Thursday, January 29, 2015

UW getting fresh taste of Walker's divide-and-conquer manipulation

[Updated] Now it's the UW, and particularly the faculty, experiencing again Scott Walker's divisive 'leadership.'

(The headline and text have been updated to more accurately reflect that UW personnel already took Act 10 hits, so this is a "fresh taste" of the back of Walker's hand). 

His talk radio-inspired slap at teachers whom he claims are not working hard enough pits taxpayers against them, and students against their professors, and faculty against administrators who must not be cracking the whip hard enough on the lazy teachers they've hired.

Everybody is in a swirl, and Walker just heads off to the next interview to pitch his plan nationally, which is what he told righty radio talker Charlie Sykes yesterday was his intention.

Walker did the the same divide-and-conquer dance on the backs of state and local public employees, and when he told upscale suburban voters in the 2012 recall election that Democratic opponent and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett would turn the state into another Milwaukee, and when he said public assistance recipients needed to be drug-tested.

It's the same sleazy, small-man tactic: one group needs to be demonized to motive his base.

Divide-and-conquer is his self-promoting means-to-an-end-game - - manipulative, cynical, negative.

For UW employees - - as public employees - - it's another hit on top of the Act 10 cuts and restrictions already levied on them.

Former Nixon administration lawyer and Watergate scandal whistle-blower John Dean wrote a book about soulless right-wingers whom he called conservatives without conscience.

And said Scott Walker was more Nixonian than Nixon.

Walker is again proving Dean correct.


7 comments:

Anonymous said...

What did all those people think would happen when they gleefully voted him back into office. Apparently they didn't get the memo the first time around that he does not care one iota about them. He only cares about himself and his own aspirations.

Anonymous said...

I know lots of UW-Madison faculty--yes, the tenured ones even who went to the protests in Madison. I hope we all support them now.

Anonymous said...

And here we all thought he and Ray Cross were simpatico. Yesterday Ray liked his new flexibility: http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/walker-proposes-13-cut-more-freedom-for-uw-system-b99433644z1-289880441.html

Today he is frustrated: http://host.madison.com/news/local/education/university/uw-system-president-frustrated-by-scott-walker-s-comments-on/article_3218845e-b4bd-52fa-8bf2-0c710445a90c.html

Didn't Walker consult with his buddy? Cross might have cautioned him that treating researchers like temps would lead to brain drain and Wisconsin falling further behind the rest of the country.

Anonymous said...

Absolutely it is our turn to support Walker's new victims. Notice how he can't just fiscally attack them with his budget pen but he has to verbally demean and denigrate them by telling the public that they aren't working hard enough. This is the same crap he pulled with teachers and public employees telling all of Wisconsin that these people had it so much better than they. He is a master of lies and falsehoods that the state media take at face value and pedal it as truthful news with no checks on his accuracy. Walker counts on this to spread his deceptions. The best way to bring the truth forward and force the media to tell the rest of the story[truth] would be once again to fill the people's house with concerned citizens who choose not to see the governor destroy the crown jewel of higher education in Wisconsin with the stroke of his pen.

Anonymous said...

I think if I were Ray Cross and Rebecca Blank I would start talking about cutting all college sports. That will get alumni attention while stopping the brain drain that is surely being contemplated by faculty on the tenure track but not yet tenured. And trolls, please, don't post about how sports brings in money and supports other programs. All of those other programs are related to supporting athletes.

Milwaukeean said...

Jim, this is a rare "fail" for you.

UW employees only now are getting a "taste" of what Walker did to state employees in 2011?

UW employees ARE state employees, and already got more than a "taste" in 2011 of Walker's attacks on education, with substantial cuts to take-home pay. And, although UW faculty long were banned by law from collective bargaining, they form a fraction (less than 10 percent) of all UW workers, many of whom long had collective bargaining but also lost that right in 2011.

You think that, of all of those marchers in Madison in 2011,none were UW workers -- state workers from UW-Madison and from UW campuses across the state -- protesting what Walker was doing to their workplaces, their paychecks, their families, their rights? Those marchers were not, despite the focus of media, only K12 teachers and firemen. You usually do not follow other media in misreporting the realities.

Please. State the facts about UW employees, who are state employees, who also already have been hit by Act 10, and by continued budget cuts and tuition freezes and more -- remember, in the last budget debate, his fake "surplus"? -- meaning the loss of pay, every day, as well as the loss of merit raises, with the result that UW workers are far behind where they were before Walker (and they already had lost a lot under Doyle and his budget cuts and "furloughs").

Report the facts about Walker's attack on the UW, not for the first time but for four years now.

James Rowen said...

@Milwaukeean: The posting has been edited and updated also with a better headline.