Despite staged winks to the audience, and the physical presence of working men and women in hard hats and work clothes, Scott Walker's State of the State speech - - live-blogged here - - could not escape some harsh realities:
* His signature campaign promise of 250,000 new jobs is failing and shows no sign of success.
* His signature job-creation change to state government - - wiping out the Department of Commerce in favor of a development corporation - - is a fiasco. $50 million in loans were not tracked; money is lost, rules were broken. As its chair, the agency and the mess is all Walker's.
* The mining bill is now Walker's number-one jobs priority - - but even if passed, the bill contributes nothing to the employment ranks except among attorneys.
The bill sets up false hopes and losing confrontations with Native American treaty rights, the US Clean Water Act and the state's constitutional guarantees of clean and accessible public water primacy.
All this from perhaps the most anti-union and anti-environmental Governor in state history - - now posing as a moderate friend of labor and the environment.
To paraphrase Rick Santorum: [Walker] - - What a cynic.
Walker three times in the speech said the state under his "bold vision" was doing better than Washington.
The data demonstrate otherwise.
Hilariously, if Wisconsin was creating jobs at the same rate as the U.S., we'd have about 100,000 more jobs on Walker's 2 years. We are nowhere near that, obviously.
ReplyDeleteSo he's right- we aren't operating like the rest of the nation. And not in a good way.
He kept bashing Washington and other states. Even Jan Brewer laid down the sword against O care and took the massive amounts of money to expand Medicare. She said herself - it will infuse money to AZ economy .
DeleteWalker said Wisconsin doesn't give excuses - that's what he's given the last few years for his failures.
ReplyDeleteWalker's staffers and eager young GOPers will be returning their hard hats, steel-toed boots and work clothes to the costume rental shop tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteHe's a clown! What a dog and pony show...that's something you would have expected from a kindergarten class [props and flags and animal explanations] Next, Vos will present the mining bill wearing a miner's lighted hat, pick axe and shovel in the dark of night because it excludes iron mining from Wisc.environmental laws. I thought after ACT 10 and ACT 21 they could do no more harm.......with their control we're in "BIG A--" TROUBLE!!!!
ReplyDelete@ anon 10:25,
ReplyDeleteAssuming you feel the same way about the children being used as props in King Obama's press conference today?