Walker's Spendthrift Ways Hits Full Spectrum

I've already wrote about how Scott Walker's misguided spending priorities have hurt the state.

Instead of spending $4 million to educate children, he gave that money, despite claims of being broke, to Spectrum Brands in order to maintain jobs in Wisconsin. Not to create jobs, mind you, but just maintain them.

That $4 million instead went to Spectrum Brand's top executive David Lumley as part of his $13.7 million compensation package.  That'll really help the economy, won't it?

Well, maybe not all of that money went to the CEO.

Some might have gone to the legal defense fund of Philip Falcone, majority stock holder in Spectrum Brands, who was just charged with security fraud for manipulating the price of the stock.

As long as the money is being put to good use and not some waste, like teaching our children or providing health care to our poor, Walker is still happy.

Walker's Priorities: Executives Before Education

When Scott Walker took over and started the systematic destruction of all the good things in the state, his battle cry was "We're broke!"  Never mind the fact that the state was far from broke.  But with that as his excuse, he slashed funding to anything he could, including nearly a billion dollars from education and several hundreds of millions of dollars from the tech schools.

But late last year, he must have checked the cushions of the gubernatorial couch and found $4 million, which he promptly turned around and gave to Spectrum Brands, Inc., a company that had just come out of bankruptcy, which was spurned by the way it was gobbling up other businesses.

The money was supposed to be used to create jobs, but I haven't noticed a big swell in the number of jobs created in Wisconsin, mostly because there hasn't been one.

But I did notice a story which allows us a good idea of where that money is going...to the pocket of Spectrum's CEO David Lumley, who collected $13.7 million last year in compensation.

Obviously, Walker couldn't squander our tax money on something that would benefit the state, like educating our children or training our workers.  Especially not when there are suffering CEOs that didn't even get out of the seven digit pay range under Doyle.

It's nice to see where Walker's priorities are, so we can make it our priority to vote him out.