There is nothing that says reform better than giving your cronies nice raises.
Scott Walker, the Governor of Wisconsin who is spearheading the GOP effort to crush collective bargaining, lavished relatively large salary increases on his staff when he was chief executive of the Milwaukee County Board. Walker surreptitiously did this in 2008 - without the approval of the county board itself and at a time that the county was facing a fiscal deficit, and Walker was about to lay off a large number of union workers. In addition, 700 county positions had already been left vacant due to budgetary pressures.
According to a 2008 Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (MJS) article,which exposed Walker's illicit personal staff raises, one aide was to achieve a 26% increase - solely initiated and approved by Walker - even though the staffer, Tom Nardelli, was to receive tax-payer funded pensions that would exceed $35,700 a year. A member of the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors called Nardelli's salary increase "obscene," according to the MJS.
My emphases
While the NYT has headlines like this:
Dueling Protests in a Capital as Nothing Much Gets Done
The real truth is:
UPDATEDx2 - Epic Tea Party FAIL: Anti-union "protesters" out-numbered 35-to-1 in Madison!
I find it so sad the the major media in this country is so cowed by the Koch Bros. & Glenn Beck, etc., that they are self-censoring the truth. Anyone with a modicum of sense will know, yes, know, from the local information that there are not two equal number of people protesting. Why does the NYT write a headline that indicates that there is this equality? They must feel that they have a lot to lose if they report the truth. I suppose David Koch makes a phone call & "the paper of record" does what it is told to do. My emphasis.
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