Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Scott Walker's Irrational Fear

I received a fundraising email from Team Walker yesterday.  Part of the email was unintentionally hilarious:
Over the past few months, we’ve told you about how the big-government union bosses have publicly promised to spend millions to take Wisconsin back to the days of double digit tax increases, billion dollar deficits, and reckless spending.

Just last week, however, a democrat insider told reporters that the big government unions plan to spend as much as $20 million to distort Governor Walker’s record because they “have a war to pick” with Governor Walker and we all know Mary Burke will put government back in their hands.
When I first read this, I thought it was part of his new book because it was so factually incorrect.

I don't recall any unions making any such claims, much less doing it publicly.  Obviously he's lying.  He's lying not only to raise funds, but because it has become so habitual for him he doesn't know how to do anything else.

I also am not aware of any union people hopping on the Mary Burke bandwagon.  Especially not after her company was just found to have outsourced jobs overseas.  And that was just the recent ones.  Jud Lounsbury at Uppity Wisconsin shows that this has been going on for a very long time:
Last week, yet another Department of Labor "Trade Adjustment Assistance" (TAA) certification was issued, following an application by laid-off Trek workers who said that "production has been shifted to China."  This follows an unmistakable trend for Trek:   between 1998 and 2011, Trek went from making 80% of their bikes in the United States to making less than one percent here.

In response to the TAA certification, Mary Burke's campaign spokesperson Joe Zapecki repeated Burke's earlier assertion that Trek's outsourcing was based purely on necessity, saying that U.S. trade policy needed to be changed to "level the playing field between the U.S. and its trading partners so that more family supporting manufacturing jobs are created right here in Wisconsin."

While it is true that bad trade deals have forced some U.S. corporations into outsourcing because their competitors were using outsourcing to sell products for less than it costs to produce in the United States, there is no evidence that this occurred at Trek.

In fact, between 1998 and 2011, Trek's sales tripled and they became the world's second largest manufacturer of bicycles and the dominant leader in the so-called "bike shop" sector. However, during the same time, Trek’s bike prices remained approximately the same. In other words, there wasn't the "price pressure" to outsource as there is in some sectors.
Walker's claim that the unions and Burke are in cahoots is the product of his compulsive lying and has no basis in reality, much like his promise to create 250,000 jobs by the end of his term.

The real irrationality comes in when one considers that not only do about 30% of Wisconsinites actually believe him, but they will also give him money despite the tens or even hundreds of millions the special interests are ready to spend on him.

3 comments:

  1. it's really scary that there are people out there that believe him.

    Can people really be that ignorant.

    that's scarier than the politics itself.

    .

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  2. Equally scary is that Paul Ryan is now selling himself as a poverty fighter and will propose a new project to fight poverty. The media will lap this up when in reality it amounts to vouchers, tax credits and volunteerism. More and more it seems Wisconsin needs a Kathleen Vinehout to lead us out of the darkness that Walker has created and back into the daylight of truth and honesty. Years ago someone mentioned that the '"TRUTH " would set us free. Boy would I like to be free of Walker Vos, Fitz, Darling, Grothman and ALEC!

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  3. Sorry, I couldn't even read this post because once I saw "democrat insider" I lost it.

    What puerile thuggishness. I've checked out thousands of liberal blogs and for all the name calling, cannot recall any of them using lower case to denigrate the opposition. And this is in an official intraparty communication? What are their blogs like now?

    This will never be over. It's the Confederate cancer and it's metastasizing.

    ReplyDelete