Legislating Though Dysfunction, Partisan Hackery Is The New Wisconsin Standard

Consider that while the state continues to shed jobs, the Wisconsin State Senate and Assembly, under GOP leadership, are devoting time in their much-ballyhooed Special Legislative Session on Jobs instead to:

1. Waste an all-night session in the Assembly to specifically amend a state scholarship program that had nothing to do with jobs - - and that had already so amended.

2. Debate and pass in the Senate The Permission Granted To Shoot-A-Burglar, Or Maybe The UPS Driver Law.

3. Agree to let people carry concealed weapons into the Capitol Building.

4. Debate and pass in the Senate The Teach Abstinence In Public Schools Bill.

5. Work to approve a bill hamstringing recall petition circulators with burdensome new legal rules to make Gov. Walker's removal by recall beginning in mid-November more difficult.

6. Debate and pass a bill in the Senate changing future primary schedules to penalize college student voting and also to limit absentee-ballot access.

And that's only a half-dozen examples culled in 20 minutes from my blog.

[Thursday update: Add Assembly approvals overnight for teacher discipline and creating an elected Milwaukee County Comptroller - - hey, one job created! - - to the 'jobs' agenda.]

This legislative farce and dismissal of the real world is taking place on the public dime at the Capitol in Madison as jobs continue to drain away from the state, and as the State Department of Revenue has said Scott Walker's 250,000 new jobs pledge is unattainable.

But the good news for out-of-work Wisconsinites: rest assured that soon there will be no more medical talk in sex-ed classes about where babies and HIV come from, comfort yourself knowing you can attend a State Capitol hearing with a gun in your pocket and be confident that you'll get a free shot at someone you think is breaking into your house.

On, Wisconsin.