Stand with Wisconsin Women, Middle-Class, Elderly, Teachers, LGBT, Children, Poor, Minorities, and More

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has been recalled, and now it's time to replace him. In the year since taking office, Walker has fought hard against just about everyone in Wisconsin besides rich white males. The alleged criminal Walker repealed Equal Pay for Equal Work for women and minorities, discriminated against minorities in unconstitutional redistricting, reduced education funding more than any time in Wisconsin history, reduced teacher and public worker pay and benefits, killed any hope of jobs, banned hospital visitation for same-sex couples, raised BadgerCare premiums and reduced other healthcare help, repealed rights of middle-class workers, and a whole lot more. So, for us in the middle-class and the poor, we're getting far less for our tax dollars, while corporations and the rich are paying far less in state taxes.

Everyone agrees that to fix education, we need to pay teachers well. We all know the main reason that many good, intelligent people choose not to become teachers is because they can get significantly more money in other jobs. Why then do people think it's OK to reduce the already low pay for teachers? If you think this won't hurt our children, you need some education yourself.

And Walker's done it all under the banner of job creation, even though Wisconsin has lost more jobs than any other state since Walker took office and continues to bleed jobs with 6,200 more in April. Walker and the Republicans have refused to make any real effort towards job creation.

Instead of real job creation, Walker gave huge tax breaks to his campaign donors, the rich who are funding his 25 million dollar campaign, the billboards you see all over Wisconsin and TV ads. Walker did this even though there's every reason to believe tax breaks for the rich are bad for the economy. Even a Republican policy wonk recently wrote in the New York Times that taxes don't affect the employment rate one way or the other, particularly now with our taxes already as low as they are. The rich can't create jobs if the middle-class doesn't have the money to spend on the products and services the rich provide. We're the real job creators.

The rich clearly don't need more money, with the millions they can donate to Walker and use for billboards and TV ads all over Wisconsin. If they paid even half that much in taxes, we'd probably solve most of our budget problems. But instead they're using it to help Walker, because they know they'll save much more in taxes. And we suffer.

It's time Wisconsin starts sifting and winnowing again to find the best solutions to our problems, not partisan and ideological goals pushed by millionaires. We need a governor who will stand up to the demands of the rich few like Diane Hendricks (who inherited her great wealth from her husband).

If you stand with Walker, you stand with rich white supremacy and nothing more. Not jobs, morals or anything else. Show me otherwise, I'd be pleasantly surprised.

Vote for your economic interests and your neighbors'. Vote Tom Barrett. Early voting has already begun.

How Many Teachers Has Scott Walker Fired?

I was talking to a teacher the other day who was telling me about 21 teachers who will lose their job under her district's latest plans. She asked me, "How many teachers has Scott Walker fired?" I couldn't answer her question at the time, but I thought it was a very interesting question.

See, the whole reason that Walker says he stripped the rights of our public workers last year was to give local governments and districts the "tools" needed to deal with his massive budget cuts without firing any teachers. Walker said that this would save thousands of teachers jobs. However, we know that this has been far from the case. So, how many teachers has Scott Walker fired?

According to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, Scott Walker has fired* at least 1,446 teachers!

That's 2.4% of Wisconsin's teachers!  All fired by Scott Walker in one year, so that corporations and super rich people like Diane Hendricks can pay little or no state taxes. In the end, we suffer with lower-quality education. The children of the super rich go to the best private schools money can buy.

So much for saving thousands of teachers' jobs, but we all know that wasn't the reason Walker stripped their collective bargaining rights. It was to push his far-right ideological and corporate goal of stripping rights from a specific group of people he figured he could get away with, public employees. "Divide-and-conquer," as he told Diane Hendricks just before she gave Walker the biggest donation in Wisconsin history and less than a month before he "dropped the bomb."

Walker's "tools" don't work.

But we all know Walker is a big fat liar.



*Yes, I know he didn't directly fire them, but they lost their jobs due to his massive budget cuts to give tax breaks to corporations. So the buck stops at Walker.