Scott Walker—Kill Anything Republicans Don't Control

Scott Walker turned civil service state positions into 37 new Walker political appointees just a month after declaring, "we're broke" in 2011 (Stein, Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

It was clear then, Walker was after power and nothing else.

Scott Walker's political set-up in 2011 was a fraud, claiming a deficit using budget numbers assuming every governmental agency gets a six-point increase. Never has happened and never will.

As then (now U.S. Rep.) State Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Madison) blew the whistle in 2011:

We found out [Feb. 13, 2011] after our briefing with the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB), the $3.6 billion deficit in the next budget that Governor Walker and the media has been repeating is a MANUFACTURED CRISIS. The number is based on $3.9 billion in new spending requests by agencies, a 6.2% increase. I don’t think there is a member in the legislature that would vote for that. In fact, I asked LFB Director Lang when was the last time we gave agencies exactly what they requested and was told he couldn’t think of one and he’s been here decades.

Independent agencies like the Fiscal Bureau work to keep politicians honest, ideally to inform.

Walker and Republicans had to misrepresent LFB budget numbers and make believe Walker's attempt to injure working families was a fiscal and not a political move, a technique Republicans employ today.

Occasionally Republicans get caught in their lies.

So, Walker and Republicans are targeting independent watchdog agencies, while blowing a budgetary deficit for the next governor to fix.

Nationally, House Republicans adopted a rule in January 2015 to invent budget numbers and imaginary revenue forecasts used by the Congressional Office Bureau, codifying Voodoo Economics (Weisman, New York Times).

Our friend, Charles P. Pierce, has the story at Esquire on Scott Walker's latest exercise in corruption.

Writes Pierce on Walker's attempt to eliminate the Legislative Audit Bureau and Government Accountability Board:

In other words, the problem with independent watchdogs is that they are independent. Far better to put the oversight function under the control of the hacks you've installed in the state agencies. This is especially egregious in this case because Scott Walker never has held a political office that he has not so deformed by his political ambitions that people actually went to jail over it. This is a singularly corrupt man, even by the standards of the our new era of decriminalized influence peddling. He never has run a campaign in his life that wasn't shot through with penny-ante grifting. There is no reason to believe this one is any different. It is an extended exercise in consumer fraud.

Fraud and lies define Scott Walker.