Charles P Pierce- Scott Walker Doesn't Care
By his works shall ye know him, and by his budget shall ye know Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, and current frontrunner in the Premature Nonsense Primary portion of the 2016 Republican nominating process. Where it is not actively hostile to the interests of anyone except his state's plutocrats and out-of-state mining interests, there is in the budget a low-running contempt for the concept of the government's obligation to do much of anything except protect the wealth of the wealthy and throw the right people in jail. His idea of "going big and bold" is to be petty and small-minded. His budget is a melange of childish vandalism, cut-rate empire building, and the construction of a Potemkin record for the consumption of oligarchical moneybags and hayshaking god-botherers in Iowa and elsewhere.
For example, he seeks to replace the state's independent oversight boards in areas like environmental management, reducing their roles to that merely of "advisory" bodies. Also, he proposes to place in his office the responsibility for local environmental issues that heretofore was the responsibility of local citizens. And he also has decided that the state's Department of Natural Resouces need not have an educational function any more.
In addition, as has been the case with taxophobe governors for decades now -- Hi, Governor Mitt Romney! -- Walker proposes to raise all kinds of fees, including vehicle fees and season passes to Wisconsin's state parks. He is still tinkering clumsily with education, rewarding the rural areas that voted for him, and punishing the urban areas -- coughblackpeoplecough -- that did not. (He's arranging for urban school boards to have less influence over charter schools, while rural districts get more money.) He's starving local governments of revenue, and he's making it harder for them to pass referenda regarding possible property tax increases. He's merging away the body that regulates banks in the state, and loosening the regulations on for-profit colleges. And he's cutting the cojones off the state's Building Commission.
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http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a33246/scott-walker-doesnt-care/
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