Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Last week I wrote up a post titled Scott Walker: A Fiscally Responsible Governor or a Politician Who Is Playing Favorites?. Judging from the number of comments left at that post, it appears that people are very interested in what’s been going on in the state of Wisconsin. I think many people may believe that as Wisconsin goes—so goes the nation…and probably the life expectancy of labor unions and collective bargaining.
What got a lot of press attention was the story of the prank phone call that Governor Walker received from gonzo journalist Ian Murphy. Murphy pretended to be billionaire industrialist David Koch. He talked to Walker for twenty minutes. Murphy reportedly told the Associated Press he made the prank phone call in order to show how candid Walker would be in a conversation with Koch at a time when Democrats claim the governor was refusing to return their calls.
The prank phone call appears to show a cozy relationship between Walker and Koch, a top campaign donor who may have a financial interest in fighting unions. Union workers protesting in Wisconsin have already made monetary concessions to help with Wisconsin’s budget shortfall. One has to wonder what is really behind the governor’s demand that public employee unions be stripped of their right to bargain collectively. Is it all part of an agenda to “take unions out at the knees”—a strategy suggested by Scott Hagerstrom at the annual conference of the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC)? Hagerstrom is the Executive Director of Michigan’s chapter of Americans for Prosperity (AFP).
In a Mother Jones article, Andy Kroll writes: Walker’s plan to eviscerate collective bargaining rights for public employees is right out of the Koch brothers’ playbook. Koch-backed groups like Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Reason Foundation have long taken a very antagonistic view toward public-sector unions.
And who is Americans for Prosperity? Felicia Sonmez has written that AFP is really two groups—both of which were founded by David Koch in 2004: Americans for Prosperity, a 501(c)4 and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, is a 501(c)3.
Somnez says that both groups are considered “not-for-profit” organizations under the Internal Revenue Service code—and that they do not have to disclose the identity of their donors or the contributions made by those donors. She added that David Koch is believed to be one of the group’s top donors.
In a New Yorker article titled Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama, Jane Mayer wrote about Peggy Venable, the Texas State Director of AFP: She (Peggy Venable) explained that the role of Americans for Prosperity was to help “educate” Tea Party activists on policy details, and to give them “next-step training” after their rallies, so that their political energy could be channelled “more effectively.” And she noted that Americans for Prosperity had provided Tea Party activists with lists of elected officials to target. She said of the Kochs, “They’re certainly our people. David’s the chairman of our board. I’ve certainly met with them, and I’m very appreciative of what they do.”
In August 2009, ThinkProgress said that it had obtained an exclusive memo from a Tea Party group that is supported by Koch’s Americans for Prosperity.
From Think Progress: “The memo outlined various ways for Tea Party activists to intimidate Democratic lawmakers and disrupt their town hall meetings on health reform. ThinkProgress published half a dozen articles exposing the role of Koch-funded groups like “Patients United” in encouraging opposition to health reform. For instance, in Virginia, a Koch-funded operative Ben Marchi assisted a birther who followed Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA) around, yelling at him at town hall meetings.”
That’s all I’ve got for now, folks. Talk amongst yourselves. I need a break!
**********
Sources
Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama. (New Yorker)
Who is “Americans for Prosperity”? (Washington Post)
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: Funded by the Koch Bros. (Mother Jones)
Why did Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker take a call from ‘David Koch’? (Christian Science Monitor)
Billionaire Brothers’ Money Plays Role in Wisconsin Dispute (New York Times)
On prank call, Wis. governor discusses strategy (Yahoo)
Koch Front Group Americans For Prosperity: ‘Take The Unions Out At The Knees’ (Think Progress)
Union Busting: The Real Call from the Koch Brothers (Huffington Post)
Charles And David Koch Exposed For Insidious Role In Crafting The Modern Right (Think Progress)
For Further Reading
Koch-Powered Tea Party Pushes Climate Denial Bill In New Hampshire (Think Progress)
Commentary: Koch brothers and the union-busting Kansas House (The Kansas City Star)
Thanks, Buddha and Buckeye!
Tea Party hugger Pat Buchanan in today’s paper:
Barack Hussein Alinsky 22 Feb
By Patrick J. Buchanan
“As a large and furious demonstration was under way outside and inside the Capitol in Madison last week, Barack Obama invited in a TV camera crew from Milwaukee and proceeded to fan the flames.
Dropping the mask of The Great Compromiser, Obama reverted to his role as South Chicago community organizer, charging Gov. Scott Walker and the Wisconsin legislature with an “assault on unions.”
As the late Saul Alinsky admonished in his “Rules for Radicals,” “the community organizer … must first rub raw the resentments of the people; fan the latent hostilities to the point of overt expression.”
After Obama goaded the demonstrators, the protests swelled. All 14 Democratic state senators fled to Illinois to paralyze the upper chamber by denying it a quorum. Teachers went on strike, left kids in the classroom and came to Madison. Schools shut down.
Jesse Jackson arrived. The White House political machine went into overdrive to sustain the crowds in Madison and other capitals and use street pressure to break governments seeking to peel back the pay, perks, privileges and power of public employee unions that are the taxpayer-subsidized armies of the Democratic Party.
Marin County millionairess Nancy Pelosi, doing a poor imitation of Emma Goldman, announced, “I stand in solidarity with the Wisconsin workers fighting for their rights, especially for all the students and young people leading the charge.”
Is this not the same lady who called Tea Partiers “un-American” for “drowning out opposing views”? Is not drowning out opposing views exactly what those scores of thousands are doing in Madison, banging drums inside the state Capitol?
Some carried signs comparing Walker to Hitler, Mussolini and Mubarak. One had a placard with the face of Walker in the cross hairs of a rifle sight. Major media seemed uninterested. These signs didn’t comport with their script.
In related street action, protesters, outraged over Congress’ oversight of the D.C. budget, showed up at John Boehner’s residence on Capitol Hill to abuse the speaker at his home.
And so the great battle of this generation is engaged.”
More here:
http://buchanan.org/blog/barack-hussein-alinsky-4611
Sounds like the right-wing is getting desparate now that the wizards’ curtain has fallen.
Koch Industries Fails to Disclose Offshore Tax Avoidance
By Daniel Zoltai
Found at: http://ecobserver.blogspot.com/2009/10/koch-industries-fails-to-disclose.html – a blog run out of Hungary by student journalists.
The column reads:
The IRS Voluntary Disclosure Program for US persons who have not properly reported their non-US bank and other financial accounts and offshore structures, such as foreign trusts and companies controlled by US persons ended on October 15, 2009.
In the last week, Democrat Senator Carl Levin has offered his Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act as an amendment to the Senate Finance Committee’s healthcare bill, bringing the issue of tax haven abuse back to the table just after the close of the IRS program, a move that is supported by Barack Obama.
With current reports detailing thousands of individuals coming forward to declare their offshore assets, there has been little disclosure made by major corporations. While public corporations are fairly transparent and often show up in examples of tax haven abuse, privately held corporations are much more likely to hide behind a veil of secrecy and employ complex off-shore structures in order to avoid taxes.
Take the example of Koch Industries. This the largest privately held conglomerate on the planet, employing approximately 70,000 people worldwide with annual revenues exceeding $100 billion. Their financials are kept strictly confidential and they do not disclose information about their management structure and activities. Koch is known to be aggressive with their tax avoidance strategies, having sued the IRS for $20 million in 2006 claiming that their tax refund was not correct. Public documents available on the Luxembourg government website, Legilux.lu, reveal that Koch operates a complex system of offshore companies and accounts in order to avoid paying US taxes on huge sums of corporate profits. Out of his Kansas office, Global Tax Director for Koch Industries, Craig M. Munson, manages these offshore corporations with the assistance of a shady Luxembourg company, ATOZ s.a., whose partners are primarily former Arthur Anderson staffers – the tax advisory giant that ceased to exist as a result of their felony conviction in the Enron “off-shore and off-balance sheet” debt scandal of 2002.
With the help of his offshore tax avoidance experts at ATOZ, Mr. Munson has set up a network of companies under the brand name “KoSa” that are used to move and consolidate funds offshore in order to avoid taxes. Some of the companies include “KoSa Foreign Investments” which was formed in June 2009 with over $1.8 billion in capital and “KoSa Luxembourg” which in August of this year declared a capital of over 520 million Euros. There are also vehicle companies such as “KoSa US Receivables Company” which declared a capital of nearly $185 million in August and “KoSa Canada Receivables Company” with a capital of nearly $35 million. These companies, and several others in the “KoSa” structures set up by Mr. Munson and his ATOZ facilitators are shells with no employees or physical operations. They are all incorporated under the “s.a.r.l.” status which has light reporting and governance requirements and is normally used for small businesses. When the sums involved are significant, such as the case here, the use of an “s.a.r.l.” is often cover for money laundering or tax avoidance schemes. In this case, it appears that these companies exist for no reason other than to avoid the payment of taxes. This is not the first time that Mr. Munson’s Luxembourg companies are involved in nefarious activity. In 2002, Arteva s.a.r.l., a Luxembourg company doing business as “KoSa” with Mr. Munson named as manager, was sued by the United States and plead guilty to charges of criminal price fixing.
A government source, wishing to remain anonymous due to direct proximity with the issue, has confirmed that the IRS will be investigating the matter.
Buckeye,
That might be more than just a kick.
That might be the Best. Day. Ever.
Hey, Eric Holder!
You may not have the spine to go after traitors who were/are politicians, but how about a prosecution of business criminals who settled a civil suit?
Even you should be able to win that one, Jelly Bones.
Wouldn’t it be a kick if Madison WI brought down the Koch family, two Supreme Court justices, and the Citizens United decision all in one fell swoop? I’ll bet AG Holder and the President are conferencing big time.
You don’t settle for $25 million if you aren’t guilty of the crime.
This ought to make the trolls come out from under the bridge:
😉
The Roots of Stalin in the Tea Party Movement
The Koch family, America’s biggest financial backers of the Tea Party, would not be the billionaires they are today were it not for the godless empire of the USSR.
By Yasha Levine
(April 17, 2010)
http://www.alternet.org/story/146504/
The Tea Party movement’s dirty little secret is that its chief financial backers owe their family fortune to the granddaddy of all their hatred: Stalin’s godless empire of the USSR. The secretive oil billionaires of the Koch family, the main supporters of the right-wing groups that orchestrated the Tea Party movement, would not have the means to bankroll their favorite causes had it not been for the pile of money the family made working for the Bolsheviks in the late 1920s and early 1930s, building refineries, training Communist engineers and laying down the foundation of Soviet oil infrastructure.
The comrades were good to the Kochs. Today Koch Industries has grown into the second-largest private company in America. With an annual revenue of $100 billion, the company was just $6.3 billion shy of first place in 2008. Ownership is kept strictly in the family, with the company being split roughly between brothers Charles and David Koch, who are worth about $20 billion apiece and are infamous as the largest sponsors of right-wing causes. They bankroll scores of free-market and libertarian think tanks, institutes and advocacy groups. Greenpeace estimates that the Koch family shelled out $25 million from 2005 to 2008 funding the “climate denial machine,” which means they outspent Exxon Mobile three to one.
I first learned about the Kochs in February 2009, when my colleague Mark Ames and I were looking into the strange origins of the then-nascent Tea Party movement. Our investigation led us again and again to a handful of right-wing advocacy groups directly tied to the Kochs. We were the first to connect the dots and debunk the Tea Party movement’s “grassroots” front, exposing it as billionaire-backed astroturf campaign run by free-market advocacy groups FreedomWorks and Americans For Prosperity, both of which are closely linked to the Koch brothers.
But the Tea Party movement — and the Koch family’s obscene wealth — go back more than half a century, all the way to grandpa Fredrick C. Koch, one of the founding members of the far-right John Birch Society which was convinced that socialism was taking over America through unions, colored people, Jews, homosexuals, the Kennedys and even Dwight D. Eisenhower.
These days, the Kochs paint themselves as true-believer Libertarians of the Austrian School. Charles Koch, the elder brother who runs the family business in Wichita, Kansas, quotes the wisdom of proto-libertarian “economist” Ludwig von Mises, but also sees himself as an economist in his own right. In 2007, Charles made his contribution to the body of free-market thought with an economic theory he calls “Market-Based Management” (a term he trademarked).
David Koch is the highbrow brother who lives in New York. He ran as the Libertarian party candidate for president in 1980 and says his dream is to “minimize the role of government, to maximize the role of private economy and to maximize personal freedoms.” Apparently everyone’s a free-market enthusiast at Koch Industries, including its spokeswoman, who recently wrote a letter to the New York Times stating that “it’s a historical fact that economic freedom best fosters innovation, environmental protection and improved quality of life in a society.” It might be true somewhere for someone, but not for the Kochs — they owe it all to socialism and totalitarianism.
Here is a better historical fact, one that the Kochs don’t like to repeat in public: the family’s initial wealth was not created by the harsh, creative forces of unfettered capitalism, but by the grace of the centrally planned economy of the Soviet Union. The Koch family, America’s biggest pushers of the free-market Tea Party revolution, would not be the billionaires they are today were it not for the whim of one of Stalin’s comrades.
**********
Today, it [Koch Industies] operates thousands of miles of pipelines in the United States, refines 800,000 barrels of crude oil daily, buys and sells the most asphalt in the nation, is among the top 10 cattle producers, and is among the 50 largest landowners. Koch Industries also poured hundreds of millions of dollars into right-wing organizations like Institute for Humane Studies, the Cato Institute, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the Bill of Rights Institute, the Reason Foundation, Citizens for a Sound Economy and the Federalist Society — all of them promoting the usual billionaire-friendly ideas of the free market, deregulation and smaller government.
If that expansion looks too fast to be legit, that’s because it was.
William Koch, the third brother who had a falling-out with Charles and David back in the ’80s over Charles’ sociopathic management style, appeared on “60 Minutes” in November 2000 to tell the world that Koch Industries was a criminal enterprise: “It was – was my family company. I was out of it,” he says. “But that’s what appalled me so much… I did not want my family, my legacy, my father’s legacy to be based upon organized crime.”
Charles Koch’s racket was very simple, explained William. With its extensive oil pipe network, Koch Industries’ role as an oil middleman–it buys crude from someone’s well and sells it to a refinery–makes it easy to steal millions of dollars worth of oil by skimming just a little off the top of each transaction, or what they call “cheating measurements” in the oil trade. According to William, wells located on federal and Native American lands were the prime targets of the Koch scam.
“What Koch was doing was taking all these measurements and then falsifying them on the run sheets,” said Bill Koch. “If the dipstick measured five feet 10 inches and one half inch, they would write down five feet nine and one half inches.”
That may not sound like much, but Bill Koch said it added up. “Well, that was the beauty of the scheme. Because if they’re buying oil from 50,000 different people, and they’re stealing two barrels from each person. What does that add up to? One year, their data showed they stole a million and a half barrels of oil.”
In 1999, William decided to take his brothers down. He sued Koch Industries in civil court under the False Claims Act, which allows whistleblowers to file suit on behalf of the federal government. William Koch accused the company of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars in oil from federal lands.
The band of brothers settled the case two years later, with Charles agreeing to pay $25 million in penalties to the federal government to have the suit dismissed. It turned out to be a great deal for Charles and David, considering that in the 1980s their “adjustments” allowed Koch Industries to siphon off 300 million gallons of oil without paying. It was pure profit–free money–to the tune of $230 million.
At the trial, 50 former Koch gaugers testified against the company, some in video depositions. They said employees even had a term for cheating on the measurements. “We in the company referred to it as the Koch Method because it was a system for cheating the producer out of oil,” said one of the gaugers, Mark Wilson.
Ah, finally! Have we stumbled onto the secret to the family’s success? At the bottom of it all, is the Koch Method that funds all the libertarians nothing but old-fashioned theft? Or, as Koch hero Ludwig von Mises might ask, “Is the Koch Method just an unceasing sequence of single thefts?”
Elaine,
Holy crap! 1-2 million?!
From Bloomberg
Koch Funneled $1.2 Million to Governors Battling Unions
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-23/koch-funneled-1-2-million-to-elect-governors-battling-unions.html
I see the shill, Maor (or is is Roam) is back. Can I ask a question? How much do they pay you to post comments in blogs? Do you get paid by the hour or for piecework? I realize you probably will not see this, since your work is more hit and run. Post but not read or engage.
Bad news, troll. I support free markets and I’m a democratic socialist and Jeffersonian Constitutionalist. So what’s your point? Free markets are a tool and like all tools they can and will be misused. The Koch’s idea of a free market is free for them and screw everybody else. The Koch’s are fascists and demonstrably so by their actions.
Fascists always lose in the end. It’s just a matter of how much damage they do before they are stopped. For examples, see Nazi Germany, Italy under Mussolini, Spain under Franco and Chile under Pinochet.
And say what you want about Soros. He can and does think about other people instead of just focusing on his pocketbook. Unlike you venal Koch suckers.
Enjoy your impending doom.
It’ll happen.
I know this because history tells me so.
Two stories from last last year (October and September respectively) in re Koch Industries tax status:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/10/obama_admin_statements_on_koch_industry_tax_status.php
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/koch-industries-lawyer-white-house-how-did-you-get-our-tax-information-1
So what? The Koch’s support free markets, big deal. Soros supports communist/socialist fronts.
You think we dont do the same? You think people like us are just going to sit back and surrender our country and let you run things?
From Boing Boing
Infographic on the relationship between the Koch Bros and Scott Walker
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/27/infographic-on-the-r.html
from The Cap Times (2/23/2011)
Koch brothers quietly open lobbying office in downtown Madison
http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_7e8aa25a-3ec0-11e0-9923-001cc4c03286.html
Excerpt:
The group has had a lobbying presence in the state before, with four contracted lobbyists from Hamilton Consulting billing just over $97,000 for services during the 2009-11 legislative session, according to the GAB. Three of those lobbyists — Amy Boyer, Andrew Engel and Robert Fassbender — are now joined also by Ray Carey, Jason Childress, Kathleen Walby and Jeffrey Schoepke.
The lobbyists for Koch Companies Public Sector registered with the state on January 5, two days after Walker’s inauguration.
The expanded lobbying effort by the Koch brothers in Wisconsin raises red flags in particular because of a little discussed provision in Walker’s repair bill that would allow Koch Industries and other private companies to purchase state-owned power plants in no-bid contracts.
“It’s curious that the Kochs have apparently expanded their lobbying presence just as Walker was sworn into office and immediately before a budget was unveiled that would allow the executive branch unilateral power to sell off public utilities in this state in no-bid contracts,” says Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy.
A little background on where the Koch family philosophy comes from. The old man, Frederick C. Koch, who along with Robert Welch, was one of the founders of the John Birch Society. The headquarters of that organization is located in Grand Chute, Wisconsin.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch_Family_Foundations
The more I learn about this family, the more unsavory they become.
From Reuters (2/26/2011)
Analysis: Koch brothers a force in anti-union effort
By Andrew Stern
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/26/us-usa-wisconsin-koch-idUSTRE71P28W20110226
Excerpt:
LIBERTARIAN STALWARTS
Among the basic tenets of libertarianism — smaller government, less regulation, and lower taxes — is anti-unionism, and the Koch brothers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to buttress the movement since the 1960s.
But the timing for the union squeeze may have more to do with the emergence over the past two years of the populist Tea Party, which lifted like-minded candidates into office in 2010 and provided foot soldiers for the libertarian movement.
“This is all a wave of political belief that the Kochs unquestionably have funded in various ways for years and years and years,” said Brian Doherty, editor of Reason Magazine, published by one of several think tanks funded by Koch money.
“Calling that manipulating, (saying they are) calling the shots, seems a silly, conspiratorial mind-set,” he said.
Walker and Kasich voice elements of the libertarian view, looking to gain from the money and votes it attracts.
Union supporters argue Walker and other Republicans are doing the Kochs’ bidding, suspicious the billionaires want to promote their business interests and curb government regulation.
Greenpeace has ranked Koch Industries among the top 10 U.S. polluters, and Koch-funded think tanks produce research papers arguing against climate change and environmental regulation.
From The Center for Public Integrity
Politics of Oil
Koch’s Low Profile Belies Political Power
Private oil company does both business and politics with the shades drawn
http://projects.publicintegrity.org/oil/report.aspx?aid=347
Excerpt:
By Bob Williams and Kevin Bogardus
WASHINGTON, July 15, 2004 — Koch Industries could be the biggest oil company you have never heard of—unless, that is, you hang around the halls of government in Washington.
Koch Industries (pronounced “coke”) is a huge oil conglomerate controlled by brothers Charles and David Koch, two of the country’s richest men and among the biggest backers of conservative and libertarian causes. With estimated revenue of about $40 billion last year, Koch is bigger than Microsoft, Merrill Lynch and AT&T.
Koch is the leading campaign contributor among oil and gas companies for the 2004 election cycle, giving $587,000 so far. Next came Valero Energy at $568,000.
Since 1998, Koch is the fourth biggest campaign oil and gas industry giver, behind ChevronTexaco, El Paso Corp. and Enron Corp.
Despite its size and political largesse, Koch is able to dodge the limelight because it is privately-held, meaning that nearly all of its business dealings are known primarily only by the company and the Internal Revenue Service. In fact, it is the second largest private company in the country, trailing only food processing giant Cargill.
Koch also prefers to operate in private when it comes to politics and government.
Although it is both a top campaign contributor and spends millions on direct lobbying, Koch’s chief political influence tool is a web of interconnected, right-wing think tanks and advocacy groups funded by foundations controlled and supported by the two Koch brothers.
Among those groups are some of the country’s most prominent conservative and libertarian voices including the Cato Institute, the Reason Foundation, Citizens for a Sound Economy and the Federalist Society. All regularly beat the drum in official Washington for the causes the Koch’s hold dear—minimal government, deregulation, and free market economics.
For the Kochs, conservative and libertarian views are a family tradition. Fred Koch, who founded the company’s predecessor in 1940, helped establish the ultra right-wing John Birch Society.
Some of Koch’s other political activities have been less exotic, but no less controversial.
For example, Charles Koch found himself under investigation by the U.S. Senate for his alleged role in funding so-called “issue ads” that helped conservative Republican congressional candidates in 1996.
Even critics seem awed by the Kochs’ ability to shape policy so effectively without drawing much attention to themselves.
“It’s astounding that so few people have ever heard of a family this rich and powerful and aggressive when it comes to policy and politics,” says Jeff Krehely, deputy director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, who co-authored a recent study on conservative think tanks, including those funded by the Kochs. “When you talk about Koch, most folks think you are talking about the soft drink company.”
Koch Industries did not respond to repeated phone calls and emails requesting interviews for this report.
David Koch, who ran for vice president on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1980, in an interview with National Journal, has described his philosophy this way: “My overall concept is to minimize the role of government and to maximize the role of the private economy to maximize personal freedoms.”
From Huffington Post (2/27/2011)
Dick Durbin At Pro-Union Rally In Chicago: Walker Trying To ‘Destroy A Basic American Right’ (VIDEO)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/26/dick-durbin-at-pro-union-_n_828731.html
Excerpt:
On Saturday, Chicagoans joined the chorus of protesters across the country to support union members in Wisconsin and other states who are fighting to keep their bargaining rights.
More than 1,000 people reportedly turned out at the afternoon Thompson Center rally, chanting “Save the American Dream.”
Demonstrators gathered elsewhere in Illinois as well. Hundreds of union supporters rallied in Springfield Saturday afternoon.
“If they bust the unions up (in Wisconsin), it’s a matter of time before they bust the unions up here,” laid-off Illinois electrician Rich Bonzani told the Chicago Tribune. “It’s an assault on the middle class.”
Sen. Dick Durbin was one of several speakers to address the Chicago crowd, and slammed Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s plan to strip about 170,000 of Wisconsin’s public employees of their collective bargaining rights. Walker has defended the move as a way to fill a budget gap.
“Governor Walker’s agenda in Wisconsin goes way beyond the budget. He’s trying to destroy a basic American right,” Durbin said at the rally, according to ABC Chicago.
Durbin also told the crowd that senators fleeing Wisconsin in an effort to stop the legislation would always be welcome in Illinois.