Scott Walker

Walker's union-busting law: "It's a floor wax! No, it's a dessert topping!"

September 22, 2011 by Uppity Wisconsin

Channel 58 in Milwaukee tonight followed up earlier reports in other news outlets on the decision of most state public employee unions to decline participation in the state's new annual "recertification" process -- which requires costly union member elections to decide whether the unions will retain their formal collective bargaining designations.

 

After quoting various union officials who said that the provision was designed to make it nearly impossible for unions to succeed, and that the annual requirement would be expensive to pursue, the news reporter contacted Gov. Scott Walker's office asking whether the recertification provision was indeed designed to kill collective bargaining. According to the newscast, the entire response from the governor's press office consisted of this: "No.

The Scott Walker-Paul Ryan-Rick Perry tax-cut mania, destroyed in two paragraphs

September 20, 2011 by Uppity Wisconsin

GranholmFormer Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm puts the lie to the current Republican mantra that tax cuts and smaller government will boost the economy. Granholm, a Democrat, faced an economic crisis in Michigan that at one point in the Great Recession pushed official unemployment to 20 percent.She explained to Salon.com's Andrew Leonard why Michigan's experiment with tax cuts and smaller government was a resounding failure. In her new book on fixing the economy:

All I don't know is what I can't read in the newspapers -- Walker edition

September 19, 2011 by Uppity Wisconsin

From an article by the very estimable John Nichols in The Capital Times comes a bald if unsurprising statement about Gov. Scott Walker. It involved Walker's reaction to the current John Doe investigation and FBI raids involving his tenure as Milwaukee County Executive:

News reports of the FBI raid are the talk of the state. But Walker is not talking. He and his press secretary are instructing reporters not to bring the issue up at public events.

Since when do a governor and his staff feel so uber-privileged that they will not only refuse to answer questions about a particular and unpleasant matter, but will effectively threaten any reporter who dares to bring the matter up in the first place? Is this transparent government, where the public has a right to know? Of course not, but it fits right in with the state GOP legislative leadership's recurring tactic of calling public meetings without following the spirit or even the language of the Open Records Act.