Journal Communications Endorsement Criteria

In Journal Communications' inevitable endorsement of Scott Walker, they have really come full circle. They are largely responsible for him being Milwaukee County Executive and they clearly have a vested interest in continuing to promote him regardless of his lack of performance. We've seen this coming through their nonstop cheer leading and millions of dollars of free advertising on their radio station and through their newspaper's kid glove treatment of him no matter what disasters happen on his watch. So this endorsement should really be no surprise, what do they have to lose that they have not already lost (like credibility)?

In their endorsement they say that Walker's "experience in running Milwaukee County has given him the right skill set". Who knew that the following qualified as "running" and who knew that it involved any level of "skill" at all? As a public service to future candidates for public office, we would like to provide the apparent criteria necessary to get the endorsement and endless promotion of Journal Communications:

• Bring it to Bankruptcy
• Constant mental health crisis, (deaths, escapes, threatened funding, shotty conditions)
• No economic development/jobs effort (other than for political cronies)
• Transit crisis: less service but ever increasing prices, cutting off more people from jobs
• Buildings literally crumbling
• Hundreds of millions of dollars in deferred parks maintenance
• Being fined/successfully sued for poor performance and then losing control of welfare programs altogether
• Losing control of the House of Correction after a damning federal audit, short staffing, 218% increase in overtime, an escape and a overdose death
• Raiding sales tax revenue which was supposed to be for things like roads, while owning "the worst road in the state of Wisconsin".
• Building phantom budgets based on assumed revenue that has no basis in reality
• Complain about government spending and debt when you actually lead the way in both categories (35% and 85% increases)
• Constant sniping on the sidelines and having a generally nasty attitude toward the constructive efforts of everyone else
• Never actually reforming the thing that got you elected in the first place - pension system, (still massive backdrop payments, workers still don't contribute eight years later)
• Multiple long-time staffers investigated by the District Attorney's office
• Awarding multiple no-bid contracts to politically connected companies that have given to your campaign
• Privatize everything, even if it costs more for less
• Short-term politically motivated approach to everything, no matter the long-term costs to taxpayers
• Break most of your original promises but continuously parrot that you've kept them.
• Whenever possible flip-flop on key issues, and then flip-flop again (be on all side of nearly every issue)

It seems that what Journal Communications really meant to say is that Scott Walker's "experience in ruining Milwaukee County has given him the right skill set to receive our inevitable endorsement".