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>> scott walker’s fourth largest donor during his 2010 campaign. they donated $43,000 to his election effort. gee, i wonder what they wanted. and now governor walker is going with the union busting budget bill. they pay him to bust the budget, and .he says right as soon as he comes in, i’ve got a genius idea, why don’t i bust the budgets? but the koch brother i’m sure care about the average worker, right? it turns out that koch industries slashed jobs at plants across the country, incluing cutting 25% of the worse force in green bay, wisconsin. now meanwhile, the koch brothers joint network increased by $11 billion in the same year. oh, we just had to cut all those workers, otherwise we would have only made $10.9 billion and we couldn’t have that. the workers had to be slashed. what was that about shared sacrifice, sarah? did the koch brothers share any sacrifice? of course, another koch-funded group, americans for prosperity has joined the wisconsin budget battle. would you believe it? they’re backing the governor’s union busting agenda. who could have figured? they started the website, stand with walker.com. gee, i wonder how all this is connected. for me, let me bring in lee fong. talk to me about the koch brothers? is this payback?
>> sure, they same the same kind of perverse supply side ideology where you basically soak the middle class and the poor to reward the rich. as you mentioned, koch industries has been slashing jobs, thousands of them, allncluding in wisconsin at the same time they’ve basically given themselves, the stwo top exectives, charles and david, an extra $11 billion. just in the last two years. that’s pretty similar to governor walker who’s basically given a huge tax cut to businesses in wisconsin while at the same time only asking nurses and teachers to sacrifice.
>> now that the protests have begun, how are the koch brothers involved in the sount protests in madison?
>> as you mentioned, they started this website, standwithwalker. basically, you know, not only saying that we should end collective bargaining rights for public employees, but also private employees and that this really radical drive by governor walker should be expanded across the country. and, you know, the past two years, they have a group called fight back wisconsin and americans for prosperity. they’ve been bussing people around, hosting tea parties. they’ve brought in walker to help campaign for him. then this past saturday, they bussed in tea partiers and people like joe the plumber, joe populists to support him.
>> they bus these guys in — and you just heard the governor he’s complaining people come in from out of state. arefully of the people they bussed in local to wisconsin?
>> well, they had definitely not wisconsinites, but the koch brothers do own a lot of companies in wisconsin. a set of power plants, pipelines, lumber mills. and interestingly enough, hidden in this budget bill, you know, we’re talking about collective bargaining rights, but he also has a line item that allows him to sell off wisconsin power plants basically with no-ed by contracts. so it’s possible there could be a quid pro quo later this year.
>> i’m looking forward to that as well.
>> so let me get this right. they get lower taxes. who know what is they’re going to get in no-ed by contracts later. if you’re looking for actually stopping collusion in wisconsin, i don’t think governor walker is going to be your guy. fwu is the ultimate goal here, not just wisconsin, but throughout the country to go after, not just public unions but private unions so the koch brothers will play less to their workers throughout the country?
>> no, it’s much bigger than that. the koch brothers want to maximize their political pow per .that’s why they financed this junket for federal judges program. they fund think tafrks and so-called libertarian nonprofits. this is much bigger than wisconsin. they want to crush the labor movement. they know if there’s no labor movement, they have no real opponents, so in 2012 and 2014 and so forth, they’re basically unstoppable. i interviewed david koch, one of the executives at koch industries. he says this is just the beginning. he plans to expand this campaign in. co-ing years.
>> that sounds lovely. and he says at some point, the average guy like me. the average billionaire like you? come on, who are you kidding. apparently the whole state of wisconsin. we really appreciate it. good report.
Walker is an insipid Turd Puppet of the rich. He should be tarred & feathered and run out of town!
That’s what they used to do to the Torries over 200 years ago.
Barefoot Accountant