Just a reminder, he wasn't out to 'fight the unions' He was out to get the budget deficit fixed.
That's not what the latest "divide and Conquer" video exposed when catching him speaking to his million $$ doner.
He admitted it was all political. Additionally he could be in trouble for lying under oath to congress if they choose to pursue.
In
sworn testimony before Congress in April 2011, Gov. Walker said his controversial measure was not political and that he had no intention of going after the donor base of the Democratic Party. He specifically denied ever having a conversation along those lines.A Videorecently released by the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel provides evidence to the contrary.
The video catches Walker talking to a campaign contributor in January 2011, before he introduced the union-busting bill. Billionaire Diane Hendricks greets Walker with enthusiasm and asks two critical questions: how he was going to make Wisconsin a "red state" and if he would be implementing "Right to Work" legislation. Walker replies that the "first step" would be "divide and Conquer" the unions through a budget bill dealing with public sector workers. He also discusses legislation to limit corporate liability.
This frank talk to a woman who would later hand his recall campaign committee as single check for $500,000, puts the Walker agenda in a new light.
In the video, Walker is shown meeting with Hendricks before an economic development session at the headquarters of a firm Hendricks owns, ABC Supply Inc., in Beloit. After Walker kisses Henricks, she asks: “Any chance we’ll ever get to be a completely red state and work on these unions?”
“Oh, yeah!” says Walker.
Henricks then asks : “And become a right-to-work [state]?”
Walker replies: “Well, we’re going to start in a couple weeks with our budget adjustment bill. The first step is we’re going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions, because you use divide and conquer.”
After describing the strategy, Walker tells the woman who asked him about making Wisconsin a “completely red state”: “That opens the door once we do that.”
In a transcript of raw footage from the conversation, Hendricks asks Walker if he has a role model. Walker replies that he has high regard for Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, who early in his term used an executive order to strip collective-bargaining rights away from public employees and who, more recently, signed right-to-work legislation. Walker described the use of the executive order to undermine union rights as a “beautiful thing” and bemoaned the fact that he would have to enact legislation to achieve the same end in Wisconsin.
Within weeks, the woman who asked Walker about his strategy to make Wisconsin “a completely red state” wrote a $10,000 check to support his campaign. (She would eventually up the donation to $510,000, making Hendricks the single largest donor in the history of Wisconsin politics.) Within a month, Walker had launched the anti-union initiative that the two had discussed as a part of that “red-state” strategy, provoking mass protests that would draw the attention of Congress.
Testifying under oath to the US House Oversight and Government Reform Committee,Walker said in his formal statement and in response to questions from committee members that his efforts to restrict the collective-bargaining rights of unions— including moves to prevent them from collecting dues, maintaining ongoing representation of members and engaging effectively in political campaigns—had nothing to do with politics.
