Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Walker pays no price for failings, scandals like Lincoln Hills

Our Teflon Governor - - Google Walker (I'll help) and subjects like John Doe I, II and $700,000 secret mining donation, deer Chronic Wasting Disease, incomplete I-94 and Zoo Interchange projects, minuscule job growth and 250,000 jobs not created, second-worst roads, worst ranking for business startups, repeated and growing giveaways of public water and other resources, secret Foxconn contract, known water contamination, etc. - - is sliding past accountability, again, over the Lincoln Hills youth prison scandal.

Shortly after his 2010 election, Walker shut down the boys youth prison in Waukesha County - - despite millions of dollars having been spent on then-recent improvements - - as part of his Act 10/austerity/destructive anti-union slim-flam, and sent the offenders Up North, out of sight and away from SE Wisconsin where many have family connections.

He ignored a direct warning about the situation from a judge.

Walker knows that hell-hole conditions at Lincoln Hills have festered and worsened, yet refuses to meet with an injured staff member and will not make a personal fact-finding visit there - - or to any state corrections institution, for that matter (so he won't be confronted by angry officers as well as conditions he has made worse) - - yet is laying the groundwork through easy rides statewide for a re-election campaign without the Lincoln Hills travesty, or his other failures or his enabling embrace of Russia's best friend Donald Trump denting the Walker image or poll numbers?

Why is this?

Low-to-no public expectations?

Post-Act 10 exhaustion/acceptance?

Weak or disorganized opposition?

Unstoppable pro-Walker networks and echo chambers?

Newsrooms drained of staff and energy?

Maybe you can get re-elected in 21st century Wisconsin - - after having made it harder for city residents and Democrats to vote - - through repeated attacks on the DNR, slams at unions, kicking the poor by freezing the minimum wage and pledging to drug-test public aid applicants, pretending to be the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan, tweeting your picture wearing UW regalia despite never having taken a class there while corporatizing its mission and cutting its budget - - and never admitting error or making an apology.

Weigh in.






3 comments:

Peter Felknor said...

I like to say that the rise of Walker predicted the rise of Trump. This is the new American post-literate know-nothingness that actually celebrates Walker's lack of education and Trump's prattling on Twitter like an angry toddler.

James Rowen said...

@Peter - - Agreed. Some examples. https://thepoliticalenvironment.blogspot.com/2017/03/trump-dismisses-rural-citizens.html

Jake formerly of the LP said...

He also knows that the state media won't pursue the story past a few days, and that enough rubes get their "news" from Belling, Icki and Bader that they'll never know that Walker's own failed policies caused this disaster.

And if the WisDems don't keep pounding the story with ads and billboards to grab media attention and break the Bubble of rural/exurban Wisconsin, the story goes away.

So far, it's been enough to slip by with 52% of a midterm electorate. This must be changed.