Adios, Keinweidersehen, Don't Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out Scotty

I was hasty in my last post, Scott Walker has dropped out of the race and conceded. Just like he dropped out of college because higher education expects you to think of others and not be selfish AF. The man who claimed being an Eagle Scout prepared him for being Commander in Chief of a military he never served in, Scotty seems to have never internalized the values of service that the Boy Scouts stress. Public service to Scotty was always an avenue to self-aggrandizement, that is why he titled his garbage book unintimidated [no link because fuck the bastard]. That is why he once claimed after hiding in the Capitol basement that "taking on" 100,000 protestors qualified him to rule the country and the world. The little weasel with the lazy eye and bald spot has been removed from office, he has only the lame duck season to inflict more harm on the state of Wisconsin.

You might ask, "but Mr. Kraken, you don't even live in Wisconsin anymore. Why aren't you more jubilant that Bruce Rauner is going home?" Good question gentle reader, I guess I'm over relying on the liberal superpower of memory as Driftglass likes to say. I was one of many casualties of Scotty's war on workers. I will probably never have a career because though I excelled in school, unlike Mr. 2.59 GPA. Maybe I should have signed up for the right wing grift machine? It was always personal, Scotty set himself up as an outsider even though he was a career politician and the rubes bought it. The subtle fascist overtones of "us against them" was always present in his communications. Scotty didn't even have to dog whistle, he ran against President Obama as though he was in the same league as the constitutional law professor. It didn't matter, the white working class of Wisconsin presaged doughfacedonny's base in their overt displays of racism and ignorance of how anything in the United States actually worked. You couldn't go to any restaurant or bar without overhearing "serious" conversations between old and not so old white people who probably never travelled 50 miles from the place of their birth holding court on "Milwaukee people" and their invasion of small towns, how state workers were pampered at the "regular folks" expense, and especially about the eggheads in Madison.

So to prove how trampled upon they were, they elected a man who ensured that none of their kids would get a decent education and would leave the state at the earliest possibility. Thus ensuring that stagnation, economic and social, persisted in their communities. But it's cool because there was a black man in their White House to blame. The few Democrats in my area had always been demoralized by the sea of militant ignorance around us. And I was blacklisted against any possibility of employment. So don't fucking tell me not one answer to a thousand resumes and cover letters wasn't personal. And I was now overqualified for blue collar work too, not that any factories were hiring during the great recession.

Eight years later, Wisconsin is basically a shell of it's former self. The state is no longer really a laboratory of democracy, and has almost no residual progressivism that marked public life and made the Badger state such a good place to live. I guess I never really understood or appreciated what a difference the progressive income tax made in smoothing out funding for schools, libraries, and other public services. In Illinois, the rich pay the same low (though the one rate was raised slightly when the new budget) percentage of their income as the working class. Therefore, we have a 10%+ sales tax, out-of-control property taxes, toll roads, red light camera automated traffic tickets, and a million other labor/cost intensive revenue streams all diluted by the corporate interests who get a piece of it when they corrupt the politicians. These interests do not care if it is Democrats or republicans they corrupt and lobby to get their rents, so every time I see a reprogrammable meatbag commenting on the corruption of the "Democrat Party" in Chicago or Springfield I want to mail them dungbombs. That is the road that Scotty put Wisconsin on, cut progressive taxes and jack up user fees. The republicans floated toll roads a while back as a great idea but probably had to abandon it because it would mainly hit their voters commuting into Milwaukee. And Wisconsin probably would have a train running from Milwaukee to Madison by now if Scotty hadn't refused it.

You don't even need to name details. Everything Scotty says was a self-serving lie, everything his pet republican legislature did was to inflict maximum cruelty on their "enemies" in education.

Good riddance. It will take 16 to 24 years of continuous Democratic governance to recover from Scotty and his thugs' destructive 8 years.