By signing Executive Order #45 this morning, Scott Walker called a special session of the legislature beginning tomorrow. Entitled "Back to Work Special Session," the proposals to be taken up by the legislature concern "Access to Capital, Regulatory Streamlining, Workforce Development, Tax Relief, Transportation and Infrastructure, Litigation Certainty."

Or in plain English: Public money for private companies, gutting environmental protections, dumbing down public education, tax breaks for the wealthy, lax regulations for the trucking industry, and gutting consumer protections in the court system. Many of these bills resemble ALEC templates crafted at the group's New Orleans conference this past August.

Just like Walker is doing with education reform initiatives, he's getting some of the more conservative Democrats' proposals in the mix as the pretext for saying that it is a bipartisan effort.

“It is an abuse of power to talk about job creation and bipartisanship as a cover for advancing a partisan agenda that rewards Republican donors and special interests at the expense of Wisconsin’s working, middle-class families,” said Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca in a press conference today.

Barca also suspected that Walker and Republican legislators are trying once again to limit public involvement.

“Republicans have continually passed bills in extraordinary or special sessions that deny the public their right to participation in this process,” he said. “Gov. Walker used his first special session to ram through an agenda that polarized, divided and distracted the state. This second special session appears to be largely another political ploy to ram through favors to special interests by denying the public the right to participate.”

Rebecca Kemble is an Anthropologist who studied decolonization in Kenya. She serves on the Board of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and as the President of the Dane County TimeBank.