Walker Stuck It To Madison When He Killed The Train; Milwaukee's MMAC Approves

He got to make his ideological point at Madison's expense.

With the acquiescence of Milwaukee's weak-kneed business community.

Milwaukee's business community enjoys an Amtrak connection to Chicago (though Walker's funding dismissal cost the Milwaukee station an $18 million upgrade) and here's what Madisonians may find hard to grasp: Milwaukee's business community could care less if Madison didn't get to a similar connection.

And Walker is only too happy to leave Madison, with its Democratic majority, out in the cold.

For Walker and the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, which gave his campaign $381,000, it's a win-win.

Both Walker and the business sector's leadership talk a decent game about jobs and development, but for both of them, self-interest, on the most narrow of grounds, allowed Walker to return the money without a whisper of complaint from Milwaukee's private sector.

Which will be the pattern for the next four years, as Walker will act and run again against Madison, with the support of Milwaukee's private sector leaders.

So get ready Madison, with all those public employees and liberal environmentalists and higher-education believers; your role as civic scapegoat is already under- - as Tom Ament still functions for Walker in Milwaukee.