Scott Walker recently wrote an Op-ed for the Des Moines Register:
In 2010, Megan Sampson was named an Outstanding First Year Teacher in
Wisconsin. A week later, she got a layoff notice from the Milwaukee
Public Schools. Why would one of the best new teachers in the state be
one of the first let go? Because her collective-bargaining contract
requires staffing decisions to be made based on seniority.
In 2010, Megan Sampson was named an Outstanding First Year Teacher in
Wisconsin. A week later, she got a layoff notice from the Milwaukee
Public Schools. Why would one of the best new teachers in the state be
one of the first let go? Because her collective-bargaining contract
requires staffing decisions to be made based on seniority.
Likely presidential candidate and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) regularly touts his education policies by citing a local teacher who long ago asked him to stop including her in his speeches and writings.
The teacher, Megan Sampson, repeated her opposition to Walker using her name in an email to Business Insider on Wednesday.
"I would like Walker to stop using my story as a political narrative for his campaign," the English teacher wrote.
It gives a new meaning to the term Walker Stalker.
This latest legislative session in Wisconsin, started exactly how you think it would. A sham hearing, lots of not listening going on and it ending abruptly with the Republicans running out of the room. cowering in fear
The committee chair, Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, said he was concerned a planned protest would become unsafe. Nass cited an article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel saying union groups planned to peacefully protest the end of testimony at 7 p.m., calling that a credible threat to the safety of the people at the hearing
Steve nASS was sprinting towards the exit so fast, you would think someone was trying to collect past due child support from him.
Who scared Mr. nASS so badly that he had to call the police and run and hide?
She did!
Mr. nASS can never claim to be #unintimidated. It is amazing his district, as badly gerrymandered as it is, would want such a milksop as its Representative.
He told a Christian Media Convention in Tennessee that he has not yet decided whether to run for president. He told the crowd that he's waiting on a sign from a higher power. He says it takes a certain kind of person to want to be president. Governor Walker says, "You've got to be crazy to want to be president of the United States. You've got to be crazy. When you look at what it does to a person and a family - you've got to be crazy."
Apparently, the fact that he is the only person in America to have their political organization open up campaign offices in Iowa and New Hampshire (the first two Presidential Primary states) is not sign enough.
When it comes to protesters in Madison, "almost all" are now from outside of Wisconsin. — Scott Walker on Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011 in a secretly-recorded prank telephone call
He was very generously given a false rating on this, but we now know where he was coming from. Walker actually was correct about Wisconsin being infiltrated with out of state people trying to influence the WI elections, he just had the candidate wrong. The people from out of state were coming to help Scott Walker.
SO MANY OF YOU HELPED US OUT LAST FALL WHEN WE ARE -- WERE FACING A TOUGH ELECTION. PEOPLE WERE MAKING PHONE CALLS IN MY STATE. YOU KNOCKED ON DOORS. YOU CAME OVER TO MISSISSIPPI AND HELP US KNOCK ON DOORS AND HELP THE CAMPAIGN ALONG THE WAY. I WANT TO TELL YOU HOW MUCH WE APPRECIATE THAT. I THOUGHT OF YOU HERE LIKE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE STATE AND AROUND THE COUNTRY, HELPED US OUT FINANCIALLY AS WELL. THAT MADE A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE. WE HAD TO TAKE ON THE BIG GOVERNMENT UNION BOSSES IN WASHINGTON. I WANT TO THANK YOU BECAUSE THE RETURN WE HAVE PEOPLE NOW IN IOWA, AND IN ALL 50 STATES, WHO HELPED US OUT. A WOMAN IN WATERLOO HELPED US OUT THREE TIMES. WE ARE PEOPLE HERE IN DES MOINES AND ALL ACROSS THE STATE THAT SAID WE WILL PUT UP A -- SOME OF OUR MONEY. I WANT TO SAY THANK YOU. MOST OF ALL, THANK YOU BECAUSE SO MANY OF YOU HERE AND ACROSS THE STATE IN THIS COUNTRY PRAYED FOR US. I HAVE TO TELL YOU, ON BEHALF OF MY WIFE AND I, AND MY SONS, WE COULD FEEL THOSE PRAYERS. IN THE DARKEST OF DAYS, I CAN'T TELL YOU WHAT A DIFFERENCE IT MADE
I guess Mr. Walker should have listened to Mark Twain's advice:
In the midst of his recall election, Walker shot down speculation that he could be Mitt Romney's vice-presidential pick. Instead, he told FOX Business Network's Neil Cavuto in June 2012 that if Romney were to ask him who would be a good pick from Wisconsin, he would suggest Paul Ryan—who Romney did eventually choose as a running mate. "I am not going through a year and a half of this to then take off," Walker told Cavuto, according to The Huffington Post. "I have to fulfill my commitment to the voters of the state of Wisconsin."
"I don't need people from outside of this state. This is about me and the people of the state of Wisconsin."— comments by Governor Scott Walker reported by WisPolitics.com during a campaign stop in Pewaukee this week.
Wisconsin could have saved $206 million in 2013-2015 if the state had
accepted the Medicaid expansion allowed under the Affordable Care Act,
according to a new memo from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
The
potential savings is up significantly from the fiscal bureau’s estimate
last year of $119 million, largely because more childless adults with
incomes below the poverty level have signed up for coverage than
expected.
Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-controlled
Legislature rejected federal funding to fully cover people with incomes
up to 133 percent of the poverty level, or $26,321 for a family of
three, through 2016.
The federal government says it would later
cover at least 90 percent of the costs, up from its usual share of 60
percent for the state-federal Medicaid program.
"As you are aware, for over a year I have communicated my belief that
you have taken our state down a fiscally irresponsible road by pursuing a
plan that has not only created a gap in coverage and newly uninsured
Wisconsinites, but also covers fewer people at a higher cost to
taxpayers," Baldwin wrote in a letter to Walker on Wednesday.
"Wisconsin is paying a steep price for your insistence on putting politics ahead of progress," Baldwin wrote.
Walker's
plan was for the 63,000 adults terminated from the state Medicaid
program, BadgerCare, to obtain health coverage on the federal health
care exchange. But about 38,000 are unaccounted for and may remain
uninsured.
"I respectfully request that you take full
responsibility for the consequences of your plan and determine how many
of the 38,000 individuals remain uninsured, and immediately develop an
action plan to guarantee that uninsured, former BadgerCare recipients
enroll in marketplace coverage moving forward," Baldwin wrote.
Explaining his rejection of federal money to fully expand Medicaid
coverage, Walker said on Fox News Sunday that "federal government
reneging" on Medicaid payments to Wisconsin caused more than $200
million in extra costs in the 2013-’15 state budget.
But typical cost-sharing fluctuations, based mainly on a longstanding
formula, explain the extra state burden -- not any reversal of course
or pulling back on a commitment by Washington. We rate Walker’s claim False.
Scott Walker's blind ambition to be President is very costly to the people of WI!
I
remember, I was a teenager, had just become a teenager and voted for
Ronald Reagan — limited government, you know, smaller government, lower
taxes, strong national defense. You knew what you were getting. You
knew how a Reagan administration, a Reagan presidency was going to be
better for you.
There are however some similarities between Reagan and the modern day
Republicans. The first and most obvious is in their love of spending
our money. Ronald Reagan left office with a 3 trillion dollar deficit.
He spent more than every single president before him combined. Reagan
was just following a philosophy that was thought up by Republican
operative Jude Wanniski called the “Two Santa Claus Theory” The theory
is when Republicans are in office to pair major tax cuts with increases
in spending. They would bleed the economy so much that when Democrats
took over (everything is cyclical), that the economy and government
would be in such a mess that if they tried to fix it as needed IE…. Tax
increases , reducing spending etc… it would help usher the republicans
back into power again.
I will end it with one more similarity. The Reagan Administration
was the most corrupt administration in history. Back in an era when
both parties worked together and the atmosphere was not as politically
charged as it is now, there were multiple scandals that resulted in the
investigation, indictment or conviction of 139 administration officials.
The largest of course being the Iran-Contra Scandal, but there were
others such as the HUD rigging scandal, Sewergate, the Savings and Loans
crisis and many others.
Scott Walker was born on November 2, 1967, according to various biographies - - here, or here, for example. His campaign bio does not provide a birthdate, but he won the Wisconsin Governorship on Nov. 2nd, 2010, got a birthday cake for his 43rd birthday that night and
was serenaded on his 46th birthday by a crowd in Virginia led by
Republican National Committee chairman and fellow Wisconsinite Reince
Priebus on Nov. 2, 2013. His birth date is not in dispute. Ronald
Reagan was elected to his first term as President on November 4th, 1980
- - just two days after Walker's 13th birthday - - and was re-elected
on Nov. 6th, 1984 - - presidential election dates, here. On presidential election day November 6th, 1984, Scott Walker would have been 17 years and four days old.
D'oh!
We at CogDis have gotten our hands on Scott Walker practicing his State of the State speech!
Just days after Mary Burke announced her candidacy for governor, Scott Walker and his Teapublican allies in the state legislature gathered to announce a $100 million tax cut for property owners - despite the fact that they didn't even draw up the bill yet.
It was quickly pointed out that mean average saving would be about $13. Big whoop. And for that, our
schools will suffer even the more.
But Walker wasn't done there. Making it even more painfully obvious that this was nothing more than a campaign stunt, Walker has been running around making the rather brash claim that it would save taxpayers $680.
PolitiFact jumped on that claim quickly and easily pointed out that Walker again was caught in yet another "Pants on Fire:" level lie:
Walker said that with a bill bringing $100 million in property tax relief, "the typical Wisconsin homeowner will save approximately $680 over four years."
The claim in an e-newsletter strongly suggests $680 in hard savings from that tax relief bill, or at the very least during Walker’s four years, but we found nothing to back up that number or anything close to it.
You can only get to it using a rough hypothetical scenario based on some big assumptions, and can make a case for $239 in four-year savings compared to the four years prior to his term.
But Walker’s newsletter doesn’t disclose that his number is hypothetical, misleading the reader into thinking that the median tax bill actually has dropped by $680.
We rate his claim Pants on Fire.
And they are actually being generous with their findings.
While on vacation, I had a chance to follow up on our personal tax situation. Even with Walker's "tax cut," it looks like our taxes will be going up for the third straight year, although by five dollars less than it would have otherwise. I hope I don't spend that money all in one place.
It's not the first time Walker made such grandiose claims. Earlier this year, Walker was trying to make similar claims regarding the income tax. The best advise regarding that was not to back up the Brinks truck, since the savings people were told they'd see were not going to happen.
In case you haven't yet seen one of the many databases going around showing the gentle reader how many cents they will save, here it is for your convenience:
That’s a much larger number of jobs created under Walker than we’ve ever heard -- even from the governor himself.
In December 2012, Walker said the state had created "just under 100,000 jobs" since he took office. We rated that statement Pants on Fire.
Why?
Walker had combined full and partial year data sets from the Quarterly
Census of Employment and Wages compiled by the federal Bureau of Labor
Statistics. His staff explained that he was using a "raw number."
But state experts and the governor’s own staff have long said that
while the quarterly census is more accurate than monthly measures, the
census data should only be viewed in one-year blocks. That is, January
to January, or July to July. In other words, you can’t combine partial
years of census data with full years to create a running total, due to
major seasonal fluctuations in the workforce.
Here is what Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie told us when we asked about
job numbers in the summer of 2012: "Please don’t, as John Koskinen, an
economist at DOR would say, compare February temperatures to July."
When we asked MacIver to show us their math, spokesman Nick Novak responded:
"We used Bureau of Labor Statistics QCEW figures for each month from
January 2011 to September 2012 (the most recent month available). To
get to the number of 137,372, we simply subtracted the January 2011 jobs
number from the September 2012 jobs number."
Novak provided a link to a BLS report that showed the two numbers.
But, this isn’t just a simple math problem. MacIver made two critical errors in their calculations.
Starting point
Walker took office at the beginning of January 2011. MacIver used the
number for the end of January 2011. To properly measure the governor’s
promise, you need to start with the number of jobs that existed at the
start of his term. That is a difference of 65,401 jobs.
Here’s how it plays out the way the MacIver Institute calculated the numbers.
January 2011 census number: 2,205,584
September 2012 census number: 2,342,956
Increase: 137,372.
Here’s how it plays out with the December 2010 number.
December 2010 census number: 2,270,985
September 2012 census number: 2,342,956
Increase: 71,971
In summary: MacIver’s math nearly doubles Walker job count because it
started counting one month later. In effect, they used a lower starting
point, which makes the growth seem larger -- by 65,401 -- than it really
is.
And even that is a bad number.
Apples to oranges
There’s a second, more important -- and more familiar -- problem. Like
Walker in December, MacIver failed to line up a year-to-year
comparison. It measured February temperatures against July.
What’s more, the item itself notes that Koskinen, the state economist,
told them they should not combine the data sets in this manner:
While Koskinen called the numbers "literally true" the article goes on
to note: "Koskinen said economists typically use the same month from
different years to avoid seasonal variations in employment."
Their rating of course is
The MacIver Institute posted an item that says Wisconsin has 137,372
more private sector jobs than when Gov. Scott Walker first took office,
meaning that Walker is more than halfway to his goal of 250,000 jobs.
The jobs promise will be the No. 1 yardstick used to measure Walker’s performance as governor.
But the conservative group’s number is wrong, two times over.
MacIver started with the wrong month of data. That alone nearly doubled
the number of jobs they claim were created under Walker.
They compounded their error by combining full and partial years of data
-- even though they (like the governor himself) were told not to do so.
A new tip to any television entrepreneurs - You could start a Paul Ryan (R- Wall St.) flip flop television station and have enough material to broadcast 24/7/365.
Transcript:
RADIO HOST: I’m gonna ask something I know a lot of people want to know,
or at least I do. What it is like for you to hear the President of the
United States call your dad a liar. How do you react to that?
TAGG ROMNEY: Uh, you know, uh, well, jump out of your seat, and you
want to rush down there to the debate stage and take a swing at him. But
you know you can’t do that, because um, well first because there’s a
lot of Secret Service between you and him…”
Over the weekend, Paul Ryan paid a visit to his alma mater, Miami of Ohio. It was nothing more than a typical campaign stop, but Ryan thought he'd outdo Knute Rockne by stopping in the locker room and getting the team pumped up for a win.
Hilarity ensued:
I don't know which is funnier - the obvious fact that Ryan had no idea what he was doing or the confused look on the players' faces when he was done with his gibberish.
In fact, the 45-second rah-rah was wildly disjointed as Ryan got his facts about Ohio State's record against teams in the state of Ohio backward. He tells the Redhawks that he's proud of them and then he asks them to go out and make him proud. Then he awkwardly finished with, "And make it… count."
It was good of Ryan to take the time to stop in and chat with the team, but I bet several of the players had no idea who he was (they are college students and probably not all registered voters).
Ryan then went up to a luxury box to watch some of the game with Ohio Representative Pat Tiberi and then left early.
Per ABC news, Ryan had the same effect for the team as he does for budget plans, and takes about as much responsibility for it:
When he left his team was winning 3-0. But, that didn’t last long.
By the time the vice presidential candidate was in the air on his way to a joint rally with the top of the ticket his alma mater was losing to Ohio State 35-10.
Reporters wanted to see what he thought of his university’s change in fortune, so they rolled an orange down the aisle on the flight from Columbus to Jacksonville.
The candidate rolled it back with a message: “We were winning when I was there. Paul.”
Miami of Ohio eventually did lose by an even bigger margin: 56-10.
I'd expect that by Thursday, he'll be telling people he suited up when the quarterback took ill and led the team to win the Rose Bowl and the Superbowl.
One of the very first details that came out about Paul Ryan is that he is very big into physical fitness and one of his passions is running.
It is also known that he is a pathological liar, second only to Scott Walker.
Now those two worlds have come together.
In a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt, he made an amazing claim:
HH: That’s okay. Hey, in high school, what did you do in high school? Were you a speech and debate guy? Were you a bandie? What were you?
PR: No, I was student government and athletics, honor society, you know, that kind of thing. I was kind of a combination. I was class president my junior year, I was the school board rep my senior year. I lettered in varsity, you know, my first year in high school, mostly soccer and track. I was a distance runner and a soccer player. So kind of well-rounded. I can’t, I can play a cowbell. That’s about it for instruments.
HH: Are you still running?
PR: Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons anymore. I just run ten miles or yes.
HH: But you did run marathons at some point?
PR: Yeah, but I can’t do it anymore, because my back is just not that great.
HH: I’ve just gotta ask, what’s your personal best?
PR: Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something.
HH: Holy smokes. All right, now you go down to Miami University…
PR: I was fast when I was younger, yeah.
Impressive, right? He is claiming he ran in a number of marathons and that his best time was under three hours. That would mean keeping up a pace of seven minutes per mile for the entire 26 miles. I've had cars that couldn't do that.
Only thing is, well, he was lying his running shoes off:
It turns out Paul Ryan has not run a marathon in less than three hours—or even less than four hours.
A spokesman confirmed late Friday that the Republican vice presidential candidate has run one marathon. That was the 1990 Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota, where Ryan, then 20, is listed as having finished in 4 hours, 1 minute, and 25 seconds.
Whoa! Suddenly we went from a number of marathons to just one and then added more than an hour to his originally stated time. Still, it's more than I could do. (Or would want to for that much. I have a car for when I want to go 26 miles.)
In the grand scheme of things, lying about the number of races he ran in or what his best time was is not really a big deal.
The only thing is that this isn't an isolated incident.
There is the now famous lie he told in which he tried to blame President Obama for the closing of the auto plant in Janesville, even though the closing happened before Obama was even took office.
There is also the one about how his budget plan will save Medicare and how it will save taxpayers money. Heck, even the guy who came up with the plan doesn't buy that one.
And who could forget the one where Ryan said that he'd never ever ask for stimulus funds...except when he did.
And remember how he tried to distance himself after Todd Akin's infamous gaffe about legitimate rape? I don't know why, since he's voted for and/or sponsored more than his fair share of misogynistic bills in his time.
So the lesson here, gentle reader, is that you can't believe anything that comes out of Paul Ryan's mouth. And whatever you do, don't get him going on fishing:
Is it any wonder that they are starting to refer to him as Lyin' Ryan?
The Wisconsin congressman said he had forgotten that his office sent
letters — with his signature — to the Energy and Labor departments
asking for money from the stimulus program on behalf of two companies in
his home state.
The best part of his sorry excuse for his blatant lies is this:
"After having these letters called to my attention I checked into them,
and they were treated as constituent service requests in the same way
matters involving Social Security or Veterans Affairs are handled," Ryan
said in a statement late Thursday. "This is why I didn't recall the
letters earlier."
You can not blame the Congressman since they treated them like "constituent Services" and in time time he has been in Congress, he can't remember ever partaking in constituent services, so how could he remember this. It must have been a rogue staff member that actually tried to help the 1st Congressional District.
No answer yet if that staff member has been found and disciplined.
Even during his explanation, Paul "Harvey Dent" rAYN (R- $350 bottles of wine), contradicted himself.
"That stimulus didn't work," Romney said at an Ohio speech in June.
"That stimulus didn't put more private-sector people to work."
Yet
in Ryan's letter to the Labor Department in October 2009, he backed the
Energy Center of Wisconsin's grant application for stimulus money "to
develop an industry-driven training and placement agenda that intends to
place 1,000 workers in green jobs." The company did not win the Labor
Department grant, federal records show. Despite the letter, Ryan echoed Romney's position on Thursday.
"Regardless,
it's clear that the Obama stimulus did nothing to stimulate the
economy, and now the president is asking to do it all over again," he
said.
When you stand for nothing, you will say anything! To be fair though, maybe pink slip paulie is just upset that his favorite band penned in Op-Ed stating
Paul Ryan's love of Rage Against the Machine
is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music
has been raging against for two decades. Charles Manson loved the Beatles but didn't understand them. Governor Chris Christie loves Bruce Springsteen but doesn't understand him. And Paul Ryan is clueless about his favorite band, Rage Against the Machine.
Ryan claims that he likes Rage's sound, but not the lyrics. Well, I don't care for Paul Ryan's sound or
his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision
of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical
to the message of Rage.
I wonder what Ryan's favorite Rage song is? Is it the one where we
condemn the genocide of Native Americans? The one lambasting American
imperialism? Our cover of "Fuck the Police"? Or is it the one where we
call on the people to seize the means of production? So many excellent
choices to jam out to at Young Republican meetings!
Don't mistake me, I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta "rage" in
him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against
workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against
the environment. Basically the only thing he's not raging against is the privileged elite he's groveling in front of for campaign contributions.
This just in...paul ryan picked his new campaign song!!
On October 28, 2010, after the Wisconsin Republican penned at least five letters to two federal departments seeking grants under the Obama administration’s economic recovery package, Ryan responded to a caller on WBZ’s Nightside with Dan Rea who asked if he sought any of the money. Ryan said that he would not vote against something “then write to the government to ask them to send us money.”
“I did not request any stimulus money,” he continued.
I received a pressing email from the recall folks:
Chris,
While Scott Walker's campaign was trying to explain their failure to find even one recall signature to challenge, Walker's spokesperson said "it obviously takes more time to verify signatures than to collect them."
She said that they were given an "impossible timeline." That's laughable!
We've already shown the other side how to achieve incredible feats within "impossible deadlines." Your strength and determination has made our grassroots effort the largest recall in U.S. History.
But as the story goes while recalling Scott Walker, we have another crucial deadline to meet. We have to enter every signer into our voter database by March 23rd.
To be honest, when it became our job to enter Wisconsin's one million signatures into our database, the Milwaukee team was nervous. We have only two offices in Milwaukee open at the moment, and only have a few computers to complete an enormous task.
Somehow, someway, we are right on target to complete this enormous task by March 23rd. We are only 200 volunteers away from achieving our original goal, but the pace must continue. Just one slow day in Milwaukee holds the entire state back from reaching our urgent goal.
The sooner we finish, the faster we can make sure that every person who signed the petition turns out to elect a new governor Wisconsin families can believe in to create jobs and return open, clean government to our state.
We want 1,000,000 plus petition signers to translate into votes. The only way we are going to be able to make sure these signers turn out to vote is if we complete the data entry process. This will allow us to make call lists and the canvassing packets for volunteers to use during GOTV.
We've faced tremendous challenges and goals before, but together we've always met and exceeded them. Sign up up now and help us meet a seemingly impossible task again so we can have the ability to call petition signers and knock on their doors on Election Day.
Here's our chance to stick it to the weasel twice! Defend the data - and our freedom - and make Walker look even more like the liar and the fool he is! Please, let's stand up, Milwaukee, and show the rest of the state how it's done!
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