The Weasel With Crocodile Tears

The Democratic Party issued a press release a couple of days ago in which they called on Scott Walker to return a $7,500 raise in salary that he gladly accepted as he was sworn in as governor.

What set off their righteous indignation and the demand for Walker to return that money was that Walker had the audacity to go on a radio program and start sniveling about how he was losing money from having to pay towards his pension.

Now let's back them crocodile tears up for a minute.

First of all, as the Dems point out, Walker lied through his weasel teeth about paying for his pension from day one.  The Dems figure that this comes to about $5,600.

When you add in the raise he took with both hands, it comes to six months worth of pay for a state maintenance worker or a correction officer.

But even if you give Walker credit at face value for what he is claiming about the "loss of $10,000 in purchasing power," he's still full of crap.

When you look at what he made in 2010, his last year as Milwaukee County Executive, you'll see that his salary was more than $129,000:

If you were foolish and naive enough to take Walker at his word, he is currently make about $134,000.  That is still $5000 more than what he was making lat year.

Another way to look at it is, if you again lose all common sense and the instinct for self-preservation, he is out about 7% of his pay.

Now compare that to a public sector worker, who is down by an average of 13%, with some workers losing as much as 18% of their take home pay.

Methinks the Dems are going a bit easy on him.

Walker should be returning at least $20,000, if he was truly serious about everyone sharing the sacrifice.

Tales From The Fridge: Walker's Salary

This is part of an ongoing series to see how true Scott Walker's claim to having kept all of his 2002 campaign promises really is.

In 2002, Scott Walker made two promises regarding his salary as county executive.

One, which was one of his own, read:

Voluntarily reduce own salary to $78,850, within 30 days.

The other, which was part of the CRG platform:

Immediately sign a waiver of all salary and benefit increases that were enacted after Jan. 1, 2000.

First one of the bat and we find that he did not keep these promises.

As we had discussed earlier this year, Walker's first commercial bragged about giving some of his salary back, which he did do. But he did not reduce his salary.

In fact, due to a law written into the County Code of Ordinances, the county executive receives a raise every year as a cost of living adjustment.

So in reality, his salary has actually increased by a few thousand dollars while he has been county executive.

To make this false promise even more egregious, for the last two years, while people are losing their jobs and their homes, including the county workers that Walker laid off, he forewent his habit of giving his salary back, effectively giving himself a $50,000 a year raise.

He promptly used that money to buy a new house and a large swimming pool. Nice way to throw it in the face of the people losing their homes.

Now, to be fair, Walker couldn't legally cut his salary in the middle of a term. However, there was nothing preventing him from making a push to have it cut back at the beginning of his next term, which would have been only two years later.

End result: Two promises made, zero promises kept.