UPDATED Friday news dump- the expense of Walker's vanity

Ah yes, the old Friday afternoon news dump, as Gov Walker tries to make people forget about the arrogance and waste that was a big part of his joke of a presidential run.

A pair of international trade missions headed by Gov. Scott Walker this year cost taxpayers nearly $150,000, and Walker's political groups are reimbursing the state $125,000 for separate costs for his security team's travel while he pursued the presidency.

Those details were included in documents released Friday that give the best accounting yet of travel expenses for the GOP governor as he jetted around the country in preparation for his now-abandoned White House bid.

The state is being reimbursed by Walker's political operations for the costs of the security team's hotel, airfare, meals and use of state vehicles while Walker was campaigning. But taxpayers are bearing the cost of the trade missions to Canada and western Europe....

The salary costs do not appear to include back pay for overtime that the U.S. Department of Labor recently determined must be paid to the troopers who work long hours guarding public officials. That could tack on as much as $1 million to the total.

You may remember that this figure is the result of 2 1/2 years of the Walker Administration stiffing their security detail on overtime. In addition, I think these are merely the costs for Walker, his staff and assorted others that may have come along on these trips. From what I can tell in the J-S story, it looks like security costs for those trips are determined separately.

Maybe we'll get some more clues on Thursday just how much taxpayers had to shell out on our Governor's little ego trip when the state's Annual Fiscal Report comes out. Granted, this would only cover the expenses through June 30, which was before Walker formally entered (and quickly exited) the 2016 race. And honestly, the pre-announcement expenses might look even worse, because it shows how much this guy was out to lunch even before he was an official candidate...and that he kept taking his full 6-figure salary while constantly embarrassing the state and putting together a poser budget that harmed almost every group in Wisconsin that wasn't a well-connected member of Walker's inner circle.

There's more where this story came from, and we shouldn't let this drop down the memory hole, even though Gov Dropout has ended his delusions of being president and is pretending to be governor again. What Scott Walker did in the first 9 months of this year to screw up and denigrate this state is something that should be hung all over him, his cronies (including the Federalist Society/Bradley (Foundation) hack he just put on the State Supreme Court), and the GOP legislators who allowed much of this dereliction of duty to go through without pushback.