Scott Walker: The Assassination of Wisconsin Democracy By Charles Pierce,

[riversedge]

Scott Walker. (photo: Getty)


Scott Walker: The Assassination of Wisconsin Democracy

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

15 July 15



In which coward Scott Walker makes his campaign for president official tonight.


n May 16, 2012, I wrote this about Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin. At the time, Walker was facing a recall election after a year in which 100,000 people regularly camped on his front lawn.............




................Since his approval rating in Wisconsin is headed south, and since he can't point to having accomplished much there except winning three elections, and since the budget he just signed demolishes Wisconsin's public universities while bestowing more goodies on the extraction industries, Walker's entire campaign is going to consist of how he stood up bravely to schoolteachers and firemen and elderly grandparents back in 2011 and 2012. This man can stand up to ISIL because he was able to beat back hordes of angry guidance counselors. We are going to hear about alleged death threats -- and a lot about the one that allegedly threatened to gut his wife like a fish -- and about how he bravely went to work each day. (You should keep in mind that at least one of those stories that he peddles is pure moonshine.) And then there's that business about the "teacher of the year" that Walker uses to make the case that the wreckage he's made of public education in the state is really the construction of a palace. (Go Warriors!) Nothing the man says can be trusted. If you work for him, and you are instructed to do something ethically dubious, rest assured that you're on your own when it hits the fan. But Walker's invocation of his own courage as a campaign trope is perhaps the most fraudulent thing of all. Because, throughout his career, Scott Walker has been nothing if not a political coward.

During the protests back in 2011 and 2012, he hid in his office. A hundred thousand of his constituents were there on his lawn and he declined to hear what they had to say. He used a tunnel to get back and forth to the state capitol. He empowered the Capitol police to roust legitimate demonstrators from a building that had a proud history of open protest and open political activism. He lit the capitol's Christmas tree in the early morning hours in a closed ceremony instead of opening the proceedings to the public. In January, a Wisconsin appeals court ruled that many of the tactics that were used against the demonstrators -- and, in particular, against the Solidarity Singers -- were unconstitutional. This was what Unintimidated Scott Walker hid behind while he was dismantling progressive democracy in the state where so much of it was born and selling the state off wholesale to whoever wanted to buy a chunk. And, last week, when it was discovered that there had been slipped into the budget an item that would have gutted the state's open-records law, one of the last remaining elements of progressive government in Wisconsin that Walker hasn't shredded, the state exploded in bipartisan outrage. True to form, Walker and his people tried to fob the responsibility off on the Republicans in the legislature until Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald blew the whistle on who really was to blame. Unintimidated! Leadership!.............

............He has spent his entire political life punching down and leaving the people who do his dirty work twisting in the wind when they get caught. Christ, what a mess this can make of democracy.

[Scuba]

1. K&R

[ladjf]

2. Wisconsin, like Greece, is an occupied territory. Both need some benevolent intervention. nt

[postulater]

3. Why has he not had his Boy Scout Eagle Scout badge revoked?

"A Scout is
Trustworthy
Loyal
Helpful
Friendly
Courteous
Kind
Obedient
Cheerful
Thrifty
Brave
Clean and
Reverent."

He has violated most of these publicly. The Boy Scouts should be ashamed of him (among other things).

[Still In Wisconsin]

4. Well at least Scott is still in favor of keeping the homos out of scouting

that is unless his pollsters tell him the Log Cabin Republicans are mad.

Oh, and for my reply title.