Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Governor Pothole and his rutted route to re-election

Scott Walker knows the road to Election Day, 2018 is neither paved, repaired or orange-barrel free.

A frequent topic on this blog, for years.

For context, I commend to you this excellent piece of explanatory journalism by Katelyn Ferral in the Cap Times.

In her article there is every relevant factoid and sum and truism you need to know.

Every bureaucratic, brain numbing buzzword.

Every talking point and spinning denial and evasion of responsibility from the Team Walker geniuses who, like their Republican counterparts in the Nation's Capitol who fumbled their promised repeal and replacement of Obamacare through inaction and ideological incoherence despite controlling all the levers of power, have managed to mismanage Wisconsin's road funding and construction problems into consistently worse shape.

And here's what Walker and his clownish band of infighting incompetents have completely missed, though now it should have snapped into the kind of sharp focus only an impending wave election can deliver:

* No Wisconsin driver needs to memorize the funding formulas and the budgeting lingo to understand that the roads are awful.

*  Every Wisconsin driver can name his or her most familiar and thus favorite rotten, ridiculously rutted roadway. Add yours in the comments.

*  And every Wisconsin driver knows who has been in charge of this steaming hot mess and also knows that elections are when the accounting is assigned.

Walker has two leading do-little legislative enabling leaders - - Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and State Senate Majority Leader Scott “Elections’ Canceller” Fitzgerald - - who will eagerly change the subject by touting their well-timed pre-election $100-per-child checks and sales tax holidays that will cut maybe $4 off the price of a kid’s' back-to-school backpack, but any consumer knows those freebies won't cover the cost of a new set of tie-rods, shocks and tires.

And the Pothole Governor, Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dumber will throw phony blame at former Gov. Jim Doyle - - but that's like blaming your bad marriage of eight years on someone who broke up with you in senior year of high school.

So Team Walker has to own the potholes and botched priorities and orange barrel indelibility - - but only if his opponents listen to the people and the sound of hard rubber and metal rims not so much meeting the road as bouncing off it.
 

4 comments:

Jake formerly of the LP said...

A reminder that Walker and WisGOP just blew hundreds of millions of dollars on pre-election gimmicks, but didn't add one cent to the roads budget out of that one-time projected surplus.

And that's before we account for the $70-$90 million in cuts that are the direct result of the Walker Admin funneling money for highways down to the Foxconn region. Both Scotty and the GOP has failed miserably on this issue for the last 7 years, and our potholes won't be filled and our debts reduced until they are gone.

Unknown said...

Hwy 18 from Fennimore to Prairie du Chien doubles as a vertebrae compactor and molar extractor.

Anonymous said...

County trunk highways D and E going north from Lake Tomahawk Wis. Also I have recently traveled US Highway 51 from Tomahawk WI to Brokaw WI and have never seen it in such bad shape.

Anonymous said...

County trunks D and E from Lake Tomahawk North, about 7 miles.
Also, I have traveled US 51 from a point north of Tomahawk WI and Brokaw WI many times. I traveled that route a few months ago and it was in terrible shape. It has never been that bad before.