There Will Not Be A 'Moderate' Scott Walker
There was news this week that Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer had joined fellow fringe Republican Gov. Rick Scott signing on to the expanded federal Medicaid funding provided by the Obama administration.
Leaving fewer right-wing GOP governors like Scott Walker who refused the funding and put ideology ahead of sane health-care funding for lower-income and out-of-work residents in their states.
So let's be clear about the message he was sending: there is not, and will never be, a moderate Scott Walker.
That is not who he is.
That is not why he ran for Governor.
That is not how he won re-election in the 2012 recall and intends to govern.
He was put into office and embedded there by far-right advocacy groups and corporate donors to turn Wisconsin into an anti-labor, anti-transit, anti-environmental, anti-public education laboratory for reactionary, private-interest -friendly and regressively-funded governance.
Period.
Whomever and whatever is in the way of that agenda gets rolled: women served by Planned Parenthood, Amtrak patrons, public employees, Native American culture, municipal transit systems, voting rights, urban school districts, Medicaid-eligible, working poor, publicly-owned wetlands, and air quality near sand mines, publicly-owned power plants and expanding, road-builder enabled freeways.
And just about anything in Milwaukee or associated with the Mayor who twice had the temerity to run against him.
Walker is in office to serve the wealthy, expand their class advantages and spend their campaign donations on his personal and party ambition.
He is there to implement Grover Norquist's blueprint to drown a dismembered government and reward the private sector and its managers with the consequences of intentionally shrunken, weakened, enervated government:
Lower taxes, greater power and more privilege, like iron mining company officials being invited in behind closed doors to write a mining bill that will let the company fill public Wisconsin wetlands and create acid mine drainage and air pollution in the watershed that has supported the Ojibwe rice-culture downstream, and connects to Lake Superior, for centuries.
Nowhere in that extremist, insider-managed, dollar-driven reactionary agenda is there room for, or any interest in anything approaching moderation.
Any campaign, candidate, consultant or commentator who tries to spin you otherwise is flat-out lying, and is after something that belongs to you.
Leaving fewer right-wing GOP governors like Scott Walker who refused the funding and put ideology ahead of sane health-care funding for lower-income and out-of-work residents in their states.
So let's be clear about the message he was sending: there is not, and will never be, a moderate Scott Walker.
That is not who he is.
That is not why he ran for Governor.
That is not how he won re-election in the 2012 recall and intends to govern.
He was put into office and embedded there by far-right advocacy groups and corporate donors to turn Wisconsin into an anti-labor, anti-transit, anti-environmental, anti-public education laboratory for reactionary, private-interest -friendly and regressively-funded governance.
Period.
Whomever and whatever is in the way of that agenda gets rolled: women served by Planned Parenthood, Amtrak patrons, public employees, Native American culture, municipal transit systems, voting rights, urban school districts, Medicaid-eligible, working poor, publicly-owned wetlands, and air quality near sand mines, publicly-owned power plants and expanding, road-builder enabled freeways.
And just about anything in Milwaukee or associated with the Mayor who twice had the temerity to run against him.
Walker is in office to serve the wealthy, expand their class advantages and spend their campaign donations on his personal and party ambition.
He is there to implement Grover Norquist's blueprint to drown a dismembered government and reward the private sector and its managers with the consequences of intentionally shrunken, weakened, enervated government:
Lower taxes, greater power and more privilege, like iron mining company officials being invited in behind closed doors to write a mining bill that will let the company fill public Wisconsin wetlands and create acid mine drainage and air pollution in the watershed that has supported the Ojibwe rice-culture downstream, and connects to Lake Superior, for centuries.
Nowhere in that extremist, insider-managed, dollar-driven reactionary agenda is there room for, or any interest in anything approaching moderation.
Any campaign, candidate, consultant or commentator who tries to spin you otherwise is flat-out lying, and is after something that belongs to you.
8 comments:
Well...yeah. But that doesn't mean it won't work and they won't try. It might, and they will.
Here's a plain truth for ya - No one on this planet is a worse huckster, lying, victimizing, cynical, mean-spirited, vulnerable-preying, cold-hearted, laughing piece of human garbage than the charlatans running the Religion Business. Remember that odd Marjoe Gortner fella?
You're prob'ly smart enough to see where I'm goin' with this. So I think you can put your outrage on ice and try not to be too surprised, it seems to me that Walker quite probably really fears/respects nothing, and will try just about anything.
He was put in place with a compliant media -- something you consistently fail to point out.
But if a media outlet makes a mistake in a headline -- then you are all over it.
WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
The media propaganda is a bigger problem than walker -- that is the mechanism that hoisted him into office (via unverifiable, non-disclosed, and proprietary vote counts that have serious statistical anomolies).
Why do you grandstand about the guy in front of the cameras and microphones and give the larger players behind it all a free pass?
All that's true but none the less he can be beaten.
We need to stop focusing on how he got there and start focusing on how to beat him and whether or not he has already started to beat himself. sic: The falling out over school vouchers.
I use as an example Sen. Dave Hansen of Green Bay. He beat a recall and survived redistricting and a well financed challenge from an equally right wing monied and well known challenger.
In Fond du Lac Jessica King first beat Randy Hopper in the recall but then lost by a mere 600 votes.
What both of these had in common was not tons of money but a clear throated message of Dem values and truth speaking.
There is a great segment in Ken Burns Civil War series where I think Shelby Foote talks about the differences between Grant and the other Union generals. He said, "Stop telling me what old Bobby Lee is going to do to you and start telling me what you are going to do to him!
Very well said and this needs to be the basis of any speculation about what Scott Walker will do.
Why is it that Rick Perry in Texas is followed by protesters begging him to change his Medicaid decision while Wisconsin quietly accepts Walker's attack on our health and pocketbooks?
Is it because we don't expect him to be capable of using common sense and common decency in his decision-making?
Amen
We don't expect common sense and common decency from flaming a**holes.
Thank you for writing this.
My soul is in pain from the heartless behavior of Scott Walker.
What I do not understand, is the screaming radio hosts and their followers who worship the Governor.
It seems that the Governor feeds these media outlets with his propaganda, and it is swallowed by their listeners. What is in it for the radio hosts. Are they paid, are they fame-whores. I just don't get it.
The radio hosts get listeners in the conservative demographic,which means ratings, better contracts, plus added celebrity.
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