Your pre-debate primer on Wisconsin jobs stats

You can bet tonight's final debate in the Wisconsin governor's race will feature plenty of talk about the state's jobs stats, given that Scott Walker made job growth his central theme in 2010. And with yesterday's release of the final Wisconsin jobs report before the Nov. 4 election, we now have the complete data set of how Wisconsin has fared for jobs in the Age of Fitzwalkerstan. And you can bet Walker will mention the numbers in this September report, because if you look at it in isolation, the numbers are pretty good.

Place of residence data: A preliminary seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 5.5 percent in September, down from a revised 5.7 percent in August and from 6.6 percent in September 2013. The 5.5percent rate is the lowest since October 2008 and remains lower than the national unemployment rate of 5.9 percent.

Place of work data: A month-over-month increase in private-sector jobs by a statistically significant, 8,400 from August to September on a preliminary basis (seasonally adjusted). The year-over-year increase in private-sector jobs was also statistically significant, at 37,400 since September 2013. The year-over-year gain in private-sector jobs included the addition of 10,000 manufacturing jobs.

Wow, sounds like things are booming in Wisconsin, right? Meh, not so much when you look inside the numbers. First of all, the job gains in September are more of a reflection of lower layoffs than actual job growth, as Summer jobs ended and students went back to school.

Private sector job change, September 2014, Wisconsin
Seasonally-adjusted +8,400
Non-seasonally adjusted -24,900

It should be no surprise that job growth would look "strong" with lower-than-normal layoffs, because it's coming at a time when the country's new unemployment claims are at a 14-year low. In addition, the seasonally-adjusted gains were heavily concentrated, and not spread around numerous sectors of the state's economy.

Top three private sector job growth sectors, Wisconsin, 9/2014
Educational/health services- +5,800
Leisure/ Hospitality +1,100
Professional/Business Services +1,000
EVERYTHING ELSE +500

The drop in the unemployment rate is nice, from a (upwardly revised) 5.7% to 5.5%, but is no different than the U.S. drop from 6.1% to 5.9%, which also is the lowest since 2008. And as mentioned before, Wisconsin having an unemployment rate below the U.S. rate isn't any real accomplishment for Walker, as much of the heavy lifting had been done in Jim Doyle's final year in office, and the advantage we had over the rest of the nation was more than 3 times larger when Walker took office than it is today.

Unemployment rate, Wisconsin vs. U.S.
Jan 2010 Wis 9.2%, U.S. 9.7% (Wis rate -0.5%)
Jan 2011 Wis 7.7%, U.S. 9.1%(Wis rate -1.4%)
Jan 2012 Wis 7.0%, U.S. 8.2% (Wis rate -1.2%)
Jan 2013 Wis 6.9%, U.S. 7.9% (Wis rate -1.0%)
Jan 2014 Wis 6.2%, U.S. 6.6% (Wis rate -0.4%)
Sept 2014 Wis 5.5%, U.S. 5.9% (Wis rate -0.4%)

The job growth in September also more likely reflects the strong U.S. economy of recent months compared to anything being done locally. Wisconsin could have been expected to pick up 5,000 private sector jobs in September as their portion of the nation's September gain of 248,000 total jobs, and 236,000 in the private sector. The first 9 months of 2014 have had the strongest growth in private-sector jobs since the dot-com era of 1999, but Wisconsin isn't sharing in those gains, as even with this good September report, Wisconsin's private sector has only added 17,900 jobs in the first 9 months of the year. That puts us on pace to end up with less than 24,000 jobs gained for the year, which would be the worst job growth of Scott Walker's 4 years as governor.

This reality of the national economy running ahead of Wisconsin's stats was what led me to create the Walker Jobs Gap charts, and even with the strong September, Wisconsin's 8,400 gain was on the heels of a seasonally-adjusted loss of 3,800 private sector jobs in August, leaving the net gain at only 4,600 over the 2 months measured. That's well behind the national pace, and the final tally before the election shows the Walker Jobs Gap at over 70,000 jobs in the private sector, and over 62,000 overall.





So Scott Walker can try to take credit for Wisconsin's added jobs, but in fact, it's the policies of Walker and his WisGOP rubber-stamps in the Legislature that have held the state back. And we're falling further and further behind as the years of Walker's tenure have gone on. You can put your own spin on why that might be, but it doesn't change the fact that the numbers show that statement to be true.

A few thoughts on the budget release

Here is a snap analysis from the State of Wisconsin's Annual Fiscal Report (AFR), which came out yesterday afternoon. The surface number was slightly better than what we projected based on revenues (+$517 million for FY2014 vs. $481 million based solely on revenues), albeit well below the $724 million that the original budget projected when the second round of tax cuts were passed earlier in the year. And a look under the surface leaves the budget situation as bad as we feared.

First off, let's use the One Wisconsin Now whiteboard as a visual aid.



Now let's see what the AFR reported.

Gross Appropriations 15,043
Transfers 35
Compensation Reserves 58
Less Lapses -345
TOTAL 14,796

We ended up lapsing more money than expected, and also paid workers extra pay and bonuses $20 million less than projected (that's the Compensation Reserves). But also there's this note that you can find on Page 13 in the AFR.

TRANSFERS. Certain transfers were delayed until the second year of the biennium, resulting in a positive variance or transfers.

Whoa, what's that? Well, I looked at the Appendix to the AFR and went to the Transportation Fund information, and sure enough, it says there was only $35 million sent to the Transportation Fund from the General Fund. Now compare that to what was expected when the budget was passed last year.

Governor: Transfer $23,000,000 during the 2013-15 biennium from the general fund to the transportation fund. Although the bill does not specify the year in which the transfer must be made, the fund condition statement submitted with the budget indicates that the transfer would be made in 2013-14, thus having the effect of increasing transportation fund revenues by $23,000,000 in that year. This transfer is in addition to the current law, annual transfer of 0.25% of general fund taxes made from the general fund to the transportation fund, estimated at $35,127,000 in 2013-14 and $36,302,500 in 2014-15. During the 2011-13 biennium, a transfer of $125,000,000 was made from the general fund to the transportation fund ($22,500,000 in 2011-12 and $102,500,000 in 2012-13) and the 0.25% of general fund taxes provision was created, with the first transfer of $35,127,000 occurring in 2012-13.

Joint Finance/Legislature: Increase the transfer by $110,293,200, to provide a total transfer of $133,293,200 under this item. The fund condition statement for the substitute amendment anticipates that $25,750,000 would be transferred in 2013-14 and $107,543,200 would be transferred in 2014-15.

I bolded that part under the Governor's proposal, because they were SUPPOSED to transfer another $25.75 million to the Transportation Fund....but the AFR shows they didn't do that. Gov Walker's Administration held it back till this fiscal year in order to make 2014's budget balance look better before the election. Tricky move there, Governor! But it also means that we're sending nearly $170 million to the Transportation Fund in Fiscal Year 2015. So that drives up expenses even further in this fiscal year.

With that in mind, here's the progression of our surplus-into-deficit trend under this 2013-15 budget, and for the 2015-17 budget. This assumes the 3.5% revenue growth that Legislative Fiscal Bureau projected for this fiscal year.

FY 2013 end balance +$759 million
FY 2014 end balance +$517 million (-$242 million for year)
FY 2015 end balance -$356 million (-$873 million for year)
FY 2015 required reserves +$65 million
AMOUNT TO BE MADE UP BY JUNE 30 $421 million

2015-17 projected deficit- $1.316 BILLION

TOTAL DEFICITS TO BE MADE UP $1.737 BILLION

Same as it ever was. Still a mess.

A short take on the 47-47 Marquette poll

My quick reaction on the Marquette Law School Poll showing Mary Burke back to even among "likely voters"? Don't wanna say I told you so, but I told you so. All Charles Franklin had to do was to fix the sample into something resembling reality and Burke “caught up.”

Oct. 1 likely voter poll sample with leaners- GOP +4.6%
Oct. 1 result- Walker +5.8%

Oct. 15 likely voter poll sample with leaners- Dem +1.5%
Oct. 15 result- Tied

May I remind you that the turnout was Dem +1 for party ID in Wisconsin for the 2010 elections, which was a GOP wave year that Dems weren’t very fired up for. The Journal-Sentinel’s Craig Gilbert pointed this out in the wake of the poll's release.

note about Marq poll showing Walker-Burke tie. this sample more in line with long-term WIS pattern (slightly more Ds than Rs) than last poll

— Craig Gilbert (@WisVoter) October 15, 2014

Bottom line- Walker never had a 5-point lead in reality, it's stayed a close race- although I worry that the outlier poll blunted some Burke momentum among low-info people who like to say they're voting for the "winner." Now, that situation doesn;t exist, and it'll likely come down to a couple of events over the next 2 weeks and to turnout.

Which means if the turnout becomes closer to presidential levels of Dem +4-6 on November 4, Mary Burke will win this thing. Of course, if Scott Walker keeps coming up with word salad answers to things like Medicaid and saying Fantasyland things like the minimum wage doesn’t “serve a purpose”, she might not even need that type of turnout to become our next Governor.

But even if Walker keeps making an idiot out of himself, let’s run up the score to keep the “262 election clerk” factor from coming into play, and snag the Senate and a sizable part of Robbin' Vos majority in the Assembly, shall we?

I'll have more on the budget report later on (got my normal life to get back to).

Your pre-AFR budget report!

Tomorrow is a huge day for news in the governor's race. Yes, there's the Marquette Law Poll, and we'll see if Charles Franklin actually gets poll respondents that are something old other than old white right-wingers, which will allow Mary Burke to "catch up." But I'm going to be paying more attention to the state's Annual Fiscal Report (AFR), which also drops tomorrow and will show just where we stood at the end of the fiscal year in 2014.

To quickly review, we already know that Wisconsin will come up $281 million short on tax revenues for Fiscal Year 2013-14. But the AFR will also show all expenses for that fiscal year, as well as other revenues that won't be included in the tax revenue number. The One Wisconsin Now whiteboard gives a good rundown of where these numbers fit.



As you can see, even if all other numbers in the AFR are the same for FY 2014, we have some room to make up between now and June 30, 2015 just to keep the books balanced for this budget, let alone the billions of dollars in deficits looming for the next one.

On that subject, we got a hint of where we stand for the 2015 Fiscal Year with the release of the first three months of revenue numbers this afternoon. The fact that it was released a few days ahead of its usual schedule, and ahead of the AFR, should not go unnoticed- it smacks of a pre-emptive move by the Walker Administration to blunt what may be bad news tomorrow.

Also interesting is that the Walker Administration released a supplemental report that implied that revenues were running ahead of the $14.725 billion that were projected in the 2014-15 budget after tax cuts were put in place in May 2014. Call me a bit skeptical on this one. In addition to there being a very small amount of revenues in the first 3 months of the fiscal year vs. the other 9, claiming a $55 million surplus for three months behind a relatively arbitrary projection isn't really something that's reassuring for where this is going on the year-round numbers.

By the way, those late Summer 2014 revenue numbers don't measure up to the tax revenues from July 2013-Sept. 2013. The DOR revenue report shows total revenues were DOWN 2.3% against the same 3 months last year ($65.4 million). So why isn't that the headline, as it sounds like another revenue shortfall? Because for the rest of 2014, income tax collections can be expected to drop $55 million a month due to the changes in withholding (Item 14 on this list), which were designed to buy off Wisconsinites into voting for Walker. Wait, you didn't notice the $10 or $15 extra a month you've allegedly been getting? (Don't spend it all either, you'll be getting lower tax refunds as a result next Winter)

So I'll add $165 million into the totals ($55 million a month), and it makes tax revenues go up by just under $100 million compared to the same time period in 2013- about 3.57%. And what did the LFB project as our increase in tax revenues for 2015 after the tax cuts? 3.49% - pretty much in line.

So what's it mean? It means this revenue report hasn't changed a thing in terms of where our budget is. The lower tax base from 2014's shortfall means we're on track to fall short by about $281 million again in 2014-15, which mwould cause us to be looking at a projected deficit of $396 million....for now. But that number will be sure to change tomorrow with the AFR report, because we'll have the expenses and every other number to fit in to see where we ended FY 2014 with. Given the higher-than-expected increases in Medicaid enrollment and likely lower amounts of Indian gaming revenues, don't be surprised if that number to make up grows higher, along with the budget deficits for 2015-17.

Isn't it nice to have this news just in time for Friday's final debate? No wonder Scott Walker is throwing around goofy ideas like a "gas sales tax" and making Palin-like word salads on the subject of Medicaid expansion. I encourage you to read the AFR's numbers for yourself (well, as much as you can without going goofy) and ignore the spin, because you can bet there will be a lot of that from the right tomorrow.

A "gas sales tax"? Does it change anything?

Just saw this flash by, and at first glance, it's quite the change-up from Gov Walker.

Gov. Scott Walker said Monday he is considering replacing the state's gasoline tax with a sales tax on gas and alternative vehicle fuel sources to stabilize long-term transportation funding in the state.

Walker offered few specifics, and the impact on consumers of charging a sales tax at the pump -- rather than the existing tax on gasoline suppliers that gets built into the pump price -- was unclear.

In an interview with the State Journal editorial board, Walker said "getting rid of the gas tax entirely" and replacing it with a sales tax is "a realistic thing for us to look at."

"Not as a revenue upper, but as a neutral conversion," Walker said. "With the idea being that that could be stable, versus something that's based on gallons of gas, which continues to go down."

At first glance, I find myself confused. The gas tax is based on how many gallons of gas you buy, but a sales tax would (I guess) be based on the PRICE of the gas. Illinois, Indiana and Michigan already charge a sales tax on gas, among other states, and there's no real difference in what consumers see when they go to the pump (it's internalized into the price). And I don't see how that translates into more money for the state's deficit-ridden Transportation Fund. Here's an example of the difference, using a 10% sales tax on gas, and why it wouldn't be that much of a difference.

Current law
10 gallons of gas at $0.31 tax = $3.10 total tax

Gas sales tax
10% sales tax at $2.71 wholesale = 27.1 cents a gallon
10 gallons at $0.271 a gallon = $2.71 total tax

A sales tax is still mostly based on buying the product, so I don't see where this does anything for shoring up a Transportation Fund deficit that could well be over $1 billion in the next budget. In fact, with gas prices going down and possibly staying there for a while, the move to a sales tax would become more likely to have LESS revenue (since lower price = lower tax). Unless there's some kind of flat amount of tax that everyone would pay, but how would that be figured? On a related note, Walker has generally opposed a Vehicle Miles Traveled system, and a "gas sales tax" doesn't sound like that anyway.

Which tells me at first glance that this is a lame attempt to deflect from bad headlines for Walker in the last week, and an attempt to get the Burke campaign off their game. And a former Mayor of Madison points out that it's an admission by the Walker Administration that they're largely out of one-time gimmicks when it comes to funding the state's transportation needs, mostly because of his stupid fiscal policies in the General Fund.

Walker opposes raising the gas tax and questioned the logistics of a mileage-based registration system. His first two budgets have relied on increased borrowing and general tax revenues to pay for road projects.

But those options will be limited given the state faces a structural deficit heading into the next budget, said Dave Cieslewicz, a commission member and executive director of the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin.

"His two escape hatches probably aren’t going to be there in the next budget," Cieslewicz said. "It would make sense he would be thinking about a different option."

But the complete lack of detail tells me that Walker's misdirection play should be ignored by the Dems as a serious proposal. But what they can do is ask questions and demand details that maybe smokes out what Walker REALLY wants to do. Because as Capper well puts it, "With Walker, there's more, there's always more."

Stay skeptical, my friends. There are no rabbits left in that hat.

Vouchers defraud while public schools struggle to stay open

The Wisconsin State Journal’s Molly Beck was guilty of committing an act of journalism over the weekend, showing that numerous private schools whose students were given vouchers for K-12 education had been shut down over the past decade for underperformance, and at a huge cost to state taxpayers.

Over the past 10 years, Wisconsin taxpayers have paid about $139 million to private schools that were subsequently barred from the state’s voucher system for failing to meet requirements related to finances, accreditation, student safety and auditing, a Wisconsin State Journal review has found.

More than two thirds of the 50 schools terminated from the state’s voucher system since 2004 — all in Milwaukee — had stayed open for five years or less, according to the data provided by the state Department of Public Instruction. Eleven schools, paid a total of $4.1 million, were terminated from the voucher program after just one year.

So did the state get its money back from these fly-by-night schools failing? OF COURSE NOT, and the vouchers’ biggest lobbyist joined the State Senate’s Education Chair in saying it should stay that way.

Recouping money sent to shuttered schools isn’t a feasible option, since the money is gone, [School Choice Wisconsin President Jim] Bender and {State Sen. Luther] Olsen said. Bender said the money was used for educating children and not squandered in most cases.

“The idea that you would go back and get money that was used for education is a misguided perception,” he said.

Bender warned against assuming that, because some schools closed, the entire system has failed. He said when poor-performing schools close, the students who attended those schools can move to a school that is meeting requirements.

If a kid’s school fails and underperforms in giving a good education, the kid can just go somewhere else in another part of town. Shit, that's good enough for Jimmy Bender. I’m sure that’s not disruptive at all socially (the “new kid” never has a problem adjusting to a different school, right?), and I’m sure being 2 years behind his/her peers in the classroom due to the last school’s crappy job won’t be a drag on his/her learning at this one.

Does Jim Bender have a clue about kids’ lives and how to improve their chances for success? Likely not, but he doesn’t care about that too much, because he and his backers are getting paid well in the Age of Fitzwalkerstan. Beck’s article mentions that voucher schools will receive $210 million in state aid this school year, and Governor Scott Walker has mentioned that he would like this number to go much higher in the future, perhaps to the point that there are no limitations on how many students could get vouchers throughout the state.

Of course, unlike the number of students in Walker’s voucher plan, the taxpayer dollars to fund those vouchers aren’t unlimited. And often, voucher funds are accumulated by taking away state aid to public schools. Remember this picture I showed around a few weeks back, as schools were starting up in Wisconsin? Note which parts of the state have a ton of beige and red.



Those beige and red areas are where districts projected to get cuts in state aid for 2014-15. That’s not cuts per student, that’s cuts in overall aid, and a lot of those cuts have led to situations so desperate that WQOW-TV in Eau Claire reports that 83 Wisconsin school districts will have referenda in 3 weeks, mostly asking to raise property taxes for their schools. In many of these cases, the referenda are in small, rural school districts that need to raise taxes just to keep the lights on and to keep operating at their current levels. This is the direct result of Scott Walker and the WisGOP Legislature funneling off state aids from these districts, and sending them over into vouchers, which often go into these newbie schools that have shown no evidence of providing a quality education.

It is especially noteworthy that these districts are having financial difficulties 3 years after Act 10 was put into effect in many of these places. Walker and WisGOP honks may talk up the “savings” from Act 10’s “tools”, and sure, they did lower costs to the general taxpayer in the short-run (by raising the costs to that certain group of taxpayers called school district employees), but those haven’t been nearly enough to make up for the continual cuts to public education, especially in rural Wisconsin. Add in the problems in attracting and retaining teachers in many districts, with the huge amount of retirements in the field over the last 3 years and fewer UW System students entering teacher training programs after seeing the denigration of the profession, and you can see how imperiled the quality of our state’s education system is.

But you didn’t think Scott Walker actually wanted to IMPROVE education in Wisconsin, did you? Silly goose. He just wanted to throw more taxpayer dollars to Jim Bender’s and (convicted criminal) Scott Jensen’s GOP money-funneling operation at the voucher lobby, and hurt Dems’ political chances in the process.

So three years after Act 10, with the prospect of huge increases in property taxes and/or increases in class sizes and reductions in school services in the places that badly need a strong public education to level the playing field, how’s that “divide-and-conquer” strategy on education working out for us? If you’re not a rich person who stands to grab the new $30 million private sector tuition tax break and/or work for WisGOP and WisGOP donators, it’s probably sucked.

Lewis Black summed it up in his own inimitable (and NSFW) way at a stand-up performance last week. People who disinvest in public education are short-sighted greedheads who should not be put in charge of anything past a hot dog stand, and those who rip on public school teachers and call them overpaid are pathetic a-holes.



"It starts with education, you fuckin' look for great teachers, you don't fuck around, and you pay them, if you want your kids top be taught well."

What IS a living wage in Wisconsin?

In Friday night's debate, Gov Walker was asked about his administration's decision that determined that $7.25 an hour was a living wage, and therefore not a reason to raise Wisconsin's minimum wage. What followed was evasions and word salad that would make Sarah Palin proud.

My point is, I think the state should be focused on helping people create jobs that are much greater than the minimum wage," replied Walker. "I was paid the minimum wage when I worked at McDonald's as a kid. I used that to expect to save up for money in college; I didn't expect that was going to be my lifetime's work. We've got to have opportunities for young people ... to go forward. But at the same time, we've got to make sure that people are living off that to support themselves and their families have jobs that pay far greater than that. The way that you do that is not by an arbitrary level of a state."

After I got through my immediate "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT GIBBERISH?" response, it seems that Walker thinks that there shouldn't be a minimum wage at all, and that he somehow thinks adult Wisconsinites shouldn't have minimum-wage jobs at all. Well, that's a nice dream in Right-Wing Fantasyland, but it doesn't match reality in Wisconsin.

We got a glimpse of how many adults are in these low-wage jobs from a release by the Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS) this week titled "Raise the Floor Wisconsin."

Poverty wage in 2013 = $11.36 per hour. Below this wage a worker cannot keep a family of four (2 adults, 2 children) out of poverty, even with full-time, year round work.

• 700,000 Wisconsin workers — 1 in 4 — worked in poverty-wage jobs in 2013.
• The median age of a poverty-wage worker in Wisconsin is 30 years old.
• Three fourths of Wisconsin’s poverty wage workers are white. But African American and Hispanic workers are much more likely to hold poverty wage jobs. While one-quarter of white workers earn poverty wages, 38 percent of black, and 42 percent of Hispanic workers do.
• Three times as many poverty-wage workers have no health insurance as other workers – 22 percent of poverty-wage workers had no health insurance in 2013; only 7 percent of higher-wage workers have no insurance.

Hey Scotty, do you think most of those 700,000 workers in Wisconsin don't want jobs that are above poverty level? And you've cut many of the protections and social services that would enable a low-wage worker to survive on such a small amount of pay (such as refusing to take Medicaid expansion that would have given Medicaid to workers that make up to 138% of the poverty line- an income of around $31,000 a year for a family of four).

So regardless of Walker's dog-whistle of low-wage jobs not being intended to be "my lifetime's work", for a whole lot of Wisconsinites, that IS their work today. This is especially true as wages for jobs have stagnated and declined in several professions compared to Walker's HS days in the '80s, if those jobs even exist at all, and it has turned people to have to take jobs in low-wage fields like retail. I noticed several adult-age workers at the registers and meat counters at my local HyVee this morning, and I bet your community's grocery store isn't very different. Whether you like that situation or not, this is the reality Gov Walker, and we need a governor who will deal with it instead of ignoring it by wishing it didn't happen.

We have a measure that one can use to find what a "living wage" is in Wisconsin. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has created a Living Wage Calculator, and has it for all 50 states and counties within every state. This calculation includes the costs for food, child and medical care, transportation, tax levels, and other everyday expenses. So we can click on the Wisconsin Living Wage page, and take a look to see what it might be for your neck of the woods in this state. I'll use my current town of Madison, and also compare with my uncle's second home in Vilas County, to see the differences there. And not surprisingly, it's a big difference based on your family situation, and for 2-parent families, I will assume both parents are working.

Living Wage Calculator, City of Madison
2 adults, no kids- $7.72
1 adult, no kids- $9.54
2 adults, 1 kid- $9.27
2 adults, 2 kids- $9.99
1 adult, 1 kids- $21.17
1 adult, 2 kids- $27.87

Living Wage Calculator, Vilas County
2 adult, no kids- $6.66
1 adult, no kids- $8.26
2 adults, 1 kid- $8.13
2 adults, 2 kids- $8.85
1 adult, 1 kid- $18.88
1 adult, 2 kids- $25.58

So the question then becomes what do we want as the standard that we base our living/minimum wage on? You probably can't go with the assumption of "adults without children", because as you can see, that's a major hit against Wisconsinites that are raising children. I would argue that the basis should be a "big-city family of 4", as a compromise between the extra burdens single parents have, and the lower cost of living that exists in rural Wisconsin. Plus, why should there be a wage penalty for living in a smaller community- they deserve high standards of pay and worker protections as well, don't they?

This makes Mary Burke's favoring of $10.10 an hour a lot closer to a reasonable minimum wage than Scott (Never Worked a Real Job Since Age 25) Walker's desire to keep it at $7.25. And there's a very legitimate argument that it should be higher than $10.10 out of sensitivity to the sizable amount of single parents that are in Wisconsin. At the very least, Scott Walker seems clueless to the reality of what a whole lot of everyday Wisconsinites have to go through just to make ends meet, and he is unfit for office as a result.