Egyptian people forced Mubarak to resign. People of Wisconsin, are you gonna WAIT for months...

[TygrBright]

...for some arbitrary date after which you are legally entitled to recall him?

Are you going to watch as he slowly disembowels the proud progressive democratic tradition of your state?

As he sells off the infrastructure that Wisconsin citizens bought and paid for with their tax dollars to his billionaire owners?

As he grinds the faces of the working men and women who keep your schools open and fix your roads and issue your license plates and check out books at your libraries into the cold, hard, pothole-ridden streets?

As he http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/04/16/gov-scott-walker-reportedly-planning-financial-martial-law-in-wisconsin">takes away your right to make local decisions about how your towns and villages will be managed?

You've already shown you can do extraordinary things.

You've already shown you're pissed off.

Are you MAD AS HELL?

Do you really want to keep on taking this crap until you can recall this sleazy thug?

Here's a better idea: FORCE HIM TO RESIGN

How?

Mockery.

You think I'm joking?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/opinion/17kristof.html?_r=1&ref=nicholasdkristof">The Power of Mockery

Start now. If you can pull it together, make it relentless, powerful, and compelling, you might actually be able to have the bastard GONE by the time the "recall date" rolls around.

He's a prick, yes. But was Mubarak less of a prick? And where is ol' Hosni today?

Let's play "Pin the clown nose on the weasel."

provocatively,
Bright

[BzaDem]

1. Yes, peoiple do wait for "some arbitrary date" after which is legal to recall him, because that is

what the rule of law means.

Mubarak was ousted in the way he was because Egypt was not a democracy. If Egypt was a democracy, Mubarak would have been ousted in the next regularly scheduled election. That's how democracy works.

[TygrBright]

3. Egypt was (technically) a democracy. Wisconsin is (technically) a democracy. n/t

[BzaDem]

6. Except that in reality, Wisconsin is a democracy (while Egypt was not). Believe it or not, it is

actually possible for an electorate to disagree with you and still be a democracy. Shocking, I know.

[murielm99]

4. I think the OP has a point.

And Wisconsin is reaching the point where it may not be a democracy much longer.

After what we have seen in Waukesha County with the county clerk who has her own unique way of tabulating the votes, maybe Walker and the other repiggies in Wisconsin won't be ousted in the next regularly scheduled election. How far do people have to be pushed?

[napoleon_in_rags]

5. The rule of law is a currency.

In that what value it has is only equal to what value people believe it has. If the law sides with moral truth it will serve the people and do quite well. But if it does not, it will devalue, and people won't obey the law anymore. This is an essential attribute of the law, Gandhi said we are not obligated to obey any law repugnant to our conscience, and he was right, and what he said was a descriptive statement. Time and time again throughout history immoral men have taken control of legislatures. But we always remember those German "criminals" who refused Hitler's orders to work in death camps when we evaluate laws... And we are reminded that the laws we our obliged to follow come from a place much higher than mortal legislatures.

[BzaDem]

7. The law applies to all -- not just those who favor it. If the law only applied to those who favored

the law, then there wouldn't need to be any laws.

It is amazing here how some people actually think that we don't have the rule of law or a democracy simply because they don't like the outcome.

[napoleon_in_rags]

8. We don't.

There was a post here on the greatest page about a week ago. It told the story of a big rich Wall street guy. He was convicted of having sex with children. He bought three 12 year old girls on his birthday, for instance. He was convicted, but sentenced to a minimum security prison where he was allowed to leave for 16 hours a day to take care of his "business". All this because he had money and powerful attorneys, ties to powerful people. A poor offender with the same crimes would have gone to normal prison and been beaten for his deeds in the general prison population.

The Law, as a principle, is about something higher than legislators, higher than any man. Moses coming down off the mountain with the tablets is sort of the archetypal image of what its supposed to be about. But now we have something quite different, legislators don't even pretend: The recent SCOTUS ruling basically empowers corporations to buy their own legislators, and that means the laws we have on the books are simply reflections of the desires of corporations, written down by servants and called "law". What this means is that the "rule of law" is simply the desires of powerful men, written down and codified by their servants in the legislature.

What I'm saying is that when the law becomes a joke, it becomes a joke. Running around self righteously proclaiming your obedience to the "rule of law" when that "law" is simply a laundry list of the codified desires of powerful men doesn't put you on any kind of moral high ground.

[TygrBright]

14. And what aspect of subjecting an elected official to relentless public mockery is against the law?

If the damage done by Kaiser Scott in Wisconsin is sufficiently minor and inconsequential to the citizens of Wisconsin, few will participate and the mockery is unlikely to have any effect, in any case.

I am merely pointing out that if the citizens of Wisconsin believe that the damage being done to their polity, their infrastructure, and their rights as workers, voters, and citizens is intolerable, they have a perfectly legal and surprisingly effective way to deal with it, before the "recall deadline."

Hardly undemocratic. Resignation is a voluntary act.

helpfully,
Bright

[murielm99]

2. Mockery would work against him, if there could be an

organized campaign. Just look at how he reacted to the prank phone call. The MSM largely ignores what is happening in Wisconsin. They certainly reported on THAT incident.

We need more mockery!

[aquart]

9. If you're in Wisconsin, go ahead.

What happened in Egypt happened because the army allowed it.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ReggieVeggie]

13. don't hold your breath

things change, anger wanes