Scott Walker Is FDR: F'ing Dumbass Redneck

It was all I could do to keep from falling out of my chair when I read Scott Walker's latest bullshit self-congratulatory rhetoric, Wisconsin A Model For Country, Scott Walker Says. [This despite the fact that the budget Governor Walker just signed also created a structural deficit of $505 million in the next biennium.]

"The position I pushed is not unlike the principle that Franklin Delano Roosevelt — not exactly a conservative — pushed as well when it came to public sector collective bargaining," Walker remarked at the annual Governmental Research Association policy conference.

FDR's opposition to collective bargaining, per se, was more against public workers striking or using quasi- militant tactics as a means to an end. He supported the public workers' voice in attempts at fair treatment. Roosevelt said, "It is one of the characteristics of a free and democratic nation that it have free and independent labor unions."

As the Library of Congress details:

Although the future of labor unions looked grim in 1933, their fortunes would soon change. The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early New Deal. The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The 1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees.

Public works and unions became kind of a big thing specifically during FDR's time in office. For Walker to claim a parallel between himself and Roosevelt for doing the exact opposite during his reign as Wisconsin governor is batshit crazy.

[Above: FDR visiting the Allis-Chalmers factory near Milwaukee, Wisconsin during an inspection trip. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, September 19, 1942.]

Walker goes on to claim one of his major policy innovations was pension reform. Yet, Walker himself, in the Journal article, even states, "Our pension system is the only one in the country that's fully funded." As a Pew report, A Widening Gap In Cities, documents:

At the end of fiscal year 2009, the largest city in Wisconsin had the best-funded system among 61 American cities, with 113 percent of the money.

The report also found the State of Wisconsin, at the end of fiscal year 2009, had 100 percent of needed funding.

More great Scott Walker logic - reform the program (our pension system) that is performing better than any similar program in the country. So, if you're doing something better than anyone else, that's the thing you want to change, and for this, you should be heralded as a model for the country?