Turns out Walker has something else in common with Reagan - He makes stuff up! This is from Gail Collins, in the NYTimes. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/14/opini ... 11292&_r=0

Lately, the big star in the race for the Republican presidential nomination has been Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin. He gave a rip-roaring speech at a conservative confab in Iowa last month, and it’s been his moment ever since.

Unless the moment ended this week when Walker went to London on an alleged trade mission and refused to say whether he believes in evolution. Or pretty much anything.

“For me, commenting on foreign policy or, in this case, economic policy in a country where you’re a visitor is not the politest of things,” he told a BBC journalist.

Who knows how that will fly with the Republican base? Maybe they’re dying for a president who’ll go on an international trip and confine his remarks to the virtues of Wisconsin cheese.

Continue reading the main story
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Gov. Scott WalkerEditorial: Gov. Walker’s ‘Drafting Error’ FEB. 6, 2015
But about that Iowa speech: It was really a rouser. Basically, Walker talked about the “comprehensive conservative common-sense conservative agenda” he’s imposed on Wisconsin. His common-sense examples included making it easier for people to carry lethal weapons around the state and defunding the main organization that helps low-income Wisconsin women with family planning.

Mainly, though, The Speech was about waging war on public employee unions, particularly the ones for teachers. “In 2010, there was a young woman named Megan Sampson who was honored as the outstanding teacher of the year in my state. And not long after she got that distinction, she was laid off by her school district,” said Walker, lacing into teacher contracts that require layoffs be done by seniority.

All of that came as a distinct surprise to Claudia Felske, a member of the faculty at East Troy High School who actually was named a Wisconsin Teacher of the Year in 2010. In a phone interview, Felske said she still remembers when she got the news at a “surprise pep assembly at my school.” As well as the fact that those layoffs happened because Walker cut state aid to education.

Actually, Wisconsin names four teachers of the year, none of which has ever been Megan Sampson, who won an award for first-year English teachers given by a nonprofit group. But do not blame any of this on Sampson, poor woman, who was happily working at a new school in 2011 when Walker made her the star victim in an anti-union opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal. At the time, she expressed a strong desire not to be used as a “poster child for this political agenda,” and you would think that after that the governor would leave her alone. Or at least stop saying she was teacher of the year.

When it comes to education, Walker seems prone toward this sort of intellectual hiccup. Just recently, he released a proposed budget that would have changed the University of Wisconsin’s mission statement by eliminating the bits about “the search for truth,” educating people and serving society, in favor of the educational goal of meeting “the state’s work force needs.” When all hell broke loose, Walker blamed that one on a drafting error.

“Is this a pattern?” teacher-of-the-year Felske wondered.

The budget also contains another interesting education idea that Walker has yet to blame on inept typists. He wants to change the way teachers are licensed. Basically, the plan would be to let people with “real-life experience” just take a test to demonstrate that they knew their subject matter. It appears to require no training whatsoever in the actual art of teaching.

“Teaching is more than just knowing stuff,” protested Tony Evers, the state superintendent of public instruction. “It is an extraordinarily complex skill.” You may not be surprised to hear that in Wisconsin, the superintendent of education is not appointed by the governor. Evers was elected on his own, and his office is extremely unhappy about Walker’s new plan.

“We don’t know the origins of this idea. It wasn’t discussed,” said John Johnson, a spokesman for the superintendent. “We’re requiring more rigor of our students, but this certainly seems like a decrease in the rigor we require of our teachers.”

The idea could very well become law, whether the educators like it or not, since the Wisconsin Legislature often makes policy changes as part of the budget. We will have to let Wisconsinites worry about that.

But it gives us a fresh look at the wave of attacks on teachers’ unions around the country. We definitely do not want to protect incompetent or lazy teachers. On the other hand, if you believe that teaching is a skill that it takes years of practice to master, you also do not want to encourage politicians to save money by canning the most expensive and most experienced teachers.

Not a problem for Scott Walker. His view of teaching is apparently that anybody can do it. Just the way anybody can be president. As long as they don’t make you talk about evolution.

Anybody can get the paperwork to be a "teacher". It's one of the easiest degrees to get.
It is also one of the most difficult professions at which to excel let alone achieve an acceptable level of compentency.
Here, in Nova Scotia, over hal leave the profession within the first five years and pursue other careers, most of them because they aren't very good at it.

I have often posted about my new profound respect for teachers since I've been involved with elementary education on both a tutoring and an operations level ~ how teachers hold it together given everything they are faced with and responsible for has driven "good teaching" to an art form ~ that is something that is obviously lost on Walker ~

This is more proof that Walker is an idiot, more concerned with making a name for himself than with the damage he is doing ~ I predict [and fervently hope] that his current "rise to fame" will revert to another "also ran" fairly quickly ~

Sooz

That's what I studied for, got my degree in. But after a short time in the classrooms, it was clear to me that I didn't have what it takes. Not enough patience, organization, focus, empathy. Nobody who's tried it thinks it's easy.

gramps, what do you know about Wisconsin Citizens Media Cooperative? ~ a friend posted this in FB tonight and I thought my head might explode as I was reading it, but I don't know anything about WCMC ~ there are many "live links" to more/corroborating information along with several pictures in the original ~ Sooz

President Walker Primer: 4 things you should know about Scott Walker before it’s too late
February 15, 2015 by WCMC

So … Scott Walker is all but officially running for president, and the country is getting a look at a man whom we residents of Wisconsin have been living with since before he became governor. While the national press has focused on the policies and conservative ideology that Walker has imposed on our state, these don’t define the man or explain the mayhem he has caused here.

The massive protests against Walker in 2011 began with “Act 10,” which stripped public employee unions of almost all of their rights and power. Walker loves to leave the story there and depicts ongoing opposition to him as a fight between him and the unions. It’s a narrative that sells well to his donors and to a national press eager for narrative simplicity.

But Act 10 was only a triggering event, not the sole or even primary motivation of Walker’s opponents. While much of the opposition to Walker centers around his policies, there is more to it than that. It is the way he implements these policies, the way he deals with opposition, and the way he rewards his allies that make Walker not just divisive, but frightening. Even conservatives who share Walker’s ideology should distrust him, and dread the prospect of him becoming president.

Why? Here is a brief primer on Scott Walker, drawn from what we have learned about him first-hand here in Wisconsin. These are things that the rest of the country should know in order to avoid learning the same lessons the hard way—on a national and international platform of the presidency.

1. Scott Walker is a liar.

“So what?” you say, “aren’t all politicians liars?” True, but Walker is in a league apart. He lies about so much, even inconsequential things, that it seems almost compulsive.

His recent lies explaining how “searching for truth” and other aspects of the “Wisconsin Idea” came to be stricken from his rewrite of the University of Wisconsin mission statement were astounding enough to draw rebuke from the New York Times editorial board, but such lies compose a large part of almost all of Walker’s public statements.

Like most politicians, Walker lies when it is politically convenient to do so; unlike most politicians, Walker lies when the truth is already firmly established, such as when he claims that Wisconsin has a budget surplus (it doesn’t), or that he never considered planting agents provocateurs among the demonstrators (he did). For Walker, deceit is not only a tool; it is an end in itself, his default mode. Walker even lies about things that have no obvious political angle, like the date of the births of his sons and how he got his bald spot.

Walker’s lies often take the form of self-aggrandizing fantasy, a large helping of which he served up in his ironically titled [for someone who almost never appears in public] ghost-written political autobiography, Unintimidated: A Governor’s Story and a Nation’s Challenge. In it, for example, Walker recounts how during the peak of the 2011 protests, a mob surrounded his car and tried to tip it over. This incident never happened, at least not to Walker, though Walker’s story bears a remarkable similarity to a 1958 attack on Richard Nixon’s car in Venezuela.

2. Scott Walker is astoundingly corrupt, even by current political standards.

He is so corrupt the corruption itself gives him cover, because an objective description of it sounds like a hyperbolic screed, leading to an “Oh, come on, he can’t be as bad as all that” from people who don’t know his history.

He IS that bad. During the past few years, the fact that he has not yet actually been indicted for a crime is the strongest defense of his character that his supporters have been able to mount.

Walker’s reputation for political cunning, reflected in the oft-repeated warnings to not underestimate him, derives from his lack of moral restraint and his willingness to do anything to get what he wants, rather than from any tactical brilliance or deep understanding of people. It’s “the ends justify the means” on steroids. This, combined with the ineptitude of the Wisconsin Democrats and the Wisconsin press, answers an obvious question about Walker: How could someone of such mediocre abilities be so successful?

Walker’s known political career began in 1988, when he ran for president of the Associated Students of Marquette University. He didn’t win, but he was found guilty of violating campaign rules. After trying to lie his way out of it, he was forced to admit the truth of the charges. The Marquette Tribune ran an editorial before the election declaring that Walker was “unfit for presidency.” Like much of Walker’s past, the details of why he left Marquette before graduating are secrets.

It may seem petty to bring up an incident from so long ago, but Walker has continued to show the pattern he revealed at Marquette in every job he has held since about which there is any public information. His lies about the “Wisconsin Idea” and getting caught in them prove he has not changed. In fact, past and ongoing criminal investigations into Walker’s administrations, both as Milwaukee County executive and as governor, have resulted in multiple felony convictions of close Walker associates, and charges ranging from misuse of county resources for political purposes, to embezzling funds raised to help wives and children of veterans, to child enticement.

Among the felons is Tim Russell, Walker’s political mentor from shortly after he left Marquette, and one of the very few people who can be identified as a personal friend of Walker. Walker himself so far has escaped indictment, but public records of the investigation, some accidentally released, leave little doubt that Walker knew about and used (and perhaps continues to use) an illegal in-house email system to illegally coordinate his public offices with his political campaigns, and to evade open records laws. The latest criminal probe has identified Walker as part of a “criminal scheme” to evade campaign finance laws by arranging to have donations to his recall election laundered through Koch-funded super PACs.

But lies and corruption are not the end of the story. They merely set the stage for what is truly frightening about a possible Walker presidency.

3. Walker does not tolerate opposition.

This applies not only to opposition from other politicians (although it certainly applies to them, too—see the fate of Mike Ellis) but to everyone. Suppression of dissent through intimidation is one of the chief features of the Walker governorship, and a main source of the fear and discord Walker has inflicted on his state.

Walker uses the power of his office to punish opponents. His administration ordered unconstitutional mass arrests of peaceful political dissidents in the Wisconsin State Capitol. In the state legislature, which Walker controls, laws have been introduced to eliminate the ability of local governments to block industrial projects of Walker’s donors, to eliminate independent government oversight panels, to eliminate the office of Secretary of State (currently held by Douglas La Follette, a staunch opponent), to remove the Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court, who has sided against Walker in several cases.

But much of the dirty work of intimidation is carried out by a network of right-wing groups that operate with a wink and nod from the administration, allied with unscrupulous legislators, Koch-funded lobbyists, and new right-wing media outlets set up by out-of-state billionaires. The most obvious of these intimidation efforts is a digitized, searchable online database of the one million people who signed a petition demanding Walker’s recall. The barely unstated purpose of this list is to keep petition signers from being hired by pro-Walker businesses. Walker himself withdrew the student representative nominee for the Board of Regents because his name appeared on the list.

People who do not limit their dissent to petition signing can expect harsher treatment. Opponents of Walker’s mine deregulation legislation, crafted specifically to allow Florida billionaire Chris Cline to open an iron mine in northern Wisconsin (and Walker’s one and only “jobs initiative”) have been attacked openly in right-wing outlets like the Bradley-funded “Media Trackers,” and behind the scenes by state legislators. Mine opponents have had their jobs threatened, sometimes with success. Many have received death threats.

4. Under Walker, Wisconsin literally has become a lawless state, a playground for the Walker regime and its supporters, and a dangerous place for the rest of us.

State agencies, most notably the Departments of Justice, Administration, and Natural Resources are fully under the control of Walker and his minions. Scientists and professionals have been replaced by political cronies who know nothing about the jobs they are supposed to do.

Ultimately, corruption and intimidation are unchecked in Wisconsin for two reasons: the State Supreme Court and the Wisconsin press. The State Supreme Court is controlled by four ethically challenged Walker allies who barely even pretend to be honest, and who Walker and his friends can count on to make problems go away.

Meanwhile, the Wisconsin press has mostly been asleep. A few articles describe each new revelation of Walker’s deceit or corruption, with follow-up articles giving Walker’s explanation, and there the matter is left. Walker is almost never asked difficult questions or pressed to explain his often incoherent answers. Thus Walker’s friends can openly violate the law with little fear of either prosecution or sustained scrutiny. When Chris Cline, in clear violation of state law, sent heavily armed and unlicensed mercenaries to his proposed mining site in the Penokee Mountains, a publicity stunt designed to raise the specter of “eco-terrorism,” no charges were ever filed and press coverage of the story quickly vanished.

The mysterious late “discovery” of 14,000 votes in Waukesha County, which swung a State Supreme Court election to Walker ally David Prosser and thereby maintained Walker’s control over the court, has never been adequately investigated, despite hundreds of suspicious irregularities and serious evidence of ballot tampering discovered during the state-mandated recount. The Government Accountability Board, the state agency that should have investigated this evidence, did not even look at it before certifying the election results.

The press accepted the results without question and never reported on the evidence of fraud. Illegal campaign donations, physical attacks on Walker opponents circulating recall petitions, online threats by pro-Walker groups such as “Knot my Wisconsin” and “Operation Burn Notice” have all gone unpunished and largely unreported.

Scott Walker has damaged the legal and political system of Wisconsin so badly that it may never recover. His house of cards is collapsing and even the state GOP knows it. It is only because Wisconsin is just a state within a larger country, and not an independent country on its own, that it has not descended into totalitarian dictatorship. Scott Walker does not scorn moral constraints on his actions. Rather, he seems to not comprehend such constraints. Walker’s only limit is the limit of his power, and it is this limit that Walker wants to eliminate by becoming president.

http://wcmcoop.com/2015/02/15/president-walker-primer-4-things-you-should-know-about-scott-walker-before-its-too-late/

Bumping so that gramps doesn't miss this ~ my prior post is a DOOZY!

Sooz

yeah, i would really like to see how gramps responds to that.

Sooz, the WCMC is stridently partisan and given to political hyperbole. Sort of like a hyper-left Newsmax. They've taken some facts and some rumors and some opinions and fashioned out of them a warning to America about this budding Hitler, Scott Walker. There's really enough against Walker without taking it to a hysterical level, imo.

He's never wanted to be anything but a politician, according to his old quotes. In college he majored in running for student government president. Not a strong student and not a good candidate, either. He got in trouble for dirty tricks, and reportedly did not leave the college entirely voluntarily as a result. Some of my old fart friends whom I trust, with close ties to WI government going way back, have told me that is true. Not incontrovertible evidence, I admit, but credible to me. I believe he is and always has been focused on gaining power because he likes power.

We have clearly seen that he's not honest. He's sneaky. If someone tried to tip over his big ol' governormobile, you'd think someoine would have mentioned it before now. He has nothing against a little nepotism if it's useful - He appointed the father of the House Speaker and the Senate majority Leader (they're brothers) to head the Wisconsin State Patrol, two days before he dropped his surprise bomb on government employees. One of the brothers sppears to have changed his mind about supporting that action after dad got the top cop job.

I could go on and on. The bit about the mines up north,and the threats and job loss retaliation is true. Ironically, the whole mine deal may now be falling through. It was going to be an open hole 5 mides wide, 4.5 mile long and 1000' deep, and the waste piled up around it or spead over the surrounding countryside.

He subscribes to the economic philosphy which holds that best way to feed the chickens is to give the horses more oats. That's the rural Wisconsin version of the trickle down theory.

He is the darling of the mini-Limbaughs on local radio (and the big cahuna Limbaugh himself) and the far right "think tanks" in our state. It seems at times that ALEC (Koch Bros.' legislation writing subsidiary) is the actual word-for-word author of a lot of our legislation. He's a real right winger.

The worst part of it is that under his wing in the legislature are some real off-the-right-edge-of-the table kooks. The kind Juanita Jean makes fun of. The same kind that even Alabama federal judges are amonishing to behave in the news now.

My main beed with Walker is that under his administration, with his encouragementg, this state is going backwards, economically, culturally, morally, educationally, and most other ways too. We used to be proud of Wisconsin's reputation for ethics in government. It's a tradition we remember fondly now.

Anyway, Walker is not quite as vile as that article makes him out to be. Exaggeration isn't necessary.

terrific reply grampy.

Thanks, gramps ~ I trust you like you trust your "old fart friends" ~ I had a feeling the article was exaggerated but then I remembered Walker's warning to "never count me out" ~

Sooz

well, he's a corrupt politician, but only an banal, ordinary one. He doesn't seserve the credit for excellence in corruption that the article's author gives him. I also count hs religiosity against him, especially in light of the way he has conducted himself in politics.

gramps, I'm again very interested in your take on this, which seems to be equally damning as the WCMC post above while being far less hyperbolic ~ and maybe it's just me, but the phrase "more Nixonian than Nixon" makes me cringe ~ ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

Scott Walker's Political Record of Lies, Deceit, Corruption and Revenge
The passive-aggressive politician wants to please America's robber barons.
By Roger Bybee / AlterNet / February 21, 2015

“More Nixonian than Nixon” is the dead-on description of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, now viewed as a serious contender for the 2016 Republican nomination, in the eyes of former Nixon aide John Dean.

Nixon, the force behind Watergate’s sleazy, secretive fundraising from the super-rich and political dirty tricks, has perhaps met his match in Scott Walker, a governor who would literally delete “the search for truth” from a state mission statement—and then lie about it.

However, when I first met Walker I back in 1996, I would have described him as about the nicest conservative I had encountered in public life. I was lobbying for a progressive coalition, building support in the Wisconsin State Legislature for a campaign reform that would set up rapid disclosure of campaign contributions. Then-state Rep. Scott Walker proved to be an unexpected and enthusiastic sponsor.

Walker was one of the most conservative of Republican legislators, but he was unfailingly respectful and friendly to me as we held news conferences together and strategized over coffee about how to win passage of the disclosure bill. His friendliness and aw-shucks manner seemed to be grounded in his background as a small-town preacher’s son and Eagle Scout.

Beneath the Mask

But beneath the genial exterior lurks a classic passive-aggressive personality, with the aggressive side displaying grandiose ambition, a relentless drive to win at any cost, and a vision of essentially transforming Wisconsin—and then the nation—into a version of Mississippi offering a low-wage, docile, and disenfranchised (via restrictive voter ID laws like the one signed by Walker) workforce, shriveled public services and low corporate taxes.

Alert observers recently saw the essence of Walker encapsulated in his budget plan for the University of Wisconsin. The episode displayed the governor's drive to chain public institutions to serving private power as well as an extraordinary contempt for the truth.

Walker and his team had slyly deleted “the search for truth” from a passage on the University of Wisconsin’s central mission in his budget proposal. Also eliminated were references to the widely revered 111-year-old "Wisconsin Idea" committing the university to “public service.” The “Wisconsin Idea” linking the university to the needs of farmers, workers and other ordinary citizens was a product of Progressive-era leaders like Gov. Robert LaFollette, whose legacy Walker has long sought to undermine.

In place of “the search for truth,” unbounded debate and a public-interest orientation, Walker and his administration assigned the university a narrow, corporatized function of “meeting the workforce needs of the state.” Initially, Walker’s proposed UW budget drew intensified scrutiny because of $300 million in crippling cuts he proposed, which were coupled with other assaults on public education like weakening K-12 public education through more subsidies for private religious schools.

But repurposing the university’s mission touched a deeper nerve. Scouring through the budget, the progressive Center for Media and Democracy discovered and publicized the attempt to reset the university’s purpose as meeting corporate personnel needs. This triggered extensive coverage and an enormous furor arose across the state. The outrage spanned UW students, faculty, officials, alumni, and the broader citizenry.

Walker hastily retreated as public outcry expanded, sheepishly claiming the elimination of “the search for truth” and the beloved Wisconsin Idea was a mere “drafting error.” But that rationale quickly melted down after media reports showing that UW officials had strenuously objected to the rewriting of UW’s mission, but were ignored by Walker’s minions. Walker’s account about dumping “the search for the truth” turned out to be utterly untruthful.

This same pattern—of serving private wealth and power—is expected resurface later this week, as Walker and his Republican-majority statehouse take up “right-to-work” legislation, which exempts employees from paying union dues—hurting fundraising and organizing—even though Walker last fall said that wasn’t on his agenda when campaigning for re-election.

The pending right-to-work battle revives Walker’s venomous war on labor, which emerged in electrifying fashion in a Feb. 11, 2011 address just a month after he became governor. Like a strutting generalissimo, Walker announced that the state faced a “budget crisis” demanded the passage of Act 10, which would eradicate meaningful union-representation rights for most public employees. He did not go after police and fire fighter unions, which have long supported Republicans. In 1959, Wisconsin was the first state to grant such rights to public workers.

Ominously, Walker threatened to call out the National Guard if workers defied his Act 10 proposal with job actions. Walker viewed Act 10 as a move to “drop the bomb” on public employees, as he told his staff, and to politically isolate them with a cynical “divide and conquer” strategy.

However, the public responded quite differently from what Walker counted upon. When the public in Wisconsin and across the nation rallied behind the targeted workers—a mix of teachers, social workers and other civil servants—Walker was forced to escalate his war. Polls found (see here and here) 57% to 60% support for union rights.

Democracy a Casualty

Walker and his Republican allies rammed the bill through, violating both state open-meeting and legislative rules. The Republicans’ victory was also accompanied by a set of undemocratic tactics never seen before in the state, such as shutting off the microphones of dissenting legislators. Walker even admitted in a recorded phone call that he “had given some thought” to bringing in “troublemakers” to presumably stir up violent actions to discredit the thousands of peaceful protesters.

Act 10 was cemented into law when the State Supreme Court predictably affirmed it in a 4-3 vote. However, the mobilization against Walker’s Act 10 carried the fight into 2012 when nearly a million Wisconsinites signed petitions calling for the second recall of a governor in U.S. history. Walker managed to win 52% to 47% in June 2012, with his victory fueled by raising an estimated $60 million in contributions from billionaires around the nation—especially those in the libertarian network created by David and Charles Koch. A lackluster Democratic candidate also helped Walker keep his seat.

The recall campaign also revealed Walker no longer believed that political contributors and their donations should be fully and immediately disclosed—the basis of the legislation on which he and I first crossed paths. A “John Doe” investigation of Walker’s efforts by special state prosecutors into the recall’s shadowy financing showed that he surreptitiously sought to steer donations to his campaign into the “non-profit” Club for Growth, a corporate lobby group. That tactic kept confidential the six-figure donations from out-of-state billionaires.

Corruption, Paybacks and Revenge

The war over Act 10 reflected the political calculus Walker uses to approach any political issue, according to Scot Ross, director of the Madison-based liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now.

Ross first observed Walker in action on the Corrections Committee while serving as a legislative aide. “I saw Walker, and wondered, ‘Who is this guy always pushing for longer and longer sentences?’ It turns out that Walker was rewarding the private prison companies who were contributing to his campaigns” by devising laws that would keep Wisconsin’s prisons full.

Wisconsin’s prisons now house about eight times as many inmates as they did in 1970, and the state has the dubious distinction of incarcerating a higher percentage of black men than any other state. Walker’s strategy on prison-related issues exposed his fundamental political approach.

“Walker basically operates on issues by asking himself three questions,” said Ross. “First, how will my position reward my donors? Then, how will it punish my enemies? Finally, he asks himself, how it help me move up the political food chain?”

Walker’s shaping of policies to reward donors has produced a distinct pattern, said Mary Bottari, deputy director of the Center on Media and Democracy, which has studied Walker and his close connections to the Koch brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC, funded by corporate and libertarian donors, drafts model bills for like-minded legislators to carry in their states and cities.

“Scott Walker has an extremely narrow agenda. He’s picking off a list of deliverables for extreme out-of-state interests,” said Bottari. “None of these items are being demanded by Wisconsinites. He’s failing to serve his state.”

His Wisconsin Record: Dreadful

Walker has failed dismally to meet the most urgent needs of his Wisconsin constituents—jobs at family-supporting wages. He delivered less than half of the 250,000 jobs that he promised through his corporate-friendly tax and regulatory policies. At the time of Walker’s reelection last fall, Politifact reported that the total number of jobs created under his administration was just 111,295. Wisconsin ranked 34th in the nation and dead last in the Midwest in private sector job creation during his term.

Wisconsin’s job growth under Walker has been heavily concentrated in low-wage occupations, which expanded at a much greater rate than mid- and high-paying jobs. If anything, Walker has been the steward of widening inequality. The net job growth between 2010 and 2013 has been confined to low-wage jobs paying under $12.50 an hour, according to a recent study by Marc Levine, a UW economic development professor. Private-sector wages are fully 15% below the national average.

Faced with measurable poor policy results, Walker has sought to direct public resentment over sliding real wages and financial anxieties to the economic system’s biggest victims: the long-term unemployed. “My belief is we shouldn't be paying for them to sit on the couch, watching TV or playing Xbox,” Walker recently said. “We need to get them the skills to get back in the game and get back to work.”

In his new state budget, Walker proposes drug testing for recipients of unemployment insurance, food stamps and other public aid, prompting Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell to accuse him of practicing “yellow politics.” The proposal targets government aid recipients for political points, but is actually quite hollow. Walker knows that similar programs in other states have either been ruled illegal or proven to show a far lower rate of drug abuse among those receiving aid than the general population.

But Walker is running for president. So his agenda has been guided by scoring points with a right-wing base enraptured with confining public-sector services and enhancing corporate profits, imposing punitive social policies and reflecting unwavering faith in the “fewer benefits, higher jobs” formula expressed by financial guru Lawrence Kudlow (a CNBC commentator who champions marketplace solutions to every problem).

Walker has almost gleefully neglected the healthcare needs of low-income Wisconsinites. He remains one of a shrinking group of Republican governors who reject federal funding that would cover tens of thousands of low-income people lacking regular access to care—by expanding state-run Medicaid under Obamacare. Those federal subsidies would provide $345 million toward filling Wisconsin’s budget deficit of $2 billion.

To the delight of the anti-abortion crowd, Walker has terminated state funding of Planned Parenthood, curtailing health screenings and other vital non-abortion services the organization provides.

Thuggish and Proud of It

As he shifts his focus away from Wisconsin’s problems and toward his presidential race, Walker has again illustrated how richly he merits the “Nixonian” label bestowed by John Dean. His early campaign steps are displaying the same deceitful and cynical traits as he grovels for campaign cash.

At a lavish mid-February fundraiser for elite donors at New York City’s posh Club 21, he stood next to Rudy Giuliani as the former mayor issued an infantile, Michele Bachmann-style attack on President Obama’s patriotism. When asked to respond to the remarks, Walker passed up the opportunity to distance himself from the attack on Obama.

Once again, Walker provided a clear glimpse into his quest for power and his craven obeisance to conservative elites. His pandering to the far right will be on display this coming week in Wisconsin, as Walker’s allies in the GOP-majority legislature try to ram through yet more anti-labor legislation: a right-to-work bill, which allows employees in union-represented workplaces to opt out of joining unions and paying union dues.

The bill, based word-for word on language from the Koch brothers-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, is due to come up in an “emergency session” timed by Republican leaders. This blitzkrieg strategy is designed to short-circuit full democratic deliberations by the Legislature and consideration of public opinion. It follows a path used in 2012 by Republicans in Michigan, where the GOP simply dispensed with any hearings during a lame-duck session, as well as in Indiana, where Republicans fast-tracked the bill and blocked a proposed state-wide referendum.

Stepping back, it is clear that Walker is positioning himself to be the political water boy for the enormous fund-raising machine led by the libertarian industrialist Koch brothers, who have said they will try to raise nearly $900 million to spend on the 2016 elections. Walker hopes his combative and bullying style will allow him to win the White House and impose a 21st-century version of robber-baron capitalism on America.

As former White House counsel John Dean warned, Walker is “more Nixonian than Nixon.”

Roger Bybee is a Milwaukee-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in numerous national publications, including Z magazine, the Progressive, American Prospect and Foreign Policy in Focus. ...

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/scott-walkers-political-record-lies-deceit-corruption-and-revenge

.....and yet he was re-elected. There's a dissonance here.

Not only re-elected, jim ~ he survived a recall vote too ~

Sooz

i would imagine that even people who disliked him did not vote for the recall. nobody likes having their vote overturned.

I'm thinking Walker's "popularity" is only because he's the new kid on the block ~ I'm content to give him some time to defeat himself with comments like these ~ ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

Walker: Union-busting prepared me for ISIS
02/27/15 09:20 AM
By Steve Benen

On the first day of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) appears to have delivered the most memorable line. Unfortunately for him, that’s not a compliment.


I’ve seen some on the right argue that Walker wasn’t necessarily drawing a moral parallel between unions and ISIS, and as defenses go, it’s a fair point.

But what the governor did argue, unambiguously, is that he believes union-busting in Wisconsin prepares him for combating ISIS and global terrorism. And that’s plainly ridiculous.

National Review’s Jim Geraghty, who isn’t exactly a knee-jerk liberal, explained, “That is a terrible response… [T]aking on a bunch of protesters is not comparably difficult to taking on a Caliphate with sympathizers and terrorists around the globe, and saying so suggests Walker doesn’t quite understand the complexity of the challenge from ISIS and its allied groups.”

Keep in mind, Walker has spoken quite a bit about ISIS and the terror threat in recent months, and he’s had plenty of time to formulate his views and his talking points. This wasn’t some curveball about whether President Obama is a Christian; this was a question about one of the more pressing issues on the planet.

And yet, once again, the Republican governor seemed wholly unprepared.

By last night, Team Walker seemed to realize the candidate had made a mistake and his communications director issued a statement saying he “was in no way comparing any American citizen to ISIS.” Rather, “What the governor was saying was when faced with adversity he chooses strength and leadership.”

But these empty platitudes – show me a candidate opposed to “strength and leadership” – don’t address the underlying problem with Walker’s comments. He genuinely seems to believe that undermining organizing rights of Wisconsin workers has prepared him to be a war-time president, ready to take on foreign foes.

Indeed, it’s gone largely overlooked, but yesterday wasn’t even the first time he’s raised this argument. Just last week, Walker said his anti-union record “would be a signal of toughness to Islamic jihadists and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.”

The Wisconsin Republican went so far as to argue that Reagan sent a powerful signal to the USSR and Iran in 1981 when he fired striking air-traffic controllers. As Walker put it, once Reagan sent those workers to the unemployment line, U.S. foes suddenly “knew not to mess with us.”

This foolish understanding of history is completely at odds with reality, but it nevertheless makes Walker’s worldview clear: in his mind, battling unions is an effective component of a national security posture.

It’s almost as if the governor is trying to prove he’s not ready for prime time.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/walker-union-busting-prepared-me-isis

wow. he really is quite loathsome.

From my "save to read/maybe post later" file ~ the video below is the Walker speech that Michael Tomasky skewers in the following commentary, which I believe sums up the GOP/TP field neatly ~ there are a few "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz


Michael Tomasky / DOWNWARD SPIRAL / 02.02.15
The GOP: Still the Party of Stupid

That Scott Walker speech was great? It was shallow, tedious, and wrong. In other words, it struck the perfect chord for today’s GOP voters.

Mitt Romney definitely had his down sides as a candidate: the retread factor, and, as I noted two weeks ago, the fact that he made all those dramatic and (apparently) wrong predictions about the future of the economy. But I will say this for him. He did pass the this-guy-looks-and-sounds-like-a-plausible-president test. I always thought that was his greatest strength. He’s central casting.

None of these remaining people looks much like a president, with the exception of Jeb Bush; and more to the point, they don’t sound like presidents either. They sound like they’re running for RNC chairman at best, or more likely leader of the Tea Party caucus. So despite all this spin from conservatives about what a strong field this is, as usual the opposite is the truth. It’s an astonishingly weak field, unified not only in their opposition to Barack Obama and the federal government but also in their hostility to actual ideas that might stand a chance of addressing the country’s actual problems.

I’ve just been reading through their “books.” Yes, I know. You’re welcome. They’re ridiculous. I can’t say this with 100 percent certainty, but I may not have seen the word “wages” once. I certainly didn’t see a discussion of wage stagnation anywhere. That’s just one of a hundred examples I could cite.

It’s not so much that they come up short in terms of personal resumes. God knows, the current incumbent had a short one. Being a sitting or former governor, or a sitting senator—those are qualification enough. And I don’t doubt that they’re intelligent people.

But the problem in the first instance isn’t them. Let me put it this way. The greatest cardiologist in the world could move to town. But if everybody wants to eat chili-cheese fries all day and nobody wants to have bypass surgery, there’s still going to be a lot of heart disease.

You follow me? There could be a man in this presidential field who is the political equivalent of that cardiologist—Lincoln and TR and Reagan all rolled into one, with a little bit of Thatcher on the side and what the hell, a tiny dash of Clinton, just for crossover appeal. And it wouldn’t matter. He wouldn’t be able to demonstrate the breadth of his vision, because that isn’t what the GOP base of today wants.

I finally sat myself down and watched that Scott Walker speech from last week that everyone is raving about. If this was the standout speech, I sure made the right decision in not subjecting myself to the rest of them. It was little more than a series of red-meat appetizers and entrees: Wisconsin defunded Planned Parenthood, said no to Obamacare, passed some kind of law against “frivolous” lawsuits, and moved to crack down on voter “fraud””—all of that besides, of course, his big move, busting the public-employee unions. There wasn’t a single concrete idea about addressing any of the major problems the country faces.

Walker’s blandishments toward the base were bland enough to get under the skin even of James Pethokoukis, the conservative economics writer who laid into the Wisconsin Governor for one particular bit of surreality:

Opportunity is equal? The data, unfortunately, do not seem to support Walker’s optimistic claim. First, there are other countries, such as Sweden and Canada, where the chances of escaping the bottom are just as good as in the United States. Second, American mobility rates have been stagnant over the past 40 years. Third, mobility rates vary greatly by race with 74 percent of white sons making it out of the bottom fifth versus 49 percent of African-American sons. Fourth, even the smartest kids have only a 1-in-4 chance of making it from the bottom fifth to the top fifth.

That’s a conservative writer, remember. And he’s right, obviously. But try to imagine Walker or any GOP candidate acknowledging these complications. That opportunity is not equal in America! That Sweden and Canada are our equals! That it’s harder on black people! That candidate would be hooted out of Republican Party faster than you can say Charles Murray.

Walker, I see, has surged in a new Iowa poll, while the only one who at least looks like president, John Ellis Bush, has taken a tumble and is viewed more negatively by potential caucus-goers than he once was (46 favorable, 43 unfavorable). We can’t say for sure why Bush has fallen, but it seems clear that Walker has gained on the strength, so to speak, of his empty-calorie bromides.

He’s gained because those items— kicking Planned Parenthood, denying your own citizens subsidized health-care coverage, pretending that voter fraud is a thing—are what pass for ideas in today’s GOP. Walker is even more vacuous on foreign policy, as Martha Raddatz revealed yesterday, twisting him around like a pretzel with a couple of mildly tough questions on Syria. The Democratic Party has its problems, but at least Democrats are talking about middle-class wage stagnation, which is the country’s core economic quandary. Rick Santorum is, in fairness, but a) his solutions are the same ones conservatives have been advertising for years (lower taxes, less regulation, more two-parent families) and b) he’s not going anywhere in the polls so far, undoubtedly precisely because he’s trying to drop the homosexuality-is-bestiality shtick and talk about actual economic problems.

But you can’t really discuss economic problems as a Republican presidential candidate, because in the pond of voters where you’ll be fishing, “America” has no such problems. Some people—roughly 47 percent of them—have economic problems, but that’s all their fault, you see. So these candidates are about to spend a year pandering to that. That will make them weak in more ways than one.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/02/the-gop-still-the-party-of-stupid.html

Another sssssnake in the spotlight ~ ~ there are more "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

Walker confronts new ‘dark money’ controversy
03/24/15 04:46 PM—Updated 03/24/15 04:48 PM
By Steve Benen

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) career in public office has not been without controversy. The “John Doe” investigation has been ongoing for quite a while, and has led to criminal prosecutions of former Walker colleagues, and there’s also a series of questions surrounding alleged coordination between the governor’s recall campaign and allied groups on the right.

These stories were obviously not serious enough in the minds of Wisconsin voters to derail Walker’s career – he won re-election last fall with relative ease – but as the governor moves forward with his unannounced presidential plans, he and his team surely realize that the scrutiny is poised to become far more serious.

And with that in mind, investigative reporter Michael Isikoff published a doozy of a report for Yahoo News today raising questions that Walker likely have to answer fairly soon.


That, in itself, seems rather routine. There are plenty of very wealthy, politically active Americans writing generous checks to various groups, and many of these contributions are not subjected to disclosure laws. It’s called “dark money” for a reason – these political transactions, which are legal, are shielded from the glare of public scrutiny.

But in this case, the fact that a billionaire directed $1.5 million to the Wisconsin Club for Growth to indirectly help Walker isn’t the problem. It’s how the billionaire benefited soon after that matters.

Isikoff’s report is well worth reading for the details and analysis, but note that in the wake of Menard’s generous campaign support, Menard’s company was awarded “up to $1.8 million in special tax credits from a state economic development corporation that Walker chairs.”

And that’s not all.


The governor’s office strongly denies anything untoward, though there’s a limit as to how much Team Walker can say – the governor’s alleged coordination with the Wisconsin Club for Growth is already the subject of an ongoing probe, so Walker’s aides can’t answer some of the questions involving the far-right group and it’s connections to the governor’s office.

We’ll have more on this on tonight’s show.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/walker-confronts-new-dark-money-controversy

Here's the video from Rachel Maddow's show last night referenced in my above post ~ Sooz

The Rachel Maddow Show 3/24/15
Dark-money probe raises questions about Scott Walker donations

Michael Isikoff, Yahoo! News chief investigative correspondent, talks with Rachel Maddow about revelations stemming from a dark money investigation into Wisconsin governor Scott Walker raising questions about donations from a local billionaire.


http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/dark-money-probe-puts-new-pressure-on-walker-417736771934

old Jonn Menard and my dad were acquaintances, back when Menards was just one Lumberyard up in Chippewa Falls. John would call my dad, then retired in his 70s, to cut truss lumber occasionally, knowing my dad needed the work. Old John hasn't been actually running the company for a long time. But I've been doing almost my work hardware business there for long time, mainly because I still have a warm spot in my heart for his kindness.

And in spite of the way the company, whoever took it over,has been an environmental scofflaw. It was caught by the DNR dumping barrels of liquid waste in a stream,off the back of a truck. Think it was waste from green-treating lumber, a process which at the time used arsenic to kill bacteria in lumber. Caught deer-in-the-headlights red handed in the dark of night doing it. That was years ago, but since then Menards has also been at odds with the DNR over wetlands preservation issues when building new locations.

Walker and Repub legislature have now changed DNR's focus away from environmental enforcement and toward facilitating business development now. And they are today attempting to water down our political campaign funding laws. They are decriminalizing corruption.

Very sorry to hear about the chicanery attributed to Old John. I have $12k maint budget at work, and won't be spending any more of it there.

Let them know, gramps. If they don't, it won't matter a whole lot.

I can't comment on this until I stop laughing, which is proving very difficult to do ~ ~ I'll post the video clip next ~ there are a few other "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

Walker points to Boy Scouts as preparation for the White House
03/27/15 04:41 PM
By Steve Benen

Just a month ago, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) was asked how he’d confront terrorist threats as president. The Republican governor quickly turned to his political fights against union members in his home state. “If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world,” Walker said.

The governor took some heat for seemingly comparing union members to ISIS, which missed the point, and wasn’t even true. What mattered about the response is that, in Walker’s mind, union-busting in Wisconsin was preparation for combating ISIS and global terrorism.

The ridiculousness of the governor’s answer raised concerns among powerful Republican players – if this is his response to an obvious question in the midst of crises abroad, Walker may not have a mature understanding of what international leadership requires.

His answer to a similar question this week won’t help matters. The Capital Times in Madison reports today:


Uh oh.

The issue came up at a Chamber of Commerce event in Arizona this week, where Hugh Hewitt asked the governor, “Does the prospect of being commander in chief daunt you? Because the world that you describe when you’re talking about safety is going to require a commitment to American men and women abroad, obviously at some point. How do you think about that?”

Walker replied, “That’s an appropriate question.” And things went downhill from there.

The video is online here, and I’d encourage folks to check it out to fully appreciate the tone and context, but asked about the challenge of the presidency and national security, Walker didn’t talk about union-busting, but he did draw a parallel between the responsibilities of the Commander in Chief and being an Eagle Scout. From the Capital Times report:


On a structural level, governors running for president have built-in advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, they’ve (hopefully) demonstrated an ability to competently oversee an executive branch, which should be excellent preparation for the White House. On the other hand, governors generally have very little experience with federal, international, and military policymaking, which can be a disadvantage.

This isn’t unique to Walker or anyone else; it’s just the nature of the office and its duties. It’s up to governors, in general, to make the case that their state-based leadership and good judgment prepares them for national office. The public has frequently been receptive to the message – of the six most recent U.S. presidents, four have been governors (two Democrats, two Republicans).

None of them ever suggested union-busting and the Boy Scouts were preparation for the White House.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/walker-points-boy-scouts-preparation-the-white-house

Here's the video clip live-linked in my above post ~ Sooz



Scott Walker Compares being a Boy Scout to Commander-in-Chief
American Bridge 21st Century / Uploaded on Mar 26, 2015

March 25th, 2015 Scott Walker spoke at a luncheon in Phoenix Arizona with conservative talker Hugh Hewitt where he told Hugh being an Eagle Scout prepared him to be Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS-9oEGyNdA&feature=youtu.be

I believe this American exceptionalism thingy is totally missunderstood in the US. Could it mean perhaps that you choose your politicians from a pool of exceptionally dumb people?