Walker Predicts Romney Will Win Fitzwalkerstan - He's Wrong As Usual

Scott Walker did an interview with "Fox and Friends," which was picked up by Politico. It is something to behold as it is one of Walker's best jobs of conflation and obfuscation one might have the bad luck of ever seeing.

First, there was this:

Wis. Gov. Scott Walker said on Friday that the Republican presidential ticket will benefit from the GOP groundwork laid out during his recall election.

Walker said on Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends” that the infrastructure is already in place to help Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) carry Wisconsin, a state that went overwhelmingly for President Barack Obama in 2008, but now looks to be in play.

“You take all the work that was done earlier this year, when we made four and half million voter contacts in a state of 5.7 million,” the Wisconsin governor said. “We had tens of thousands of volunteers help us in my election earlier this year. That excitement continues on

Excuse me, but WTF?!

First of all, there is no one better at getting boots on the ground than the unions, except for #wiunion.

How else can they explain that when Joanne Kloppenburg ran against David "Chokehold" Prosser, in two short months she went from given loser to within a few points of Prosser?

Or in the recall itself, which wasn't supposed to succeed at even getting enough signatures, got within spitting distance of a million?

Out of the 4.5 million contacts that Walker is claiming, about 3 million of them were robocalls. The unions were too damn busy pounding the pavement and making real person calls to worry about the numbers.

But Walker wasn't done with his lying:

He added that the debate highlighted Romney’s successes as “a job creator” and as governor of Massachusetts, where he “helped the economy grow” as he worked on both sides of the political aisle.

“I think that’s what people here in Wisconsin and across the country want in the next president,” Walker said, citing Romney’s record of, he said, both governing successes and of bipartisanship.

Walker probably thinks that Romney is a wonderful "job creator" because they are relatively the same. Romney, in his one term, drove his state from the mid 30's all the way down to 47th. That is similar to Walker taking Wisconsin from a state leading in the recovery to dead last in economic activity and job growth for months in a row.

Not exactly what I would call a glowing recommendation there.

And the last bit of bovine manure comes with this:

Ryan, a son of Wisconsin, also energized voters when he joined the presidential ticket, Walker said.

“[The excitement] certainly got accelerated when Paul Ryan was added to the ticket,” Walker said. “Not just because he’s from Wisconsin, but because in his district, which is evenly matched between Republicans and Democrats, there’s always been a high level of respect, even in the blue collar, working class union towns like Janesville and Kenosha, because of the hard work Paul Ryan has done and will do.”

Oh yeah, sure, Ryan did cause an uptick in Romney's numbers...for about three days.
Since then, almost every single poll has Obama in the lead from anywhere from three to eleven points. That includes the most recent poll that came out late on Saturday showing Obama taking Wisconsin.

Nate Silver, the guru of election prediction, gives Obama an 83% chance of winning Wisconsin. I like those odds.

Another sure sign that Obama will be taking Wisconsin is the fact that the right wing echo chamber has been in a mad scramble to explain away the polls or find some obscure right wing pundit willing to go on a suicide mission and call Romney the winner.

As if you needed any more inspiration to get yourself to the polls on Tuesday, as well as your family, friends and neighbors, I leave you with one word and a picture.

The word is Walkergate and the picture is this:

The Kaukauna Is Still A Lie!

When Scott Walker budget was enacted last year, he loved pointing to the Kaukauna School District has an example of how his budget was so "successful" in saving taxpayers money and not harming the quality of education.

I pointed out a post by Jake, who pointed out that the Walker's Kaukauna story was a lie:

So this wasn't a "union costs exploded for 2011-2012" problem. This was a "budget cuts from Scott Walker and WisGOP in Madison are screwing us on the local level" problem. In fact, the original budget proposal from the guv resulted in a drop of Kaukauna's available revenues of $2.16 million (a bit under 5% of their total), and $2.75 million from the state (check out your favorite district's cut here, Kaukauna's on Page 5). The unions responded by proposing $1.8 million in concessions, which combined with the district $345,000 in surplus funds from 2010-11, would have taken care off all of the state cuts put into Kaukauna's budget. The Kaukauna School Board turned them down and asked for layoffs of 14.5 full-time positions instead, and decided to wait on the Legislature and State Supreme Court to do the dirty work of putting the screws on the teachers, and hope for large numbers of teacher retirements.

Which is exactly what happened. The Kaukauna teachers will now have to chip in over 18% of their pay in health care and pension contributions, with no corresponding increase in salary. And for all the talk about "Kaukauna class sizes going down," even Kaukauna School Board President Todd Arnoldussen admits it's projected class sizes being reduced, and those are reductions from huge INCREASES THAT WERE PREVIOUSLY PROJECTED. In other words, little to no change will result from what students would have seen this year. Class sizes DID NOT GO DOWN, as much as the deceptive press releases may indicate.

And I'm not even bringing up the fact that I wish Kaukauna good luck in attracting and retaining quality teachers when they're getting a huge cut in their take-home pay. Strangely, those "free-market" types that are always bashing public educators leaves out the free market reality of lower pay = lower quality. (But when has consistency and reality ever been part of the equation for those haters, anyway?)

The lie was picked up on nationally and made even clearer:

But here’s the thing: The collective bargaining ban, in and of itself, was not responsible for achieving these savings and this surplus. As the Appleton Post Crescent reports, the teachers union had already offered up financial concessions that would have produced almost identical savings and an almost identical surplus.

What’s more, the use of this one district to declare Walker’s policies a success is almost comical in its cherry-picking. There are 424 school districts in Wisconsin, and as the AP recently noted, Walker’s policies mean draconian budget cuts to 410 of them, with labor officials and school districts predicting increased class sizes and layoffs.

Walker’s premature declaration of victory — and the right wing echo chamber’s flacking of it — could look awfully silly when the full bill for his policies really comes due. And the notion that this one school district’s fiscal success is in any way a referendum on the most controversial aspect of Walker’s union busting proposal is laughable. This fight has never been about public employees’ unwillingness to make fiscal concessions — and always about stripping them of their rights.

When the recalls came, Walker and company tried to point at Kaukauna again as their flagship on how the budget was working. Meanwhile, those of us on the left repeatedly pointed out that any savings were one time deals and the long term costs would far exceed any savings, real or pretend, that Walker might tout.

Guess who was correct.

Well, let's just say thatKaukauna is still a lie:

The owner of a $150,000 home within the Kaukauna and Little Chute school districts will see annual costs jump $80 and $61, respectively, if the home’s value increases or decreases at the same rate as the school district’s projections.

After several years of cutting spending, the Kaukauna Area School District no longer had any fat to trim and will have to increase the tax levy for revenue, said Bob Schafer, business manager for Kaukauna. Because the district spent less than it budgeted, state aid was reduced by more than $850,000, according to figures from the Department of Public Instruction.

“Our biggest dilemma was No. 1, the dropping property values, and No. 2, the amount of state aid,” Schafer said. “We lost a lot of state aid this year.”

Kaukauna also underspent their budget last year by about $1.5 million due to healthcare and retirement adjustments, which meant a smaller state aid payment for the 2012-13 year.

“That does have a ripple effect in your aid payment for the following year,” Schafer said. “That was a big factor for us.”

Still, the situation could have been much worse, he said. Kaukauna had the option of taxing homeowners up to $10.13 per $1,000 of home valuation, but the Board of Education voted instead to take money out of a different fund and set the tax rate at $9.33.

“Yes, it does raise property taxes, but everybody feels that this is what’s best for the kids and the community,” Schafer said.

So those of you in the Kaukauna School District who voted for Walker, not just once, but twice, congratulations to you. You won the Walker Booby Prize of higher taxes and a poor education for your children.

Ah, ah, ah! No complaining now! You're getting exactly what you wanted. It's just too bad you had to ruin everything for the rest of us in your headlong rush to prove yourselves fools.

No, They Did Not Build It On Their Own

The good news is that some of the people in Viroqua who were laid off when NCR closed will be getting back to work.

The bad news, for Republicans, is that they needed the government to make it happen, in the form of corporate welfare (emphasis mine):

Susan Noble raised the flag in front of Viroqua’s Food Enterprise Center on Wednesday afternoon to mark the opening of a renovated 100,000-square-foot manufacturing facility.

“Hallelujah,” she said. “We’re back in business.”

A crowd of about 60 business leaders from throughout the Coulee Region attended the grand opening of the facility formerly operated by NCR.

Noble, executive director of the Vernon Economic Development Association, said the loss of 81 jobs when NCR closed in 2009 “was a tremendous blow to our community, but (VEDA) took it as an opportunity and ran with it.”

VEDA put together a multi-million dollar plan to repurpose the NCR plant as the Food Enterprise Center. The financing included $2 million from the Federal Economic Development Administration, a $1.8 million Midwest Disaster Bond and other loans and lines of credit through six area banks.

The manufacturing plant has been remodeled and now has four tenants, Keewaydin Organics, LuSa Organics, Ridgetop Foods and Fifth Season Cooperative. All are involved in either distributing food or producing value-added food products.

Well, you know that something that Scott Walker and Paul Ryan won't be talking about.

Another Right Wing Cliche Proven False

"The government doesn't create jobs."

How many times have you heard a right winger say that?

It's been a common talking point among Republicans for years. Scott Walker ran on it a couple of years ago and credits it, in part, for his election as governor. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are going back and forth across the country repeating it. Almost every Republican candidate, on all levels of races, are using it as their tagline, promising to reduce government spending.

But look what happens when you do cut government spending:

Oshkosh Corp. will lay off 450 production employees in mid-January in response to declining military spending.

The company announced the layoffs to employees over the lunch hour Thursday. In a press release, the company said reduced U.S. Defense Department spending will require it to reduce its production workforce in Oshkosh from about 4,000 to 3,500. The company’s total Oshkosh workforce, including managers and office personnel, will be reduced from 4,500 to 4,000.

The company aggressively ramped up the size of its workforce between 2008 and 2011 after winning contracts to produce more than 8,000 Mine-resistant All-Terrain Vehicles, or M-ATVs, and 23,000 Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles trucks, or FMTVs.

It held job fairs in 2008 and 2011 to hire more than 1,000 workers, which brought thousands of people from across the state to Oshkosh in search of work at a time of high unemployment in most cities.

Now, Oshkosh Corp. needs to adjust as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan come to a close.

“These are always difficult decisions,” Oshkosh Corp. spokesman John Daggett said. “Unfortunately, there’s no huge contract in the near future that will have a significant impact. But there could be different changes just based on a lot of moving factors.”

Another right wing talking point, about those damn greedy union thugs, also gets shut down at the same time:

The United Auto Workers Local 578 Bargaining Committee released a written statement Thursday afternoon expressing concern about the layoffs’ impact on the community and working families.

“As expected, the union is very concerned not only about the impact to our membership, but also their family members and the surrounding community,” the statement reads. “The union is also very concerned that the company has outsourced work and we are in the process of attemping to bring this work in and explore additional work with the company. We are also looking into ways to lessen the impact of an outright layoff, such as the possibility for some to retire early. The union will continue discussions with the company on these matters to lessen the burden as much as possible.”

Are the Republicans so greedy that they are absolutely unable to tell the truth anymore? Or is that they are merely looking at increasing their hold on power so that we can all become corporate serfs, just like in the "good old days?"

The scariest part is that Scott Walker has no clue about what he needs to do so it could end up being absolutely devastating to not only the region's economy, the entire state's as the ripple effects are felt.

Romney Edits Reality!

Here is the real quote from President Obama

If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be ‘cause I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

 Let me tell you something. There are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.

Yet as Greg Sargent Points out, Romney is out with a HEAVILY edited video. After the reality of who Mitt is as a person started to hit home, the republicans only chance is to alter reality.  Here is their attempt and its failing!     

As for what President Obama said, not only is he correct, he is not the first person to say so! Benjamin Franklin understood it at the birth of our Constitutionally limited democratic republic:

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. 

 Abe Lincoln echoed Franklin:

  "Most governments have been based, practically, on the denial of equal rights of men, as I have, in part, stated them ours began, by affirming those rights. They said, some men are too ignorant, and vicious, to share in government. Possibly so, said we; and, by your system, you would always keep them ignorant, and vicious. We proposed to give all a chance; and we expected the weak to grow stronger, the ignorant, wiser; and all better, and happier together."³ 

Thom Hartmann ties it all up nicely here: