Scott Walker, the Governor of Wisconsin, is trying to distinguish himself from the crowded field of candidates by taking the most extreme positions in opposition to working people and the middle class (he long ago blew off the poor). Over the weekend, he lobbied a few more grenades at working people and the poor. As has recently become customary among governors who don’t like debate, he tried to stuff some ugly provisions into the state budget at the last minute. Having won election and then beat back a recall, he has to answer only to the people funding his campaign.
Only one hurdle stands between Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and his upcoming bid for the White House: passing a budget to keep his state chugging for the next two years.
After months of uproar over provisions to slash hundreds of millions of dollars from state universities and strip the values of “truth” and “service” from their mission, lawmakers in Madison missed their July 1 deadline to pass the budget.
In the ensuing scramble, Governor Walker and his allies in the statehouse used the 4th of July holiday weekend to insert several more controversial provisions into the massive document, which local press called “a grab bag of pet projects.” Walker and Republican lawmakers have already been forced to retreat on one of them: a gutting of the state’s open records law that would have barred reporters and the public from accessing the documents that reveal how laws are written, including drafts and e-mails between state lawmakers.
But the other additions remain, including provisions that censor information about police shootings, scrap factory workers’ right to one day off per week, and completely eliminate the state’s 100-year-old definition of a “living wage,” which now says workers deserve pay that provides “minimum comfort, decency, physical and moral well-being.” This major change, which has received far less attention than the open records law rewrite, would strip the state’s Department of Workforce Development of the power to to investigate complaints that an employee is not being paid a living wage, and would replace “living wage” with “minimum wage” throughout Wisconsin’s laws.
The change to the wage law comes just as low-income workers in the state are suing Governor Walker for refusing to consider their complaint that the current state minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is not a living wage.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I locked up the cats though 😗
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I recently returned to Wisconsin, where I spent the first 30 years of my life, for a family reunion. Even my most ultra-conservative relatives could say nothing good about Scott Walker. One of their direct quotes was “He has ruined this State.” Coming from these people, it shows how over the top this huckster and shill really is.
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But they keep voting for him.
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mathman, one of the great mysteries of our time is why people vote for politicians who strip them of the bare necessities.
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Its not a mystery to me. The GOP “dog whistle” “states rights” platforms have been steeped in veiled racism for decades.
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The American Prospect, Spring edition, 25th anniversary issue has a GREAT article comparing Scott Walker with his Minnesota neighbor Mark Dayton on how and why Minnesota is outpacing Wisconsin in so many areas.
It compares the two states in important areas, how similar in many ways they are, the things that Walker has done with Dayton.
Minnesota now has a budget surplus, wages are higher etc etc etc.
GREAT ARTICLE. Scholarly, honest appraisal.
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Race to the bottom. It accelerates as it goes.
Such a shame in Wisconsin. It was always a “good government” state with a robust public sector that people built over generations.
They’ll destroy all that accrued value in one generation and leave nothing that lasts for the people who come after.
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I do think Teachout and Bernie Sanders are hopeful signs, however. Not because they’re liberals but because both are talking about capture and corruption in government and people seem to respond to that. I think they’re responding to it because they know it’s true.
There’s only one reason the legislature in Wisconsin would quietly gut the sunshine laws in the state, and every voter knows why- capture and corruption.
Anyway, hopefully at some point we can have a grown-up discussion on why so many of our lawmakers seem to be bought and paid for.
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He is auditioning for Faust
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And hence the reason so many people, I know from IL, are now sending their kids to college in IOWA!!!
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I have a new nickname for him:
“Scott Worker Stalker”
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One of the great mysteries of our time is why people vote for politicians who strip them of the bare necessities.
“Cold as a razor blade, tight as a tourniquet, dry as a funeral drum..”
One needs the “wit” to recognize, to connect the “dots”. Has it not always been a “fight”
between objectivity and subjectivity? A matter of consciousness?
Calling the “harvest” a great mystery, seems to ignore a basic concept of sow and reap.
The differences between “official policies” (what is said to be done) and “actual policies”
(what the policies actually accomplish), continue to clash with the endless stream of
pseudo platitudes, fueled by the amplification of myths. Myths that DO NOT provide a
“well-lit” space, as to WHAT we are doing.
Hiding the structural realities, of the distribution of resources, in “country”, or “rule of law”,
does well to mask the evident. The distribution of assets is a fundamental part of the
social structure, is it not?
While we’re busy playing “country”, “rule of law” and voting, the results seem to indicate
“America” is a business, run on the “rule of MONEY”.
How can one “find their way”, if they can’t see the “lay of the land”?
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education and commented:
Walker is a special kind of stupid!
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