Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Wisconsin Republicans Create Their First Job

State Republicans, most notably Goobernator-elect Scott "Train Wreck" Walker, has been taking a lot of flak for their anti-high speed rail posturing. Walker, as the reader is probably very well aware, made his anti-rail stance one of the main planks of his campaign platform.

Since the election, the people are starting to realize that the Democrats were correct and that Walker's grandstanding could get very expensive. Despite growing concern and repeated warnings, Walker continues his act of bravado with our jobs and money and states that he won't allow HSR to go through Wisconsin, but would rather use the money to fix roads and bridges. (This is the first recorded incident of Walker caring about maintenance of anything, by the way.)

Then, last Friday, as I predicted, Walker started to backtrack on his position, saying he was "in no hurry" to push for the rail funding to be used otherwise, in order to prepare for the inevitable flip flop. You could start seeing the concern growing in his base by then.

The following Monday, reacting to a rally held outside of the Talgo plant and increasing pressure from the state's Democratic Party and groups like One Wisconsin Now, Walker caved in a little bit more, saying he was now willing to allow that money to go to fixing current rail lines. Even the Wisconsin State Journal, which had originally endorsed him, appeared to be having some buyer's remorse. The flop sweat from the right was becoming quite noticeable.

On Tuesday, the desperation from the right was palpable as three of Walker's allies, Congressmen Jim Sensenbrenner, Paul Ryan and Tom Petri said that they would introduce a bill that would change the law so that if states like Wisconsin and Ohio, who made terrible blunders in their elections, wanted to forgo jobs and a large influx of money, it would go to back to pay off some of their debt and deficits.

But the chances of that bill going anywhere is somewhere between slim and none. The problem that these three stooges face is that they are not the only members of Congress. To get the bill passed, it would need the support of the representatives from Illinois, New York and now California, as well as any other state that would be more than glad to bring jobs and a recovering economy to their fair states.

To add to the job-killing Republicans disconcertion is the fact that U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has again emphatically repeated the fact that if Wisconsin, Ohio or any other soon-to-be backwater state wanted to reject the HSR funding, he would move swiftly to make sure the money is responsibly and fairly redistributed to states that want to actually grow their economies.

And just to pile on more bad news, Walker's idiot ideology won't be cost the state $100 million as previously reported, but might actually be closer to $135 million.

With all of the backtracking, moving of goal posts, and attempts to throw up red herrings, it is easy to see that Walker and his Republican allies have actually created one job. That job is a massive snow job which they are trying to pull over on the state's citizens.

The only real question is which promise Walker going to break - creating jobs, stopping the train or both?

6 comments:

  1. I pinched you, but you refuse to wake up.

    You are having a nightmare, but it is real.

    You lost. You are wrong and right is coming.

    Enjoy!

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  2. Wisconsin loses with these people. I'm not an economist, but you don't have to be to see these guys are hoping to use all the tricks of Hoover. Starving a country to get it out of a depression/recession didn't work then. I don't see it working now. We'll be living in "Hoovervilles". Hmmmm. Which Republican name will we tack "ville" onto in the next year?

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  3. Scoot can't even make a decent snow job to cover his tracks, but sadly that wouldn't stop him from wasting time and money and people's jobs trying. His wrongheadedness about the train is apparent to everyone but himself and I guess also with people like anon@2:31AM who had already drunk the kool-aid. "You lost," no anon, we all lost with Scoot Walker and "right," is nowhere to be seen.

    dadofone

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  4. Another job created. People to conduct witchhunts on the left wing Cheddarsphere.

    I have Jeff Simpson's home address, asshole. You're next.

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  5. To: Anon@9:15AM,

    I am obviously missing something here. If you are going to resort to not-so-veiled personal threats and elementary school style name calling, would you please try to at least be coherent enough so that readers who might only infrequently stop by here, might know who you are directing your apparent rage at, and WTF you are actually talking about. Thank you so very much.

    -dadofone

    Chris, I understand you have a regular job, but threats of this nature shouldn't be allowed imho, on a public forum. I enjoy your blog immensely.

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  6. Dadofone,

    I appreciate your sentiment, but I am hoping to keep the comments open. If the bully troll wants to make anonymous threats, it only shows that it is incapable of rationale thought so seeks attention through its boorish behavior.

    And to be honest, that is mild for him. But don't worry, if the fool wants to keep it up, I can always just put comment modifications back on.

    ReplyDelete