Political Cartoonist Phil Hands has published an intriguing
cartoon about embattled, though hardly cowed-down, gubernatorial incumbent
Scott Walker.
challengers, Walkers has amassed a considerable fortune: $13 million and
counting. He deserves every penny, even if he has culled the majority of his war
chest from out-of-state donors. If politics is the most public example of
accountability, choice, and competition, then by all accounts Walker has deservedly
commanded a great deal of wealth and respect.
From the beginning of his term, Governor Walker and his
Republican colleagues engaged in a political fight which must eventually be waged
across the country: ending lavish expenditures handed out during previous
administrations to politically entrenched public sector unions. These benefits benefited
the political class and the public workers at the expense of the overwhelmed
and impoverished tax payers.
Curbing the collective bargaining rights of these interest
groups, a growing liability in the state, Walker demonstrated a mature tenacity
for difficult decision-making, even if the cost-cutting and budget-balancing which
ensued would damage his party in the mainstream media.
mantle of fiscal responsibility, and the greatest obstacle to this high
expectation of state government has been the public sector union monopoly,
which recently has served neither the state nor the citizen, but the small
cabal of union leaders.
this profligacy. I hope that the governor finishes his four years in office.