Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Scott Walker: Surrender Monkey


Since he took office, Scott Walker has been trying to abdicate his duties as much as he possibly can.

It started when he first wanted to spin off the parks and the transit system into their own district authorities.

When the House of Correction proved beyond his limited management skills, he again abdicated his responsibilities and foisted it off on the Sheriff's Office.

Earlier this year, Walker admitted that he wasn't able to properly manage the Income Maintenance program and called for the state to take it over.

Apparently, Walker is now ready to come to terms with his own Appomattox:

He said the state could take over administration of public assistance programs, social services for seniors and people with disabilities, and the courts. Cities and villages could take over maintenance of county roads, he said.

New, specialized districts could be formed to run transit, the parks, and the zoo and local cultural institutions, Walker said. The airport could be operated independently or through a transportation district, he said.

I congratulate Walker on finally admitting that he cannot do the job, and that Doyle and the state government are better managers than he is. We can only hope he finds the courage to take the next step and step down from office.

But this does raise a couple of questions.

One, if he wasn't to reduce duplicate services to save money, why is Walker talking about abolishing county government? This would leave almost twenty different communities trying to provide the same services in each of their own towns and villages. And because they are each individually smaller, except for the City of Milwaukee, it will be almost impossible for these small towns to pay for the necessary equipment and/or training. If Walker was genuinely serious about saving money and reducing duplication, he would be advocating for the county to absorb all of the municipalities. Of course, this will probably never work.

Secondly, can you imagine what Walker would do as governor? Would he finally call it too difficult for him, give up and turn over the controls to the Feds and President Obama?

I can already hear the noise as the heads of several right wing bloggers, squawkers and pundits explode at the concept of Obama running Wisconsin.

6 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  2. cognitive dissidence, home of the spam.

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  3. Yeah, I've got a lot of clean up to do, don't I?

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  4. that same guy hit my site yesterday/today.

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  5. I suppose Governor Walker thinks he could wave his magic wand and eliminate Article IV Sections 22, 23 and 23a, of the Wisconsin Constitution which have to do with such matters as granting the legislature the ability to confer powers to county governments, mandating "one or more systems of county government" (not zero county governments where desired) and authorizing the election of county Chief Executive Officers like himself. You can't get rid of this stuff without an amendment -- but don't tell Governor Walker. He's a slow learner.

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  6. Mr. Horne,

    You know as well as I do that Walker doesn't give a fig about the law. He just says whatever pops into his head, if he thinks that his lunatic fringe base will buy it.

    It's sort of like political Tourette's sysndrome.

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