I owe my donors HUGE favors!” – Scott Walker!
As Dan Bice of the Journal Sentinal online points out:
For Governor-elect Scott Walker, there are more than 128,000 reasons to favor using tax dollars on roads instead of rail.
Scores of road builders opened their wallets for the Republican candidate in the recent election.
More than 150 employees of highway construction firms wrote checks to Walker, compared with only about two dozen for his opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.
More important, road builders spent nine times more money helping Walker than they did Barrett.
At the Cap Times, Dave Zweifel also writes about the lovefest between Walker and the Highway builders.
Back in March I wrote a column about Walker flying off to Florida (notice he didn’t take the train) to attend the annual convention of the Wisconsin road builders association. (The road builders have now changed their name to the Transportation Builders Association, an obvious effort to mask where their real interests lie.) Walker was just beginning his race for the governorship and he wanted to assure the highway guys that he was on their side and, at the same time, lobby them for some money.
Turns out, his trip was a great success.
According to records maintained by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, Walker got $84,793 from road builders between January of 2009 and August of 2010. There’s surely a lot more that came his way between August and the election, which is still to be reported.
Plus, the Wisconsin Transportation Builders Association in the same month that Walker flew off to their Florida convention gave the national Republican Governors Association $25,000 to help sponsor TV ads that supported Walker for governor.
The $84,793 to Walker, incidentally, was nearly half of the $188,423 that the highway lobby contributed to all Wisconsin candidates this past election cycle.
Who cares if it cost the WI taxpayer $100 million and hundreds of jobs?
Scott Walker has favors to repay!
PP…I’ve been trying to figure out…what exactly is your *main* beef with Walker? You’re from Dane County (right?) so what is it about Walker you dislike so much? Is it because he’s Republican…or is there more?
In the case of Ron Johnson and Scott Walker? I think Ron Johnson is less of a damage to Wisconsin in itself, perhaps despite him being pretty much incapable of speaking and having little to no qualifications, if he proves himself to be a good senator by some stroke of luck or do some good? I will give credit where credit is due. If he doesn’t? Out he goes. Simple as that.
Scott Walker however is going to damage Wisconsin itself if he does what his record shows, as he did terribly to Milwaukee County. There is a ton of history of Scott Walker in general with Milwaukee County, to be fair though Milwaukee for the most part has had a lackluster history in general in leadership. While Milwaukee in it’s own ways, has tried to make strides forward with Tom Barrett, Scott Walker sincerely did not help the rest of the County except maybe the richer portions of it – which easily may explain his lack of popularity there as County Executive. Many things that Scott Walker overlooked in Milwaukee County were flat out terrible. Many of his programs have either had their ownership transferred from the County to the City of Milwaukee or they have not grown to their full potential at all. A good example is the Private Industry Council of Milwaukee, which was taken away from Milwaukee County and leadership was given to the City of Milwaukee due to his incompetence. Why is it the city of Milwaukee has to pick up the slack for the County? In a way, due to this giant problem I’m kind of waiting for Milwaukee to just annex the entire county itself into the city in a similarity to how Indianapolis did to it’s own county.
He has a history of mismanagement and a lack of communication, Ron Johnson is a fairly nice guy whom I’ve spoken to, a bit detached from the problems but it seems that he is enthusiastic to learn even if I don’t agree with him politically – I have respect for him as a fellow person in business although I’m not sure what to think of him as a senator. But Scott Walker is frankly … many things I don’t want to describe here.
I think he is supremely unqualified to be governor. I think that has been shown by his record in Milwaukee County. His whole career has been a failure from the time he got in trouble for his campaign tactics, to dropping out of college to releasing his 68 page “jobs plan” in 48 point font, to bankrupting milwaukee county(and many countless other things).
I see a very LONG 4 years for the state of WI with walker as gov. That has nothing to do with the fact that I live in Dane County.
Having self-respect, demanding competence and giving a cr*p about the future of the state of Wisconsin means I can never support someone like Scott Walker. It’s really that easy.
And PP, who says we have to be stuck with Scotty until 2014? Hmmmm….?
The thought of Scotty not serving his full term and Rebecca Kleefisch stepping in gives me shudders
I am naive.
With that out of the way, just what exactly do the road builders have to fear? Their gravy train ain’t going nowhere. There will be roads to build for generations to come. Rail ridership will nary put a dent in highway traffic. And even if it did, roads don’t get better with age. They will always need to be replaced. And they’re hugely expensive. Much more so than rail. Even if Walker’s worst fears came true, road expense will always dwarf the cost of rail.
But what do I know?