Dirtier Than Nixon

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is running for President of the United States of America. Sure, he’s being coy about it, but everyone knows that’s his plan.

With Walker as President, you’ll get plenty of promises, but few good results. Although he doesn’t really care what the average person thinks about him, as long as they vote for him. His real concern is carrying water for those he needs to advance his career.

Walker was never about public service. Can anyone point to a solid reason he was elected as Milwaukee County Executive? Other than this, I mean. What has he ever accomplished that moved society forward?

For Scott Walker it has always been about him. His career. His aspirations.

Yet, he brings nothing to the table.

Walker had an excellent opportunity to demonstrate to the people of Milwaukee County just how good he is at managing large, complex enterprises. The results?

The State was forced to take over Milwaukee County’s public assistance programs, due to Walker's ineptness. It’s almost as if Milwaukee County had picked their ill-prepared, unskilled, and unqualified cousin for the position.

“The State's unprecedented move Tuesday to strip Milwaukee County of its role in administering food aid, child care and medical assistance programs was prompted by years of county mismanagement, state Health Services Secretary Karen Timberlake said.”

“The state "has in fact expended millions of additional dollars and thousands of hours of staff resources to assist your county over a period of years," Timberlake wrote. "Despite these efforts, Milwaukee County's performance fails national and state standards and is failing the people of the county."

"Milwaukee County has demonstrated a sustained inability to successfully provide services to its (poor) customers," Timberlake said in a letter to Walker. She disputed Walker's assertion that the problem has been the state underfunding the operation, or due to the souring economy[1].

A ‘sustained inability’. For those who strive towards process excellence, those are damning words. But ‘process excellence’ was the last thing on Walker’s mind. What Timberlake is saying, essentially, is ‘we gave you more help than your predecessors and you still couldn’t do the job’. Walker wanted failure, because from his Randian perspective, those receiving the help weren’t the ‘creative minds’, the ‘makers’ that added value to society, they were ‘takers’, nothing more than grist for the mill and entirely expendable.

Got it. Refuse to administer help (that’s already available) to those most in need, then when they remain needy, seek excuses, not solutions. Thus, the self-fulfilling prophesy becomes the proof.

While on the campaign trail, expect to hear many things from Walker. Programmed talking points produced by his Koch-sponsored handlers designed to mask the real agenda: continue to push for policies that reward the wealthy for being wealthy while destroying America’s middle-class and keep those already struggling from improving their condition.

But what he won’t talk about are any of the scandals and near-scandals that follow him.

Tom Barrett, Milwaukee Mayor and Democrat Gubernatorial opponent in both the 2010 and the recall elections, had this to say about Walker and his tight-lipped defense strategy:

“There are just so many questions that Gov. Walker refuses to answer. He refuses to answer questions about who’s paying his legal defense fees for his criminal defense lawyers. He refuses to answer questions on where he goes on fundraising trips when he should’ve been in Madison working on legislation. He refuses to answer questions such as, ‘Did he sign recall petitions against Sen. [Russ] Feingold and Sen. [Herb] Kohl?’ The more questions he refuses to answer, the more people are asking themselves, why is he asking us to trust him[2]?”

Regarding whether or not Walker signed recall petitions against Senators Feingold and Kohl, walker says:

“I don’t remember what may or may not have been put in front of me. I just don’t remember. Do you remember everything you signed 15 years ago?” he said in the interview. “The mayor’s just desperate.”

Which makes you wonder: Does Walker read what he signs? Signing a recall petition is not like, say, taking a survey or some routine paperwork. Surely one would remember a petition. Do we want a president that is either unfocused or is a liar?

Another scandal surrounding Walker is the John Doe 1 & 2 investigations. John Doe 1 involved Walker’s Milwaukee County staff working on his bid for governor while on county time. Walker has repeatedly stated he knew nothing of what the staffers were up to.

The notion that Walker puts forward as to his lack of knowledge whether or not his staff was breaking election laws, is incongruent with being a manager that is focused on the work to be done, and therefore laughable. If he didn’t know what was going on in his own office, what does that say about his skill at administration? Yet, he his damned by his own words. Writing about the indictments brought forth on Kelly Rindfleisch, Walker says:

"We cannot afford another story like this one…No one can give them any reason to do another story. That means no laptops, no websites, no time away during the workday, etc[3]”

So, he knew.

Walker habitually surrounds himself with corrupt people. One of his biggest contributors paid a fine of $166,900 for illegally funneling money to Walker’s campaign. And let’s not forget the convictions of former Walker staffers in the John Doe I probe.

But it’s not just crooks that Walker keeps company with, it’s stupid people with disgusting values. Walker’s former deputy chief of staff, Tim Russell, and his partner, Brian Pierck, chose the brilliant user name of “Walker04” when visiting child pornography sites[4].

Imagine the selection process that was used to locate such great talent. Now, imagine that same expertise applied to potential cabinet secretaries and even Supreme Court nominees.

All this might matter to a person if they were intent on serving the public, not so with Walker – like the Honey Badger – he just doesn’t care. Walker is only concerned with advancing his own career. Make no mistake: Walker uses the Koch brothers (and others) as much as they use him.

Let’s also not forget Walker’s demonstrated fealty to the Koch brothers, and particularly the infamous phone call. Last time I checked, neither Koch brother was a citizen of Wisconsin. To further cement the relationship between the Koch brothers and the Right in general, reflect for a moment of the efforts of ALEC – funded by Koch.

To be fair, not all the blame for ALEC’s influence can be placed at Walker’s feet – too many Wisconsin Republicans holding office offer sacrifice at this altar. Let’s just not forget that we are the sacrifice they are offering.

Walker has made the largest cuts to public education in the state – ever. The result of Walker’s ‘administration’? Wisconsin ranks poorly compared to any other state in terms of economic health and job creation, the keystone of his campaign promises. Transfer that thinking to the national level.

This all goes beyond money. It speaks to the question of what kind of society we wish to have. Do we want to live in a country where the number of dollars you have is the only metric worth considering? What about the overall quality of life attainable to the average citizen, even if they aren’t filthy rich? Is it only the moneyed-class that has a right to pursue happiness?

If you aren’t convinced that the only reason Walker is Governor of Wisconsin is the Tea Party frenzy of 2010 – manufactured by Koch – and that the Tea Party is an entirely astroturf effort, consider the following:

“Many of the ideas propounded in the 1980 campaign presaged the Tea Party movement. Ed Clark told The Nation that libertarians were getting ready to stage ‘a very big tea party’, because people were ‘sick to death’ of taxes.[5]”

They’ve been at this for a while.

Most frightening of all are the ties that the Koch’s have to the John Birch Society, possibly the most extreme right-wing group ever, with the possible exception of the Ayn Rand Society, though are nearly one and the same.

Even William F. Buckley, Jr., whom no one could mistake for a left-leaning socialist-sympathisizing flower-child condemned the John Birch Society, and Barry Goldwater felt the need to distance himself from the group.[6]

And the Koch’s are fulfilling the JBS agenda, if not in name, then certainly in deed. Helped by Grover Norquist (no friend of middle America and another Randian robot), who wants to return the country back to the good old days of the 1880’s where there corporations ruled people’s lives in nearly every way and made countless miserable.

In this worldview, regular people are of no use – they are not the ‘creative minds’ Rand writes of but the ‘reactive minds’ that L. Ron Hubbard pities[7]. Nevermind that the ‘creative minds’ (read ‘job creators) that Rand talks about could never realize success if not for the ‘takers’ she despises.

This is why Wisconsin voters carry a burden unlike those of other states. Wisconsin has the opportunity, nay duty, to turn him out of office – any office. People of Wisconsin need to reclaim their place as innovators of public service and policy.

They’ve done it before, and come November, they will realize another first: the first state to rebuke the big-money Koch-Machine fueled era of Randian/Birch government.

As William Finnegan, writing in the New Yorker[8], put it:

“Wisconsinites aren't used to such hard-nosed politics. Bipartisan consensus is a cherished local value; laws mandating official transparency are proudly upheld. The good-government tradition is strong, and many Wisconsinites like to suggest, politely, that the state has been indispensable to social progress in America. It was here that the first progressive state income-tax and workers'-compensation laws were passed, in 1911; the first unemployment insurance established, in 1932; the first collective bargaining agreement for public employees signed, in 1959. The country's first kindergarten was opened in Wisconsin. The historic bastion of Wisconsin progressivism was the Republican Party. As William Cronon, a University of Wisconsin historian, writes, "The Democratic Party was so ineffective that Wisconsin politics were largely conducted as debates between the progressive and conservative wings of the Republican Party." At times, the Socialists (Milwaukee had three Socialist mayors, the most recent serving until 1960) and Robert M. La Follette's Progressives also played vital roles”.

Scott Walker has brought nothing to positive to Wisconsin, he'll bring nothing positive the the country. He's already dirtier than Nixon was when he was forced out of the Oval Office in disgrace. His friends are linked to the most paranoid and extremist organizations ever to crawl the Earth.

Walker has mis-managed Wisconsin's affairs in a spectacular show of incompetence. Likewise as Milwaukee County Executive. And, he the same thi...wait. What did he do as a member of the state assembly?

Now, he wants to be President. He has the Koch brother's money backing him. He's able to lie with a straight face. He might make it, after all. That's why Wisconsin simply must stop him, here.

Wisconsin is ready to rise to the challenge and lead the country away from the perverse distortion of of our Founding Father's vision. Our motto is "Out of Many, One" not "For a Few, All".

Come November, it’s on the people of Wisconsin, more than anyone else, to set the ship of state aright once again and put the country back on a genuine path to prosperity for all. And this time, a democrat will lead them.

---

[1] The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel February 3, 2009.

[2] “Scott Walker Keeps Low Profile Before Wisconsin Recall Vote. David Catanese, Politico.com

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76809.html

[3] “Sending Scott Walker Packing” Ruth Conniff, Progressive magazine March 2012, Vol. 76, Issue 3

[4]http://host.madison.com/news/local/crime_and_courts/former-walker-aide-tim-russell-gets-prison-for-stealing-from/article_fbe19ae6-64b7-11e2-a1ae-0019bb2963f4.html

[5] http://occupymuseums.org/press/TheNewYorker.pdf

[6] http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/goldwater-the-john-birch-society-and-me/

[7] For a discussion of the similarities of Rand’s philosophy and Hubbard’s, see “The Ayn Rand Cult”, by Jeff Waler. Open Court Publishing, Peru, Illinois 1999.

[8] “The Storm”, William Finnegan, New Yorker 3/5/2012 Vol.88, Issue 3.

Navigation by WebRing.

A Triple-Foul

I’ve read that soon, print newspapers will be a thing of the past.

I know of one that few will miss: The Milwaukee Urinal-Journal Sentinel.

The reason that prompts me to make such a statement is that the only good thing about the paper is the local section.

Most of the editorials are predictable, even laughable.

Case in  point: the April 20^th editorial regarding the soon-to-be new Milwaukee Bucks Basketball Corporation facility.

In the editorial, the Journal’s editorial board makes the argument that, since it’s a foregone conclusion that taxpayer money will be spent to fund a new arena (and maybe more), the community should step back, take a deep breath, and think about the big picture.

In their minds this means consideration for a number of other things, such as maybe some kind of museum, or stores, or whatever that ‘we’ might want to include in this new facility.

But not, for instance, any tie-in to mass transit. The Journal says that’s another conversation. I disagree.

Since it’s inevitable that public money is going to help the new millionaires who bought the team make even more money, and that it’s likely that this public money will come in the form of a sales tax, and that many of those who will end up paying this new sales tax use mass transit to go the low paying jobs that provide the income that will be taxed, providing improvements such as more routes into suburban industrial parks and the like should be at the forefront of the discussion, and is not ‘tangential’ as the board suggests.

Where are all the anti-tax conservatives? Why haven’t we heard the usual hew-and-cry from the Tea Partiers, Neocons, and the rest of the Rabid Right? Where’s Grover Norquist?

Norquist, he of the “No Tax Increase Pledge”, insinuated himself into the Volkswagen-UAW flap over the union’s effort to organize workers at the VW Tennessee plant, which had nothing to do with tax rates anyway. Where is this self-appointed slayer of bigger government, this Champion of the 'Leave Us Alone' mantra? Why doesn’t it bother him that the people of southeastern Wisconsin are about to be oppressed by a new layer of taxing-authority government?

I keep forgetting that people like Norquist don’t really care so much about taxes, what they care about I that their friends aren’t taxed. And since this new Bucks tax will be paid by those with little to no political clout whatsoever, all is fine.

It probably does irritate Norquist that the new owners have pledged $100M to help build the facility. Fools. Don’t they know they could get that money from taxes as well?

We have our own local version (kind of) of Norquist in the person of Christian Schneider, columnist for the above mentioned newspaper and avid Scott Walker lapdog. The only reason Schneider hasn’t gone batshit crazy over the impending new tax is because his LordMaster™ Scott Walker hasn't yet made an edict regarding the issue.

He does, however, find it within him to make such funny jokes about how the team could come up with the rest of the money for the facility without raising taxes. While Schneider’s column is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, it really is foot-in-mouth.

First, the math. While not meant to be realistic, they betray how the right thinks about people’s money. Not big corporations or the very rich, but regular people’s money. The numbers don’t reflect any sort of reality because they don’t need to. Not in the context of raising taxes for a new basketball temple or when lowering the tax rates on the very wealthy, which the not very wealthy at all end up paying so that the much-more wealthy can enjoy themselves during their much-more frequent downtime. The only thing that matters to Schneider or Norquist is that no one with money is going to have to pay anymore tax. King’s don’t pay taxes, their subjects do.

Once again, those on the right (The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Grover Norquist, and Christian Schneider, in this case) demonstrate that they don’t have to actually live the values they proscribe for others, as long as the proletariat does.

How Many Half-Walkers Make One Lie?

Wendy Davis, the darling of women’s rights crusader’s for her dramatic filibuster in opposition of curtailing abortion services in Texas, has come under fire for making some ‘inaccurate’ statements regarding her struggles as a young single mother.

First of all, let’s get this out of the way: No two ways about it, being a single mother at any age is difficult. Couple that with recent family-unfriendly policies adopted in many states and the country overall such as shifting tax burdens onto the backs of the poor; large, super-profitable businesses hiring people for part-time as opposed to full-time work to avoid paying higher wages and providing benefits such as paid time off and healthcare, etc. and the basic and necessary work of parenting becomes harder than people who’ve never had to deal with those burdens could know.

I am not knocking Wendy Davis because she was a single mother.

I am knocking her because, like far too many public servants,  she's played with the truth.

She’s had to backpeddle from initial statements that portrayed her more sympathetically than the truth can support. We’ve seen this too many times in the past to let exaggerations, embellishments, and (in some cases) outright lies to slide past us and into our social sub-consciousness:

•  One President wasn’t a crook, and then was;
• A different one didn’t trade arms for hostages, and then, yes, he did;
• Another one didn’t have sex with ‘that woman’, and then, did;
• One isn’t gay, just has a ‘wide stance’;
• This politician claimed a world-class marathon time, but not really;
• Another closed a bridge, didn’t close a bridge, just found out about it, and knew about it all along. Very, very, busy, man.

The point of the list is that we, the people, have heard this sort of thing too often to fall for it anymore. We should never accept it from anyone.

We know that politicians have smart people around them advising and parsing each utterance to be spoken. So, how do we drill down deeper to more fully understand why this happens?

When “It is What It Is” isn’t enough, exaggeration and embellishing follow. And politicians are people too. I think. However, they need to be accepted more than your average person-on-the-street.

They need it because they need votes. Joe Six-pack doesn’t need your vote.

Yet, for myself, whenever I hear someone in office or running for office make a factually distorted remark (I call it pulling a ‘Half-Walker’), I immediately rethink my thinking regarding prior thinking about that person. Or so I think.

If I (or you) can’t trust someone to report accurately about things that are easily discovered independently, how can I (or you) trust them to do the right thing when the public eye is not focused on them? I can’t. Can you?

Now, I know that some will see this as an attack on Wendy Davis because she’s an advocate for women’s issues. There is nothing I can say to dissuade them otherwise. And, really, it’s not so much a criticism of Ms. Davis as it is a criticism of the way we, the public, are seemingly never satisfied with a regular story of overcoming obstacles.

The backstory now has to be larger than life.

The thing that gets me the most is that Davis really didn’t need to embellish anything. Raising a child is hard work under the best of circumstances with a fully committed partner and several magnitudes harder by yourself.

We need, more than ever before, honesty and integrity in our leaders. We need our leaders to strive for excellence and to lead by example. Wendy Davis has failed that test. She tried to pull a Half-Walker. To her credit she has admitted as much, yet her admission speaks of ‘tightening’ her language, another Half-Walker.

It’s been said that the truest test of character is when you do the right thing even when know is looking.

How Milwaukee’s Socialist Legacy Made Scott Walker What He Is Today

The legacy of Milwaukee’s socialist past has benefitted Scott Walker in a way that could not have been predicted by the city’s early to mid-20^th century socialist leaders.

“Sewer Socialism” – Milwaukee’s version of socialism that came to power in 1910 with the election of the nation’s 1^st socialist mayor – Emil Seidel (later the 1912 V.P. candidate on the Socialist ticket). These Sewer Socialists worked for and put in place, among other things, public parks, and public health and traffic safety measures. It meant providing basic government services honestly and with frugality.

Prior to these ‘sewer socialists’ taking the reins of city government, Milwaukee was at least as corrupt as Chicago. They cleaned up city government and kept it clean. After Seidel came Mayor Daniel Hoan, who ran the city from 1916-1940 and then Frank Zeidler from 1948-190.

These guys weren’t the type of socialist that seeks to take over every aspect of life, they just wanted to see city government run to the benefit of all. They did it so well that not only in the city of Milwaukee but the entire state of Wisconsin, good, well run government came to be expected.

For many years, that's the way it was.

So when the pension scandal broke in 2002 and forced the County Executive, Tom Ament, along with a slew of County Supervisors, to resign, it gave Walker the opening he needed.

Walker ran for and was elected Milwaukee County Executive. Welcome to the “What, Me Worry?” era of county governance.

Walker proceeded to undermine Wisconsin’s legacy of good government practice by his now all too familiar game of “Three-Card Monty” governance: tell the public what you think they want hear while secretly doing what’s politically unwise and unpopular, then spring it on the unsuspecting public in a way that’s sure to piss them off.

If anyone finds out, throw a subordinate or two under the bus and move on. After all, who could place responsibility for the administration of the county’s business in the lap of the Executive?

That’s how he operated as County Executive, which has driven investigations of its own (and a number of former Walker employees convicted of crimes) and how he continues to operate as Governor. And, there’s more where that came from.

Don’t be fooled by this counterfeit leader or his rhetoric – that he’s looking out for the less well-off – he’s running for President (some Koch-head must have planted that idea). He has to appear to care about the 99%, after all, he needs their votes.

Barba Tenus Sapientes

"The best off...should pay at a rate at least equal to what low- and middle-income families pay." - Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy

Scott Walker wants to change how Wisconsin collects taxes. He wants Wisconsin to join the cast of states that have no income tax. That doesn't sound so bad at first hearing, but, like all things Walker, this needs further unpacking.

Let's look again at the chart shown previously:

It should be pointed out that simply because a state may not have an income tax in no way should be interpreted that no taxes are paid. They just aren't call income taxes.

You see how the line showing the current tax structure for Wisconsin has a sort-of hump in the middle? And, how that is in contrast to the other lines, which represent who pays what percentage in taxes of personal income for non-elderly taxpayers?

The reason for the hump is to give those on the bottom of the earnings scale a break. It's no secret that lower-income people have less to work with in the first place.

As you can easily see, people in the lowest 20% , pay from 5.7% to a whopping 16.9% of their income in taxes in one form or another, be it sales, property, or excise tax. That 16.9% figure? That's from Washington, where there is no state income tax. It's also the highest percentage paid by anyone in any category.

Generally as one moves from lowest to higher income brackets, the percentages of taxes paid goes down, but not the dollar amounts. This is as it should be.

Take a look at the chart below:

The upper and lower lines represent the range I believe distribution of tax burden will be within.

The line in the middle, labeled Walker's Wisconsin, is what I think the state's tax structure will look like after Walker obeys his overseers and does their bidding. The structure will favor the better off, and the least well off will carry an unfair burden. No surprises there.

Yet, I still wouldn't be surprised if Walker tries to take it a step further, if not right off the bat, then at the next budget cycle, by removing features such as exemptions for children, sales tax deductions for groceries, rent, heating,etc.

Walker's not stupid and he's sure to incorporate at least a few progressive features into the scheme, such as:

• Property tax Homestead exemptions - at least for the elderly. 
• Provide a tax credit to offset impact of sales tax - at least for lower-income taxpayers. 
• A tax credit linked to Federal poverty level and/or to inflation. 
• Standard deductions and child-care exemptions. 
• Refundable Earned Income Tax Credit. 
• Limits itemized deductions for upper-income taxpayers. 
• Use of Combined Reporting for corporations.

But I'm certain that once he sells the state on discarding the graduated income tax, he (if he's still Governor and not..and not..I can't say it...) then train his efforts to punish and reward freely:

• Providing total exclusion of Capital Gains taxes (that's how rich people make their money make their money). 
• Eroding the Combined Reporting requirement. 
• Higher reliance on property taxes. 
• Decoupling exemptions from inflation indexes. 
• Removal of Federal Income Tax deduction. 
• Institute only non-refundable EITC. 
• Higher reliance on sales and excise taxes.

Neither of the above lists are exhaustive. Think of it as a game: remove two from column A and add three from column B.

I hope I'm wrong - and there's a chance I am, since Walker is running for president. Maybe the strategy is to do this one thing right to show the people he really cares. Because he does - about his ambition.