And Without Even As Much As A Thank You

Late Friday night/early Saturday morning, I wrote a post about how Scott Walker's irresponsible and unnecessary union busting bill was costing the state tax payers a bundle of money:

If Walker and his cronies follow their usual pattern, they will be hiring some very expensive private law firm to defend the state in this lawsuit as well. With the fees being charged by these attorneys, defending against three different lawsuits, the bills are going to rack up pretty quickly. And guess you gets to pay for it...

That's right, tax payers like you and me who are barely making ends meet (if we're lucky).

You know, for a non-fiscal bill that doesn't do a thing to save tax payers a dime, this thing is getting pretty damn expensive. It would have been much less expensive if Walker had just sat down like a true leader would have and negotiated the cuts with the unions. Any money that he could even imagine of claiming he saved tax payers will be eaten up by the legal fees he's accruing.

Sure enough, twenty-four hours later, here comes the local paper with that same story:

So far this year, two firms with strong Republican connections have racked up more than $700,000 in invoices and payments authorized by Gov. Scott Walker and GOP lawmakers to help represent the state in cases such as legal challenges over Walker's legislation ending most collective bargaining for public employees.

More payments on the ongoing cases and another likely case are still to come, as Walker considers a request by the Department of Justice to appoint one of the firms to represent the state in a federal lawsuit over redistricting legislation.

The Troupis Law Office and the firm of Michael Best & Friedrich, with partners who include Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, have received special counsel contracts from Walker paying up to $300 an hour along with legislative contracts worth up to $395 an hour. As was the case when Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle awarded special counsel contracts that in one tribal gambling case came to $1.5 million, the latest Walker contracts haven't included the same kind of formal competitive bidding requirements in place for many other large state contracts.

Of course, if you talk to them about this, they'll say they've been working on it for a while.

But another question is of even more importance: How many more of these story need to be brought to the light of day before even conservatives have to admit that Walker is corrupt?