Scott Walker

While Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and his Republican allies in the state legislature talk a tough game when it comes to fiscal responsibility and sound governance, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel today reports on a brewing controversy regarding the governor’s hiring practices. According to reporter Daniel Bice, Walker’s team helped a Republican political operative get a job in a state agency with a higher pay than her predecessor. Not only was the staffer a paid GOP activist, but she is also the mistress of Republican State Senator Randy Hopper.

Progressives are currently seeking to recall Hopper, an ardent supporter of Walker’s union-busting legislation. But Hopper may not even reside in the district anymore, as his estranged wife claims that he now lives with his mistress in Madison.

Bice reports:

Even though the state is supposedly broke, top officials in Gov. Scott Walker's team were able to scrape together enough money to give a state job to the woman identified as Sen. Randy Hopper's girlfriend.

Anything for a political ally.

Valerie Cass, a former Republican legislative staffer, was hired Feb. 7 as a communications specialist with the state Department of Regulation and Licensing. She is being paid $20.35 per hour. The job is considered a temporary post.

Cass previously had worked in the state Senate and for the GOP campaign consulting firm Persuasion Partners in Madison. She also was paid for campaign work for the state Republican Party and U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner before that.

…

Cullen Werwie, spokesman for the governor, confirmed that it was Keith Gilkes, Walker's chief of staff. She was then interviewed by the Department of Regulations and Licensing's executive assistant and deputy and hired by Secretary Dave Ross, a Walker cabinet member.

…

Hopper has maintained that he had nothing to do with Cass' recent appointment to the state job.

Interestingly, Cass' name does not appear on a lengthy list of job applicants to Walker's transition team.

Earlier today, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed into law a bill that strips public workers of their rights to collectively bargain after the Republican-controlled legislature rushed through the legislation. While Walker maintains that the bill is necessary to solve the budget crisis, it is becoming increasingly clear that the move was purely a power grab by the GOP and its pro-corporate allies.

As previously reported, Walker’s bill makes special exemptions for the two labor unions which endorsed his campaign for governor. The workers who were members of unions that supported his opponent, on the other hand, were the targets of the legislation. Moreover, despite claiming that they are simply trying to be fiscally responsible, Walker and his GOP allies backed massive corporate giveaways that expanded the deficit.

But now, Republican leaders in the state legislature are practically admitting that the bill was about partisan politics.

Republican State Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald told Fox News that the bill was passed in order to dramatically weaken the clout of unions who could support President Obama’s reelection campaign in the swing state: “If we win this battle, and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you’re going to find is President Obama is going to have a much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin.”

Randy Hopper, a Republican State Senator who could be recalled by voters this year, also said in an interview with Fox News, “I think there’s absolutely no question that this is an issue for 2012.”

As Republicans admit that the union-busting bill is all about punishing progressive groups and rewarding corporate backers, it is clear that the GOP’s rhetoric on “fiscal conservatism” should not be taken seriously.

In the Huffington Post today, People For the American Way's President Michael Keegan connects the extreme pro-corporate policies being pushed by federal and state GOP officials with the new liberty that corporations have to buy influence in elections:

One year after Citizens United v. FEC, when the Supreme Court opened American elections to a corporate spending free-for-all, elected officials in Washington and in statehouses around the country are pushing a stunning set of financial policies that, if passed, will provide a windfall for giant corporations at the expense of already-hurting individual taxpayers. Largely proposed under the guise of financial responsibility, these proposals threaten job creation and essential government services while ensuring the coffers of corporations remain untouched.

American taxpayers are beginning to fight back against some of the most egregious proposals, such as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's attempt to bust public employee unions and the House GOP's slashing of funding for women's health care. But as long as corporations can buy unlimited political influence, these battles will only escalate and they will continue to be just as lopsided.

In the coming weeks, we will see the interests of corporate funders and the interests of individual taxpayers go head-to-head as Congress and the president attempt to hammer out a continuing spending resolution that will keep the government running for the rest of the year. The Republican House wants to block funds to reproductive health services, gut the Affordable Care Act, and even prevent the Environmental Protection Bureau from regulating pollution -- all while costing an estimated 700,000 American jobs. The winners in the House's proposal? Large corporations and the wealthy, who under the proposal astoundingly would not even be asked to give up a single tax loophole.

Read the whole thing here.

On The Morning Joe, Richard Haass offered his proposal to resolve the conflicts in states like Wisconsin and Ohio, where Republican governors are attempting to dismantle organized labor by stripping workers’ rights to bargain collectively for the purported reason of balancing the budget. Haass, the president of the Council of Foreign Relations, agreed that collective bargaining is a right of workers that shouldn’t be rescinded, and went on to say that elected officials should “make a deal” with unions who represent public employees: “You can’t expect people to collectively bargain fairly with the people they are contributing to, why not make a deal with the public-sector unions,” said Haas, “going forward you can collectively bargain, but in exchange, you can’t contribute to the people you’re bargaining with. Essentially have a no political contribution to state officials, and that’s the deal.” According to Haass, this would prevent unions from “tilt[ing] the political playing field.”

If Haass believes that the unions which represent nurses, teachers, and police officers should be barred from influencing elections, will Haass and his likeminded commentators formulate a similar proposal for corporations?

As a result of Citizens United, corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money from their general treasuries to fund political groups to bolster or attack candidates for office. And in states like Wisconsin, corporations can make direct contributions to the candidates, just as Koch Industries gave the maximum $43,000 to Scott Walker’s campaign.

Corporations helped finance the Republican campaign apparatus, and now their influence in lawmaking is mushrooming. “Citizens United alone did not win the 2010 elections for Republicans,” writes People For president Michael Keegan, “But the money it let loose helped ensure that those swept to power by widespread voter dissatisfaction would be eager to pander to the interests of corporations and the wealthy, and to demonize those who oppose them,” like labor unions.

Haass may claim that it’s unfair for labor unions to negotiate with officials they backed in the election, but the far more significant and serious question is: should corporations be allowed to finance the campaigns of the politicians who write their taxes, implement their regulations, and in many cases subsidize their coffers?

Just today, the “free-market” Republicans voted unanimously to maintain the tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies that go to big oil companies.

As the Republican majority in the House of Representatives time and again confirms, corporate-backed politicians almost always side with corporate interests in government.

Madison, Wisconsin’s police chief isn’t so happy about Gov. Scott Walker’s joking around with a caller who he thought was billionaire Republican donor David Koch. In his conversation with a reporter pretending to be Koch, Walker said that he had “thought about” planting troublemakers in the crowds outside the state’s capital to discredit pro-union protesters. Police Chief Noble Wray told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

“I would like to hear more of an explanation from Governor Walker as to what exactly was being considered, and to what degree it was discussed by his cabinet members. I find it very unsettling and troubling that anyone would consider creating safety risks for our citizens and law enforcement officers,” the chief said.

“Our department works hard dialoging with those who are exercising their First Amendment right, those from both sides of the issue, to make sure we are doing everything we can to ensure they can demonstrate safely. I am concerned that anyone would try to undermine these relationships. I have a responsibility to the community, and to the men and women of this department - who are working long hours protecting and serving this community – to find out more about what was being considered by state leaders.”

The police chief’s remarks come the day after a deputy attorney general in Indiana was fired for encouraging the use of violent force on the Wisconsin protesters.

h/t Think Progress
 

In both Wisconsin and Ohio, Republican governors are attempting to rush through legislation that would devastate workers’ rights that would in reality do little to help close their states’ budget shortfalls. Behind their proposals to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights is actually a political power play to diminish the voice of organized labor in American politics, a move sponsored by corporate interest groups.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s desire to eliminate collective bargaining has more to do with political baiting than sound fiscal policy.

For example, Walker specifically exempts the four public employee unions that endorsed his gubernatorial bid in his plan to eliminate collective bargaining. Labor law professor Paul Secunda of Marquette University called it “the worst type of favoritism there could be.” And despite his claim to be a fiscal hawk, the Governor pushed through costly corporate giveaways that jeopardized the state’s balanced budget and rejected a Republican’s compromise bill that would permit only a temporary curb on collective bargaining while preserve unions’ financial concessions.

History shows that states that stripped their public employees’ collective bargaining rights did nothing to solve their fiscal problems. Policy Matters Ohio notes that while Indiana, Kentucky, and Missouri recently eliminated public workers’ bargaining rights, “the budget shortfalls of these states in 2010 ranged from 10.6 percent of general revenue fund (Indiana) to 14.5 percent (Kentucky) to 22.7 percent (Missouri), mirroring the fiscal crisis of states across the nation.”

Rather than solve the budget problems, doing away with a key right of workers only advances the agenda of the corporate interests funding Republican campaigns.

Jonathan Salant of Bloomberg looked into the ties between virulently anti-labor corporations like Koch Industries and Wal-Mart and the radical GOP proposals in Wisconsin and Ohio:

Koch, a closely held energy and chemical company based in Wichita, Kansas, is controlled by the billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch. Along with other corporations, Koch Industries has often opposed organized labor on regulation and free trade, Holman said. Now they see a chance to cripple unions in the name of balancing budgets, he said.

The $1.2 million in Koch support for Republican governors includes $1.1 million given to the Republican Governors Association, which spent more than $3.4 million in support of Walker, according to Common Cause, a Washington-based advocacy group that opposes the governor’s proposal.

In addition, Koch gave $43,000 directly to Walker, his single largest corporate source; $11,000 to the Wisconsin Republican party; $22,000 to Kasich; and $34,000 to the Ohio Republicans.

Koch also supported the 2008 campaign of Indiana’s Daniels, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. The Republican Governors Association, which received $25,000 from Koch, was the biggest source of campaign cash for Daniels, institute records show.

In addition, Americans for Prosperity spent $1.2 million in support of Republican candidates for Congress last year, Federal Election Commission records show. Koch Industries’ federal political action committee contributed $1.3 million to candidates for the 2010 elections, 90 percent of it to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the Bentonville, Arkansas, subject of a campaign by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, also contributed to the campaigns of Walker and Daniels, and donated more than $340,000 to the Republican Governors Association for the 2010 elections, according to the Internal Revenue Service and the National Institute on Money in State Politics.