Walker's Christmas Follies Begins Early

Last year, Scott Walker thumbed his nose at Wisconsin and at Christmas at the same time when he put a model Wisconsin and Southern Railroad to run around the Christmas tree in the Capitol Building. This was an egregious affront due to the fact that the then owner of Wisconsin and Southern, William E. Gardner, was convicted of illegally donating company funding to Walker's campaign.

Image courtesy of
scottwalkerwatch.com

This year, Walker is wasting no time releasing his inner Scrooge and showing what a buffoon he is.

His grand plan for this year's tree? Get the kiddies to make ornaments which will help the latest marketing scheme for his corporate-run corporate welfare machine, WEDC. You know, the one that can't keep track of millions of dollars it was handing out to fellow corporations.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's regurgitation of a Walker press release:

Gov. Scott Walker says the theme of this year's tree will be "In Wisconsin," which is also the motto being used in a marketing campaign by the state's chief economic development agency.

Walker asks that the ornaments be brightly colored and represent goods or products that are made within Wisconsin such as milk, cheese and other dairy products, cranberries, and Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

Teachers or students interested in displaying ornaments are asked to submit them by Nov. 19. They should be sent to the governor's Capitol office.

Well, this presents some interesting problems for Walker.

First, Walker has made a big stink that it is a Christmas tree, not just a holiday tree. But he forgets the "reason for the season", as they like to say, to make it a crass commercial enterprise for the private market, in a public setting yet. Talk about your crony capitalism.

I can't wait to hear Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and the other squawkers call out Walker on his war on Christmas.

Then there's the bit about teachers and students who might want to submit ornaments.

Apparently he forgot that he slashed education funding by a billion dollars. There are now fewer art teachers and much less in the way or art supplies available due to his giving all that money to his campaign donors.

If I were an art teacher, I'd be hard pressed to want to squander the little time or supplies left to me to use them on one of Walker's hare-brained schemes to promote his corporate welfare program.

Maybe he's just trying to get the children used to the idea of working for nothing to benefit Big Business, or getting them used to the idea of what the lack of child labor laws is like.

And finally, can he explain all the taxpayer dollars that went into promoting his corporate welfare program that only came up with the idea of exploiting kids to do so? Where is all that money?

Apparently, like most everything else, Walker doesn't do holidays well either.