Thursday, April 19, 2012

 

Political Mayhem Thursday: The Scott Walker Recall


In 2010, Scott Walker was elected the governor of Wisconsin with 52% of the vote. However, his efforts to overhaul the state's finances made him highly controversial, and on June 5 the state will hold a recall election. If he is recalled, he will only be the third governor in the nation's history to suffer that fate.

Here's the thing: Walker, during the campaign, promised to create 250,000 jobs in his first term by cutting taxes and the pay of public employee union members. Still waiting on those jobs (it was an unrealistic goal), but he did do the things that he said regarding taxes and the unions. In addition, he has tried to eliminate much of the collective bargaining power of the public unions, and that is primarily what has made some people angry.

Walker is a career politician-- he started his run in elective office at age 22, not long after dropping out of Marquette University.

What do you think? Recall Walker?

Comments:
Cutting union pay is one thing (and remember, we are talking about modestly paid teachers, firefighters, police, who provide essential public services). Cutting collective bargaining rights is another. Scott Walker's bait and switch is why people are outraged--and why he will, deservedly, lose the recall election.
 
Repercussions of the "Great Recession" necessitate public sector contracts and bargaining rights do need to be re-set (re-evaluated) as have our personal budgets - though with dignity and respect, not the vitriol so easily spewed.

In one way or another, we have all been "stained" by "The Five Cardinal Sins (of Progressive Activists)." The internet, our megaphone of protest / expression to selected audiences that elicits cheeres and jeers, seldon rebuttal.

I often lament the role I played in the public / private sector debate. Through architectural design, ocassionally, I contributed to the "McMansion" complex client's demanded and funded with easy money, equity cash-back mortgages and city's responded with, "our new city hall, fire stations and schools are more design worthy and extravagent than yours." Funding appeared to grow on trees and was there for the picking.

Brick walls appeared everywhere on residences, around communities, adorning public buildings - each longer, higher and more elaborate than the previous.

The tsumami of the financial crisis may have passed, though the clean up has just begun and as we attempt to reclaim what we have lost - what many believe they deserve, we need to begin dismanteling - one brick at a time - the barriers (walls designed and built) that separate and prohibit a true sense of nation, community and family.

Until the barriers are lowered allowing us to at least see the eyes of our brothers and sisters (Home Improvement, the fence, Tim Allen and Wilson) we will continue to reap what we sowed during the last decade as desire replaced dignified discourse and "Mine" became mantra.
 
I think it’s safe to say that bait and switch has certainly not been invented by Scott Walker and if the electorate did not ask the hard questions BEFORE they went to the voting booth (and it looks like those hard questions were more than obvious at the time he ran for governor in the first place), then they got what they opted for in that voting booth. It is just too unfortunate that this retail mentality (where bait and switch is in fact the norm) of the spoiled consumer who buys what they don’t need and then feel entitled to a refund is flooding aspects of life and society completely unsuited for it. Now consumers in Wisconsin are deeply divided whether the refund for frivolously chosen merchandise should be issued based on their place of employment and views about public vs. private sector employment and benefits and it is predicted that the total amount spent on the recall election will be between $60 million and $80 million. I don’t even want to say the word “more” …but need I?
 
And yet, the state budget is balanced and the property tax rates actually went down a little bit on average. You may not like his policies, but that's no reason to recall an elected official. Vote him out when he next runs for re-election instead.
 
I'm not a Badger and my only trips to Wisconsin involved wrecking a car and then going back to pick it up.

Nothing wrong with a recall. In fact its a test of his policies. If Walker wins, then he's vindicated. If he loses, then the Democrats will have to figure out how to rescind his policies without making a bigger mess. I wouldn't be surprised to see the recall win, then have a new Governor come in and realize that it's not possible to turn back the clock.
 
Recall, y'all. 250,000 jobs by destroying the unions and lowering taxes on the rich?!
Bob
 
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