Oh come on - It’s trivially easy. Just send some agent provocateurs into the crowd. Start some fights. They can dress up like stereotypical anarchists or students.
The government then has to send troops in to “restore order”.
Issue press releases about the “violent protesters”. Fox News will be a big help here.
Announce that you must sadly enforce a curfew, entirely due to the “violent left wing radical protesters”
It’s so simple.
Not so. The limits of the free speech clause protected by the First Amendment is articulated in Brandenburg v. Ohio as “imminent lawless action”. There’s no reason that the Governor can’t call out the National Guard, but they legally cannot act unless someone tries to incite violence. Or, of course, if there actually IS violence.
That was completely unnecessary. And untrue, for that matter.
Oh don’t worry. Violence can be arranged. Or invented.
Note that there was no vote today as the Governor could only find 19 Republican legislators to vote today. He had to have 20. All the Democratic legislators stayed away from the Capital building today. We have the Governor’s Frankenstein veto in Wisconsin. It’s been changed but they still screwed it up.
There must some camels in Wisconsin.
Apparently they, and two of their Republican colleagues, crossed the state line and are now holed up in a hotel in Rockford, IL. I’m pretty darned sure we won’t forcibly extradite them out. 
As a non-union government employee, the benefits package is the sole reason why they can afford to pay me approximately 50% of the salary that I’d command in the private sector. I’m lucky, in that my family situation allows me to afford to take a job where I get paid dick-all. I work pretty much solely for those benefits. If you want me to pay for them like people in the private sector do, that’s great. Pay me what I can make if I work in the private sector. My salary hasn’t even gone up commensurate with cost of living; only one year out of six did we hit 3% raises. I mentioned earlier today that there was once a thread on here that asked the question of how long it took you to double your salary at work. I find the idea laughable. But I love my job and I can’t imagine doing anything else. The average public worker is not the problem. If the state’s elected officials think I should take cuts, I say “you first.”
I mentioned the Frankenstein veto as I can see him using it a lot and what we might see in the near future.
Ditto. My equivalent private sector salary would be about 25% higher, assuming I had the ‘average’ salary for an equivalent position in my same region. Those benefits made up the difference. Or at least made me feel better about it.
I too love what I do, and frankly if I left, it’d be a challenge for the state to replace me. It took 3 years to fill a similar position in our system, and that absence caused a LOT of headaches. AND kept patient care from being as good as it could have been.
I see how crowded these people are and hope nothing like a fire starts.
Situation continues to deteriorate. State Patrol has been dispatched to corral AWOL legislators.
This shows my naivete, but having the unions opt out of Obama care and now the Wisconsin unions objecting to necessary budget constraints is surprising to me.
Seems having the unions being willing to take one ‘for the team’ might pay off in a second term for Obama, and whatever Supreme court nominees to be made 2013 to 2017.
Seems like that might be worth a lot of scratch . . . .
As Wisconsin born and bred I love the Democratic evil genius who came up with fleeing the state so the State Troopers couldn’t bring the dems back and force the vote. As of last night they were at the ClockTower Inn in Rockford, IL.
My understanding is that it would have passed as there 2 more than the required 17 Republicans in office.
Go Wisconsin!
Oh, missed the Rockford post.
I can tell you from experience, it is not too hard to have a REAL good time in a Rockford motel . . . .
:eek:
We still had more folks welcome the Packers back home after the super bowl…
I agree with the others who have spoken about the likelhood - and usefulness - of violence. In fact, I think Gov. Walker’s last best hope is that violence break out. Somehow or another, he has to forestall discussion of what he’s trying to do.
If you can either egg the demonstrators to violence or pin violence on them, you change the game. What seems like the will of the people will be seen as the mentality of the mob, and the issues at hand will no longer matter.
Just curious, but did all the Democrat legislators independently think of leaving the state as individuals, or did they, perhaps, violate a Wisconsin open meeting law when this idea was disseminated?
[Rockford Chamber of Commerce]The Clock Tower has such great amenities, too, and an indoor water park! And it’s really close to a huge movie theater and a Cracker Barrel, and a short drive to Cherryvale Mall. I’m sure they’re having a lovely time.[/Chamber of Commerce]