Thursday, October 10, 2013

To Look Presidential [Sic], Walker Returns Fraction Of School Aid Cuts

In his first state budget, Walker cut a billion dollars from schools - - among the deepest cuts nationally - - and from other local aids.

Now to appear moderate as he promotes a presidential run, Walker is proposing to return 10% of the cut funding - - and calling it tax relief.

Spin on top of spin.

7 comments:

Jake formerly of the LP said...

And drives up the structural deficit even higher, by the way, since I'm assuming these are state tax dollars paying for this.

Smells like desperation to me. They do know the election is NEXT year, right?

JB said...

Not that the money is really there anyway, I suspect. I would not count on increased revenues, with people employed at lower wages and buying fewer things. Moreover, some of that increased revenue has been diverted to highways.

This is just an election game.

By the way, whatever happened to that $100 million for Milwaukee?

Anonymous said...

Expect a lot of this sort of thing fro Scottie now. He wants to make himself look all compassionate. We must remember: It is NOT proper to thank or reward the arsonist for helping put out the fire he started.

Anonymous said...

While all points here are good -- and kudos to author for not linking to journal communications (without full disclosure), posters here always assume that our votes are counted accurately and verifiable.

We know that the state has been gerrymandered so severely that almost unprecedented margins of victory are needed to dethrone scotty.

We know that the repugs are trying to disinfranchise as many voters as they can -- one state is even looking at a 2-tiered voting system where some voters have access to cast ballots in more elections than others.

We know that the proprietary touch-screens and the ballot scanners cannot be verified -- GAB will proclaim it election fraud to fully-test that machine counts are accurate.

But absolutely no one is talking about the central tabulators that are proprietary and which have documented impossible outcomes that violate the most basic law of mathematics -- the law of large numbers.

Wisconsin can be statistically proven to have NOT swung almost 20 points from June to Nov 2012 (walker up on state-wide race, obama up in the fall).

So all the points here would be valid if we had anything close to open, fair, free, transparent, and verifiable elections.

BUT WE DON'T

Conclusion: all the media has to do is prop up the 51/49 lie and walker merely needs to go through the motions that enable the media to explain (whether verifiable and/or accurate or not) the next election theft.

And once he can proclaim he has won the popular vote in bob lafollet's "progressive" wisconsin 3 times in 4 years -- the media will be ready to catapult him back onto the national stage -- eventually as the frontrunner for prez.

But only if the powers that be annoint it to be so -- remember, scottie walker is a distant cousing of george WALKER bush.

What I have outlined CAN happen and, should the MOTU choose, it WILL happen.

And none of the mental gyrations to analyze and explain will mean a thing.

Betsy said...

I thought Walker had to borrow to balance the budget. @Anonymous 5:23, why/how does gerrymandering effect a statewide race for governor? Or are your referring to the legislature? Please give us some hope!

CJ said...

@JB- The $100 million of federal money meant to assist homeowners stuggling with foreclosure?

CJ said...

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/hud-official-criticized-walkers-use-of-foreclosure-funds-7v6bhle-166960226.html

This money?

[...A chunk of the settlement goes directly to each state to spend as they see fit within certain parameters. Donovan said in his letter that the vast majority of attorneys general have directed their state direct funds to housing counseling, legal aid, marketing and outreach to inform people of the program, affordable housing programs and loan modification programs.

Van Hollen decided - after consulting with the governor - that Wisconsin would use $24.3 million of the estimated $30.2 million it will receive in direct payments to help plug the budget gap. In June, he said another chunk - up to $1.3 million - would go to raises and bonuses for prosecutors.

In a column, Van Hollen defended his decision, saying the state has discretion on how to spend the money and that the foreclosure crisis "harmed more than just the people who lost their homes."
...]


Another interesting interpreation of law from Van Hollen. Yeah. Walker, what a "hero".