Oscar Mayer Closing Shows Epic Failure of Industrial Ag-Food Processing Systems

"Nowhere is the Pope’s call for deep, fundamental, lasting change more essential than in the American Food system. A recent Fortune Magazine 'Special Report: The war on big food' (May 2015) begins, 'Major packaged-food companies lost $4 billion in market share alone last year, as shoppers swerved to fresh and organic alternatives. Can the supermarket giants win you back?,'" writes John Ikerd, PhD of agricultural economics.

The 1,000-plus workers at Madison's Oscar Mayer plant would agree, so do the workers in six other manufacturing facilities in North America, (Godar, The Capital Times).

Safe food operations, used to be called family farms, should be subsidized by the U.S. government as sustainable and healthy for society.

"[T]he white-collar Kraft Heinz headquarters jobs are moving to Chicago, as global financial players discard a big piece of Madison's economy, identity and blue-collar workforce like a hot dog wrapper," notes The Political Environment.

Policy decisions have been made, and not the right ones, corporate agriculture and the industries they serve are simply unsustainable.

That's part of the demands citizens will make this coming Saturday when a wide coalition of Wisconsinites across the political spectrum will rally in Madison Nov. 7 at the state capitol at 1:00 p.m.

Scott Walker and Republicans Tank Economy

Robert Kraig sums the Wisconsin situation in the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, noting the corruption and Republican policies purposefully driving down wages.

Insanity.

The Republicans have gerrymandered Wisconsin, and growing numbers want to end GOP-backed machine, black box voting, so power-mad and underhanded are the Republicans who are subverting anything not overtly Republican.

Even as Republicans trash the formal structure of democracy and they want it done in secret, they are crashing the economy.

Writes Kraig:

What passes for discussion of economic strategy in Wisconsin is dominated by Gov. Scott Walker’s discredited jobs agency, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp, or WEDC.

As embarrassing as the agency’s failures are, by fixating on the WEDC trainwreck we are missing a more fundamental challenge: the lack of a strategy to reverse declining economic opportunity in Wisconsin.

Contrary to the cheer-leading we hear from Governor Walker and corporate leaders, our economic direction is alarming. Wisconsin’s middle class shrunk more than any other state since 2000. There is overwhelming evidence from academic research institutes at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and UW-Milwaukee that we are sliding toward a low-wage economy. Wisconsin is hemorrhaging middle-class jobs and replacing them with poverty-wage jobs, so much so that the poverty rate is increasing even as employment increases. Wisconsin also has some of the worst race-based economic disparities in the country, including the highest rate of African-American unemployment.

Never has Wisconsin seen as corrupt and as complete an economic failure as Scott Walker.

Scott Walker's Campaign Is Faltering, Policy Lightweight Is Scaring GOP

Scott Walker

There is an unspoken rule in Scott Walker's campaign and gubernatorial office: No town hall-style events where Walker has to answer unscripted questions and think on his feet.

Like the iconic feather by Garry Trudeau savaging former Vice President Dan Quayle (1989-1993), Scott Walker's brand as a lightweight is penetrating the nation just one month after Walker declared his candidacy for the presidency.

Bake in the fact that Scott Walker's criminal scheme illegally coordinating fundraising is on track in the federal court system, Walker's incredible destruction of his own home state, and you have a fatally wounded candidate, [no matter how much dark money the Koch brothers and other billionaires dump into the electoral system].

Scott Walker's retort: Using a tweet to appeal to the Iowa GOP Caucus crowd amid falling poll numbers: 'Hillary Clinton has liberal, academic friends!'

On that point, Walker is right. Hillary does have well-educated, successful and socially conscious friends, and they worked their butts off to their parents' delight and pride.

But this does not sit well with the radical evangelical Scott Walker who feels academic and professional attainment are elitist defects to be avoided, hence, Walker's perverse efforts to wage war on the University of Wisconsin System.

After Walker's candidacy collapses from sheer lack of policy knowledge and intellect, rightwing welfare and unspent campaign funds await.

Wisconsin Under Walker Careened to Worst State in Household Income Decline

Update: Prediction markets judge Scott Walker biggest loser of Fox News date (New York Times). As Juan Cole writes of Walker's foreign policy responses: "After W., I have a rule that if you flounder around speaking some odd Klingon form of English and don’t seem actually to, like, know anything, you can’t be president."
 ---
Coming off a debate performance in which Scott Walker shocked analysts by showing a pedestrian grasp on major issues including foreign policy and jobs, news from last spring that Wisconsin under Scott Walker has plunged to worst in Household Income Decline went unmentioned.

This is of course to be expected from a campaign now billing itself as "grassroots."

Like Scott Walker or not, it is objectively clear that this toxic ideologue is a lightweight and a vindictive liar, not a serious man as judged by command of facts and evidence, rather a flunkie to billionaires in a position to inflict a lot more damage onto Wisconsin.

This description of Walker is not advanced in most political coverage of what Walker in particular and the Republican Party have become.

As Paul Krugman notes this week: "It has long been obvious that the conventions of political reporting and political commentary make it almost impossible to say the obvious — namely, that one of our two major parties has gone off the deep end. ... Or to put it another way, modern Republican politicians can’t be serious — not if they want to win primaries and have any future within the party. Crank economics, crank science, crank foreign policy are all necessary parts of a candidate’s resume." (New York Times)

To the extent the clown car is not so described, the United States is at risk in many spheres of public policy and the most vulnerable of our fellows will get hit first.

Scott Walker Retreats on Jobs Pledge in National Debate

Scott Walker's 2010 campaign promise to create 250,000 new private sector jobs in his first term was broken after Walker repeated the pledge, before scrubbing the jobs promise off his campaign website in 2013.

"It’s a commitment I made in 2010 and it’s a commitment I make today," Walker said at the 2012 Wisconsin GOP convention (Mal Contends) (Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

Last night, Walker was asked about his broken jobs promise and Walker said his promise was simply the result of a governor who "aimed high"—a qualification never used in his campaigns. (Gilbert, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) (Wisconsin State Journal omits coverage of jobs question in debate coverage).

No promise, no commitment, no accountability, Walker apparently wants America to believe any promise he makes is subject to revision in light of Walker's unmentioned future assurances that he aimed high.

Would a mortgage company accept this explanation for a broken commitment?

How about a judge who received assurances from a convicted defendant for a deferred sentence?
- Well, judge we reached that agreement because I aimed high.

Perhaps American jurists will revise Contract Law in which a new element of a binding agreement is an undisclosed intention to aim high.

The national audience introduced to Walker last night could not see the following truisms in the constrained debate format, but with Scott Walker two rules apply:

• Nothing Walker promises should be believed
• Most of what Walker will do in office will not be discussed in public

From a Time Magazine transcript of the Fox News debate last night in Cleveland:

CHRIS WALLACE: Governor Walker.

(APPLAUSE) Governor Walker, when you ran for governor of Wisconsin back in 2010, you promised that you would create 250,000 jobs in your first term, first four years. In fact, Wisconsin added barely half that and ranked 35th in the country in job growth. Now you’re running for president, and you’re promising an economic plan in which everyone will earn a piece of the American dream.

Given your record in Wisconsin, why should voters believe you?

SCOTT WALKER: Well, the voters in Wisconsin elected me last year for the third time because they wanted someone who aimed high, not aimed low.

Before I came in, the unemployment rate was over eight percent. It’s now down to 4.6 percent. We’ve more than made up for the jobs that were lost during the recession. And the rate in which people are working is almost five points higher than it is nationally.

You know, people like Hillary Clinton think you grow the economy by growing Washington. One report last year showed that six of the top 10 wealthiest counties in America were in or around Washington, D.C.. I think most of us in America understand that people, not the government creates jobs. And one of the best things we can do is get the government out of the way, repeal Obamacare, put in — reign in all the out of control regulations, put in place and all of the above energy policy, give people the education, the skills that the need to succeed, and lower the tax rate and reform the tax code. That’s what I’ll do as president, just like I did in Wisconsin.

Scott Walker Is Desperate on Jobs

Scott Walker is in trouble, and it showed this weekend at the debate, fumbling the central issue of the race: Jobs.

"I don't know how many of you watched the debate last night, but Governor Walker said in the debate that he didn't think Wisconsin had a jobs problem. Right?" Mary Burke said. "Well, I want to be a governor who acknowledges the challenges that we have and is going to focus on the ideas that are going to move us ahead and will make sure that Wisconsin has a vibrant, growing, thriving economy so that when you graduate from college, there are going to be job opportunities for you to be able to stay in this state." (Bice, Glauber and Barrett, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)

The extraordinary lengths to which Scott Walker, Wisconsin's corrupt attorney general J.B. Van Hollen and Republican Party have gone to exclude registered Wisconsin voters from voting reveal how desperate Walker is.

To the extent Environment, Education, Health Care, Women's Rights are an issue, Walker loses.

Jobs, and Scott Walker loses.

Walker and the Repulsives are cornered.

Walker also refused to say whether his own administration is correct in stating $7.25 is a living wage.

If Walker were comfortable, his campaign would be non-stop positive impressions, not even acknowledging he had an opponent.

But Wisconsin leads the nation in negative TV spots in campaigns for governor in the nation. (Gilbert, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)

Watch for desperate moves from Walker surrogates, the kitchen sink, anything.

Jonathan Alter reported and wrote in his seminal book, The Center Holds, Obama and His Enemies(Simon and Schuster, 2013), the Obama campaign utilizing its high-tech veritable wizards compiled voter support scores on the 180 million American voters (p. 107), and successfully demolished Mitt Willard Romney.

Burke has the same capacity and watching the debate closely, a quiet confidence from Mary Burke is taking hold, and a desperation from Scott Walker is becoming equally apparent.

Scott Walker Refuses to Commit to Full Term; Backs off on Jobs Pledge

Scott Walker makes no jobs promises to the Wisconsin people anymore, refuses to pledge to commit to another full term, and has held ZERO Question and Answer sessions with Wisconsin voters.

It takes contempt, utter disrespect, Scott Walker has for Wisconsin voters to refuse to answer a simple question about any of these matters.

Disrespect is all Scott Walker has, besides a lot of money from special interests.

Walker was asked if he would serve a full term last April; Walker refused to answer with a yes or no, saying he was so focused on serving another term that he couldn't commit to serving a full term. (Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) That's WalkerSpeak.

Writers are asking Walker to commit to a full term. So should Mary Burke.

Voters should demand that Walker respond to his central and repeated 2010 campaign promise that Wisconsin would add 250,000 private sector jobs during his first term as a floor.

Walker will break that campaign promise, period.

"I want my Cabinet secretaries to have branded across their heads, '250,000 jobs,' I want them to know their job is on the line because my job is on the line to create 250,000 jobs in the private sector," said Walker said at a December 2010 meeting of the Dairy Business Association [DBA]. (Bauer, AP)

It's appropriate Scott Walker made his broken promise at the DBA, a larger collection of bull-shitters than you will ever find in Wisconsin, excepting the Walker's Office of the Koch Brothers.

Scott Walker Takes Credit for Manufacturer's Job Expansion Occuring Under Jim Doyle

Scott Walker breaks jobs promise

Update: See also One Wisconsin Now: "The latest television ad from the floundering campaign of Gov. Scott Walker purports to feature 'real people' who allegedly got their jobs via the trickle-down economic policies of the Walker administration. The ad provides no identifying information about these individuals, and the Walker campaign has refused to provide additional information in response to media inquiries. According to One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Scot Ross, Walker’s broken promise on jobs and his campaign’s track record of using paid actors and outsourced clip art in ads makes questions of about the veracity of the latest ad well founded."
---
Jud Lounsbury at Uppity Wisconsin has the latest Scott Walker lie, this one in a new Walker TV spot claiming credit for jobs created by a Milwaukee suburban manufacturer during the administration of Gov. Jim Doyle.

Don't look for a retraction from Scott Walker, a noted pathological liar, still refusing to face the people of Wisconsin in even one town hall-style, question-and-answer session to explain why Walker's failure to deliver on his campaign pledge to create 250,000 new jobs is the fault of ... someone else.

In the Spring, Walker took a new tract and said he was just aiming high, (Spicuzza, Wisconsin State Journal) not promising, despite the fact that the 250,000s jobs promise was unequivocal and repeated incessantly during the 2010 campaign.

Walker will be likely to hit only half of 250,000 jobs by November.

Even the Republican-spinning Politifact column of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (James B. Nelson) admits Walker has a "ways to go," calling the promise "stalled" today.

This is RepublicanSpeak for Walker Jobs Promise Broken.

Walker's new campaign site on "Scott Walker on Jobs" now omits mention of the 250,000 new jobs campaign promise.

On August 7, Stu Rothenberg of Roll Call changed the rating of the 2014 Wisconsin governor's race from Leans Republican to Pure Tossup.

One can see why the Republican Party's corrupt attorney general, J.B. Van Hollen, and Walker are working feverously to get permission from the federal Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit to reinstate the GOP's voter obstruction law, the photo voter ID law, still enjoined from being enforced after being found violative of the United States Constitution and the Voting Right Act by U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman in April 2014.

Appellate briefs for Van Hollen and Walker's motion are due next Tuesday, August 19.

Jobs Reports Is Bad News for Scott Walker and Wisconsin

Updated—Mike Ivey has a piece out the new jobs report for Wisconsin, and the report paints a dreary picture, as Wisconsin under Walker has maintained its position in last place in jobs growth or virtually tied for last place among Wisconsin's five border states.

Wisconsin lags behind the nation as a whole in job growth as well, with the nation adding 6,484,000 jobs (5.82%) since 2011, and Wisconsin adding 88,000 jobs (3.37%).

The jobs numbers come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW).

The QCEW numbers are the standard non-partisan numbers economists use in gauging unemployment.
Scott Walker who is expected to run for reelection made an unequivocal and repeated promise that he would bring 250,000 new jobs to Wisconsin during his first term.

Walker's 88,000 jobs are 65 percent short of his promise, 162,000 jobs short; and Walker has 13 months to go.

Walker would need our citizens to get 12,461 new jobs a month to make good on his promise.

Walker's line is that he has exceeded the economic performance on the 2007-09 recession and the two years after the worst national recession since the Great Depression. 

Walker will need all of his big-money cats to help him explain why dead-last in the region is good, exceeding the great recession is commendable; and bringing up the rear nationally makes his case for reelection and president.

Scott Walker Is a Zombie GOP Candidate

Kill a zombie candidate like Walker by asking a policy question that
enters his skull, and into the brain tissue with the result: Road Pizza

You would not know it by the fawning national profiles of Scott Walker, but a different creature of politics is growing from inside Wisconsin. 

Walker is everywhere, even his young adulthood.

Time Magazine writes of Scott Walker, "At first he tried to be a part time student, but quickly the births of his children took that option off the table."

Ahh, no.

Mike Browne of One Wisconsin Now knocked this down fast: Walker was married three years after he left Marquette in February 1993; and didn't have his first child until 1994, four years after he left Marquette.

So Walker did not leave part time student academia quickly to have a family; he was seeking public office.

From Walker's personal instructions from God of which he often tells us: Walker ran against "now U.S. Representative Gwen Moore in a State Assembly race in fall 1990," shortly there-after his omniscient political adviser convinced Walker to move to Wauwatosa, Wisconsin for a successful run in the open June 1993 special election.

Since 1993 Scott Walker has been public worker extraordinaire.

But as governor he nuked the earned salary, pensions and healthcare benefits of unionized Wisconsin public servants, while amassing a small fortune as Wisconsin state rep, Milwaukee County Exec, and Governor, and raking in $10s of millions in his campaign funds that he keeps quiet with his big-money friends who also bankrolled Walker's legal defense fund, and presumably are the source of the dark money entering Wisconsin politics after Citizens United.

Lies and money will get you far in politics, but Scott Walker is too much of a lightweight to run for president, even for nomination of the White neo-conferarate party, aka the Republican Party.

Walker will just pocket the money, leave the Wisconsin economy a mess and take a six-figure salary in rightwing world.

Wash Post: Scott Walker Ripped off Wisconsin on High-Speed Rail

Scott Walker - Jobs Destroyer

Wisconsin Jobs—California, here we come.

Juliet Eilperin in this morning's Sunday Washington Post has an explosive piece on how Scott Walker's rejection of $823 million in federal money in 2011 for a high-speed rail project, a jobs-intensive high speed rail project, is blowing up in Wisconsin's face.

And the costs are mounting.

Reads Eilperin piece: "Wisconsin’s Republican governor, Scott Walker, rejected $823 million in funding that the federal government was offering, and the Transportation Department transferred the funds to California."

Nice job, Scott Walker. Did you know that one aspect of being governor is not destroying jobs?

Apparently not; because among Wisconsin border states, Wisconsin is still bringing up the rear.

Does Scott Walker really want to run for president?

Scott Walker's Economic Development Corp Takes Hit in National Report

Creating Scandals Instead of Jobs: The Failures of
Privatized State Economic Development Agencies

Mike Ivey in the Capital Times:

A new national report is harshly critical of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. ... WEDC was created by Gov. Scott Walker to replace the economic development duties of the former Department of Commerce, including offering loans, grants and tax credits to private business. But the agency has been fraught with problems, the report charges, including misuse of taxpayer funds, exaggerated jobs claims, conflicts of interest, excessive executive pay and lack of basic oversight.

This Is What Uncertainty Looks Like

The shot below shows why Scott Walker is running away from his 250,000 jobs campaign promise.

Scott Walker's jobs failure - Via Seattle to Scott Walker: Not in OUR state!

BusinessJournal: Scott Walker is 40th out 45 Governors Taking Office Before 2013

Came by this by way of the Democurmudgeon blog.

Businessjournal gives Scott Walker a jobs-creating rating that is typical; Walker brings up the bottom.

The [Businessjournal] On Numbers analysis ranked 45 current governors, excluding five who only took office this year, "based on a comparison of the annual growth rate for his or her state and the corresponding figure for the other 49 states." Wisconsin now, Wisconsin wow. Maybe we need to take a bigger ax to public schools and the Univerisity of Wisconsin System? The Walker RX is working so well.

Hecka a job, Scotty, And thank you.

Are you consciously aiming for number 50 out of the 50 states now; maybe to thin out the herd of citizens you don't like?

Do you think you should spend a little less time out-of-state raising money and kow-towing with extremists, and get back to Wisconsin, CREATING JOBS?

Wisconsin jobs blues

Wisconsin still lags behind nation and neighbors in job growth

Scott Walker looks for a safe place to hide

Scott Walker will fittingly sign the state budget at the private establishment of a contributor who gave Walker money.

No members of the public need attend.

Wisconsin is still badly under-performing the nation and its border states in private sector jobs growth.

As Rep. Peter Barca said:

New federal figures released today show Wisconsin is 38th in the nation in overall job creation since Gov. Walker took office, including dead last in the Midwest. These figures cover the two-year period from December 2010 to December 2012 and come from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW).

Don't look for admission, and certainly not an apology from Scott Walker.

Facts, data and jobs for Wisconsin families are not his concern.

And Walker's campaign promise of 250,000 jobs, Walker is running away from that pledge faster than a rabbit from a hawk.

He just made that promise to get elected.

Walker's concern is pleasing his campaign contributors.

As Uppity Wisconsin notes: "Both the state Assembly and state Senate passed the budget last week. Gov. Walker has stated he will sign the budget this Sunday, June 30, at the establishment of a generous campaign donor."