Friday, 25 May 2012

• Currently Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street By John Nichols see related

  Why We Need to Kick Walker Out of Wisconsin

  So unless you don't pay attention to news (even Fox News counts for this point), you know that after the gay marriage debate, the biggest thing going on in American politics right now is the recall election of Scott Walker, the Republican Governor of Wisconsin, my neighboring state. Now if you haven't been following what this recall is about, please allow me to wrinkle your brain on the subject and let you know why this asshat needs to be shown out the door, preferably by a very large boot to his ass.
  

  
  
  
  

  1) He signed SB202, repealing an existing law that promoted equal pay for women and prevented the ability for women to take legal action against employers who would try and pay women less for the same job a man does. (All part of the Republican War on Women that obviously doesn't exist, right?)
  
  2) Wisconsin has a terrible jobs record, and Walker routinely lies about it. In fact, Wisconsin is 51st in the nation in job growth (including Washington DC). In his second year as governor, he lost over 20,000 jobs, which is even worse compared to the second worst job loss in the nation, Rhode Island, which lost 4,000 jobs. And there's no bias in these numbers, since neighboring states Iowa and Michigan have job gains, and are both Republican-controlled. This is especially embarrassing, considering his entire election platform was on job creation.
  
  3) Scott Walker has terribly close ties with the extremely right-wing, election buying billionaires, the Koch Brothers. Walker was even recorded taking a prank phone call from somebody pretending to be David Koch. This doesn't directly tie him to the Koch brothers in itself, but the fact that the governor rushed to the phone so quickly to take the call does imply a very strong relationship. In this phone call, Walker even went along with "David Koch's" idea to to discredit the Occupiers by putting "troublemakers" into the crowd. In fact, had this been the real David Koch (which, to Walker's knowledge, it was), Walker might even have been engaged in an illegal act, since Wisconsin law forbids coordination with campaign donors.
  

  
   
  
  

  4) His "anti-collective bargaining" plan, or as most people would call it, "union busting" plan, is just plain cruel. Under it, police, firefighters, teachers, nurses, and many other public employees will no longer get to negotiate their pay. These are arguably the most important people in our society, the people we depend on. This does nothing to improve the budget, but for some reason was very important for Walker to sign into law, claiming it would grow to be popular.
  
  5) He slashed aid to public schools by $800 million (incidentally, the same amount the federal government gave to him to build a high-speed rail line between Milwaukee and Madison at zero cost to his state, which would have created thousands of jobs), all to fund his tax cuts to the rich and corporations. These tax breaks cost $200 million in this budget and $2.3 billion in the next ten years, while increasing taxes on working families by $56 million through cutting the Earned Income Tax Credit. While slashing taxes on the some of the state's largest corporations and his campaign donors by up to 95%, some middle-class families in Wisconsin will be paying a ten times higher tax rate than that paid by some of the state's most profitable companies.
  

  
  
  
  

  6) Perhaps most damning of all, 2/3 of his funding comes from out-of-state, making you wonder who he is beholden to: the people of Wisconsin, or the people who gave him $21 million to ensure that the message is clear: you can buy elections.
  

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