Duffy, WisGOPs could learn a lot from "Communist" Madison

You may have heard about the recent kerfuffle involving a certain former reality show member ripping on the town that I call home.

Rep. Sean Duffy, of Wausau, called Madison a "communist community" in a recent Fox News interview and blasted the ongoing presidential recount. Duffy says, "It's a sad state of affairs for these Democrats who don't believe in democracy and freedom and free elections."

The comments drew a rebuke from Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan who on Wednesday called for an apology.

Duffy responded on Twitter by saying "the PC crowd is humorless. For those offended by my 'communist' comment, I'll send a therapy dog to your 'safe place' of choice in Madison."

Classy stuff from Sean (from the Real World), and so typical of a dumb-assed right-winger to whine about others taking offense to his idiotic statements.

I won’t go into the other part of the BS that Duffy gave on Fox News, where he lied and said Dane County was the only place in Wisconsin counting ballots by hand for the presidential recount (nearly 2/3 of the state’s counties are doing that). Instead I’ll go into how absurd his dated “Communist” label is for us in Madtown. Because Sean, the facts show that we’re not the ones who “don’t get it” in 2016, it’s you that doesn’t have a clue about the way things work these days.

You see Sean, in the actual Real World, us Madison hippies are so Communistic that we have twice the job growth of any other county in Wisconsin… in the private sector. These numbers come from yesterday’s release of the “gold standard” Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

June 2015- June 2016 private sector job growth
Dane County +8,555
Kenosha Co. +3,932
Waukesha Co. +3,214
Winnebago Co. +2,288
Outagamie Co. +1,537
Wood County +1,146
Ozaukee Co. +1,132
Rock County +978
OTHER 64 COUNTIES +2,323

The only place on that list that’s even partly in Duffy’s district is Wood County, and even that comes with a major caveat, as Wood County lost nearly 5,500 jobs between June 2012 and June 2015, and is still 3,900 jobs behind what they had when Sean Duffy and Scott Walker assumed office in Wisconsin in 2011.

In fact, out of the 26 Wisconsin counties that are part of Duffy’s gerrymandered district, over half of them lost private sector jobs over the last year while Dane County was booming. This helps to explain the resentment that Sean from the (not very) Real World is trying to tap into- the fact that educated, more urbane places with a high quality of life have succeeded in recent years, while less-educated rural places are economically stagnant, or downright dying.

But instead of ripping on “Communistic” Madison, maybe Duffy and his fellow WisGOPs should take a few tips on how to grow jobs in the 21st Century from us. Not only have we kicked the rest of the state’s ass over the last 12 months, but the same pattern holds for the last 5 YEARS.

Private sector job growth, June 2011- June 2016
Dane County +30,797
Milwaukee Co. +16,708
Waukesha Co. +16,668
Kenosha Co. +10,016
Brown County +7,057
Rock County +6,492
Outagamie +5,953
Marathon Co. +5,246
OTHER 64 COUNTIES +63,469

Again, only one county in Duffy’s district appears- Marathon County, and it is well behind those Dem voters in Dane and Milwaukee Counties. The fact that the other 64 counties have an average net gain of less than 1,000 jobs over the last 5 years seems like a damning indictment of the 2010s economy, and especially the Walker/WisGOP policies that have been in place since then.

This is what’s funny about Duffy’s lame resentment play- his constituents in the 715 actually are getting screwed over by “those people in Madison.” But it ain’t liberal eju-kay-teds like me that are doing it. It’s the regressive GOP “representatives” that they keep returning to the Legislature. Can you tell me how allowing major giveaways to corporate Wisconsin (through the WEDC slush fund and tax cuts) while defunding rural public schools gives any benefit to northern Wisconsin? And how is allowing mega-farms and polluters to spoil the environment of that naturally beautiful area anything that is going to make Northern Wisconsin a more attractive place to live and raise a family in?

Dane County State Senator Jon Erpenbach summed up this hypocrisy of 715 Republicans quite well in a Facebook exchange where Erpenbach responded to concerns by former State Rep. Gary Sherman. Sherman used to represent the Superior area in the Assembly, and said that Dems need to do more outreach to Northern Wisconsin. Erpenbach replied

It’s not Dane County legislators voting against the Northwoods for expanding broadband or more funding for rural schools or roads or healthcare. Every single GOP elected official from the Northwoods votes against the Northwoods. They voted against those things. As for Sean Duffy, making $176,000 or Tom Tiffany taking away all local control. They justify their votes against the Northwoods by blaming Dane County so they can hold onto their jobs.

Along those same lines, can you tell me one thing Sean Duffy has done that has helped Northern Wisconsin over the nearly 6 years he has been in office? I don’t see a lot of votes to protect natural resources from the Kochs’ boy, do you? And this guy has been among the no-solutions clown show that has continually voted to repeal Obamacare, and likely will try to mess it up for good next year. This is despite the fact that the relatively low-income residents of the 7th district are the Wisconsinites most likely to get insurance through the Obamacare exchanges. Note this stat from 386/> this article from 3 weeks ago in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

In rural areas like Vilas County, which Trump carried by more than 26 percentage points, residents over the past year enrolled in the subsidized private exchanges at nearly 2 1/2 times the rate of Wisconsin as a whole. In Taylor County, where the president-elect won almost 3 to 1, consumers also are signing up for coverage in the Obamacare exchanges at rates much higher than average.

Both of those counties are in Sean Duffy’s district, yet Taylor County gave Duffy 74% of the vote last month, and Vilas County gave him 66%. So apparently they think the slide downward is a fun trip or something, or maybe the many people in the 7th District that are close to the economic edge need to take a closer look at what the fake lumberjack is doing when he flies away to DC, and realize that his real bosses aren’t the people he allegedly “represents” (his wife, Road Rules Rachel, may be even worse. When she’s not having another kid, she parlays her ethnicity into big bucks being a token for the Kochs’ “Libre Intiative”).

No one can explain why Sean Duffy is having such a problem dealing with Dane County’s reality better than longtime Madison Mayor Paul Soglin, who released a statement on the matter today. Here it is, in full.

I apologize to Congressman Duffy for referring to him as a moron. I should have said he is a liar and a charlatan.

Maybe Northern Wisconsin should ask why that guy dancing in the window is ripping on "Communist" Madison, instead of wanting to make their communities in the 715 as vibrant as what we have every day in Dane County. Just a thought.