Sunday, August 18, 2013

Austerity Doesn't Apply To Fascism

As the gentle reader is already aware of, Scott Walker has sent his pet storm trooper, David Erwin, have spent the past couple of weeks cracking down on the Solidarity Singers for their audacity of singing truth to power and exercising their First Amendment rights.

Some of the Erwin's claims to infamy include arresting reverends, friars, veterans, grandmothers, mothers and teenagers.  They have also arrested Madison Alderman Mark Clear.  They have threatened to arrest State Representative Sondy Pope and other state officials for just observing.  These Keystone Kapitol Kops even arrested Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive, who was there to cover the ongoing story, violating another aspect of the First Amendment, Freedom of the Press.

Now it's being reported that Erwin, who is supposed to be a civil servant, has received a most uncivil raise for his fascism:
Gov. Scott Walker's administration rewarded the new hardline Capitol Police chief and his top deputy with double-digit pay raises earlier this year after moving the pair on paper to phantom jobs for two weeks and then back to their real posts.

Chief Dave Erwin — who has overseen a crackdown on Walker protesters at the statehouse — received an overall salary hike of 11.7%, to $111,067 a year, the same rate as his predecessor. That amounts to an $11,680 annual raise.

That hefty raise was possible only because Walker officials transferred Erwin on Feb. 5 to a ghostposition in the state Department of Administration, according to a copy of the transfer letter obtained by the Journal Sentinel. Then, on the same day, he was shuffled back to his real job as head of the Capitol Police force.

Each of the moves, backdated to earlier in the fiscal year, came with a retroactive boost in pay for Erwin. Under state rules, the chief is a civil servant, not a political appointee.
The article goes on to report that Deputy Police Chief Dan Blackdeer had also received a huge jump of 14.6%.

Those raises are considerably better than the 1% raises the rank and file workers got, which weren't even close to covering the extra bite taken out of their contracts.  Then again, we have seen how cronyism and nepotism has become the norm for the state under the Walker regime.

I also find it very telling that the Teapublicans - who will wail, gnash their teeth and pull at their hair every time a dime is spent to help a poor person - are so mum about all these blatantly unethical giveaways.

Apparently, austerity doesn't apply to fascism.

3 comments:

  1. Capper, you missed this detail in the AP report. “Walker aide Jocelyn Webster said the governor had no hand in authorizing Erwin’s salary increase.”

    See. Scot Walker is just like Sgt. Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes. “I know nothing.”

    ReplyDelete
  2. Keep in mind this maneuver transferring Erwin to DOA and back gives him rights to a job at DOA. This was done foe Mark Wahl.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "Our rules don't apply to us." 21st Century GOP motto.

    ReplyDelete