Bar talk, with Rep. Robin Vos, Sen. Mike Ellis and Glen Grothman, caught on video. Thanks to Rock Netroots for blogging this breaking story.
If you can, in some way, contribute and fill in some of the blanks, we'd love to hear from you. There are some passages that are inaudible and not noted here. This is what I've been able to pick up:
Grothman: "What are you going to do about venture capital?"School vouchers is the subject matter here, and going after the Green Bay district next:
Vos: "Well, there is a way to find $200 million in venture capital.
Mike Ellis: "I'd like to hear this..."
Sen. Sheila Harsdorf: "Don't they know that's a part of the state that wants (unclear)"
Grothman or Ellis: "I talked to Robin Vos last night, and he's gonna get it done without amendments. (unclear)...Fitzgerald...(said?)...'Well, my brother doesn't know if he can get enough votes.' I thought, you little bastard you...Fitzgerald brothers are the biggest grifters in the west, they play the odds, they play against each other and then they blame each other. And that's how they get...(unclear).
Ellis: "It was fucked up. So we voted for a bill we didn't like, or I didn't like, votes so we could get it, so Racine could get it...You know I'm not affraid. You're going to be running (unclear), and if you need to use the Democrats, use them."From WBAY, looks like Sen. Ellis is trying to explain...the unexplainable:
Ellis: "We've got some great school districts in the Fox Valley, the only one getting close to the margins is the Green Bay area, that's not even the Green Bay school district, it's target schools, because of the demographic disbursment. You've got Preble out there because of all the poor people. So what we need to do, when we're done with this bill, is modify it so that a segment of the school district may move into the program. (unclear)...Green Bay east is fine, west is fine, Preble is a sewer...they got the poverty possum, we need to not make it the entire school district, we need to make that Preble, that geographic quadrant, they are illegible like Milwaukee is for a voucher program."
State Senator Mike Ellis is under fire after he was caught calling Green Bay Preble High School "a sewer." Looking into the camera, Ellis said, "I feel it's an invasion of privacy, but that doesn't deny the fact that I made a bad choice using Preble, and I'm deeply sorry for it." Ellis's apology didn't stop Green Bay Preble parents and students from speaking out about the video. Teachers, students, and parents we spoke with say they're absolutely outraged by the senator's comments and they have no idea why he would say such a thing. A crowd of hundreds turned out at the school's library to show their solidarity and school pride Thursday afternoon. "We were quite devastated by this a lot of us. Didn't sleep well last night. We couldn't believe that one of our elected officials, someone who's in charge of coordinating millions of dollars to decide which schools they should go to, would be saying this about a school like ours," teacher Jeff Kline said.
Late Thursday afternoon, the Green Bay Area Public School District and school board released a joint statement calling Ellis's remarks "grossly insulting to the Preble students, parents, staff, and the entire Preble neighborhood … Using inflammatory, inaccurate language about our families living in poverty appears to be nothing short of an attack, not only on the Preble neighborhood but on the wider Green Bay community."
Senator Ellis responded, "Absolutely, it's a bad choice of words; I should have used a different word.
Why should Ellis have picked another word, when the one he used was the one he intended? Nice to know what our elected Republican representatives are thinking, isn't it?
Maybe that $200M is coming to Walker's campaign. Kidding. but nothing would surprise me.
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