Walker's Wisconsin still moving Forward? "...childhood poverty increase...parents lack of secure employment...teens not working."

So is the state moving in right direction, as Scott Walker claims? WPR: 

(A) report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation ranked Wisconsin 13th in the country for childhood well-being. Iowa and Minnesota respectively ranked third and fifth in the rankings.

Wisconsin's ranking is a holdover, still based on policies that have since been replaced. Here's the supposed forward movement Walker is so proud of:

Wisconsin showed gains in education and health, but “Within the economic well-being category, we saw childhood poverty increase, we saw children whose parents lack secure employment get worse, and we saw teens not in school and not working also get worse,” said Ken Taylor, the executive director of the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, which helped produce the report.

Taylor also pointed out that a report earlier this year found that Wisconsin was the worst state in the country for well-being of African-American children.

Taylor said he's concerned … “Our state has made some choices not to expand the use of the Affordable Care Act, for example,” he said. “The long-term implications of that, we're going to be watching those closely and we're concerned about those.”

The Milwaukee/Chicago Mega City idea Futuristic, Great next Step.

I'll admit, I never considered tying the entire Milwaukee-Chicago region together, but I like it. I'm also familiar with the old Wisconsin/Illinois rivalry and cliches that grew around it. It was fun bashing tolls and anything south of the cheddar curtain. Chicago radio personalities had their day with us as well. But that was then, this is now. So much traffic already exists between the two states major metropolitan districts, including Racine and Kenosha. 

This future thinking originated from Paris, France of all places:

jsonline: Critics say Wisconsin's efforts to lure businesses fed up with double-digit tax hikes inflame age-old Wisconsin-Illinois animosities and undermines efforts to bring Chicago and Milwaukee into a cohesive economic bloc.

The comments about business poaching came at a conference called "Milwaukee's Future in the Chicago Mega city," that explored the untapped potential of the Chicago-Milwaukee economy. The event was sponsored by Marquette University and the Journal Sentinel. Milwaukee's most tangible and immediate ties to the global economy run through Chicago, which already is a global city … The event was prompted in part by a report issued by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a global economic think tank based in Paris. The 332-page report issued in March advocated closer ties within the Chicago-Milwaukee economy, and declared the region "is at a tipping point."

ManpowerGroup Inc. chief executive Jeff Joerres, said it's disappointing that it took a team of economists from Paris to issue the wake-up call. The OECD found that the Chicago-Milwaukee region is politically splintered despite common industries, highways and shoreline. Among the most pernicious practices that split the region, the OECD found, is Wisconsin's practice of poaching companies.

Ironically, when the M-7 formed five years ago (Milwaukee 7 economic development group), it asked its seven member counties to sign a noncompete pact promising not to poach companies from one another, calling it a zero-sum game.

Yet the Chicago Chamber, no bastion of liberalism, wants to explore what sounds like “progress,” a bad word in Republican world:

The Chicago Chamber wants to take the next step and create a Tri-State Alliance for Regional Development. That group would gather civic and business leaders from the region and begin the baby steps toward broader cooperation, said Kelly O'Brien, a senior official at the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce. 

Don't believe your lying eyes, believe Scott Walker.

I just loved the way this opening line was written on Channel3000's news site:

Gov. Scott Walker said on Friday that despite state budget cuts and recent dismal job growth numbers, he believes the state is headed on the right path.

Can he get away with that?

Question: "Is this the year that you expected when you came in January?"

Walker: "We knew there would be challenges, but I had no idea what kind of national attention and focus about pro and con on these issues. But, it is what it is."

Wow! And finally:

Question: "How do you think about it that you are the first governor in history to be facing this? Or that you could be the first governor in (Wisconsin) history to face a recall election?"

Walker: "Ironically, if Lord willing, with the support of the voters, I'll also be the first governor in state history to be elected twice in the same term."

Since Walker has cut public employee pay, money they could have been used to buy things, income and sales taxes are down. Big surprise:

Walker takes Down State Economy, while his believers think its just Democratic sour grapes

A scorched earth policy is the easy way to balance a state budget. But is "easy" what Wisconsin voters wanted? There is no ideological proof a strict conservative policy would ever work in the real world. Not anywhere. And guess what, it isn't working. Taking money out of state workers pockets, who pay state taxes and spend locally, never did make any sense. But the budget is balanced? It isn't, and more cuts have already been suggested. 

Gov. Scott Walker’s economic policies have caused so much job loss that Wisconsin is trailing the national pace of job creation. That’s brought home by a new report from IWF, The Price of Extremism: Wisconsin’s economy under the Walker administration.

If only Wisconsin had matched the national pace of job creation since April, about 34,000 more families would have a breadwinner with a full-time job, the report says.

Wisconsin lags the national economy because of Walker’s “cuts only” approach to budgeting. His policies have pulled billions of dollars out of the state economy, the worst possible action he could have taken during a difficult economic period.

Walker’s cuts include:

Cuts in state aid for important programs at the state and local level, Cuts in aid to low-income families, Cuts in take-home pay for hundreds of thousands of public employees, Rejections of federal dollars.

The indirect ripple effects of these policies will alone cause the destruction of about 18,000 full-time jobs, according to IWF’s economic simulations. The report also includes estimates of the impact on a number of individual counties.