Brownshirt tactics employed against all dissenters. Many signed up to vote just to fight 'the gay menace' their pastors fired them up about. Faux news coverage and media consolidation solidified the cause of Walker, as the victim of mobs and agitators.
It would almost be admirable, the efficiency of the Koch machine, if it weren't so evil. They've worked and paid to reorganize our society from the ground up through media persuasion for over three decades directly, but even longer than that.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1017&pid=44227
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024806298
(Although that second link and the information was from Reid first.)
The woman who hid the votes got away with it. The judges who threw out charges got away with it, while another was assaulted and nothing done. Elected Democrats were locked out of the process. Walker made a deal with one public union, the capitol police, to deny the rest their say.
Those who were exercising their right of free speech in the recall election were brownshirted by right winger storm troops. Their homes and jobs targeted, property destroyed, threats that were made and carried out, silencing them in fear for their lives and livelihood.
The mining interests had armed militia hired by the corporations to keep people serving notice and documenting what was being done there. They gave the union school and public workers a choice to retire and get out of the way, or get no retirement.
These people are as ruthless as Tom DeLay was, when he said it was not enough to just defeat the Democrats. They were to be knocked down and then when down, stomped on and tossed off a cliff. That motto was in his office. We can't forget he organized and paid for the Brooks Brothers riot. HRC has said recently, and not so recently, she would attack Jeb for the stolen election of 2000. The GOP are afraid of her wrath, which is why the generate nonstop attacks on her and use all the tools at their disposal.
They follow no procedure without the physical force to back it up. They're using the internconnected data base made by corporations to track purchases to make tlists of enemies. The Koches paid, what is to most of us a fortune, for the personal data of 300M Americans.
The NSA thing is a Libertarian diversion from the real threat to our privacy and liberty. If we let them into the White House, we'll see what 1984 looks like in our own lifetime.
There will be no escape from this technologically driven society, in which we are held chattel.* Folks are being played while all that we had is being stolen. Those getting'a piece of the action,' don't care about process. They believe any compromise and democratic process is the wail of weaklings who deserve to be eliminated. They believe in brute force. Each demand they make is made, even when quietly, by intimidation.
*(ORIGIN Middle English: from Old French chatel, from medieval Latin capitale, from Latin capitalis, from caput head. Compare with capital and cattle).