Monday, July 30, 2018

"Previt" Scott Walker. Meeting Gov. Handout.

We've met Gov. Pothole Scotthole. And Brown, Blue-Green Water Walker

Today we say "Hello" in Russian, "Previt," to honor Governor Handout - - from his hand to yours using your money  - - a true, throwback Sovietski, just as a forlorn Ron Johnson might have put it. 

Hello, also to subsidies - - and, breaking news, here's a new one: $12.5 million for Fiserv which helped with their recent purchase of the Bucks' arena naming rights.

Yes, it's been that kind of year, when Republicans who have spent a fortune branding themselves as the party of 'a hand-up' have gone all in for 'hand outs.'
Walker has his hand out to the feds, they are handing him a fist full of dollars and Walker is passing some out Benjamins, too.

Walker let on the other day that while he didn't recall chatting up an accused Russian spy in Russian, as she remembers it, he had taken a Russian language class during his too few undergrad semesters at Marquette University.

Other recent events suggest that maybe he'd been channeling a different class, Glorious Highlights of The State-run Economy.

*  For instance, I think the $4.5 billion state and local handouts Walker has engineered for Foxconn have set the US record for taxpayer subsidies to a profitable, foreign firm.


*  And Walker wants to offer Foxconn-style handouts to Kimberly-Clark so it can keep open plants it says the market says are no longer viable.


Hey, market-schmarket: We're big government and we're here to help with, as Republicans traditionally call it, other people's money.

This is all entirely understandable, and justifiable, from Walker's point of view.


First of all, the $60 million proposed charge to taxpayers is chump change compared to the billions he's ticketed for Foxconn.

You may not hear much about it from Walker because he's busy campaigning around the state on the public's dime hawking another handout program - - those $100-per-kid checks for school supplies.

Something else he won't talk about when he's on check-handout tour: how the money may lessen the pocketbook pressure on teachers whose take home pay he permanently slashed through Act 10 but who still pay out of their own pockets for some children's supplies.

I have heard these accounts from teachers, and reporting backs it up, but he won't mention anything that undermines the disinformation that, all of a sudden he's, the education governor!

But back to his proposed transfer of taxpayer millions to Kimberly-Clark, its bottom line, and ultimately to its shareholders' benefit, 


For the company, it's practically a necessity, as you can see from its 2017 report that:
"Adjusted earnings per share in 2018 are expected to be $6.90 to $7.20, a year-on-year increase of approximately 11 to 16 percent...The company's Board of Directors has approved a 3.1 percent increase in the quarterly dividend for 2018, which is the 46th consecutive annual increase in the dividend."
And while we're on the subject of who's on the dole and who isn't, you have to be impressed overall with Walker's campaign-year, going all in for the free federal money, including:

*  $160 million in Federal taxpayer dollars for bigger, wider roads to serve the Foxconn site, while other roads statewide continue to crumble (see Scottholes, above). A full archive of Foxconn posts is here.


*  $166 million in Federal taxpayer dollars he just got from his BFF Donald Trump to lower some Wisconsin health care premiums, though it's only one-sixth of the roughly $1 billion federal health care dollars Walker turned down when Obama-era programs would have provided it - - and that taint flat out ruined it.


On that score, PolitiFact said

The upshot of the governor's decision is that the state, over a five year period, is spending about one billion dollars more on Medicaid than it would have if it took the extra federal money.
Same for the $23 million federal broadband and $810 million Amtrak expansion, train assembly and maintenance bucks he refused.

It's all situational, you see - - and for both Walker and Trump, the situation is ugly, polls say.


To both, we say "Dasvidaniya."


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The Fiserv thing really bothers me. Fiserv was founded by George Dalton, Tonette Walker's uncle. It also seems fishy that Fiserv will benefit from the law that creates an electronics and information technology manufacturing zone. Do the Walkers, their children or Tonette's family benefit financially from this? It's such a coincidence.