Scott Walker completely ignores request from Wisconsin teacher to quit talking about her story

Megan Sampson, an English teacher at Wauwatosa East High School in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, has repeatedly been used by Republican Wisconsin Governor and presidential candidate Scott Walker as the face of his union-busting Act 10 bill. Act 10, among other things, stripped teachers and most Wisconsin public employees of the vast majority of their collective bargaining rights.

However, Walker has been using Sampson’s story, which I’ll explain in detail in the following paragraph and only mention once on this blog, without permission from Sampson. Sampson has repeatedly denied Walker permission to use her story because she doesn’t want to be seen as a political figure, and she’s offended by Walker using her as a posterchild for Walker’s far-right political agenda.

In 2010, Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) laid off Sampson, and Sampson was hired by the Wauwatosa school system not long afterwards. Both of those events occurred before Act 10 became law in Wisconsin in 2011. After she was hired to teach in Wauwatosa, MPS offered Sampson to return to MPS as a teacher, but Sampson refused the offer because she was employed to teach in Wauwatosa.

Walker has claimed that Sampson was hired in Wauwatosa after Act 10 became law in Wisconsin. As I stated in the above paragraph, this claim by Walker is false. Additionally, Walker has claimed that Sampson was honored by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) with a Outstanding Teacher of the Year award for her work for MPS. In reality, DPI gave four Wisconsin teachers outstanding teacher awards for 2010, but not Sampson, and Sampson received an outstanding first-year teacher award from the Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English (WCTE), a non-profit organization whose membership is composed of English teachers in Wisconsin who wish to join the organization.

Since I started blogging a few years ago, there have been instances where people have contacted me and asked me not to use their name, likeness, quotes, stories, etc. in my blog posts, and I have respected their wishes. The fact that Scott Walker has continued to use the story of Megan Sampson in an inaccurate manner and, more importantly, without her permission proves that Walker has zero respect for his fellow Wisconsinites. If Walker can’t respect the people of his own state, he’s not going to respect the American people if he’s elected president.

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Scott Walker compares progressives to right-wing terrorists and touts junk science about Ebola

Wisconsin Governor and likely Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker compared progressives and labor union members to ISIS, a right-wing Islamic fundamentalist terror group at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual gathering of conservatives in the United States:

We need have someone who leads and ultimately will send a message that not only will we protect American soil, but…freedom-loving people anywhere else in the world. We need that confidence,” (Walker) said. “If I can take on a hundred thousand protesters, I can do the same across the world.

First off, regarding Walker’s claim that his political base consists of “freedom-loving people”, a claim that he’s made multiple times since he’s made it 100% clear to the people of his home state of Wisconsin that he wants to be president, Walker has made it clear to me that, if elected President, he wants to continue the Republican tradition of supporting freedom for people in foreign countries while taking freedom away from the American people. That’s not freedom-loving, that’s hypocrisy!

More importantly, I found Walker comparing progressives and labor union members to a group of Islamic fundamentalists who have beheaded Americans in the Middle East downright offensive and absolutely absurd. The 100,000+ people who descended on the Wisconsin State Capitol four years ago to protest the union-busting bill now known as 2011 Wisconsin Act 10, or Act 10 for short, weren’t out to kill anybody; they were out to voice their opposition to driving down wages and busting unions. To compare progressives and labor union members to a group of right-wing terrorists is false equivalence, pure and simple!

Additionally, as progressive blogger and possible 2016 Wisconsin State Senate candidate Chris “Capper” Liebenthal pointed out, Walker also claimed at CPAC that Ebola, a deadly virus that spreads through contact with bodily fluids, can be cured with aloe, a common ingredient in shampoo and skin moisturizer. In reality, Walker’s claim is false, since there is currently no cure for Ebola (although research to find a cure is ongoing), and methods of treating Ebola are currently very limited. I certainly wouldn’t want Walker making health care decisions for me or anybody else!

Scott Walker has made one absurd claim and comparison after another since he’s made it clear that he wants to be president. What’s next for Walker? Claiming that the U.S. should appease Israel more often because Robin Vos and Scott Fitzgerald helped him implement a far-right agenda in Wisconsin? Claiming that he can take on Vladimir Putin and Russia because he watched the movie Rocky IV? Claiming that he can take on Kim Jong-un and North Korea because he mandated forced ultrasounds for Wisconsin women who want to have an abortion? Walker frightens me!

Scott Walker compares immigration reform to union busting, has no immigration reform plan of his own

Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who will likely run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, attacked President Barack Obama, who is legally prohibited from seeking a third term in the White House, over, among other things, Obama issuing a lawful executive order on immigration:

Gov. Scott Walker criticized President Barack Obama’s handling of a range of national and international issues, including immigration and foreign policy, in his annual end-of-the-year interview with the Wisconsin State Journal at the Governor’s Mansion Monday.

Walker, who is mulling a run for president in 2016, joined a lawsuit earlier this month seeking to block Obama’s executive action sparing as many as 5 million people living illegally in the United States from deportation. Obama announced the action in November, saying it was an important step to fix the nation’s broken immigration system.

Perhaps the most moronic comment that Walker made in his interview with the Madison, Wisconsin-based Wisconsin State Journal newspaper was his bizarre comparison of immigration reform and union busting:

Citing his controversial 2011 measure to all but end collective bargaining for most of the state’s public workers, Walker likened Obama’s executive action on immigration to trying to “invoke Act 10 without the Legislature.”

For those of you who are not familiar with Wisconsin politics, “Act 10” refers to 2011 Wisconsin Act 10, a state law that was enacted by the Republican-controlled Wisconsin State Legislature in violation of the state’s open meetings law, signed into law by Walker, upheld by courts controlled by far-right supporters of Walker and his destructive agenda, and stripped Wisconsin’s public employee unions (except for what few public employee unions supported Walker in his 2010 gubernatorial campaign) of nearly all of their collective bargaining rights. Walker is a total moron for comparing immigration reform to stripping collective bargaining rights from public employees.

Furthermore, Walker has no plan whatsoever to reform the broken immigration system in this country:

On how he would resolve the problem of the estimated 12 million immigrants living in the United States illegally, he said he’d “leave that up to the people who are running for federal office or in federal office to decipher.”

I find it hypocritical and downright asinine that Walker, who is considering running for federal office, has no plan to reform the immigration system in this country, and then turns around and says that he’d leave the issue of immigration to those “who are running for federal office or in federal office”. He’s already passing the buck on immigration, and he hasn’t even officially entered the presidential race yet!

In addition to immigration, Walker also criticized Obama over the fact that Obama hasn’t (yet) started a full-scale war with the Islamic fundamentalist terror group ISIS and over Obama’s plans to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba. In other words, Walker wants to return to the failed George W. Bush-era hawkish/neoconservative foreign policy of fighting multiple full-scale wars at the same time that drive up the national debt and is whining about a lack of democracy in Cuba while, at the same time, he’s trying to destroy democracy in Wisconsin and the rest of America.

Make no mistake about it, America can’t afford four years of the Hillary Clinton-Jeb Bush-Scott Walker police, surveillance, and military state. America needs Bernie Sanders to run for the Democratic presidential nomination, because he’ll bring real progressive leadership to the White House.

It’s official: Wisconsin right-wingers now pushing for right-to-work-for-less legislation

It’s official: The right-wingers in Wisconsin are now pushing for even more union busting in Wisconsin.

Lorri Pickens, a former political operative for the Koch Brothers front group Americans for Prosperity (AfP), is now leading a front group called Right to Work Wisconsin, whose mission is to convince the Republicans that control the Wisconsin State Legislature to pass a so-called “right-to-work” bill. Other individuals behind this group include Chris Martinson, Kenosha School Board member Bob Nuzzo, and 2014 Wisconsin State Treasurer Republican primary candidate Randy Melchert. This group may have the backing of the Koch Brothers and other big-money Republican/conservative donors.

If enacted in Wisconsin, a “right-to-work” bill would allow public-sector and private-sector workers who are not members of a union to benefit from collective bargaining agreements between management and union workers without joining the union or paying union dues, effectively allowing non-union workers to benefit from the wages, benefits, etc. of union contracts without paying for the benefits. To put that another way, “right-to-work” is actually the moral equivalent of legalizing shoplifting, since allowing non-union workers to not pay for benefits negotiated by unions is just like allowing shoppers at department stores to not pay for clothes, toys, video games, and so on. Additionally, a “right-to-work” bill would drive down wages in Wisconsin, put thousands more Wisconsin families into poverty, decrease the amount of revenue that Wisconsin receives from income taxes, hurt economic growth in Wisconsin, and cost Wisconsin thousands of jobs.

I hope enough Republicans in the Wisconsin State Legislature come to their senses and oppose a “right-to-work” bill, because Scott Walker would sign it into law in a heartbeat if it were to hit his desk and Wisconsin can’t afford it.