Friday, March 26, 2010

Walker Creates Jobs for All the Wrong People

Who can forget Scott Walker promising to end all unemployment in Wisconsin? The problem is that he lacks any credibility on any real job creation. He has done nothing to create real jobs as Milwaukee County Executive. That is until now. Unfortunately the jobs that he is handing out right now are to all the wrong people.

We all know how he used questionable means to send 27 Milwaukee security guards to the unemployment line. We also know that he awarded a contract to foreign-owned Wackenhut, to replace those jobs.

It is bad enough that this private firm has had a questionable history with Milwaukee County (not to mention others across the country). But now it appears that Wackenhut not only had a convicted felon guarding the Milwaukee County Courthouse, but that it also shipped in workers from Chicago and even Florida to replace the newly unemployed Milwaukee workers. So I guess one could say that Walker created jobs in this example, but unfortunately it was for a convicted felon and for people from Chicago and Florida.

Walker also continued his 8 year practice of recycling his campaign operatives through Milwaukee County government on the taxpayer's dime. Walker promised to eliminate cronyism back in 2002 but then he immediately began perfecting it. Capper draws our attention to a current example: Tim Russell who apparently got a promotion that may have included a $50,000 $2,500 raise.

Walker has been kind enough to repeatedly find taxpayer financed jobs for Russell, even if he wasn't qualified. Walker must really like Russell because he also pays him big bucks to work on his campaigns. Leading up to the 2008 race for county executive, Walker's campaign shelled out a $10,000 payment to Russell. Wow, Walker is really delivering a lot of cash to this guy! Sometimes courtesy of taxpayers and sometimes courtesy of Republican sugar daddies.

So maybe we can now admit that Scott Walker has created a few jobs this month, unfortunately it has been for all the wrong people. Sending more Milwaukee workers to the unemployment line while hiring felons, out-of-state workers and giving $2,500 raises to political cronies doesn't seem like the kind of jobs plan that will play well with the public.

UPDATE: It looks like we can now add Ohio to the list of out-of-state workers for which Scott Walker has created jobs.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Capper draws our attention to a current example: Tim Russell who apparently got a promotion that may have included a $50,000 raise.

Too bad it's an complete lie.

Cory Liebmann said...

i just saw the mjs report earlier this evening. based on that it appears that the $50k figure is clearly wrong.

while the number is wrong, i don't think that the principle behind it is... walker clearly has no problem sending frontline workers to the unemployment line while at the same time repeatedly hiring political cronies, giving them raises, promoting them and recycling them between his various campaigns and county jobs.

pj135 said...

A premise based on a lie is still a lie. Your character assination is based on data that is not factually true...thus a LIE. Unfortunately everything you say needs to be factually correlated because of your bias. Why should we waste our time reading anything you write??

Cory Liebmann said...

fact: scott walker promised to end cronyism and then proceeded to give all of his political cronies jobs on the taxpayer's dime, this included russell and a long list of others.

fact: walker kept moving russell around from county job to county job, even when many feel that he was not qualified for at least one of them.

fact: walker kept recycling russell between jobs on his campaigns and official county positions.

fact: while walker was giving political cronies raises and promotions, he was sending front line workers to the unemployment line.

fact: while walker was sending milwaukee county workers to the unemployment line, he contracted with a firm that brought in a felon and out-of-state workers to replace them.

the exact amount of russell's raise does not magically erase these facts. it is the walker record and he should own it.