Wednesday, June 10, 2009

George (Scott) Walker Bush: Redux

Shortly after 9/11, George W. Bush was able to "take advantage of a good crisis", and got the Congress and a majority of the population to back him on his unjust and poorly planned war in Iraq. He also took advantage of people's hate and fear to cause all sort of mayhem, violating people's civil rights, violating people's human rights, and doing just about anything else he damn well wanted to do. He justified these horrendous behaviors by hiding behind his claim that he was doing it all in the name of national security, which he alleged was being threatened by a country that didn't attack us.

During his tenure, he had such stupendous blunders such as partying with Senator John McCain while people were dying in New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina. We found that most of his appointees were cronies and/or wealthy campaign donors who were grossly unqualified for their jobs. Throughout Bush's time in office, he was consistently awarding large no-bid contracts to his buddies, like Blackwater, Halliburton, Big Oil and Big Pharma.

When he left office, he left us with two major wars and an economy that had already been spiraling into a deep, deep recession (maybe even a depression). People are losing their jobs and their homes in records numbers.

Meanwhile, he refused to accept any responsibility for the consequences for his actions. And during and after his terms in office, if anyone dared to call him out on his failure of a presidency, they were called names like unAmerican and much worse, and other forms of verbal abuse, including death threats.

In other words, when he left his office in disgrace and with very low approval ratings, he had left the country in much, much worse shape than it was when he was sworn into office.

Here in Milwaukee County, Scott Walker took advantage of the failing economy to create his own crisis. He purposely and intentionally created a ghost budget year after year. By doing so, he was able to claim that there was a financial crisis and call for a state of emergency in the County. (Just how is a projected 1% deficit a crisis anyway?) He then used this artifice to take control of the county and rewrite policy, much like Bush tried to rewrite the Constitution. We found that many of his appointees were cronies and/or wealthy campaign donors who were grossly unqualified for their jobs.

During his tenure, Walker has had such stupendous blunders such as failing to deal with the pension crisis. Walker has been traveling the state and the Midwest, partying with wealthy campaign donors and special interest lobbyists, while here in Milwaukee, people were being denied services such as food stamps and health insurance. Other people, like the chronically mentally ill, were also denied proper services, and some died as a result of Walker's neglect. Through out Walker's time in office, he was consistently awarding large no-bid contracts to his buddies, like he did with the destruction of the courthouse annex, the free give away of the county grounds and the proposed move of the mental health complex.

Whenever we will be able to get Walker out of office, he will have left us with a crumbling infrastructure, a failing transit system, hundreds of millions of dollars of debt and a local economy that had already been spiraling into a deep, deep recession (maybe even a depression). Business are closing and people are already losing their jobs and their homes in records numbers.

Meanwhile, Walker has refused to accept any responsibility for the consequences for his actions. And during and after his terms in office, if anyone dared to call him out on his failure as county executive, they were called names like a union thug and much worse, and other forms of verbal abuse.

In other words, when he finally leaves his office in disgrace and with very low approval ratings, he had left the county in much, much worse shape than it was when he was sworn into office.

The biggest difference is that where Bush had, at best, a spineless Congress (with the exception of Senator Russ Feingold) and at worst several hundred lapdogs, Walker has to contend with the County Board, who is increasingly able to see through the malicious lies that he is trying to tell them. Even more important is the fact that the Board is increasingly willing to take actions to stop him from doing more damage.

The biggest concern is if enough people in Milwaukee County have learned the lessons from the Bush administration. Otherwise, we will continue to have our very own version of George W. Bush in the county courthouse.

See the original George (Scott) Walker Bush post here.

4 comments:

  1. There are liberal writers I find myself agreeing with paragraph by paragraph, but because our ideologies are different, I disagree with their final conclusion.

    You, on the other hand, our different. I just decided to stop reading your articles, not because we have different ideologies or that we disagree on your final conclusion, but because your perception of reality is so skewed that you lose my support right after your first paragraph.

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  2. Not sure what was skewed about the reality described:

    That the war in Iraq was poorly planned? You can read the Army's own report indicating so.

    That basic human rights were violated? How about the 4th, 6th Amendment, 8th and 10th Amendments to name a few? Are we still not in agreement waterboarding is torture, or that it is/was unconstitutional to hold US citizens as prisoners at Guantanomo Bay without a "speedy and public trial"?

    Based off of what information did we decide torture was necessary in order protect the US public from terrorism?

    Anyway...

    Why is there so little news coverage over the county layoff situation? Is there anything the county board can do to stop pink slips from going out on Friday?

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  3. Jonathan-

    Welcome. Don't worry about my anonymous friend. He is one of Walker's campaign staffers (you can tell by the poor spelling - our different?).

    The little coverage is for two reasons. One, showing that Walker is a liar isn't as sexy as two cops being gunned down. Two, TMJ and MJS are in Walker's pocket.

    I wonder if he will claim their in kind contributions.

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  4. For someone that doesn't read my articles, he or she sure does come back to the site often enough. In a single day, yet. But that's OK. It drives my standings up and makes my site more visible.

    ReplyDelete