Created in secrecy, nurtured by lies, Act 10 is ten years old

The Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl ten years ago this weekend.

After which newly-elected Wisconsin GOP Governor Scott Walker quickly destroyed the joyous, unifying statewide vibe when he 'dropped [his Act 10] bomb' on unionized teachers and other essential public sector employees to curry favor with anti-union donors.

And to fuel what would ultimately be his historically-short and flawed 2015 presidential bid.

But Walker was riding high in 2011 and had no use for modesty when caught bragging about Act 10 to a caller he thought was the influential anti-union billionaire David Koch:

This is an exciting time. This is — you know, I told my cabinet, I had a dinner the Sunday, or excuse me, the Monday right after the 6th. Came home from the Super Bowl where the Packers won, and that Monday night I had all of my cabinet over to the residence for dinner. Talked about what we were gonna do, how we were gonna do it. We’d already kinda built plans up, but it was kind of the last hurrah before we dropped the bomb. And I stood up and I pulled out a picture of Ronald Reagan, and I said, you know, this may seem a little melodramatic, but 30 years ago, Ronald Reagan, whose 100th birthday we just celebrated the day before, had one of the most defining moments of his political career, not just his presidency, when he fired the air-traffic controllers. And, uh, I said, to me that moment was more important than just for labor relations or even the federal budget, that was the first crack in the Berlin Wall and the fall of Communism because from that point forward, the Soviets and the Communists knew that Ronald Reagan wasn’t a pushover. And, uh, I said this may not have as broad of world implications, but in Wisconsin’s history — little did I know how big it would be nationally — in Wisconsin’s history, I said this is our moment, this is our time to change the course of history.

And in the divisive aftermath he liked to share with donors, Walker came to display more character-free shallowness beyond grandiosity by cloaking his anti-union crusade in false narratives about campaign transparency, fiscal responsibility and other good-government goals to which he was not entitled:

* So he lied about having run on Act 10 in the 2010 campaign - a falsehood revealed by the record and by his own language - 'dropped a bomb - on state citizens. 

What kind of a chief executive treats his citizen workers as targets?

* And Walker repeatedly tried to camouflage Act 10's blatant union-busting for partisan advantage as mere deficit medication - an supportable claim which then-Cong. Dennis Kucinich, (D-Ohio), exposed at a Congressional hearing while Walker impassively 

took his beating - video, here. 

* It was a falsehood Walker also tried to paper over by treating a reporter perhaps to a Jonathan Swiftian metaphor by calling Act 10 a merely 'modest' proposal. 

OK - that's probably giving a politician who hadn't shown much interest in book-learning. 

* But if false modesty wasn't the right shade of lipstick for the Act 10 pig, how could Walker explain this more indelible shade Walker applied by the bucketful - that Act 10 was a union rights preservation bill.

A characterization so bigly and boldly dishonest that Journal Sentinel's fact -checkers  had to label it ridiculous:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker says his budget-repair bill would leave collective bargaining “fully intact” 

In arguing the changes would be modest, Walker cited the civil service system and said "collective bargaining is fully intact." However, Walker himself has outlined how his budget-repair bill would limit the collective bargaining rights of public employees.

Indeed, it’s that provision that provoked daily demonstrations at the state Capitol and national media attention. To now say now say collective bargaining would remain "fully intact" is not just false, it’s ridiculously false.

And that means it is Pants on Fire.

And because the past is prologue, and you can't teach an old dog (or dog-whistler) new tricks, Walker reprised his super 2011 workplace slipperiness four years later by signing a 'right-to-work' [Sic] bill into law that shafted private-sector workers after he'd repeatedly said he opposed it:

"I have no interest in a right-to-work law in this state," Walker said in 2012. "We're not going to pursue that in the remainder of our term, and we're not going to pursue it in the future. The reason is private-sector unions are my partner in economic development."

And flash forward to today, Saturday, ten years after Act 10 was delivered and we find an out-of-office Walker still on his self-serving-one-note anti-union message. 

John Nichols: Now Scott Walker is exploiting the pandemic to — you guessed it — attack teachers and their unions