Some things you just never see coming, and you can not make up. This is most definitely one of them,.
Scott Walker, who dropped out of college midway through, and somehow found himself Governor of Wisconsin,.has found out he does not much like actually governing. Walker has found that fundraising and scoring political points to cash in later is much more appealing.
He is currently chair of the Republican Governors Association(RGA), where he travels the country and helps elect Republicans to Governorships. This, of course, means he gets to spread around resources to where they will best help his own career when he runs for President again. Which is all fine, except rumor has it he actually has a full time job.
Let's not stop there. Last year, after winning re-election(and promising not to do so), had a chat with God(supposedly) and decided he was being called to run for President of the United States. While running for President, and collecting his full time pay and Cadillac benefits, worked a max of 48 minutes a day.
Apparently he did not listen very well to God, because after months of campaigning(and not working) and blowing through over ten million dollars, Scott Walker returned to Wisconsin, dropped out of the race and earned himself a solid 0.0 rating amongst Republicans.
Now Scott Walker has decided that Professors at our world class university system are not working hard enough, and will punish anyone who does not teach more classes!
But wait, There's more!!
Scott Walker put this in his latest budget and sent it to a GOP led legislature that works a few weeks a year, and gets a full time salary and benefits package!
These three groups are going to get together, when they can find the time, to debate how lazy college professors are!
UW system spokeswoman Stephanie Marquis said professors who focus on research can bring millions of dollars to the states, noting that Wisconsin students, faculty and staff secure more than 150 patents on new products and discoveries annually.
"My whole reputation is research," said Laura Albert McLay, a UW-Madison associate engineering professor who specializes in improving efficiency. "The university wouldn't run if we spent all our time teaching."
She estimated that she put in about 50 hours in a recent workweek, with about half of that time spent teaching or helping students in her classes. The rest of her time is typically taken up with tenure and diversity committees and research with graduate students. Their projects have included developing mathematical models to help doctors prioritize patients and technology workers better protect their infrastructure.
Walker is trying to make college more affordable, she said, "but it's important to have a real understanding of what professors do and what their lives are like. If a plan like this isn't executed well, people will leave. There will be an exodus."
Of course, the idea of an investment in our future is something that is a foreign concept o our friends on the right. The question you have to ask yourselves is, with 150 patents yearly,and such life changing inventions as Social Security, the round silo, the bone marrow transplant and maybe one of the biggest inventions of all - tap beer, all here for us as a result of the University of Wisconsin system. Are we as a society, willing to forego life changing research, to appease a few people, in an anti-intellectual, extremist base, who have never stepped foot on(or were forced to leave early), a college campus?
What can (and can't) be said about Scott Walker?
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