Thursday, September 18, 2014

As poverty rises in Wisconsin, Walker intentionally adds misery

[Updated, 10: 18 p.m.] Shocking, depressing census data shows a spike in poverty among tens of thousands of Wisconsin low-income families with single mothers in charge.

Wrong-Way Walker - - the self-proclaimed "original Tea Party in Wisconsin - - has responded by kicking thousands of low-income families off their existing BadgerCare health insurance and refusing to accept an increase in statewide food stamp availability - - and proposing that low-income aid recipients be drug tested before they can feed their children.

Walker has launched an unending volley of missiles the way of low-income women and families:

An arbitrary $20 monthly public assistance wrist-slapping cut and trims to a federal tax credit designed to boost income and make work more attractive. More cuts to health-care services at Planned Parenthood clinics. Mandatory ultrasound examinations.

And now cuts to food stamps combined with the extra, gratuitous pee-in-a-cup requirement - - not based on data but an ideological presumption that the poor are lazy and criminal.

Policies and consequences like these are why I've been arguing for a couple of months in an ever-expanding posting that Walker is a uniquely cold-blooded partisan who clutches to power at the expense of people least able to resist:
There has never been a Wisconsin Governor in our memories prior to Wrong Way Walker who so widely disrespected the time, resources and basic interests of so many Wisconsinites, particularly the state's lower-income residents, just to advance his own political career. 
Conflationists can claim until the cows come home that every Wisconsin Governor has behaved this one-dimensionally, opportunistically, selfishly, coldly - - including his latest  pandering play and ploy for his Tea Party base: mandating drug testing for low-income Wisconsinites who apply for food stamps and other public assistance. 
Few if any Northern states' governors have so eagerly embraced a Nixonian, southern strategy to wield and hold power. 
And has been so habitually evasive, to our knowledge - - for 26 years.


1 comment:

  1. Nixon has a lot of accomplishments, many environmental: the CWA, SDWA, established the EPA. From a young age he excelled an, became an attorney, was a leader of several organizations. Walker is a c average drop out. He's not in Nixon's orbit.

    ReplyDelete