Sunday links.
Wisconsin’s Governor Walker thinks David Rhode, a paramedic from Middleton, is the cause of the state budget deficit.
Congress wants to kill Big Bird and Elmo. Don’t let them.
“Enough is enough!” David Kirui, an English teacher at Martin Luther King High School in East Germantown, told the crowd.
Ed Secretary Arne Duncan thinks the Wisconsin governor and the unions should try to be more collaborative. Jeez. How much bigger of a wad can this guy be?
1,000 rally in Springfield in support of the Wisconsin movement.
Larry Ferlazzo posts a couple of good videos.
In this bigger picture, the Wisconsin governor’s fawning 20-minute phone conversation with a prankster impersonating the oil billionaire David Koch last week, while entertaining, is merely a footnote. The Koch Industries political action committee did contribute to Walker’s campaign (some $43,000) and did help underwrite Tea Party ads and demonstrations in Madison. But this governor is merely a petty-cash item on the Koch ledger — as befits the limited favors he can offer Koch’s mammoth, sprawling, Kansas-based industrial interests.
Look to Washington for the bigger story. As The Los Angeles Times recently reported, Koch Industries and its employees form the largest bloc of oil and gas industry donors to members of the new House Energy and Commerce Committee, topping even Exxon Mobil. And what do they get for that largess? As a down payment, the House budget bill not only reduces financing for the Environmental Protection Agency but also prohibits its regulation of greenhouse gases. Frank Rich
