A tale of two pictures in Fitzwalkerstan

Sometimes pictures really do tell a lot, and today was absolutely one of those days.

In suburban Milwaukee, here is the photo-op of Gov Scott Walker signing the (right-to) work-for-less bill.



Pretty monolithic crowd, isn't it? Bain Capital era Mitt Romney thinks that group looks too corporate, white and male.

The signing took place at Badger Meter, a company that claims work-for-less is necessary to keep jobs in Wisconsin, but one who has taken home $130 million in profits over the last 12 months, and have previously outsourced numerous jobs to Mexico. Capper at Cognitive Dissidence has plenty more on just what a lowlife Badger Meter CEO Rich Meeusen is, and how much of a taker his company has become- which makes it fitting that Walker and a number of other arrogant white men showed up there today to celebrate the screwing over of working people.

Now, let's compare with the picture that took place today is Madison, where an estimated 1,500 students and others took to the streets to complain about the killing of unarmed 19-year-old Tony Robinson at a home on Williamson Street on Friday night.



Slightly different crowd isn't it? And probably not as connected to the decision-makers at the Capitol as the guys in suits in the Walker picture are. As a sidelight, I sure wonder how many of those white guys in suits were allegedly darting in and out of traffic in Madison and doing other idiocies on Friday nights when they were 19? Why didn't they get the death penalty Tony Robinson got?

And why does our media gear 9 hours of AM talk a day and newspaper articles toward the white guys in suits and other fools in the "Stand with Walker" crowd? This one-sided megaphone goes a long way toward explaining the anger and outrage that led to that diverse group to take to the streets in Madison today- because lots of people are being left out and feel they are not receiving a fair shake by this state and this country in 2015, and that their voices are getting ignored.

Maybe those were the type of difficult gotcha questions our "Unintimidated" governor was trying to avoid today, as he refused to take questions at the work-for-less event from the media (this has become a habit of "Mr. Unintimidated"). Because the "divide and conquer" mentality of the white guys in suits at Badger Meter and the media that panders to their interests go a long way toward explaining the mess that we see on the other end of the racial and socioeconomic scale in this state. And why it'll take a long time to fix the damage that has been inflicted in this state over the last 4+ years, because the idea of governance and respecting all constituents is completely out the window in the Age of Fitzwalkerstan.