to shrivel significantly this year for a real economic reason or just because you have a bad governor. we call this the rick scott test because elected florida governor rick scott didn t just use a deficit to justify cutting public education down to the bone and through it. he didn t say oh, our state deficit is so bad i ve got to kill education to make the deficit better. no, rick scott gets the bad governor test named after him because rick scott found a way to make huge, devastating cuts to education in a way that does not help the state s budget deficit at all. rick scott has just announced his new budget in florida. it takes more than $1.7 billion out of the public schools and instead of putting that money back into the budget gives it away in corporate and property tax breaks. so k-12 education gets absolutely eviscerated in the state of florida and the money saved by the state no longer spending the money on the
folly in wisconsin. remember when his administration said protesters had caused so much damage to the state capitol that it was going to cost $7.5 million to clean up the horrible, horrible mess the protesters made and repair everything they had broken? walker s administration has now said that maybe that 7.5 million figure was a little high. they have since revised the cleaning estimate downward by 95.3%! i know. never mind! [ male announcer ] it s 2011. wonder where the durango s been for the last two years? well, it toured around europe, getting handling and steering lessons on those sporty european roads. it went back to school, got an advanced degree in technology. it s been working out more muscle and less fat. it s only been two years, but it s done more in two years than most cars do in a lifetime.
walker was not only illegally coordinating campaign expenditures in that moment, he was soliciting david koch s financial help from the governor s office inside the state capitol. you are not supposed to solicit campaign contributions from your public office. talking about the koch brothers in 2011 is starting to feel like talking about karl rove in 2004. if you care about progressive politics or even fair play in 2011, you really can t get away from the koch brothers. they are becoming way too ubiquitous. they come up in every political scandal, from wisconsin union busting and phony astro turf bus tours to the questionable partiality of the american supreme court justices. every time a political scandal erupts big or small, there are the koch brothers with a chair pulled up to the table. i do not want it to be true. i am sick of these guys already. but every time you turn over a political rock, there they are. new example. the consumer product safety
effect. now that prank call gives governor walker a whole new headache. wisconsin state democrats filed ethics complaint over what mr. walker said to the guy he thought was david koch, or what walker said to the man he believed was the oil billionaire that funded his campaign, specifically raising ethical concerns about this part. the coming days and weeks and months ahead, particularly in some of these more swing areas, and a lot of these guys don t necessarily need ads for them, but need a message reinforcing why this was good to do for the economy and good to do for the state. so to the extent that message is out over and over again, that s obviously a good thing. wisconsin governor scott walker suggesting to the fake david koch that the real david koch should get out the message for republicans, raising the idea of a little koch funded independent expenditure to support the state s republican senators, particularly in swing districts. you know, that s the thing about independen
was surprised. i saw the quote from senator miller. and he wasn t saying anything we weren t saying, we are ready to go back. it is not up to us. it is up to theรง republicans t sit down, come to resolution over this. i talked to senator miller last night. we were frustrated last thursday night because we thought there was some sort of head way with governor walker and then the senate republicans thursday passed a resolution saying if we crossed state lines, we would be arrested, which isn t incentive to go back. we were surprised we were getting signs from walker administration that maybe we are going to move forward, but from the senate republicans, taking a big step back. there is a little frustration on that which led to the article sunday night. we are where we were from the beginning. taking it very much day by day. we continue to reach out. senator miller sent a letter to governor walker today and senator fitzgerald, asking them to come and sit down and talk things over. the re