Scott Walker, Wisconsin Governor/hypocrite/shit for brains/champion of the rights of teachers? In making his case for The budget-repair bill, which would strip most collective-bargaining rights from 175,000 public-sector workers while imposing immediate benefits concessions, Walker sought to highlight the plight of a one such teacher. Megan Sampson was named an Outstanding First Year Teacher in 2010, and was then laid off from Milwaukee’s Bradley Tech High School. This happened, according to Walker in his horribly written Wall Street Journal op-ed :
“Because her collective-bargaining contract requires staffing decisions to be made based on seniority. Ms. Sampson got a layoff notice because the union leadership would not accept reasonable changes to their contract.”
What the Governor neglected to mention was that the layoffs were the result of more than $33 million in budget cuts made to Milwaukee’s public school system in 2010. Budget cuts. Hundreds of parents, teachers and students protested the cuts at a public hearing last year. Does he think we all have amnesia? DO we all have amnesia? Now Scott Walker wants to cut $900 million in education aid from the Wisconsin state budget. Walker’s “reform plan” calls for a 5.8% pension contribution from government workers and a 12.6% health insurance premium payment. Walker is quick to point out that these apply to him, too. Here’s the problem. Governor Walker’s salary is $137,092 (plus free car and house, staff, etc. but will get to that later), while the starting annual salary for teachers in Wisconsin is just $25,222 (factor in having to pay for stuff the Governor doesn’t have to pay for and pay back the student loan that the Governor doesn’t have to pay back (because he didn’t go), and the teacher’s “shared sacrifice” of bridging the budget gap, like, say, purchasing supplies for students), so it’s kind of hard to believe that many first year teachers will be able to shoulder this financial burden as easily as Mr. Walker. I doubt that Megan Sampson probably is raking in the big bucks at her new gig – a plum job teaching English at Wauwatosa East High School, where, ironically or not, Walker’s 2 teenage sons attend – but she will be asked to bear the burden of Scott Walker’s education cuts and well as the burden of being Walker’s poster child for his political agenda.
Upon being elected last year, Mr. Bag Lunch immediately upped his personal security detail at the taxpayers expense – by 50 percent – in response to the “larger size of his family”, and the “ongoing threat level” and moved his fat ass into the Wisconsin Governor’s Mansion. Walker’s wife and sons remain in Wauwatosa while he alone mincing around the 16,000 square foot Mansion in the tony Madison enclave of Maple Bluff. Walker’s parents have moved into his smaller Wauwatosa home to help care for Walker’s sons. When questioned about the increase in the taxpayer’s bill, Walker whined about “security concerns”, citing U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, injured during a town hall meeting shooting rampage. Don’t worry, Walker. For some reason, Dems don’t shoot you guys.
Average Wisconsin Home
Casa Scott, at Christmas!
Walker has made a call to citizens for “ideas” on how to make state government run more efficiently – the fairytale of “shared sacrifice” to remedy his on the job problems such as his projected $3 billion budget shortfall. His problem. He lives in the house, his problem. No “shared” sacrifice necessary, folks. Because you, sir, are living in a 34 room, 13 bathroom mansion stark-raving-alone save for a bloated security detail and 7 personal employees – a personal chef, a gardener a “facilities maintenance specialist, a housekeeper, a laundress and flower arranger, and the head of the waitstaff (i.e. a butler). The fiscal bureau states the Mansion’s 2010 annual operating expenses at $273,340, nearly all of which is salary. Go rent an apartment like a Democrat you hypocritical limp-lipped fop. No state governor should be living in a MANSION at taxpayer’s expense during a recession. Find something else to do with the $1.13 million over the next four years in operating expenses, plus the $3 million the state could make by selling the pad and the 3.7 acres of land it sits upon on Lake Mendota.
Even California doesn’t provide a HOUSE or a housing allowance. That’s because when a Democrat replaced a Republican in the Governorship, out went the Mansion! Jerry Brown ordered the California Governors Mansion to BE SOLD. REFUSING TO LIVE THERE AT THE TAXPAYERS EXPENSE. The original California Governor’s Mansion is modest by Scott Walker’s living standards. So much so that in 1967 California Governor’s Wife Nancy Reagan refused to stay in it. The stately, 6-bedroom, mansard-styled Victorian built in 1877 was “too old” and in an “undesirable” neighborhood. So, the state footed the bill for their lavish rental, while Nancy supervised construction of a new, lavish “showplace”, knowing full well that it would never be completed in time for them to ever live there. The residence – described by Ronald Reagan as a “Taj Mahal” – an overblown ranch adjacent to an Indian burial ground in tony Carmichael, was finished just as the he left office in 1975, having cost the state $1.4 million. His Democratic successor refused to live in the garish, 25 room, 12,00 square foot manor stretched ranch-style over 11 acres, and no Governor, Democrat or Republican – getting a whiff of the faux redwood, vinyl countertops, cinder-block walls slathered in adobe – has wanted to touch it since. Gov Brown opted for a downtown apartment for $250 a month. He slept on a mattress on the floor and paid the rent himself. Govs. George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Gray Davis all lived in the same modest suburban home that was bought by a group of Mr. Deukmejian’s supporters and rented to the state for $1. Even the Schwarzenegger’s horrible taste had limits and they opted to live in a hotel. The Reagan fiasco sat as a taxpayer supported home for wayward raccoons until 1984 when it was unloaded to a private developer at auction (Joan Didion hilariously described the house as “an enlarged version of a very common kind of California tract house, a monument not to colossal ego but a weird absence of ego.”)
Governor Walker, is it preposterous to expect you or ANY Republican alive today to put your money where your big fat lying liver-lipped mouths are? How about selling that mansion, thus slashing $1.13 million in annual overhead and adding $3million into the coffers, thus saving, oh I dunno… average teacher salary $24,o000… x 4 years = $96,000, $1.13 million + $3 million = $4.13 million = like 43 teachers? You are such a “Scott”, you vacant-faced, lip-lidded, “brown bagging lunch” promoting/Official “Scott Walker Brown Paper Lunch Bags” (five for $7) hocking/Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse going/$2,182 steak dinner racking up, curiously effete, beady eyed, lady -lipped sack of white potatoes. I hate everything about you.