It's Not Just Those Emails. Here's The Secret Investigation That Should Worry Scott Walker.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/02/scott-walker-secret-emails-john-doe-recall
It's Not Just Those Emails. Here's The Secret Investigation That Should Worry Scott Walker.
—By Andy Kroll
| Fri Feb. 21, 2014 12:27 PM GMT
This week, the media got the chance to pore over more than 27,000 pages of previously unreleased emails and other documents gathered during a three-year secret investigation of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's staff when he was executive of Milwaukee County. That secret probe—what Wisconsin law enforcement calls a "John Doe" investigation—resulted in charges against three former aides to Walker, a major campaign donor, and a Walker appointee. The John Doe probe figured prominently in Democrats' attacks on Walker during his June 2012 recall election that the governor handily won. Walker himself never faced any charges.
The recently released emails shed new light on the activities of Walker and his aides. Walker had insisted that staffers in his county executive office had been prohibited from doing political work on county time, yet these records show the opposite was true. The future governor and his underlings set up a private WiFi network to communicate with staff on his 2010 gubernatorial campaign, and county staffers used private laptops so that their campaign-related work wouldn't appear on their county computers. The emails also show the degree to which Walker's staff (whose salaries were funded by taxpayers) worked to get him elected governor while on the county clock. As Mary Bottari of PRWatch notes, Kelly Rindfleisch, a former Walker aide who was convicted of campaigning on county time, sent and received a whopping 3,486 emails from representatives of Friends of Scott Walker, most during normal work hours. (Walker, through his spokesman, declined to comment about the emails.)
State and national Democrats want the public to see these emails as part of a Chris Christie-style scandal. But there's a big difference: This case is closed—and it has been since March 2013. So while the emails may result in some unflattering stories and uncomfortable questions for Walker, especially if he later runs for president, there's nothing serious (read: legal) to worry Walker. Christie, on the other hand, faces two active probes of Bridgegate and related matters—one mounted by a legislative committee, the other by a US attorney—that could drag on for months, if not years.
But there is an investigation that should keep Walker up at night: a second John Doe investigation reportedly focused on his 2012 recall campaign. (After Walker targeted public-sector unions following his 2010 election as governor, labor and its allies launched a petition drive to throw Walker out of office via recall election.) John Doe probes are conducted in secret so the public can't know all the details, but leaked documents suggest investigators are looking at possible illegal coordination between Walker's recall campaign and independent groups that spent millions of dollars to keep him in office. Here's how the progressive Center for Media and Democracy wrote about the investigation recently:
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After all, we're still at war, aren't we? Never mind that it's winding down. We're still at war. And as long as we're in that revolting state of affairs, I'd suggest we make some use of it - for the greater good. Chicken salad out of chicken shit. Lemonade out of lemons. Many of the koch brothers industries are natural resource-based, aren't they? Lumber, oil, gas, that kind of thing? Natural resources that belong to THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES. Not just two people in particular. ALL the people. And during wartime don't we have to take drastic measures covering the use of our natural resources? And shouldn't we ALL be making sacrifices to support that war effort? Remember what we all read/heard/studied about - during WW2? Heck, nobody hesitated when women were asked to give up their nylon stockings for the war effort. Nobody batted an eyelash when sugar and gasoline and other commodities were rationed, for the sake of supporting the war effort. Whole industries were turned over to the war effort. Detroit switched almost overnight from making cars for consumers to making tanks and other heavy artillery - for the war effort. Everybody had to tighten their belts and do without and make sacrifices of all kinds - to support the war effort.
And there's such a lament now - about how easy it is to push for war these days because it's just so painless. Only affects a few people somewhere over there - whom we don't know, our sons and daughters aren't drafted or compelled to serve, we don't have to go, we don't have to sacrifice, no muss/no fuss! Hell, let's go for the glory!!!
I realize this is splitting hairs, and proposing a foul on a technicality. And maybe it's not practicable or doable at all (especially with the strength of the opposition). But as long as that technicality exists, WHY CAN'T WE USE IT? Or at least threaten to use it? Or at least start talking about it? Make 'em shake and shudder and lose sleep up at the level of the koch brothers ("oh noes! They couldn't REALLY do that to our precious empire, could they?"
?
It also strikes me that this would certainly be one way to alienate some of these rich ivory-tower fuckers who never fight but cheer on any war somebody ELSE has to go fight. If they knew they actually stood to have skin in the game - because their precious industries might have to be enlisted to the war effort, too, maybe they or some of their little chickenhawk friends wouldn't have such massive hard-ons for war?
Just a thought.
I used to post such memes as "Destabilize the enemy." Seems to me this would certainly be one way to do that.
