Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Scott Walker: Screw The Poor!


Milwaukee County Executive Scott "The Weasel" Walker (pictured on right) has been trying desperately to privatize anything and everything he can, in an effort to garner political and financial favors from the private sector as he gears up for the next phase in his perpetual gubernatorial campaign.

Included in his irresponsible, myopic decisions was to privatize the public assistance call center. He had willfully chosen to understaff the call center, guaranteeing poor service. His goal was to make the county workers look bad so that the board would be willing to go along with his privatization plan. He didn't care who he hurt, as long as he got his way.

His pretense was to save tax dollars. But we found out last month, it has now cost Milwaukee County taxpayers money, as they lose out on money coming in from the state, since he has shown he doesn't know how to manage the county, nor can he hire people that are capable of managing their department.

Today we learn that Walker is still purposely shorting the call center, having only seven of twenty-four positions filled. It's not like he didn't have the money to fill the positions. After all, he has purposely had 717 positions that were fully funded remain vacant. And despite not spending all that money, he claims that there is a deficit. He has yet to explain to the taxpayers what he did with all that money.

According to the article, Walker's plan is to have 28 people being paid a starting salary of $27,000, just to answer the phone. That's it. Answer the phone and take a message. He would then have ten UW-Milwaukee employees do the actual work that people need. That is one third of the number of workers that the County Board proposed to have that could actually help people instead of paying someone $13 an hour to take a message, but not help anyone.

Even Walker admits that his scheme would not save the taxpayers one red cent. Would any Walker fans tell me how he is being fiscally responsible when he would tax people the same amount of money, but give them one third the service for it?

Keep in mind that Walker is about to officially kick off the next phase of his perpetual gubernatorial campaign. He already has a long way to go to even make it out of a primary successfully, much less make any headway in a general election. Xoff and Dan Cody show that point. I don't know how much success he thinks he is going to have when the transit system fails, throwing the local economy in the tank. And that is also not mentioning the fact that most upstaters look poorly on anyone coming out of Milwaukee.

Walker may not have noticed, but the country is in the middle of a recession, which has been going on for a year. People are losing their jobs, and their health care. And even the ones that are fortunate enough to stay employed are finding it harder and harder to get basic needs. Does Walker really think that he is even going to maintain any level of local popularity as more people are going to come looking for help putting food on the table, keeping their homes heated, and making sure that their families get proper health care, only to find out that they can't even get through on the phone?

Contact your County Supervisor and tell him or her that they need to stop letting Walker sell out our poor and needy, just so he can get a few more bucks in his campaign coffer. If Walker doesn't want to be the adult, they will have to do it for him. Again.

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