One of Walker’s favorite families, The Deschane Family, is back in the news. In yesterdays complete fileting of Walker in Washington the brilliant hire of Brian Deschane was brought up. As Dan Bice reported:
During today’s testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee , U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) quizzed Walker about the hiring:
“Are you ready to apologize to the people of Wisconsin for hiring the 27-year-old son of one of your major campaign donors, who’s a lobbyist, and that individual had no college education, very little managerial experience and had two drunk-driving convictions and was hired for $81,000-a-year job when you obviously had better qualified applicants? Are you ready to apologize today to the people of Wisconsin? That doesn’t sound like good government to me.”
Walker responded by distancing himself from what happened:
“That person was five levels below me. When that hiring was brought to my attention, I had my staff go back and have that person taken out of that position, and I acknowledged the fact that there were more qualified people, and I asked someone else to be put into that.”
Who knew that his Chief of Staff and two cabinet secretaries are “five levels below him”?
Walker didn’t mention that his chief of staff, Keith Gilkes, recommended Deschane for his first job in state government or that two cabinet secretaries signed off on his hiring.
That brings up many questions that need to be answered:
* Was Scott Walker lying to Congress?
* Does he not care who runs his agencies?
* How many other unqualified kids of donors are working in our state Government?
* How many unqualified kids of donors are buried in Milwaukee county government?
* Who approved the raise?
* Does he really not know where Cali is?
* How many major donors and WMC members are pissed at him now that they won’t be able to stick their kids into a highly paid government job that they are not qualified for?
* Between the Deschane Hiring and taking the fake phone call, is Keith Gilkes the least qualified person in the Walker Administration?(my vote is still Mike Huebsch).
* Does anyone really believe that Scott Walker is not in way over his head?
“O shame, where is thy blush?” Shakespeare
Are you starting a “LEAST QUALIFIED PERSON IN THE WALKER ADMINISTRATION” contest? Will you be limiting the number of nominees? Dave Ross certainly has to be in the running. It is his department where the two most notorious examples of hiring have been parked. Admittedly, Dave has a long history of furniture reupholstery. If there were a Board of Reupholstery Licensing, I am not sure that he would have been membership material. Maybe the contest needs some categories: professional/amateur; those who don’t know/those who don’t know that they don’t know; greatest impact/least impact; elected/political appointment/imbed. Josh Marshall at TPM has made his Golden Dukes an annual award, but that would seem to suppress hopes for an early Walker recall.
GC i did a turkey of the year last thanksgiving.
http://bloggingblue.com/2010/11/24/turkey-of-the-year/
Seriously though if you did awards for badness in the walker administration, not only would the competition be very tough but also where would you stop? there is utter incompetence from the highest levels to the lowest.
This guy has raised nepotism and lying to a higher level.
Jeff,
I’m pretty sure that Gilkes is the least qualified person in the Administration.
With all due respect, Huebsch is incredibly qualified, he may however be blinded by loyalty to his corporate masters, but qualified he is.
Gilkes on the other hand lost the Senate Republicans the Majority, Lost the Assembly Republicans their near super majority and put them onto a path to the minority (which they have gained back, but still) and fell ass backwards into a wave year where his candidate probably should have had a landslide victory. I’m not sure I’d hire him to run Bill Gardner’s railroad.
Scott Walker’s got some serious problems floating out there, electorally. He’s going to have to deal with Abele for a year, and Tom Nelson for 4 years. If there’s one thing I know, it’s Tom Nelson will be in the news being a royal pain in Walker’s ass.
If an election were held today, would Walker beat any of the following people?
Tom Barrett? No.
Tom Nelson? No.
Ron Kind? No.
Russ Feingold? Doubtful.
Joe Parisi? I doubt it personally.
Chris Abele?
Peter Barca?
OK DJ i will agree with that. Maybe Huebsch is qualified, he just puts his party ahead of the law. Maybe he truly does know better but does it anyway.
The one thing where I would disagree with you is Feingold. I think now that people in WI have woken up, they have tremendous buyers remorse on ROJO and throw everyone on your list in an election and feingold wins hands down. Everyone knows we made a MAJOR mistake on that one.
I’m not sure if I agree with you on Feingold.
I don’t think he’s as strong as many of our ilk think. But perhaps that’s just me.
I also would like to posit a question. If Jim Doyle was running for election right now against Scott Walker, would Scott Walker beat him?
Also, I agree with you, in a Primary Feingold is a difficult man to beat statewide, in Dem Primaries.
And, if by some act of God, we recall Scott Walker (which I’m not very high on the probability of) he’s probably the defacto candidate to run a short term election.
I don’t know if he’s the best candidate 3 and a half years from now (The most reasonable defeat scott walker election)
Let’s draft Tony Schultz for Governor.
Steve,
I want tony schultz on the ballot somewhere in 2012…..maybe making duffy a one hit blunder
Then let’s draft Tony Schultz for Congress.
“The one thing where I would disagree with you is Feingold. I think now that people in WI have woken up, they have tremendous buyers remorse on ROJO and throw everyone on your list in an election and feingold wins hands down. Everyone knows we made a MAJOR mistake on that one.”
This hits it right on the head. And Feingold is the anti-Walker, who would never have hire the kiddie corps like Gilkes, Werwie and Deschane to be major parts of his administration.
In fact, I’d argue the WisDems have a huge winning hand if they push the “integrity and clean elections” angle, as Walker and WisGOP legislators have made Doyle look like Mr. Clean by comparison. It also hits at Kathy Nickolaus’ corruption and the WMC/ Koch angle. This is why the Deschane story has major legs, because it illustrates the underlying problem of a Walker Administration that has no interest in governing or caring about doing good work.