Here's what he said:

"I’d encourage people to go onto Youtube and type in Steve Wynn. He does about a five-minute piece where he’s talking about- he’s the fellow who does Wynn resorts in Las Vegas. He’s also creating resorts in Macau in China, communist China. And his point is, the level of uncertainty, the climate for business investment is far more certain in communist China then it is in the U.S. here." [Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Radio Network, 8/30/10]

As of this writing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has yet to formally declare his bid for President in 2016, but that hasn’t stopped him from campaigning for it. Arguably, he’s been campaigning for President ever since winning his first election for Governor in 2010.

Seen in this light, all of the extreme, unconstitutional, and potentially illegal actions Walker’s administration has undertaken make a twisted kind of sense. His slash-and-burn policies of the past four years have nothing to do with responsible state governance. But they do signal to billionaire GOP campaign donors that he is willing to ride roughshod over the needs of the people in Wisconsin to prove that he can do the two things required of any contender for top office: Concentrate power in the executive office and redistribute wealth upwards.

Those were the hallmarks of the George W. Bush administrations and they have been the twin pillars of Walker’s reign as Wisconsin’s Governor. After four years of administrative power grabs, regressive social policies, and massive tax cuts and giveaways to the wealthy, it is clear that Walker’s view of the people, institutions, and resources of Wisconsin amounts to not much more than grist for his political ambition mill.

Rolling back voting rights, environmental and consumer protections, workers’ rights, health care, food and housing supports for people in need, and women’s rights while systematically dismantling public education are not the actions of an administration that plans on sticking around to manage the fallout.

This is what we know. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. government launched a horrific campaign to recruit fanatical Muslims from around the world in order to form an anti-communist militia. It jointly ran the program through the CIA with the Saudi and Pakistani intelligence.

So the U.S. government is not only protecting the Saudi royal family from scrutiny, but also protecting its secret role in the campaign against the Soviet army in Afghanistan. We still don’t know the extent to which American intelligence officials in Pakistan had direct contacts with Osama Bin Laden when he was a chief organizer of the Arab volunteer effort against the Soviet Union (the gang of Jihads was technically a volunteer force, because the Saudi government picked up the tabs for those who came to Pakistan from Saudi Arabia). The Economist revealed after September 11 that American intelligence agents did have contacts with Bin Laden, at least prior to 1994.

The man who was assigned to run the entire affair was none other than Prince Turki Al-Faisal, who ran Saudi foreign intelligence apparatus from 1977 until days—literally days––prior to September 11. We still don’t know why he resigned and under what circumstances.

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It is unlikely that the Obama administration would respond to the pleas by the families of September 11 victims. There is so much at stake for his government and for his close ally, Saudi Arabia. It is certain, for example, that Princess Haifa (who is also the sister of Prince Turki and wife of Prince Bandar––such are marriage arrangements in the House of Saudi) sent regular checks to Omar Bayyumi, who had strong connections to at least two of the hijackers. She was never investigated and the matter was typically covered up by the government. Let us just imagine the U.S. government response if this was the wife of the Iranian or Syrian ambassador in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr



During her film career, Lamarr co-invented the technology for spread spectrum and frequency hopping communications. This new technology became important to America's military during World War II because it was used in controlling torpedoes. Those inventions have more recently been incorporated into Wi-Fi, CDMA and Bluetooth technology, and led to her being inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.

During her term as Secretary of Labor, Perkins championed[vague] many aspects of the New Deal, including the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Public Works Administration and its successor the Federal Works Agency, and the labor portion of the National Industrial Recovery Act. With the Social Security Act she established unemployment benefits, pensions for the many uncovered elderly Americans, and welfare for the poorest Americans. She pushed to reduce workplace accidents and helped craft laws against child labor. Through the Fair Labor Standards Act, she established the first minimum wage and overtime laws for American workers, and defined the standard forty-hour work week. She formed governmental policy for working with labor unions and helped to alleviate strikes by way of the United States Conciliation Service, Perkins resisted having American women be drafted to serve the military in World War II so that they could enter the civilian workforce in greatly expanded numbers.

Back when he was running for reelection, Walker didn't advertise his "bold and aggressive" right-wing ideology in quite the same way. Concealed carry, castle doctrine and defunding Planned Parenthood––some of Walker's biggest applause lines in Iowa––barely registered a mention during the campaign. And then there was his shout-out to the network of out-of-state, right-wing funders, whom he thanked for making his political career possible.

Sticking it to Wisconsin in order to build a winning national campaign turns out to be a very successful strategy, judging from the rave reviews Walker has been getting from his fellow Republicans. Hence Walker's budget proposal to cut $300 million out of the University of Wisconsin system. Apparently, not being afraid to "go big and bold" means being willing to take a meat cleaver to one of your home state's greatest assets. We saw it with the scheme to liquidate our top-tier K–12 public school system and hand it over to private interests. Now it's Bucky Badger's turn.

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In Iowa, Walker acknowledged that "the Occupy movement started in Madison, so I have to apologize for that." It's true. The massive protests around what Walker called "my Capitol" in 2011 inspired similar occupations, including Occupy Wall Street. The realization that a political class financed by billionaires is actively hostile to the interests of 99 percent of Americans ignited citizen activism all over the United States. It animated the protests in Madison, and it ultimately cost Mitt Romney the 2012 presidential election, when he exposed himself as the unabashed champion of the very wealthy, contemptuous of a huge portion of the public.

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Walker is, of course, a favorite of the Koch brothers. He showed up at their swanky retreat in Palm Springs after his star turn in Iowa, just as the Kochs announced they will spend $889 million in the 2016 election cycle––as much as each party's presidential nominee. Walker is a great frontman for the Kochs' ideology: union busting; deregulation, especially of their own fossil fuel industry (the governor in Iowa said Wisconsin was planning to sue the federal government over new EPA limits on power plant carbon emissions); tax cuts for the rich; repeal of the Affordable Care Act (another Walker applause line); and the privatization of everything.

Walker's budget would change special prosecutor appointments

Madison — Gov. Scott Walker's proposed budget would add a new requirement on special prosecutor appointments even as a controversial investigation into the governor's campaign and conservative allies languishes under the leadership of its own special prosecutor.

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The budget proposal would require a state judge or district attorney seeking a special prosecutor to ask permission from the state Department of Justice by spelling out the reason for the appointment under state law. The Department of Justice is headed by GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel.

Schimel declined to investigate a state legislator who allowed a wealthy contributor to write legislation for him and defended pay to play by saying: "Why can’t a legislator press for legislation that benefits a person who has contributed to their campaign? Isn’t that the essence of representative government?"

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Schimel declined to prosecute an attorney for a Walker aide after that attorney destroyed documents from the aide's computer in the middle of the criminal investigation into Walker's fundraising practices.

"Drafting error"? Really?

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As shown in a photo accompanying this story, Walker’s budget deletes a number of phrases contained in the statute. Among the statements that are removed: "Extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campuses"; and "Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth." With some added language, the edits to the language emphasized the mission should be to "meet the state’s workforce needs."

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As the budget was being prepared, Walker’s administration insisted to UW System officials that the changes to the Wisconsin Idea language be made. In December 2014, a budget analyst in Walker's Department of Administration directed the nonpartisan budget-writing office to remove the phrase "Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth" from the state statute covering the UW System's mission. In January 2015, the same analyst told the budget-writing office to remove another phrase: "To extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campuses."

Five days before Walker introduced his budget, a UW System official sent an email to Walker's budget staff raising concerns about the changes, saying: "We strongly urge that stricken language is unique to depicting the character, mission and vision of the UW System." That UW official, John Yingling, later told the Journal Sentinel that Walker’s budget staff responded by saying the changes would remain in the budget.