Scott Walker/GOP legacy shows up in declining ACT scores in Math, Science, and English.

Have we forgotten all those past predictions warning what would happen if school funding got slashed, if teachers were vilified, and Act 10 past? 

Yes, apparently.

Today Milwaukee Journal Sentinel never mentioned any of the above, so Scott Walker, Scott Fitzgerald, and Robin Vos once again got away with attacking education like all good Republicans always do and causing the decline we're seeing today. We said it would take a while for this to happen, and now it is happening, despite having a great public school system and teacher workforce in Wisconsin:

According to a new analysis released Friday by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum ... the percentage of students who met that benchmark has declined in every subject but one since the state began requiring the 2014-'15 school year.

a. about 48.7% of students last year were deemed college-ready in English, down from 54% in the 2014-'15 school year. 

b. math dropped from 36.2% to 29.2%; 

c. science from 31.7% to 31%, after peaking three years earlier.

d. reading (went up) slightly from 34.4% to 35.8%.

The drop for all students in every subject is smaller, so there is time to rebuild what Gov. Scott Walker blew up, but consider these few points written up by former Sen. Kathleen Vinehout back in May, 2018:

1. A 2017 analysis by the Center for American Progress Action Fund shows that a large number of teachers have left the teaching profession (and didn't teach the following year) in Wisconsin after the enactment of Act 10 ... in the 2010-11 school year teachers aged 55 and over (who were) retiring jumped from about 15 percent in the 2009-10 school year to over 30 percent.

2. After Act 10, the overall percentage of teachers leaving the profession rose from 6.4 percent in the 2009-10 school year to 10.5 percent in 2010-11, with exit rates remaining higher than before with 8.8 percent leaving in 2015-16.

3. And according to a Journal Sentinel special report, 2015 saw the smallest group of juniors and seniors enrolled in teaching programs in over two decades.

4. And according to a Journal Sentinel special report, 2015 saw the smallest group of juniors and seniors enrolled in teaching programs in over two decades. (Note: enrollment was down nationwide, but not like in Wisconsin.)

5. After Act 10, the average experience level of teachers in Wisconsin also decreased. Teachers with less than five years of experience increased from 19.6 percent in 2010-11 to 24.1 percent in 2015-16.

6. According to a 2017 report by the Wisconsin Budget Project, Wisconsin school districts struggle to fill vacancies, especially in math, science and technology. The report notes that one reason for teacher shortages is high turnover.

7. The Journal Sentinel examined spending and teacher data for 424 districts and found that 75 percent of districts were losing their teachers more often after Act 10 because a competitor offered better working conditions and compensation.

8. That turnover has been accompanied by lower, not higher, teacher salaries. According to the Center for American Progress, after Act 10, “year-over-year pay cuts were found across urban and rural counties” ranging from 2 to 3.4 percent when adjusted for inflation ... teachers with experience between five and 15 years have seen their annual salaries fall by an average of $4,273.

While right-wing groups like the McIver Institute love to claim huge taxpayer savings, much of that could have been done in cooperation with public education. Wait, I think they used to call it, negotiation. It's been a while since we've used that word around here.

They think saving taxpayers money is better than educating the next generation (they also think too many kids got to college now). McIver never brings up the majority of school districts where it's voters passed massive funding referendums, the same as if taxes were never cut in the first place. If saving taxpayer money on schools was so important...?

But they do hate public opposition and that messy thing in the Constitution...free speech, like during the Act 10 protests. NOTE: A number of myths below: no one needed protesters bused into the state, protesters never "created their own self contained society and government," teachers did protest for their kids AND themselves, and public support for occupiers never eroded. Wishful thinking by McIver Institute "fellows," but then, conservatives just don't go out and protest. Who needs to when they have big money on their side buying influence. For a good laugh...:

Wisconsin liberals were furious with Walker’s attempt to curtail union power, and they showed up in droves – and in buses from out of state – to register their disapproval. Protesters flooded the Capitol.

More than a week into the riots over Act 10, protesters still hadn’t left. In fact, they had set up camp inside the state Capitol and formed their own self-contained society and government. Public education was crippled and schools shut down as teachers skipped class and threatened to go on strike at the protests’ peak. Teachers admitted on camera that they were doing it for themselves at the expense of their students. As more people began to see what was really going on at the Capitol, public support for the occupiers eroded.

Down the Scott Hole Pt 1: Walker's Memory loss on China...

I took a well-deserved break from the Fitzgerald/Vos/Walker/Trump madness, but...found out there's no escape and they never take a break.

Catching up: Here's an older story I forgot to post but is still relevant to Scott Walker's legacy, after making new comments about empty food shelves and socialism that are embarrassing every Wisconsinite:
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Scott Walker has revealed who he really is on twitter over and over again; a political hack lacking any self-awareness. At one time, we didn't know for sure, because Walker's handlers shaped a more ambiguous public response to questions. What we've seen from him on Twitter has been shocking and embarrassing for Wisconsin.

Walker's biggest talking point at "WALKERGROUP" relayed this wishful thinking; "Wisconsin had become a beacon for private sector investment that led to prosperity for hard-working families." Seriously? And yet, those same "hard-working families" are still feel left behind, resentful, angry, while still making a minimum wage that hasn't gone up in over 10 years losing 16 percent of their buying power.

So I couldn't let the following twitter thread disappear without documenting it below. Here's the jaw-dropping tweet from a very forgetful Walker, who's not all that smart:

Here's reporter Jud Loundsbury's response:

Here's what real oppression looks like beyond Walker's ironic inability to recognize how "capitalism," and the NBA, took sides with the China for the love of money, and not Hong Kong's protests to protect civil liberties. It gets messy when reality meets up with meaningless GOP talking points...women held in a cell at the U.S. border...: 

But Scott Walker loves China really:

Walker brushed off his party’s concerns about trade with China, downplayed citizens’ worries about outsourcing, and called the country’s trade practices “good and fair.” That governor was Scott Walker—the same governor who, on Tuesday, confused just about everyone by saying Obama should make the Chinese president cancel his upcoming state visit. Same guy.

According to one analysis, the Badger State lost more than 60,000 jobs during his tenure because of the growing Chinese trade deficit and the country’s currency manipulation.

Walker’s 2013-2015 biennial budget proposal included a provision that would have foreign individuals and corporations own unlimited amounts of land in the state, even if they didn’t live there. “[T]here's no question that this would allow the Chinese government to buy a big chunk of land in northwest Wisconsin if it wanted to,” said Republican then-state Senator Dale Schultz at the time, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.

Walker's AOC dig Gets Surreal: It's looks like Walker has never had to worry about paying for Tonette's hair salon bill. For some reason, Walker pounced on this...

Conservatives will take any opportunity they can get to rag on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) for being a normal human being. For example, many expressed outrage upon learning that she spent $300 (plus tip) on a haircut and color. The fact that she paid someone a fairly average amount of money for a necessary service sparked fake outrage amongst her haters, who apparently think her criticisms of the rich mean she should not pay skilled workers for their time and talents. One critic, in particular, former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R), took aim at Ocasio-Cortez Saturday.

Giving up the Future for Tax-cuts Today.

Let's call it "tax-cut atrophy."

While Wisconsin Republicans are enjoying their out-of-step tax-cut agenda, taxpayers took off in a different direction. It was odd watching Republicans cut education spending at the same time taxpayers, who voted for them, went out of their way to increase education spending.

First, here's Scott Walker's familiar bragging "point" that gave us Wisconsin's "lost decade."

What a hero. Yet constituents had to raise their taxes gladly, after "years of flat state support" from Walker and GOP legislators. In just 2019 alone...

Voters across Wisconsin approved nearly $770 million in additional funding for school districts ... continuing a trend of strong voter support for increasing local property taxes to offset years of flat state support for public K-12 schools.

These property tax increases through local referendums have continued throughout Walker's "tax cutting" term:

Embarrassed that their own constituents were raising taxes, Republicans claimed it was irresponsible and unfair to other taxpayers, and then passed laws making it harder to hold referendums.   

Wisconsin's Future is Now, not actually in the Future:  The Republican tax-cut blinders are on, ignoring the inevitable taxpayer support and venture capital investment needed for future businesses and job creation. Their most recent budget proposal could be worse:

Sen. David Craig, one of the chamber’s most fiscally conservative members, (said) that he would join Sen. Steve Nass in opposing the (budget) plan, which they say spends too much money. Two other Republican fiscal hawks — Sens. Duey Stroebel and Chris Kapenga haven’t yet said...

Taxpayer Spending needed to be World Leader Again: The Wall Street Journal's "City Lab" featured this in-depth look the US's decline from being a dominant leader in capital investment to where we are today.

America’s long-standing lead in Venture Capital backed high tech is now in jeopardy, according to our analysis. About two-and-a-half decades ago, the U.S. was home to more than 95 percent of global startup and venture-capital activity. Today, that share has been cut to a little more than one-half. And the pace of that decline is accelerating, with more than half of the fall occurring in just the past five years.

Game-changing companies like Intel, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Genentech, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Uber, Airbnb, and WeWork are just a few well-known examples of venture-backed companies that have introduced new technologies and spurred the rise of whole new industries.

And yes, we can blame tighter GOP budgets since their 2010 takeover, cuts to spending, and their irrational focus on tax-cuts. I'm writing this because Madison was one of the cities mentioned in the story, and we're a college town struggling to get state funding for the UW...:

Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Minneapolis make the list of the world’s 60 or so established startup cities. The majority of them, such as Nashville, Detroit, Indianapolis, Columbus, and Cincinnati, are part of a separate group of 40 or so emerging tech hubs, alongside smaller U.S. college towns like Ann Arbor, Madison, and Bozeman, and rapidly growing Asian hubs like Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Calcutta, and Manila.

Thanks to Scott Walker's obsession with tax-cuts, continued now by the locked in gerrymandered Republican majority, we're going miss out again on making this a better state for people and business. And don't forget Trump's attack on immigrants:

...outlined in the Wall Street Journal, part of the reason is that other nations and global cities have gotten wise to America’s long-term advantage and increased their investments in universities and R&D; made their cities denser and more attractive; and worked hard to retain their talent at home and opened their borders to global talent. The eroding advantage of the U.S. is partly self-inflicted, because it has clamped down on immigration and become far less open to foreign entrepreneurs and innovators.

Here are a few more charts:

On Job Growth, Tax Cuts and Protecting Dairy Farms, Walker's Legacy an Astonishing Failure!

Scott Walker's smoke and mirrors legacy is really starting to crumble, even as Republican legislators brag about how great the last 8 years have been. Oops?

Let's note just how bad things after Walker replaced reality based problems crying out for solutions with right wing theoretical concepts that ignored everything.

Keep in mind, this is just two months into Gov. Evers first term. Republican Rep. Robin Vos repeated Walker's ridiculous sales pitch, even as the following facts contradicted every word:

Vos: "Our state and its people are thriving. Wisconsin now has more jobs than people to fill them. It’s clear: the state of our state is strong. You might ask, how did we get here? For the last eight years, Republicans worked hard to make Wisconsin open for business. We cut taxes by more than $8 billion."

1. Walker thought Tax Cuts created Jobs...Wrong: The numbers just came out, and they're not helping Vos' argument one bit. For a complete breakdown see Jake's Wisconsin Funhouse:

Try attracting out of state workers with wages 20% lower than surrounding states. Looks like that ad campaign is just another waste of taxpayer dollars.

Tax Cuts = 30 Percent Fewer Jobs, Poverty Rates Higher, Lower Participation Rates: A study from July 14, 2017, from a researcher who calls Wisconsin his home state...:

WPT: Wisconsin Tax Cuts Did More Harm Than Good, Study Finds: A new study coauthored by Oklahoma State University Economics Prof. Dan Rickman found recent tax cuts actually hurt Wisconsin. The study, which compared Kansas to Wisconsin, found that 30 percent more jobs could have been created from 2011 to 2015 if it were not for tax cuts. The study also found that the unemployment and poverty rate would have been lower, and labor participation would be higher.

Scott Walker Legacy; he Ignored and Destroyed Dairy Farms: Walker's 8 year focus was to replace our current structure of government with a theoretical conservative system that shockingly ignored solving problems; youth prisons, veterans homes, polluted drinking water, underfunded state parks, deteriorating roads, financially squeezed schools, mass transit, CWD, etc. and...

...the one things that put Wisconsin on the map; America's Dairyland. Instead of understanding the problem and leading a reform movement to save our states dairy farms, heck the whole industry, he instinctively thought of mega corporate farmers and producing an oversupply milk. That resulted in low prices for the last 4 years:

In 2012, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker announced an incentive program to produce, as a state, 30 billion pounds of milk a year by 2020 — a 15 percent increase. 

Despite record production every year since 2002, Walker urged farmers to step it up even more.

Dairy farmers ... reached 30 billion pounds in 2016 — four years ahead of schedule. By then, however, the market had turned and many dairy farmers were having trouble breaking even on their new investments. Some felt duped by the agribusiness system.

“The more surplus farmers produce, the lower the price of agricultural commodities for food processors," said Kara O'Connor, government relations director for the Wisconsin Farmers Union.

Who did Walker help most? Guess...

"All of the most powerful players in the industry, except the farmer, benefit from overproduction."

Notice how Walker's program alone brought down the dairy industry in the chart below:

Walker left another major problem for the Democrats to solve:

1. By the turn of the 20th century, 90 percent of Wisconsin farms had dairy cows, and led the nation in butter and cheese production ... until 1993 when that recognition went to California.


2. For nearly 80 years, “America’s Dairyland” has been imprinted on the state’s license plates.

3. Dairy contributes more to Wisconsin’s economy than citrus does to Florida or potatoes to Idaho, and more than a quarter of the nation’s cheese comes out of the state.

But then the problem festered under Walker and his bad policy advice, along with Trump's tariffs:

4. Wisconsin lost almost 700 dairy farms in 2018, an unprecedented rate of nearly two a day.

5. As of Feb. 1, Wisconsin had 8,046 dairy herds, down 40 percent from 10 years earlier, according to state Department of Agriculture data. 

6. Remaining dairy farmers have burned through their farm equity and credit to remain in business. 

7. Although consumption increased, they've not always kept pace with runaway production.  

8. Foreign markets for American dairy products have shrunk in response to tariffs that President Donald Trump placed on foreign steel and aluminum. Cheese shipments to China have fallen almost 65 percent, according to industry figures, and exports to Mexico are down more than 10 percent. 

9. Laurie Fischer, CEO of the American Dairy Coalition (said) “The administration has not lifted steel and aluminum tariffs on Mexican and Canadian products, and in response, those countries are refusing to (ratify) the pact or lift retaliatory tariffs, impacting dairy products and other items."

And Trump's supposed farm "bailout? Horrific:

10. A 55-cow dairy farm would receive a one-time payment of $725 from the bailout but stood to lose between $36,000 and $48,000 in income last year from low milk prices, according to the Wisconsin Farmers Union. A 290-cow dairy would get $4,905 but would lose several hundred thousand dollars. 

11. Farmers have flushed milk down the barn drain because they couldn't find a processing plant to take it. 

12. Some farmers have shot calves because the newborn animals had no market value and were considered too expensive to raise for beef. 

13. The stress farmers have endured in trying to keep everything together has been overwhelming, especially on farms passed down for generations. Nobody wants to be the one to close the gates. Elizabeth Rich, an attorney from Plymouth and president of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund Foundation said, “Fifth- and sixth-generation dairy farmers are losing their farms; many are killing themselves. We can and must do better.”

14. Some farmers say the U.S. needs a milk supply management system, like Canada has, that imposes production quotas and protects farmers' income. Critics of Canada's system say it has resulted in trade barriers to U.S. dairy products. "But whether the answer is a system similar to Canada's supply management program or something completely different, we can't just sit back and continue down the same current path without trying to find something that actually works for farmers," Brad Rach, dairy director for the National Farmers Organization, wrote in a blog.  

Desperate GOP Lame Duck Laws Struck Down: Early Voting and Politician Twitter Block!!!

Wisconsin's hard core Republican extremist legislature needs a little continuing education in civics and constitutional law.

Power didn't just corrupt, it also made Republicans forget who they were elected to serve. Oh, and gerrymandering also made it impossible for Republicans to claim the voters chose them when in fact it was the other way around.

The GOP's lame duck legislation is coming apart at the seams in the courts. 

And Scott Walker's legacy? Well, he signed off on this illegal stuff, and he'll be remembered for it:  

It's a big victory for now Attorney General Josh Kaul, who at the time, represented One Wisconsin Institute and Citizen Action of Wisconsin Education Fund. Is there any question at this point Republicans don't want people to vote, or even believe in the idea of elections themselves? 

Moving swiftly, a federal judge struck down limits on early voting that Republican lawmakers approved last month in a lame-duck session. In a five-page ruling, U.S. District Judge James Peterson concluded the new limits on early voting are invalid because they so closely mirror ones he struck down as unconstitutional in 2016. His decision also threw out parts of the lame-duck laws affecting IDs and other credentials that can be used for voting.

"This is not a close question: the three challenged provisions are clearly inconsistent with the (2016) injunctions that the court has issued in this case," Peterson wrote. Peterson also ruled that temporary voting credentials will be valid for 180 days instead of 60 days, as Republican lawmakers wanted. The credentials are given to people who have difficulty getting state ID cards because they lack birth certificates or other documents. Peterson's ruling also requires the state to allow students to use expired college IDs to vote. Republican lawmakers wanted college IDs to be accepted only if they had not expired.

No Brainer First Amendment Violation: A judge overturned a Twitter block by 3 Republicans legislators. Thanks to Trump, twitter accounts by politicians are now public and subject to the First Amendment. Irony? 

Federal District Judge William Conley ruled that three Wisconsin state legislators - Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Burlington, Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, and former Republican Rep. Jesse Kremer of Kewaskum - violated the free speech rights of a liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now, when the lawmakers blocked the group from their respective Twitter feeds.

Scot Ross, the group's executive director, called the decision a victory for "open, transparent and accountable government. Elected officials can’t exclude people from public forums just because they don’t agree with their political views or don’t want to hear what they may have to say," Ross said in an email.

Conley wrote that the case presented a "novel question of law for this court: is the interactive portion of a government official’s Twitter account a designated public forum? While there is no settled law on whether a government actor’s social media account is a designated public forum, two federal district courts have now held that government officials’ social media accounts can constitute public forums," Conley wrote, adding that the lawmakers presented no reason for blocking One Wisconsin Now, "except by vague innuendo or by claiming that they must have had a valid reason but can no longer remember why they did so."

Conley's ruling follows a decision from a federal judge in New York, who in May said President Donald Trump is not permitted under the U.S. Constitution to block people from his Twitter feed. In that case, U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, determined that Trump's Twitter account is considered a "public forum" under the Constitution because it is an interactive space where Twitter users can dialogue directly with him and other users. She also found that by blocking people from it, Trump was discriminating against them based on their viewpoint.