USN&WR !: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Starting to Look Like a Mideast Tyrant

[steve2470]

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/susan-milligan/2011/02/25/wisconsin-gov-scott-walker-starting-to-look-like-a-mideast-tyrant

By Susan Milligan

Posted: February 25, 2011

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is surely a busy man these days, standing his anti-union ground as his state government veers toward breakdown. But still, has he had no time to take notice of what’s been happening in the Middle East?

Perhaps he had been paying attention to Cairo, where police and military abandoned their allegiance to Hosni Mubarak, removing the authoritarian’s last chance of hanging onto power. That might explain why Walker spared police and firefighter unions from his demand that public employees give up most of their collective bargaining rights, effectively making the existence of those unions irrelevant.

But the power grab Walker is seeking in his budget goes well beyond his effort to transform himself from state employer to ruler. As Tom Friedman reports in an alarming column in Friday’s New York Times, Walker is also trying to remove the competitive bidding process for sale of state public utility plants. For a governor purportedly committed to cost-cutting, that effort is mind-boggling. The point of competitive bidding is to get the best price for the seller, Wisconsin. The budget measure Walker wants would also, Friedman reports, allow him to make cuts in healthcare for low-income families without going through the normal legislative process.

Citizens across the Middle East are risking, even losing, their lives to bring down the sort of centralized power Walker is attempting to grab through the budget process. Has he not noticed that such an approach is not working out so well now for the Middle East’s autocrats?

[SoCalDem]

1. Yep..he seems to think that "the people" put him there to solve all problems for all time

and at anyone's cost:(

[aquart]

7. No, only the Koch brothers' problems.

[calimary]

2. Posted to my FB page.

Funny how this is starting to look, isn't it?

And in walker's attempt to grab and consolidate power for himself as governor, doesn't that move look an awful lot like The Big Intrusive Gubmnt that walker and all his little republi-CON reagan-worshipping friends claim they're so ardently against?

[MBS]

5. you got it. n/t

[Skip_In_Boulder]

3. Hell, all Republicans look like Tyrants to me

It just seems to come naturally for them.

[calimary]

4. No kidding.

[tabatha]

6. I heard Rand Paul say on Letterman that competition is good.

Maybe he should tell Walker that competitive bids are good, too.