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How Scott Walker operates - an excellent case study
From the editor of the Cap Times, Madison, Wisconsin:
Paul Fanlund: Linking a $300-million UW budget cut to ‘flexibility’ is preposterous. January 29, 2015
So, you’re part of Gov. Scott Walker’s inner circle, crafting a state budget you want to play well outside Wisconsin and extend the boss’s presidential credibility, painting him as a guy capable of big, bold conservative successes, at least as defined by GOP ideologues everywhere.
Yes, our administration cut taxes last term, mostly to benefit the higher-income GOP base. That overreach helped us manufacture another $2-billion budget shortfall for the two-year period that begins July 1. But that’s how we roll: Create a crisis and solve it with still more spending cuts.
To help us this time, let’s stick it to a favorite target: the University of Wisconsin System. After chopping UW System support in our first four years, let’s go for another draconian reduction of $300 million, or 13 percent, over two years, the largest cut in UW history. So how do we camouflage what it really is: part of a fundamental and ideological assault on the availability and affordability of public education in Wisconsin, from kindergarten through graduate school?
Let’s trot out, under the always handy guise of “reform,” a proposal to permit UW leaders greater autonomy, and argue that the new freedom will allow them to get out from “under the thumb” of state government. As a tactic, we first leak to the media that the governor intends to propose a “bold plan” to grant more autonomy to UW. That sounds good, and presents Walker as someone who thinks big and does not, say, need the more deliberative advice of a bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission to study the future of higher education in Wisconsin. That would be better for the state, but does not fit the presidential campaign timetable.
Well played, governor.
Yes, our administration cut taxes last term, mostly to benefit the higher-income GOP base. That overreach helped us manufacture another $2-billion budget shortfall for the two-year period that begins July 1. But that’s how we roll: Create a crisis and solve it with still more spending cuts.
To help us this time, let’s stick it to a favorite target: the University of Wisconsin System. After chopping UW System support in our first four years, let’s go for another draconian reduction of $300 million, or 13 percent, over two years, the largest cut in UW history. So how do we camouflage what it really is: part of a fundamental and ideological assault on the availability and affordability of public education in Wisconsin, from kindergarten through graduate school?
Let’s trot out, under the always handy guise of “reform,” a proposal to permit UW leaders greater autonomy, and argue that the new freedom will allow them to get out from “under the thumb” of state government. As a tactic, we first leak to the media that the governor intends to propose a “bold plan” to grant more autonomy to UW. That sounds good, and presents Walker as someone who thinks big and does not, say, need the more deliberative advice of a bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission to study the future of higher education in Wisconsin. That would be better for the state, but does not fit the presidential campaign timetable.
Well played, governor.
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7 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
he wants to "privatize" the UW system to give to his corporate masters.
