The cherry on top of the scoop of outrage was the layout of the story’s jump. It was next to a jump of a story about 21 Milwaukee Public Schools nurses losing their jobs because Walker is proposing to cut a $1.5 million grant that helps pay for them.

A $250 million giveaway for big business vs. $1.5 million for nursing services for mostly impoverished children. Not a tough choice for the gov, apparently.

Nice package, JS.

Her aide wrote back asking for my phone number and address (to ensure I was a constitutent, I assume) and said he would have Leah get in touch.

This was a more than a few days ago now, and i’m still waiting for Leah.

Hmm, wonder if it was the word “Milwaukee” in my address that led her to blow me off. Ah, well. The Story Hill Neighborhood Association has invited her to attend the quarterly meeting on Monday night to discuss the potential impacts of the proposed state budget.

And the odds of her showing up are… ?

It’s enough to gag a maggot, as my late, blessed mother would say.

Republican State Senators Joe Leibham (Sheboygan), Mary Lazich (West Bend), Neal Kedzie (Elkhorn) and Pam Galloway (Wausau) are sponsoring a resolution complaining that “states are demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government” even though it’s supposed to be the other way around under the US Constitution’s Tenth Amendment.

The four either do not see or do not care about the irony or hypocrisy in interfering so very heavily in local affairs while whining about federal interference in state affairs. They want the Senate to claim, on behalf of the state, “sovereignty…over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the U.S. Constitution.”

But wait! There is more!

The fearless foursome state “that this resolution shall serve as notice and demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of its constitutionally delegated powers.”

Yeah, you tell ‘em!

And give local governments and public employees their rights back, too.

You can just hear those knees quaking in Washington, can’t you?

Wow, does everybody get to do this or is it a special privilege reserved for political hacks who mistake small-margin electoral victories for divine right? 

Of course, everybody can’t foist the legal bills onto taxpayers, as Walker is doing (and to think a lot of those taxpayers are the very public employees he is so eager to harm!).

Mr. “Frugal Government” Walker is running up those bills just as fast as he can.

Gad, what a hypocrite.

The Building Commission met and when about 50 people were in the room, the doors were closed and no one else was let in.

Walker, reports the JS, said the meeting was 100% open.  “We can’t put more people in than there is space to stand and sit around in,” he said.

Well, what a load of crap. The meeting could have been moved. There could have been an overflow room set up with audio and / or video.  Walker’s lame-brain thrashing about to justify slamming the door on public access will, if his Swiss-cheesy reasoning is allowed to stand, have a terrible consequence: one side or the other can pack meeting rooms, essentially shutting out opponents.

On the same day the governor gave the middle finger to public access, he did not allow school superintendents into a press conference Walker called to give really spurious information about his proposed budget’s impact on public education. Walker did not want any inconvenient truths spoken.

This isn’t democracy in any recognizable form. It is, unfortunately, Walker’s Wisconsin.

Then I think of Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed 2011-13 budget and I think, “Oh, never mind.”

What a victory! Running over public employees, the Open Meetings law, and general respect for Wisconsin’s government all at once.

This will take years and years and years to repair.

It was a lesson in how not to behave.

Sickening.

The meeting at the Wauwatosa Public Library ended early. This photo is by Steve Brachman.