Scott Walker Ramps Up Extremism

Scott Walker Ramps Up Extremism
By Kenneth Quinnell
In advance of his upcoming recall election and possible legal trouble, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has become even more extreme, ramping up the rhetoric and taking actions that are troubling, to say the least. Most importantly, he signed a repeal of the state's Equal Pay Enforcement Act:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who is facing a recall election, quietly repealed a state law making it easier for pay discrimination victims to seek justice. Amanda Terkel reports in The Huffington Post that Walker signed into law a bill passed in party-line votes by Republicans in the state legislature that rolls back the 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act. The act had allowed workers to challenge pay discrimination in state rather than just federal courts.

The act was only one part of Walker's assault on women:

Among them were four highly controversial measures focused on women's health care and sexual education:
A repeal of the state's Equal Pay law, which allowed victim's of wage discrimination to collect damages of between $50,000 and $300,000, and a repeal of the Healthy Youth Act, which had provided requirements to schools that comprehensive and scientifically accurate information about everything from abstinence to contraception be taught at an age-appropriate level.
Walker also signed into law a ban on abortion coverage through policies as part of a health insurance exchange to be created under the federal health care reform law starting in 2014 (the only exceptions would be in cases of rape, incest or medical necessity); and a bill requiring women seeking abortions to undergo a physical exam and consult with a doctor alone, away from her friends and family, in order to make sure she isn't "being pressured into the decision." Doctors who break the law could be charged with a felony.

As usual, working families were a target for Walker as well:

I know that collective bargaining is not a right; it's an expensive entitlement. It's about time somebody stood up for the hardworking taxpayers of our state.

The problem is, of course, that collective bargaining is a right.

Walker has also been railing about how state workers can't be the "haves" while everyone else is a "have not." The state worker he used in an ad to that effect, it turns out is actually one of the have-nots, making only $25,227 a year, certainly not a massive salary by any standards.