Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) [unveiled a budget] that aims to slash hundreds of millions of dollars from the state’s public universities over the next two years. Students, professors and state lawmakers are already blasting the plan — the deepest cut in state history…. At the same time, Walker is calling for a nearly $500 million new basketball stadium in Milwaukee for the Bucks. Under his plan, the state would take out $200 million in bonds to pay for the arena, and the county and city of Milwaukee would have to chip in as well. The team’s owner has promised some private funding, and Walker claims the taxes the NBA players will pay will make up the difference.
I suppose you’d have to live in Wisconsin to understand how someone who makes no apologies for his devotion to the 1% can be elected, survive a recall, and be re-elected by a comfortable margin. At some point, Wisconsinites have to accept their responsibility in the debacle that is Walker’s reign of error. THEY elected him, and, as a very wise man once said (It may have been me, but I can’t recall), elections have consequences. Now the good people of Wisconsin are being forced to face the consequences of electing, and re-electing, a Republican governor thoroughly committed to the destruction of the middle class.
Most Republicans at least try to camouflage their ties (and devotion) to Charles and David Koch. Walker seems to feel no need to apologize for his being on Koch Industries’ payroll; indeed, he seems to view it as a badge of honor. After surviving a recall election in the wake of his declaring war on Wisconsin’s unions, Walker seems to view himself as bulletproof. The idea of cutting funding for Wisconsin’s public universities is merely the latest battleground, because he’s not even attempting to camouflage his plan to gift the Milwaukee Bucks NBA franchise with a glittering new state-of-the-art arena. To call his budget “nonsensical” would seem something of an understatement…but I don’t live in Wisconsin, so I don’t have to deal with the fallout.
Though it’s quite possible Walker doesn’t see a connection between the Bucks proposed arena and the cuts being forced upon Wisconsin’s higher education system, those who’ll feel the cuts most definitely do. ‘Course, there’s no reason Walker really needs to care about Wisconsin, anyway; he’s got his sights set on the 2016 Presidential race.
The question that really needs to be asked is why Walker is proposing public assistance for a private company even as he’s trying to cut public assistance for higher education. Part of the problem with Republican ideology is that it views education as overhead instead of an investment in our collective future. Despite what Walker and his Koch benefactors might believe, education is one of the things- perhaps the biggest thing- that will will keep American from sliding inexorably into an idiocracy.
Or perhaps the Kochs really do see their path to owning America as traveling through that idiocracy. Whatever the case, Wisconsin seems to have exactly the quality of leadership it deserves.
