I listened to Scott Walker talk again: Walker’s Wauwatosa Interview

I watched this interview of Walker in Wauwatosa last Friday. It’s been a while since I sat and listened carefully to Walker for this long without cursing. Am I becoming more “civil” because I can assure you his breathy nasal twang is still as unpleasant as the first day I heard him falsely proclaim Wisconsin was “broke”.

Walker says as he speaks of the recall: “….I think they want to send a message to anybody be they Republican or Democrat … that you don’t mess with us. You don’t mess with the public employee unions or they’ll put an end to your political career.”

I would like to beg to differ with the phrase “mess with”. That makes it sound like he just walked by and tousled Wisconsin’s hair a little.

I believe he meant to say that he turned Wisconsin upside down over the side of a bridge and 200,000 or so of its citizens came to say “stop” and he ignored them.

OK to be more accurate, he held public education, public unions, healthcare, the poor, and the elderly over the side of a bridge.

Meanwhile the corporate persons have not always gotten a limousine ride either! (pity) Indeed I don’t see evidence that they got the 1.5 billion that they would’ve gotten if he had completely eliminated the corporate income tax as he’d promised.

But they did get “a ride” of sorts if you consider that Walker’s legislature signed in an estimated $1.6 billion in corporate tax breaks spread out over the next 10 years.

You know this reminds me of an annoying thing my dad used to say to me after I asked him for something. He’d say, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride”. It was his way to say “no”. I wonder if my dad was also trying to teach me that there’s some people that always have a ticket to ride because they don’t ask. They take.

Now to be fair, these corporate rides are not entirely a thing of the Walker regime. Institute for Wisconsin’s Future says corporations, like GE, have paid minimal taxes on their billions for years in our state. It seems hard for me to believe, but they say GE has paid 0$ in state taxes since 2003.

Does this mean Wisconsin has been “Open for Business”, for at least the right people, for some time now?

I’d love to give you a tax cut…

Towards the end of this video Walker says:
“I’d love to cut individual income taxes across the board in the next budget. You look at mid and small sized companies in the state – they are overwhelmingly individual income taxes and not corporate.”

And I in turn would love to proclaim he is making a tantalizing and yet non-committal non-statement!

About 1 year ago Walker gave small businesses a goodie designed to get them to hire people. From Feb 2nd 2011 “Gov. Scott Walker signs a bill giving companies a tax reduction between $92 and $316 for every job they add, depending on how big the company is. The tax cut is expected to cost $67 million over the next two years.”

Apparently his mix of trickle down here, squeeze a teacher there, send a corporate handout yonder is not working. DWD numbers show 6 straight months of job losses for Wisconsin.

My dad had another phrase he loved to use. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. I thought of that because Wisconsin had 1.2 billion in hand with that high speed rail money and some medicaid money that Walker sent away. My dear departed father, if he were here with Walker right now, would say, “Where in the hell are those god damn birds now?!”

That means it’s time to beg.

In last week’s State of the State speech he asked businesses to hire 1 new employee in the next year and added “Imagine how many more people we could get working if we all pitched in together,” Walker said.

I can only promise I’ll pitch in and help Walker carry his boxes out of office. But if it comes down to an indictment, I can try to help, but probably can’t.

The FBI is very protective of evidence.