Wisconsin Governor Gets Punked!

[Havakasha]

Amateur hour.



WED FEB 23, 2011 AT 12:08 PM EST
Scott Walker's conversation with 'David Koch'
byBarbara Morrill

Well, now we know what a $43,000 donation to Republican Governor Scott Walker will buy you. For David Koch, one half of the billionaire Koch brothers, easy access and a 20-minute phone call to discuss Walker's current union-busting attempts. Unfortunately for Walker, it really wasn't Koch, it was Ian Murphy of the Buffalo Beast, who wondered:
... who could get through to Gov. Walker? Well, what do we know about Walker and his proposed union-busting, no-bid budget? The obvious candidate was David Koch.
... and posing as Koch, Murphy easily got the embattled Governor on the phone.

Walker's office has confirmed that the call did occur, but says that it only "shows that the Governor says the same thing in private as he does in public."

Except of course Walker has never publicly said that he was considering planting agitators into the crowds of protesters:

Koch: We’ll back you any way we can. What we were thinking about the crowd was, uh, was planting some troublemakers.
Walker: You know, well, the only problem with that —because we thought about that. The problem—the, my only gut reaction to that is right now the lawmakers I’ve talked to have just completely had it with them, the public is not really fond of this ... My only fear would be if there’s a ruckus caused is that maybe the governor has to settle to solve all these problems … Let ‘em protest all they want…Sooner or later the media stops finding it interesting.

And Walker has never publicly announced the plan to trick fourteen Democratic Senators into giving him the needed quorum to pass his union-busting bill:

An interesting idea that was brought up to me by my chief of staff, we won't do it until tomorrow, is putting out an appeal to the Democratic leader. I would be willing to sit down and talk to him, the assembly Democrat leader, plus the other two Republican leaders—talk, not negotiate and listen to what they have to say if they will in turn—but I’ll only do it if all 14 of them will come back and sit down in the state assembly. They can recess it... the reason for that, we're verifying it this afternoon, legally, we believe, once they’ve gone into session, they don’t physically have to be there. If they’re actually in session for that day, and they take a recess, the 19 Senate Republicans could then go into action and they’d have quorum because it's turned out that way. So we’re double checking that. If you heard I was going to talk to them that’s the only reason why. We’d only do it if they came back to the capitol with all 14 of them. My sense is, hell. I'll talk. If they want to yell at me for an hour, I'm used to that. I can deal with that. But I'm not negotiating.
Nor has Walker publicly talked about the baseball bat he'd like to bring to such a meeting, or how much he's looking forward to a payoff when he succeeds in crushing the unions:

Koch: Well, I tell you what, Scott: once you crush these bastards I’ll fly you out to Cali and really show you a good time.
Walker: All right, that would be outstanding. Thanks for all the support…it’s all about getting our freedoms back…

And apparently for Scott Walker, "freedom" is defined as doing the bidding of his corporate overlords, because he's certainly not listening to the people of Wisconsin.

For more discussion, see Lauren Monica's diary.

[SiriuslyLong]

Is that really true? Man is that funny. It's amazing how far people will go. Politics at its finest.

"And apparently for Scott Walker, "freedom" is defined as doing the bidding of his corporate overlords, because he's certainly not listening to the people of Wisconsin."

You should edit that to read "SOME people of Wisconsin". I think others agree with him.

[SiriuslyLong]

The news just broke on TV!! "could be damaging" No $hit lol.

It was speculated that Walker would address it. Can't wait to see that.

[Havakasha]

Yes, certainly there are many people in Wisconsin who agree with him. i believe most recent polls show however that more oppose him.

[Havakasha]

Scott Walker's Prank Caller: I Was Going To Pretend To Be Mubarak First

First Posted: 02/23/11 12:57 PM Updated: 02/23/11 12:57 PM

WASHINGTON -- The man who pretended to be conservative bankroller David Koch on a prank phone call with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) said Wednesday that he originally planned to pose as exiled Egypt President Hosni Mubarak but couldn't perfect the voice.

Ian Murphy, the editor of the Buffalo Beast, told The Huffington Post in an interview that he was "shocked" at how easy it was to get Walker, currently the nation's most-talked-about governor, on the phone merely by pretending to be a billionaire donor.

"Fifteen minutes in, I wanted to almost stop it and say, 'Are you so dumb, I'm not David Koch. How can your staff be so incompetent and how could I get on the phone with you so easily,'" Murphy said, barely suppressing his glee. "But I didn't."

Instead, Murphy spent an additional five minutes talking to Walker about a host of outlandish proposals and takes on the protests that have erupted around the governor's anti-union budget legislation. Walker's office insists that he said nothing on the phone with Murphy that he wouldn't have said in public, but the governor pitched the Koch impersonator some bizarre plans.

Walker said he wanted to ostensibly trick Democratic lawmakers to return to Wisconsin so that he could call a quorum and quickly pass his bill to strip collective-bargaining rights from the state's public-employee unions. He also talked openly about putting plants in the crowd of protesters to sway public opinion against their favor.

"He didn't do it because it was unethical, but because it didn't work," Murphy said. "People ask me what was the smoking gun. That's what I'm saying."

How the call came to happen provides a window of sorts into how even the most audacious forms of guerrilla journalism -- if a prank call can be called that -- can affect political debates. Murphy said he came across a Huffington Post article quoting a Democratic state Senator complaining that Walker wouldn't take his calls.

"I just wondered ... who could get ahold of him," Murphy said.

After deciding not to call as Mubarak, Murphy said he was looking to pose as someone whose voice was "more generic." He settled on Koch and practiced imitating the billionaire's voice with the help of some YouTube videos.

Perfection, however, was elusive. Instead, Murphy just spoke with a bit more bass, with the idea of playing the part of a Koch caricature. "I just envisioned him saying 'beautiful, beautiful' a lot, and things like 'crush those union bastards,'" he said.

Calling the phone number on the governor's website, he managed to talk his way onto the line with Walker's chief of staff, via Skype. After explaining that Walker couldn't call him back because his "maid" threw his phone in the washing machine and he'd have her "deported" but she made "next to nothing," Murphy waited for 10 minutes on the phone -- a tell in itself, he noted: "You don't expect David Koch to wait 10 minutes on the phone."

Nonetheless, Walker came on. "I kind of just let him talk. I was in shock," Murphy said.

So too, apparently, was the governor. As Murphy noted, Walker seemed "thrilled" to talk to "Koch." The impression left was that the billionaire backer and the upstart governor really hadn't rubbed elbows before.

"That might be one downside of this thing, it shows that they don't have the intimate relationship people imagined," Murphy said. "It's henchmen passing envelopes back and forth and the billionaire never actually talks to the politician."

But Murphy said took another key lesson away from the prank. "If you are David Koch, you can get anyone on the phone," he said, "period."