While the voter ID fiasco in Wisconsin is reason enough to want to blow this corrupt, voter-suppressing administration out the door, there's a bigger story related to this. And that story involves the hackery and political favortism of Walker appointees at the highest levels of Wisconsin government.
Take the two DOT officials at the head of the voter ID story. The writer of the memo asking DMV employees not to mention free IDs to customers is Steve Krieser, a "recently-promoted" executive assistant. Krieser is a former GOP operative and Capitol staffer that clearly used those connections to land his current gig. Then, when a grunt worker sent an email saying that people could get free IDs and that the word should go out to others, did the DMV reward him for providing quality customer service and saving taxpayers some money? Hell no, they fired him, and the person who concocted a cover story about "documented rule violations" is another high-ranking DOT guy named John Murray.
And who is John Murray? Another former Capitol staffer who got a second job when he was elected this year as the Mayor of Sun Prairie. A Wisconsin State Journal article noted last month that Murray has worked with right-wing City Council allies to have both his City Administrator and No.2 person leave in the last 2 weeks in one of Wisconsin's fastest-growing cities. Also in the article is a point about how an unnamend source says "The people running the city now absolutely hate government and want it completely open for business." And by open for business, we know that means "unregulated growth and tax giveaways to companies."
So here are two former GOP staffers getting appointed by a GOP governor and are in charge of the implementation of a major change in state policy. Now, do you believe they will work for the taxpayers that pay their salary, or the elected officials they owe their careers to? EXACTLY. And this is what was one of the most dangerous parts of the "budget repair" bill was- turning numerous civil service positions into appointed positions. Allowing a key spot in state government to be left up to the whims of elected officials and the intersts who pay for their elections means any disloyal or overly honest employee can be replaced by a yes man/woman who will be working for the Fitzwalkerstanis, and not the people that they're supposed to serve (and get paid by).
But hiring unqualified/ corrupt hacks is the WisGOP way. Walker couldn't have pulled a lot of his union-busting ploys if the Legislature had gone along with $100 million in concessions from state workers in December. One of the guys who held that up, outgoing Sen. Jeff Plale, who was rewarded for his "no" vote by first getting a high-level DOA job and then being promoted to Railroad Commissioner last month.
And Plale's hardly the only one. Remember Randy Hopper mistress Valerie Cass using Hopper's pull to land her prime gig? How about Spalding Smails...ERRR.....Brian Deschane? Remember him, the 2-time DUI college dropout who just so happened to be the son of the head of the Road Builders and parlayed that connection into an $80K job? There's also Rich in Retail, the slimy POS who secretly recorded a union official outside of a Milwaukee bar and now has a good gig for the state? Apparently his deeds were duly noted by the Walker boys.
And we're not even going into the recently-departed Cindy Archer and Tom Nardelli, who went along with Walker from Milwaukee to Madison, only to take leave of their 6-figure jobs within a few months due to the always- sketchy "personal reasons".
The point is that the voter ID absurdity isn't just a voter suppression story, it's a "GOP hackery" story. Which really isn't surprising, because if you don't believe that government does things right, isn't it in your interest to put people in charge that will cheat and screw it up to "prove" your point? This is what happens when you elect Republicans to high levels of office in the 2010s- kissing the right ass and helping people politically matters much more to people than providing results and quality serivce to the taxpayers.
And now you know what I meant 6 months ago when I said that public sector unions are needed now more than ever. There needs to be that independent line of defense from elected and appointed hacks that serve Wisconsinites first, and politics second. In Walker World, that isn't happening, and that's as big a reason as any to recall these bums.
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