of actual details disclosure, and the word "yet."

Scott Fitzgerald says Senate Republicans don't have votes for all extraordinary session bills

The point is that the whole special session is a corruption justified by canards, an abuse of ill-gained gerrymandered privilege and a scam on the voters which should be shelved.

Republicans have majorities in both houses and can legislate in regular session in regular order without 11th hour, lame-duck advantages self-arrogated on a fast-track..

About Vos' sanctimonious and selective hypocrisies

Some history about the WI GOP's post-defeat power-grab launched to change the rules - - especially about who gets to write and enforce formal state rules - -  which Walker has been imperiously adjusting for years.

I know writing about changing the rules about writing the rules is a bit of a rhetorical Mobius strip, but bear with me, because, yes, it's about another strip or two, too.

We need this review because GOP leaders like 
Robin Vos are selectively and sanctimoniously lecturing us on "the basics of how the republic works," and are scheming in a hurriedly-scheduled special legislative session to strip powers from WI Governor-elect Democrat Tony Evers.

So let's look at the record and unpack Vos' new-found talking point about the need to "restore the balance of power in state government."

Speaker Robin Vos‏ @SpeakerVos
 6h6 hours ago6 hours agoMoreWill be joining @DanODonnellShow later this hour to talk about the extraordinary session and our efforts to restore the balance of power in state government. 

One of "the basics" which Vos would prevent Evers from exercising current state rule-making powers that was a Walker's idea and he proposed before he was sworn in:

Republican Governor-elect Scott Walker announced plans Tuesday to require the governor to approve all state rules and give citizens a chance to challenge those rules in their local circuit courts... 

The measures are to be considered in a special legislative session Walker will call Jan. 3, the day he is sworn in and Republicans take over the Legislature. 

"It will give any future governor, by putting it in the statutes, the ability to kind of say, 'The buck stops with me,' " Walker told reporters...

And did you see that it got on a special legislative session? Talk about consistently rewriting the rules whenever convenient. I'd noted the Walker power play at the time:

"On, Wisconsin?"...Here's a brief look at some of Walker's Non-Wisconsin lowlights:

*  Walker wants to remove state rule-making powers - - a very important state function because  Wisconsin rules have the power of law  - - from the legislature to his office.

That's a power grab that upsets the checks-and-balances among the branches of government, blocks transparency and opens the door even more widely to special-interest influence.

Even the Journal Sentinel, after editorially-endorsing Walker's candidacy, said it was a maneuver that could back-fire:

Like the idea of Walker wielding such power? Now imagine the next guy - for whom you didn't vote - with the same powers. This makes no sense on a few other fronts. 

But Walker got his way, and it came in handy when he needed to stick it to people he didn't like:

Gov. Scott Walker used his broad new powers to reshape a rule to lower inflation-based raises that public unions can negotiate by 30% or more for teachers in public schools and technical colleges... 

Early last year, Walker changed state law to give him more control over administrative rules. State agencies - including those not controlled by the governor - must get his approval before writing and implementing such rules, which have the force of state law.

Or when he needed to routinely reward special interests at the expense of public health:

Responding to strong complaints from Wisconsin’s dairy industry, the state Department of Natural Resources quietly narrowed the scope of rules it is writing to reduce health hazards from hundreds of millions of gallons of manure spread on farm fields each year. 

But conservationists said... the changes exposed the way a 2011 state law has allowed Gov. Scott Walker and the DNR to give industry opportunities to sharply limit crucial administrative rules before the public even knows they are under consideration... 

Since Republicans took over state government in 2011, Walker and the Legislature have insisted that administrative rule-making power belongs more firmly in the hands of elected officials...including a requirement that the governor review initial scope statements and approve them before rule-making proceeds.

But after having given Walker the power to give major trade groups and donors the favors they wanted. now Vos and other GOP leaders have decided that now is the time make another change to further empower themselves.

Reminds me of what former Walker-appointed DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp had put it in an angry but  prescient screed about rule-making she said Democrats had abused:

Those of you that haven't had the pleasure of peeking behind the scenes of our state agencies like DNR, Health and Family Services, etc...need to know how some of the most far-reching policies come down on our heads.

The most crushing/controversial rules that businesses have to follow in our state are--most times--done through the "rule making process" of our state agencies. 

For example, people who go to work for the DNR's land, waste, and water bureaus tend to be anti-development, anti-transportation, and pro-garter snakes, karner blue butterflies, etc...This is in their nature; their make-up and DNA. So, since they're unelected bureaucrats who have only their cubicle walls to bounce ideas off of, they tend to come up with some pretty outrageous stuff that those of us in the real world have to contend with...

Well, sometimes agencies try to use this process as an end-around the legislative process to implement Rules, which end up having the same affect as Laws... 

Just another example of the democrats game plan: Change the Rules to Fit the Players.

Shout it with me, now: HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS DEMOCRAT.

Vos graciously learns us some Civics 101 with just one tweet! #wellnowweknow!

Hey, kids: Perfesser Vos 

is taking a few minutes out of his busy democracy-busting day after the Packers game had ended to learn you dumbbells something about what this guvmint needs to git rectified, so give this expert in Constitutional process, popcorn marketing, fair play, transparency and due process double-standards yer full attention:

Peruse below this bit of tut-tutting tweeted condescension from the GOP Assembly leader who has spent the better part of the last three weeks working to nullify the thrust of the Nov. 6th elections by creating a 141-page bill behind closed doors and set for quickie hearings and fast-tracked votes by his party's gerrymandered legislature

Hat tip, Jud Lounsbury
‏ @JudLounsbury 35m35 minutes ago

Robin Vos‏ @repvos

As we work to ensure that the branches of government in WI are equal, it's important to note that far too many citizens don't understand the basics of how our republic works. #coequalbranches Americans know literally nothing about the Constitution

4:25 PM - 2 Dec 2018

Increasingly desperate WI GOP ensuring inevitable irrelevancy

So here we go again.

Almost eight years ago, citizens in Wisconsin showed up at the State Capitol because the newly-elected GOP Governor Scott Walker had unveiled his plan drawn up in secret to strip public employees of bargaining and workplace rights and to reduce their clout at the ballot box.

It was a deliberate power grab and exercise of "divide-and-conquer," in Walker's words, disguised as a "modest" budget measure - - again, his language.

On Monday, citizens in Wisconsin will again show up at the State Capitol because the newly-defeated GOP Governor Scott Walker and his loyalist legislative servants have unveiled another plan also drawn up in secret - - again to use state power to strip citizens and local communities of voting rights, and this time going even further by snatching away from legitimately-elected incoming Democratic officials their fairly-won, office-holding privileges.

It's another deliberate power grab, this time falsely disguised as a "reasonable" reset of authority shared among all three branches of state government, when, in fact, the GOP-controlled Wisconsin Legislature had giddily-given Walker extra powers - - from selling state assets to implementing state rules - - to carry out the 'chamber of commerce' vision of government that his special-interest donors had paid for.

And as they did with their 2011, 'drop-the-bomb' Act 10 education depredation legislation, these Wisconsin Republican officials may get most of all of what they want for the time being, because they - - a) rigged the Legislature through grotesque gerrymandering - - and just look at the data - - 

- -  and b) hold a friendly State Supreme Court majority, strengthened by fill-in Walker appointments - - a hard-right ideological advantage which the GOP's newest grab for power seeks to further embed by rigging the 2020 election calendar to boost the chances for one of Walker's hand-picked, far-right favorites.

I acknowledge that this is a dispiriting scenario, made more distasteful because Republicans will get unearned satisfaction from draining away the sweetness which Democrats' deserved to savor after putting in the work to win upset November 6th victories.

Republicans also will enjoy watching Democrats and grassroots progressives continue to spend time and money fighting the government for access, fairness and rights about which there should be no such struggle.

Think about it: we're almost in 2019, other states are making voting easier through online or mail-in balloting, and GOP public officials in Wisconsin are again trying to make it even harder to vote.

And Republicans also know if they succeed in constricting turnout and reducing Democrats' leverage in Wisconsin, as they are doing also in neighboring Michigan - - national media beginning to see the trend - -  the GOP has a better shot at holding those key states' electoral votes in 2020 for Trump, or his replacement.

But here's the thing: these transparently slimy moves are all inevitably doomed to collapse in the face of blue waves driven by stronger realities, namely that the GOP is getting older and whiter and weaker and the electorate is getting younger and more diverse and engaged.

These are some of the very pressures which help explain why Walker, despite all the advantages of incumbency - - from name recognition to easy media to free airplanes to armored carloads of dark, outside money  - - lost by 30,000 votes. 

To a bi-racial ticket.

Anachronistic politicians like Walker, Fitzgerald and Vos are also aging into the same accelerating insignificance which defines their party and its agendas. 

To an ever-higher tech, digital world, Walker, Fitzgerald and Vos are the political equivalents of the eight-track tape deck and corded phone.

Those three men are all now in their 50's, middle-aged, defined by careerist political jobs principally-based in the Wisconsin Legislature - - nearly a half-century of public trough satisfactions are on our tab and their ledgers there  - - but it's a domain that does not necessarily translate into bigger and better things and which they used more like a hammock than a trampoline.

And yes, Walker did bounce all the way out to the governorship, but not only did he just get rejected by the voters for over-staying his welcome, he's now involved in an ugly, perhaps extra-legal power grab on his way out the door - - moves that that are so blatantly undemocratic and self-serving as to undermine any claim he might imagine on a legacy other than permanent public enmity.

Can you name a cutting-edge business that would hire any of those three?

A publication which would seek any of them out for a personally-drafted thousand words about the future?

Do you see yourself standing in front of their official portraits one day and saying, "Now there was a leader," or "I'd really like to have a beer with that guy and pick his brain."

So I see what these Republicans are doing with the power they possess and want to expand as vindictive.

And morally bankrupt.

And certainly as a pathetic waste of our tax money and the good they could have done addressing some of the shortcomings and injustices  of our time had they sincerely looked beyond the reflections in their mirrors to true public service and the value of the public sector.

But that's not the case, so just as Trump helped organize the mid-term blue wave that helped cost his party the Wisconsin governship ,and control of the US House of Representatives which further imperils his incumbency, this 11th-desperation by one-dimensional and arrogant Wisconsin Republicans contains the same inevitably of backlash and failure.

Onward, and on, Wisconsin.

Twas the night after voting, but the creatures were stirring...

The ballots were tallied by those duly sworn,
yet plans to upend them were soon to be born.

When on creatures' bed stands there arose cell phone clatter,
they sprang from their nests to see what was the matter.

By email and text, it was St. Walker the Phony,
hating on Josh and Mandela, and certainly on Tony.

St. Walker fumed at his creatures by name,
Road-builder Robin and Big Fitz of Fake Fame.

"Where were my voters, my WOW counties' numbers?"
"And why was I stuck with such bone-headed bumblers?"

"Now do you get it?," he exclaimed and exclaimed.
"Why we need new rules now so we win every game."

They nodded their heads and were turning around,
when down the chimney St. Walker did bound.

Dressed in blaze orange to hunt dirty work,
And a mask to hide his wink and a smirk.

He tore through the statutes to rig things ahead, 
while visions of plum jobs danced in his head.

His henchmen were awed at St. Walker's devotion,
he finished and turned without a commotion.

Up the chimney to the SUV he then arose,
his middle finger extended aside of his nose.

And they heard him exclaim, as he drove out of sight,
"Coal in your stockings - - this is my right."

WI GOP lame-duck authoritarians want Dem winners to be their interns

[Updated] So now we know what Walker's henchmen in the GOP-controlled Legislature meant by a few minor, reasonable tweaks after the Walker governorship was defeated by the voters.

They're not just changing the rules in the middle of the game; they're tossing the rules - - even the concepts of rules or reasonable permanence and tradition - - after they lost the game to allow themselves a tighter grip on the privileges of winning.

Not merely by tilting a 2020 State Supreme Court election by playing with the schedule. 

Not merely by removing early voting days by up to a month as local communities had chosen to establish them to make sure they 'win' elections the next time, or making sure fewer ballots are cast by further embedding voter ID requirements that have been cited in court proceedings as barriers which many thousands of voters could not overcome.

No -- - Robin Vos and Scott Fitzgerald - - 

with a green light from the defeated Scott Walker - - are bent on using a 141-page omnibus bill to nullify the fundamental change that voters unambiguously declared on November 6th by turning the fair-and-square winners - - Tony Evers, Mandela Barnes and Josh Kaul  - into virtual four-year clerks who will work for legislators and committees stacked with GOP appointees committed to killing the Democrats' agenda before it can get introduced - - as the Journal Sentinel notes:

The legislation is wide-ranging and would limit Evers’ power in a host of ways. His agencies would have less freedom to run their programs...

The power of the incoming attorney general also would be greatly diminished. 

The Legislature — not the attorney general — would have control of how to spend money from court settlements. The recently created office of the solicitor general, which oversees high-profile litigation, would be eliminated.

Legislators would gain the power to intervene in any litigation when a state law is challenged, and they would have the ability to appoint their own private attorneys — at taxpayer expense — to handle the case instead of the attorney general...

Legislators would also have the ability to sign off on court settlements.

In another change that has broad implications for the lawsuit over the Affordable Care Act, the Legislature’s budget committee — rather than the governor —would get to decide whether to continue or drop legal actions. 

Just the latest iteration of GOP word play. Vos and Fitzgerald were saying all they had in mind was a little 'inside baseball,' some 'reasonable' lame-dick session tweaks.

What they were planning was a 141-page omnibus statutory rebellion, a rewrite of state government that no voter asked them to submit.

Remember when Walker called his Act 10 bomb merely some "modest, modest" proposals?

Are they democracy's stewards, or its saboteurs? Now they have answered the question, and their interest in political stewardship is as contaminated as has been their eight-year polluted stewardship of Wisconsin land, water and clean air.

I'd been warning about this impending GOP power grab soon after the November ballots had been counted, and continued to post my concerns as Walker pretended he hadn't really lost and his legislative allies began to minimize and hide what they had in mind.

And as late as Friday I was still underestimating the Republican arrogance, self-absorption and contempt for a democracy in place here since 1848.

I know there are some Republicans in the State Senate who know this is wrong, that this is not why they took their oath and collect a salary paid by all the people and come to work for the people in The People's House. 

Luther Olsen knows this is wrong. 

Robert Cowles knows this is wrong. 

They and a few others are going to have to have Profiles in Courage moments, or the democracy here based on the public deciding the basics in fair elections will be voided if a small group of insiders gets away with huddling behind closed doors after the votes have been counted and vindictively changing the outcome.

Not by shredding ballots or digitally erasing votes, but by further corrupting the political landscape through misuse of the people's legislative processes to put in a fix.

It's good to learn that people will gather at the State Capitol steps in Madison on Monday at 5:30 p.m. to protest the GOP's heist of the election.

But everyday people who have already done their ballot-box civic duty should not have to do anything at that hour on a Monday evening except unwind after work or school, walk the dog, fix dinner, play with the kids or get ready for a late shift.

Why does every waking moment in America and especially in Wisconsin turn into another necessary active affirmation to stop another authoritarian politician who keeps coming like The Terminator for our rights?

Shame on these Republican 'leaders' for putting their grasping self-service and special-interest slavishness above the will of the people.