Dan Bice and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel continue to rail on Scott Walker.
It's kind of pathetic.
The election is over. Wisconsin voters clearly sided with Walker's vision for the state and his proposed approaches to solving the messes created by Jim Doyle and the Democrats.
Alas, in the liberal media, there is no honeymoon for Scott Walker. He hasn't been inaugurated. He's barely been the governor-elect for two weeks, but Tom Barrett's media partners are offering no relief from the idiotic harassment that defined their behavior during the 2010 campaign.
Today, Bice exposes campaign donations to Walker. He received $128,859 from road builders.
Egad! What an abomination! How corrupt!
Bice writes:
For Governor-elect Scott Walker, there are more than 128,000 reasons to favor using tax dollars on roads instead of rail.
Scores of road builders opened their wallets for the Republican candidate in the recent election.
More than 150 employees of highway construction firms wrote checks to Walker, compared with only about two dozen for his opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.
More important, road builders spent nine times more money helping Walker than they did Barrett.
No wonder then that Walker is grabbing headlines with his efforts to halt the Obama administration's plans to build a high-speed rail line between Milwaukee and Madison. Instead, the Republican politician is on a quixotic quest to have Congress redirect the $810 million to repair Wisconsin roads and bridges - even if most believe the dollars will end up going elsewhere.
"It sure looks like (Walker's) message is tailor-made to appeal to the road builders," said Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonprofit group that advocates for campaign finance reform.
McCabe's group will issue a report this week showing that the Republican candidate received $84,793 in campaign donations from road-building company employees and their spouses from Jan. 1, 2009, to Aug. 30 of this year. That dwarfs the amount taken in by any other Wisconsin candidate for statewide office.
If Bice is trying to make the case that Walker's efforts to stop the high-speed train boondoggle is repayment for the road builders' campaign donations, he's really losing it.
A couple things--
First, having a high-speed train from Milwaukee to Madison wouldn't eliminate the need to repair and build roads.
Being "pro-road" isn't necessarily being "anti-train" and being "pro-train" doesn't demand that one be "anti-road."
It's a mistake to view the issue of transportation in those terms.
Walker is wisely against committing millions and millions of state taxes to run and maintain a train. During the campaign, he did emphasize the importance of repairing and building roads. The people of Wisconsin supported him on that.
Tom Barrett, on the other hand, supported the utter waste of state funds for a high-speed train. He didn't highlight the need to address our crumbling roads. Voters rejected Barrett on that.
Bice seems to be making the case that road builders bought off Walker with their donations. That's ridiculous.
Walker is simply promoting what he views as the best use of funds for the people of Wisconsin. Dumping state tax dollars into a high-speed train is not smart. Dumping nearly a billion federal tax dollars to build a train the state neither needs nor wants is also not smart.
Second, there's nothing corrupt about people donating to a candidate that supports their views and what they want. Is it surprising that road builders would contribute to Walker rather than Barrett, cheerleader for the train and ignorer of the roads?
For example, I certainly wouldn't donate money to Tom Barrett, an avowed pro-abortion, pro-embryonic stem cell research candidate. Why would I contribute to a candidate that supports what I'm against?
Walker, as a reformer and conservative, is acting on principle. He wasn't bribed by the road builders' $128,000.
He didn't need that money to get elected governor.
Bice asks, "Now that road builders had such a big hand in helping him get elected, will Walker feel any obligation to the industry when he takes office in January?"
Good grief.
Walker feels an obligation to do what's right for the people of Wisconsin, not what's expedient for his personal political future.
Bice is confused about Walker.
Walker is no Jim Doyle.
This attempt to create scandal and the whining by Bice and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is silly.
They can keep yapping and suggesting that Walker is corrupt but Wisconsinites know better.
We're familiar with Walker and we're familiar with the tactics of the liberal media.
Like Russ Feingold in his concession speech, I, too, will quote Bob Dylan:
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’
1 comment:
Walker is making this state look like a pig headed tea party cheerleader, cheering because we know we've lost. Yeah, other states are getting an economic advantage over us! When we finally come to the realization that high speed rail is part of the 21st century economy (it was part of the 20th for a lot of people too) and begin to construct it we will look back on this refusal of federal funds as one of the biggest mistakes, from an economic improvement standpoint, this state has made.
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