Scott Walker's Destroying University System Is Done with Malice Aforethought

"Add two more schools to the list of UW System institutions that are taking steps to cut staff because of Gov Walker's proposed budget cut of $300 million to the System. ... As a result of their foolish choices, Wisconsin is now losing jobs and reducing our competitiveness in developing human capital. So tell me again how that mentality is supposed to attract business and make Wisconsin a better place to live in?," asks Jake at the Economic TA Funhouse.

Scott Walker's project is to degrade every university town economy because the populations around higher educational institutions tend to be better educated, and vote against Republicans.

That spin-off development—the most striking in Madison (Epic as an example)—creates a population accepting of other human beings, intellectually curious and apt to look more closely at the society they inhabit, never a good thing for Republicans.

If Scott Walker could benefit politically from the promotion of the University of Wisconsin System, he would be singing the praises of higher education. Instead, political expediency has Walker stripping the UW of its ability to perform its most fundamental functions, let alone advancing the research that could be among the greatest medical break-throughs of our time.

News that professors (WKOW-TV) and students are declining positions since they don't want to live in a University of Wisconsin targeted by Scott Walker pass without comment from Walker because Walker is all in favor of non-GOP-voting demographics leaving the state (Conroy and Shannon, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and Isthmus).

Take stem cells, discovered by James Thomson and his team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The promise of stem cells has only been touched.

Scott Walker should have been traipsing around the world hyping the 10th Annual Wisconsin Stem Cell Symposium on Wednesday, April 22, hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center and the BioPharmaceutical Technology Center Institute (BTCI).

Instead, Walker is on a fundraising tour, telling anyone who will listen that he wants to be president and do to the United States what he has done to Wisconsin.

Stem cells could be helping stroke victims (Reuters).

"Current studies are researching how stem cells may be used to prevent or cure diseases and injuries such as Parkinson’s disease, type 1 diabetes, heart disease, spinal cord injury, Duchene’s muscular dystrophy, Alzheimer’s disease, strokes, burns, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, vision, and hearing loss. Stem cells could also be used someday to replace or repair tissue damaged by disease or injury."

Stem cell procedures currently provide life-saving treatments for patients with leukemia, lymphoma, other blood disorders, and some solid tumors" (American Medical Society).

The fact that Scott Walker is a religious fanatic does not help matters, but Walker's attack on education and science is sociopathic. Real people are waiting anxiously for the medical and other break-throughs promised by research currently conducted at the UW.

Scott Walker Still Targets Wisconsin Idea, Rural Wisconsin Resources

UW Extension is the Wisconsin Idea in Action

Updated - The University of Wisconsin Extension held a workshop in  December informing Bayfield and Ashland county residents of the health risks of the proposed swine CAFO. (Mullen, Ashland Daily Press (Wisconsin)) (Mal Contends)

The workshop was well-attended, northern Wisconsin communities used scientific findings to make local policy informed by the implications of the proposed swine factory, a 560-acre operation that could be sold to China (which owns one-fourth of the American pork industry and is anti-green on pollution).

Former Wisconsin attorney general J.B. Van Hollen subsequently rushed out a formal advisory opinion the Friday before Christmas Day stating agricultural operations could be sold to foreign countries, as long as the industrialized agricultural site is less than 620 acres. (Mal Contends)

Now, we learn that Scott Walker wants to eliminate myriad UW outreach and environmental programs in Walker's proposed budget, as reported in a column written by a UW graduate student studying the budget.

Such UW programs and institutions effectively blow the whistle on the destructive industrialized farming operations that have proliferated the last 10 years.

Walker's budget would terminate all manner of manifestations of the Wisconsin Idea, and environmental outreach institutions.

Targeted for defunding by Walker are the acclaimed College of Natural Resources at UW-Stevens Point (offering a water quality symposium March 19) and myriad UW Extension and environmental institutions.

Walker's Budget language is full of language such as "delete" appropriations, a radical policy move that Walker did not run on during the 2013-14 gubernatorial campaign.

"[Walker's] new budget dilutes or terminates the public interest and the public sector in Wisconsin so Republican corporate donors and Tea Party advocates who have funded his campaigns can appropriate public resources," notes The Political Environment.

Wisconsin Idea

The Wisconsin Idea remains under full-scale attack should Scott Walker's budget be passed through the GOP-gerrymandered legislature. See Walker Budget. (pp 472-473)

Walker mandates that his notoriously partisan Department of Administration would by statute "interrogate UW System Authority employees publicly or privately regarding the books, accounts, and matters examined. Provide that the UW System Authority would be required to cooperate with the DOA Secretary and comply with every request of the DOA Secretary related to his or her functions." (p.494)

After Scott Walker is humiliated in his faux run for president, Walker will move back to Wisconsin and target the state. One hopes most Wisconsinites will be awakened from their political slumber.