Anyone with the least bit of common sense would have known this was a stupid idea.
As we see all too often from lefty protesters at G-20 summits and other intergovernmental gatherings, there seems to be a belief that freedom of expression includes the right to damage and destroy other people's property.
I'm all for opening the Capitol to protesters. But leave when the building closes and stop taping your s@#$ everywhere. Just hold your damn sign. Is it really that hard?
Also in court, DOA chief legal counsel Cari Ann Renlund said the state received an estimate from a vendor that it would cost $7.5 million to clean up the damage done to the Capitol's marble walls from the adhesive and tape used to put up signs around the building.
As we see all too often from lefty protesters at G-20 summits and other intergovernmental gatherings, there seems to be a belief that freedom of expression includes the right to damage and destroy other people's property.
I'm all for opening the Capitol to protesters. But leave when the building closes and stop taping your s@#$ everywhere. Just hold your damn sign. Is it really that hard?
32 comments:
I can really see how the tape thing undermines the entire argument of the protesters and their political philosophy. How foolish i've been!
The point is that you can make your point without needlessly wrecking a building that taxpayers spent a billion dollars to renovate.
What part of taping shit to marble surfaces was vital to communicating the message?
Please DOA is making this up to keep protesters out right? I am not hardcore one way or the other on this issue but no one can reasonable tell me its 7.5 million dollars to remove tape from marble. This will end and because DOA put it out there, someone will check the actual costs and even if they try to inflate them they won't hit 20 grand...(which is stil to much by the way)
Do you have a lot of experience in this area? I mean, you don't get to arbitrarily decide a number is unreasonable and then pick one at random that you think might be better. That's not an argument.
Seriously, if you have better data, I'd love to see it.
I'll do it for $5 million! I will be considered a real hero for saving the state $2.5 million. Seriously, tape off of marble, $7.5 million? That would pay for 7 1/2 years for our whole city to run.
This number may be right but really you don't see any cause for skepticism here? That hippie bashing might help a certain flailing governor?
Remember those stories about how the Clintons trashed the WH? Only they turned out not to be true? You dont think it's possible this is a retread of that?
Didn't some guy once say trust but verify?
You are buying an awful lot from the administration at face value these days, RS. Still bleed red, I guess...
$7.5 million to remove tape from marble.
Boy, I hope they put that contract out for bid....I'll win it hands down!
Now they're claiming they'll need $2.75 million for air freshener to knock down the smell of hippies with bad personal hygiene.
"Still bleed red, I guess..."
No, it's more that I bleed respect for law, and order, and democratic governance. I'm all for protesting. Don't be violent, don't harass people who disagree with you, and don't vandalize property. The State Capitol is not a Holiday Inn. When the building closes at 6 p.m., you leave and come back the next day.
If you're an elected official and your house is in session, you show up for work. If you're in the minority, make your arguments well and then sit down and let the process move forward. If people wanted you to have you way, they would have elected more of you than the other team. I felt the same way last session when the GOP was in the minority and I feel the same way now.
The difference between me and, frankly, most of you, is that I'm actually consistent. Most of you look for ways to excuse your own side while bitching when someone else does it. Hypocrisy is truly the bipartisan value.
Sorry, RS, but if your initial response to seeing the $7.5 million figure is "OMG it must be true!!!" your vaunted skepticism is somewhat lacking, implying your "consistency" may be less bulletproof than you think.
Again, it may be accurate. At the same time, given Scott Walker's record of issues with the truth (to say nothing of competence), I'm inclined to take more of a "show me" attitude.
FWIW, I think outsized claims of jobs killed by getting ride of the train were/are dumb and counterproductive (tho i was in favor of the train).
Wouldn't concern troll if I didn't care,
Brew City Brawler
$7.5M? That's a lot of WD-40 and razor blades!
The issue is that you can't clean those surfaces chemically without damaging them. You're talking about porous surfaces that in many instances are nearly 100 years old. Marble, for instance, will be damaged by something as basic as vinegar. It's very possible that all of those surfaces will not only have to be cleaned, but also be entirely repolished to make sure the finish is consistent.
Apparently none of you were in/around Madison when we did this the first time. It took over half a decade to restore the interior of the building. This isn't scraping bubble gum off the floor in your garage.
And to the Brawler, yeah, hopefully they'll bid it out and get a better number. But you know what? Even if it's a million dollars, it's still a million dollars totally wasted because a bunch of people can't show any respect to property that isn't personally theirs. A hundred bucks is too much, frankly.
Manners, respect, and free speech aren't mutually exclusive. Too bad the protesters didn't do a better job of figuring that out. Maybe the next time I have something to say, I'll go to WEAC headquarters and spray paint my thoughts on the side of the building. Free speech, right?
But Jim, see, that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the damage to the building. You don't get to hijack threads and change topics here. Again, that's Owen's blog.
Sorry if you don't like how I roll. But this is my corner of the world, so you can play by my rules or you can watch me delete off-topic comments. You can talk about the vandalism to the building (about which I will entertain many opinions, as you can see above), or not. There is no third option.
Thanks for playing.
I believe the vast majority of the protesters used blue painters' tape specifically to avoid damaging the marble surface. Until the signs have been removed, how can they know whether there is adhesive residue that will require special restoration? I'm skeptical about the estimate, because I think they came up with the number before they had sufficient information.
7.5 million? That's even more than he saved not fixing the facade on that parking ramp in milwaukee county!!
Darn hippies.
@ Ordinary Jill - The "non-damaging" blue tape has resulted in huge chunks of paint being ripped off the walls in over a dozen places in just one northeast hallway here in the capitol.
I hope the $7.5 million estimate includes steam cleaning all of the hearing room furniture that was treated like dorm room futons for the last 2 weeks.
Manners, respect, and free speech aren't mutually exclusive. Too bad the protesters didn't do a better job of figuring that out. Maybe the next time I have something to say, I'll go to WEAC headquarters and spray paint my thoughts on the side of the building. Free speech, right?
One guy intentionally defacing a building with spray paint seems like vandalism. A thousand people taping signs up in the capitol, which turns out to result in damage to state property, not so much.
If you're in the minority, make your arguments well and then sit down and let the process move forward. If people wanted you to have you way, they would have elected more of you than the other team. I felt the same way last session when the GOP was in the minority and I feel the same way now.
Isn't there a legitimate argument to be made that one effect of the budget repair bill (whether intended or not) is to take so much political money away from democrats as to effectively rig "the process"? When they were in the driver's seat, did the dems do anything comparable?
As you eat your crow...there is no real damage or real costs this was about the protesters being a pain in the ass and DOA wanting them gone period. So when you bring me real numbers backing up the 7.5 million dollar claim let me know.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/117409458.html
What crow? My argument in principle remains that even a hundred dollars spent to repair avoidable damage is a hundred dollars wasted because of a lack of bad manners.
At what point did I defend the specific estimate? I'm arguing a principle. You're building straw men - as though because it's less than $7.5MM it's somehow legitimate or okay to damage other people's stuff.
And what's "real damage?" Carpet cleaning, surface repairs, replacing broken door frames, repainting walls apparently does not count in your book.
Also, feel free to read two comments up. By all accounts I've heard from staff and others, there's a fair bit of work to be done. And whatever it costs is too much.
At least the thing we can be grateful for is that this whole debacle on the part of the protesters has compelled DOA to come up with guidelines that groups will have to follow in the future. Sad that it's come to that, but clearly certain people can't be trusted to honor and respect basic notions of decency on their own.
Problem solved...clearly by vandal sympathizers.
So now that Huebsch has backed off in a major way, down by about $7.3 million. We can reflect on how RS was so eager to buy into DOA's obvious propaganda that was little more than a tool to get a favorable ruling from a judge.
But I suppose RS will have some condescending comments about how he was right all along.
Don't be so gullible.
I am right. $200k is $200k too much to spend because people have bad manners.
I'm wondering, If a DOA lawyer testifies in court with numbers that are not true, is that perjury?
No. According to all reports, the number came from an estimate submitted to DOA by an outside firm. Provided Peg Lautenschlager was sober, she'd object to a DOA lawyer testifying personally to the cost of a renovation/repair project because it would fall well outside the witness' own area of expertise. They're no more qualified to make a cost judgment than you or I are.
No doubt that DOA may have asked for an expansive, worst-case scenario type of quote, but that's also well within its right as the caretaker of the facility. Until the protesters were removed and until DOA has an opportunity to have the building comprehensively inspected, an exact number will be difficult to obtain.
Tape residue is not damage and the Painter's Union has volunteered to remove it. This was nothing more than a lot of spin trying to make the protesters look bad.
Is it kind of lame to keep the signs around after the people leave the Capitol?(as cool a display as it is) Possibly, but Huebsch and co. really gave out quite the self-inflicted wound here.
These people tried some kind of alarmist culture-war garbage that has no relevance to anyone under 60and/or who lives outside of the 262. Now they've been caught in a lie, and probably purjured themselves and given another credibility hit to an administration that may already be damaged beyond repair.
Bigger than that, WHY LIE ABOUT THE COST when we know these things are public record and have to be checked. Seriously, how low an opinion do the Walker folks have of the common citizen that they don't realize they won't be figured out and ridiculed for making such an absurd statement. It's like Scotty's layoff threats when there are thousands of unfilled positions.
RS,
You are drowning in the Kool-Aid again.
First, making an issue out of this particular matter should be so far down the list of possible points of discussion regarding the budget repair bill and its related protests that it should have never been worth your time to post.
Second, lumping the peaceful protests and the wonderfully nice citizens of Wisconsin in with "lefty protestors at G-20 summits" and their batshit crazy antics is simply dishonest.
Third, your refusal to even acknowledge that the force of your argument is admittedly a bit less dominant when $7.5 million turns into $347,500 is simply stubborn. Instead of your usual insight from the playground, it smells of typical right wing (and left wing) stubbornness to simply back off when the actual facts do not fit your pre-arranged point.
Fourth, the DOA was not making your argument, where even $200,000 makes the same (less sensationalist) point. They were throwing around a huge number in court. Do you honestly believe there would not have been a change in strategy if their number was $347,500 instead of $7.5 million. Do you think it would have garnered this much attention from you and the media?
Finally, looking at the JS article we now see much of that number came from $25/sq. ft. at 240,000 square feet. That's absurd. Let's assume that for every poster hanging, there is 1 square foot of tape touching the marble. This is an incredibly generous assumption because I could hang a poster where only 3"x3" of tape touch the marble at each corner, meaning 0.25 square feet total for all four corners. So, assuming a generous 1 sq. ft. per poster (meaning a whopping 6"x6" of tape is touching marble at each of the four corners of the poster), that would imply there are 240,000 posters taped to the walls of the capitol. 240,000. Really? We both know there are not a quarter-million posters in the capitol. And, with my handy taping it would actually imply 920,000 posters are taped up in the capitol.
Of course, why am I even going down this rabbit hole? The likes of MSNBC, Fox News, and the DOA just toss around "facts" with no reasonable objective basis in reality. If I ignore the facts then I just allow the narrative to continue unabated. If I try to challenge the facts I just wind up in a wasteful truthiness-spiral wherein we are not discussing any actual, meaningful issues, and instead calculating the square footage of tape used to post a sign.
Speaking of using "facts" to fit a narrative; I really need to get out of here and relax. Maybe someplace warm. You know, with palm trees, like Madison, Wisconsin.
Fuck this whole system if fucked up.
"Just hold your damn sign. Is it really that hard?"
Quite a few words have been written here, yet I don't think anyone has attempted to answer this question yet.
Are the signs really really heavy or something?
Anon,
It is not that "hard" to hold my damn sign. It's just that it would smudge ink all over my fingers. And, given their complex chemical and biological makeup, it would cost $42,375 to clean up the damage done to my fingers.
That would be the Old Spice High Endurance Body Wash -- Government Bureaucracy Edition, which can only be applied with a special loofa (or falafel) made from the individually plucked hairs of baby emperor penguins.
In this tight economy, I just don't have that kind of cash to spare. So wall+tape it is. And besides, my hands are preoccupied tightening my own belt so we can offset all these additional business tax credits.
It's not an unrealistic estimate: Do you have any idea how much it costs to get Koch Industries consultants just to come look at blue tape?
I love that the Painter's Union is going to volunteer to clean up and repair damage... Are you telling me they wouldn't raise holy h@!! if someone walked into thier shop and volunteered to do anything, lest they lose out on some overtime pay. Capitol maintenance staff should tell them, "Thanks, but no thanks," and file a grievance for them so much as suggesting they volunteer to pick up a paint brush.
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