Expose': What Republicans are really thinking...

The surreal efforts by the right wing to play down Scott Walker's draconian cuts to the UW and ridiculous changes to Wisconsin Idea may at long last help bring more attention to what is really going on at the Capitol and in the heads of our Republican legislators.

Thanks to a former member of the state senate, Dale Schultz, we're able to get the real story behind the deceit and phony concern they have for public policy. On WPR's Joy Cardin Show, Schultz again let it all hang out.

Transportation and education disaster: Schultz gets right to the problem; the no tax pledge with Grover Norquist. Do legislators know Norquist came up with this hair brained idea when he was just 12 years old? I've got a 12 year old they can meet, if they don't mind waiting for him to get home from school. Why wait years and have to go through a think tank pledge?

"Everytime Grover Norquist writes a letter, my colleagues wet themselves."

Who can argue with that? Schultz also says we should chuck the entire voucher experience:

"I remember one time in my caucus asking my colleagues 'where are the failing schools. Which of you have them and would you be able to meet them,' and not a hand went up. I think it is time to stop this nonsense with our educational system, that we chuck the entire voucher experience, the data is in, it doesn't work as well as public education." 

WEAC: Schultz said,“There is no evidence that this (voucher system) works better than public education,”  

“After 25 years why do we insist on expanding and duplicating what our public schools are doing and don’t even do it as well … and yet with the evidence in, it’s time to say this (voucher system) doesn’t work. We need to recognize that the best chance of getting the most out of our dollars for Wisconsin’s children now and in the future lies with public schools.”

Schultz: "This is nothing more than the wholesale destruction of the University of Wisconsin system. The greatest economic driver that we have in the state of Wisconsin...and for what?" For a $5 property tax cut a year.



And on Walker's attempt to shred the Wisconsin Idea, the UW's mission statement:

"The whole tawdry affair...it sickens me because this is a sophomoric sideshow that is incredibly hurtful and not productive."

Schultz said “a number of people around the governor” are attacking education and educators “in a very mean-spirited way” for political purposes. “The bottom line for K-12 education is we cut, again, $135 million over the biennium to get a $5 per house tax cut, and I am just thinking whose idea of a priority is that?” It might be great for Governor Walker’s political ambitions, he said, but “What does it do for the people of Wisconsin?”

“This is nothing more than the wholesale destruction of the University of Wisconsin System, the greatest economic driver that we have in the state of Wisconsin.” Schultz said Walker’s rewriting of the UW mission statement and deletion of the Wisconsin Idea was a “sophomoric sideshow that is just incredibly hurtful and not productive.” It will make people wonder whether people are serious about education’s role in Wisconsin. “We can’t afford this kind of mean-spirited nonsense,” he said.

“This will continue unless every single person in Wisconsin takes this as a wake-up call and engages as every citizen ought to and speaks to their Legislature and responds to the governor’s proposal in a way that makes it clear that this is unacceptable. If we don’t do that, then I think the Wisconsin that many of us know and love will be a thing that will be a part of history.”