Tag Archives: walker

In Shocking News, Scott Walker’s Health Care Plan Screws the Poor

by ForrestTrujillo Posted on August 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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This is going to be the most anticlimactic blog post ever, but can you guess how Scott Walker’s health care plan compares to Obamacare for the poor? And how it compares for the upper middle class and the wealthy?

Damn. You guessed. But just to make it official, here are a couple of charts that show how the subsidies in the two plans compare at different income levels. I used the Kaiser calculator to estimate Obamacare subsidies and Walker’s written document to calculate tax credits under his plan. The chart on the left shows a 3-person family with 30-year-old parents. The chart on the right shows the same thing with older parents.

And have no fear: I chose $30,000 as the minimum income level because most families below that level qualify for Medicaid. And you guessed it: Walker’s plan slashes Medicaid too. So the poor and the working class get screwed by Walker no matter what their income level is.

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In Shocking News, Scott Walker’s Health Care Plan Screws the Poor

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Scott Walker’s Abortion Flimflam Explained! (Maybe.)

by JuliannDiggs Posted on August 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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I had almost given up on anyone helping me understand what Scott Walker meant when he explained why he opposed abortion exceptions not just for rape and incest, but also to save the life of the mother. “There are many other alternatives that can also protect the life of that mother,” Walker said during Thursday’s debate. “That’s been consistently proven.”

But then a reader came to my rescue, and it turns out that Jonathan Allen had it right in the first place. It really does derive from the Catholic doctrine of intent in medical care. Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association provides the nickel explanation:

The reality [] is that an abortion is never necessary to save the life of the mother. This is, quite simply, a choice that a mother and her doctor never have to make, and Ms. Kelly has contributed to the already widespread ignorance on this subject.

The nearest circumstance would be what are called ectopic pregnancies, the anomaly in which the fertilized egg attaches to the Fallopian tube and never implants in the womb of the mother. Removal of the Fallopian tube is necessary to preserve the mother’s life and thus is a procedure that indirectly — not directly — causes the death of an unborn child. This technically is not even an abortion, because the procedure is done for the purpose of removing the Fallopian tube, not killing the baby.

As Lauren Enriquez writes, “The abortion procedure is not — ever — necessary to save the life of a mother…A true abortion — in which the direct intention is to end the life of a human being — is not a treatment for any type of maternal health risk.”

Now this explanation I understand. The key step in this tap dance is to declare that some procedures that terminate a pregnancy aren’t “true” abortions. Even if you know ahead of time that a procedure will abort the fetus, it’s not really an abortion as long as abortion isn’t your intent.

In other words, I just didn’t have my cynicism meter turned up high enough. When Walker said there are always “alternatives” that can protect the life of the mother, he was only talking about true abortions. He wasn’t talking about medical procedures that kill the fetus only as a side effect. Those aren’t true abortions, so they’re not part of the class of procedures for which there are alternatives.

Yeesh. If this is really the explanation, it takes political misdirection to a new level. All that’s left now is to explain what Walker meant by “This has been consistently proven.” That makes it sound very science-y, but this has nothing to do with science. It has to do with the meaning of the word “abortion.” Walker has chosen a specific term-of-art definition that’s quite different from how most people understand the word. This allows him to say something that seems to mean one thing but actually means another.

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Scott Walker’s Abortion Flimflam Explained! (Maybe.)

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Republicans May Be Shooting Themselves in the Foot Over Abortion

by Charole1736 Posted on August 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here’s an interesting recent poll question:

There’s not much need to tell you I just made this up. If it were real, this bill would get 0 percent support. Everyone who saw it would be immediately appalled at the idea that someone could be casually murdered if they were born as a result of rape or incest.

But if you ask this same question about abortion, this is roughly what you get. Very strong majorities, even among Republicans, support an exception to an abortion ban for rape and incest. Among other things, this is why I don’t believe most people who claim to believe that abortion is murder. If you support a rape or incest exception, it’s pretty obvious you don’t really think of abortion as murder.

So where am I going with this? Right here, with Paul Waldman’s observation that the Republican Party’s move to the extreme right on abortion is getting much more public than in the past:

One moment in the debate that may have struck some as odd occurred when Marco Rubio got a question about him supporting exceptions for rape and incest victims to abortion bans, and he insisted that he supports no such thing. Mike Huckabee declared that “I think the next president ought to invoke the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution now that we clearly know that that baby inside the mother’s womb is a person at the moment of conception.” Scott Walker went even further, stating his opposition to exceptions to save the life of the pregnant woman (“I’ve said many a time that that unborn child can be protected, and there are many other alternatives that can also protect the life of that mother”).

In the past, most Republicans have fudged this issue. The more honest among them admit that it’s mostly for political reasons: in their hearts they don’t support any exceptions to an abortion ban, but they realize the broader public does. So the lesser evil is to do what’s necessary to move public opinion, which is the only way to eventually get to a full-blown ban on abortion.

But that fudging is apparently getting less tenable these days, and it’s forcing Republican candidates to take public positions that they know are very unpopular. If this starts to spread, it could be bad news for the incrementalists, who correctly believe that such an extreme position is likely to lose them a lot of support. I wonder what would happen in the next debate if one of the moderators asked one of those show-your-hands questions to the entire field about whether they support a rape or incest exception to an abortion ban? We know where Rubio and Walker are. But what about the rest of them?

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Republicans May Be Shooting Themselves in the Foot Over Abortion

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Debate Liveblogging: The First GOP Presidential Debate of 2015

by Parab3olum234 Posted on August 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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WRAP-UP: Marian, who seems to be more in touch with the common man than I am, thinks Rubio was the winner tonight. He seemed fine to me: plenty conservative, but also serious and wonkish. But the big winner? I’m not sure.

So who was? I don’t think there was a big breakout. But I do think there were two losers. First, Donald Trump. His schtick might be entertaining in small doses, but when you hear it repeatedly in response to question after question, it just seems juvenile. This was just not a good format for his brand of performance art.

The second loser was Walker. Not because he made any big mistakes, but because he didn’t really do anything to break out, and he needed to. This is not a huge deal: I don’t think he did himself any real harm, and there are plenty more debates to come. But he needs to up his game.

Jeb Bush was very presidential sounding, but mostly treaded water. For him, though, this isn’t so bad. Unlike Walker, I don’t think he really had to do any more than that.

Tonally, this debate was like night and day compared to the earlier debate. There was plenty of skirmishing, plenty of barbs, and much more energy. The actual substantive disagreements—Rand Paul aside—were pretty slight, but the candidates made the most of them.

There weren’t a whole lot of memorable zingers. Even Trump seemed off his game, even defensive at times (when he was asked about his contributions to Hillary Clinton, for example). Walker had his bit about Hillary’s email server, but it sounded too robotic to draw blood. Still, I’m sure it will get plenty of cable news air time, since there wasn’t a lot of competition. Mostly, I suspect the bits that will be on a 24/7 loop are the direct arguments between the candidates.

Summary: Trump and Walker probably lost a little ground. Maybe Christie too. Rubio gained a bit of ground. Bush stayed even. The rest probably will stay about where they are, which is so low that it hardly matters if they gained or lost a percentage point.

Prediction: Someone will drop off the top ten, and Carly Fiorina will be on the big stage next time. Personally, I think she did well, but not great. (Maybe because I live in California and remember her Senate run in 2010.) But the media seems to have decided very quickly that she did superbly. That will be enough to give her a bump in the polls.

Debate transcript here.

First off, I want to apologize if anyone gets seasick from the graphic at the top of this post. Sometimes politics requires sacrifices, I’m afraid. And I have to look at it too.

10:56 – Carson: “It’s time to move beyond” talking about race. Huge applause.

10:54 – Megyn Kelly is asking about God. But someone apparently came up during the commercial break to ask about veterans. So now she asks Rubio what he thinks about God and veterans. Kinda falling off the rails here.

10:52 – Kasich: “I do believe in miracles.” He’d better.

10:41 – Walker on recent cyberattacks: “It’s sad to think about, but probably the Russian and Chinese governments know more about Hillary Clinton’s email server than do the members of the United States Congress.” Zing! It got good applause, but wasn’t that a little too obviously a preplanned zinger?

10:37 – An Iranian general visited Russia. What would Trump do in response? No answer, but it would be totally different from what Obama is doing. BTW: the part of the Iran deal that Trump doesn’t like involves 24-day notice for inspections. Trump twice called it 24-hour.

10:35 – Walker gives a total non-answer about #BlackLivesMatter and civil rights.

10:32 – Kasich gets a surprising amount of applause when he gives a fairly tolerant answer about gay marriage.

10:31 – Trump’s defense of his big mouth: People’s heads are getting cut off. We don’t have time to be nice.

10:30 – I guess this debate is going two hours, not 90 minutes. Crap.

10:29 – Megyn Kelly asks Trump, “When did you actually become a Republican?” Trump says he has evolved. “You know who else evolved? Ronald Reagan.” Well, true enough.

10:26 – Rubio says he has never advocated a rape or incest exception to a ban on abortion. Is this true?

10:24 – Huckabee says “Iran got everything, we got nothing” from the Iran deal. With the exception of stopping Iran’s nuclear program for at least a decade, I suppose that’s true.

10:20 – Walker: We need to kill the Iran deal, put in place even more crippling sanctions, and then persuade our allies to go along. And how will we manage that? Crickets.

10:16 – Trump: Only four out of hundreds of his companies have gone bankrupt. So there. By the way, “this country, right now, owes $19 trillion, and they need someone like me to straighten out that mess.” Big applause. Crikey.

10:12 – Huckabee says his consumption tax is great because it will tax “illegals, prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers,” who are all freeloading off the system right now. Um….

10:11 – Christie: “I’m the only guy on this stage who’s put out a 12-point plan on entitlements.” Unsurprisingly, this got no applause. I guess 12-point plans aren’t what they used to be.

10:10 – Walker has exactly the same economic plan as Bush!

10:07 – How will Bush get 4% growth? Answer: lift our spirits, fix the tax code, get rid of regulations, repeal Obamacare, build the XL pipeline, fix the immigration system.

10:05 – Carson plays the Alinsky card on Hillary.

10:04 – Ben Carson doesn’t think Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. I wonder who he’s betting on?

9:51 – Trump says he gives money to lots of politicians because he gets favors in return. “I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what, when I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them and they are there for me.” So how about Hillary Clinton? What did he get from her? “I said, be at my wedding, and she came to my wedding. And you know why? Because she had no choice.” Ha ha ha. I wonder how long it takes before this routine gets old even with his supporters?

9:50 – Trump is asked why he supported single-payer health care 15 years ago but doesn’t anymore. He says it’s because 15 years ago was a different era. Huh? Word salad follows.

9:49 – Asked about health care, Trump says he was against the Iraq war. Okey dokey.

9:47 – Carson: “Carson doesn’t believe in fighting stupid wars.” Apparently this means he’s in favor of waterboarding.

9:45 – Bush: “We need to take out ISIS with every tool in our arsenal.” That’s all the detail we get from Bush.

9:41 – Cruz: “We will not defeat radical Islamic terrorists as long as we have a president unwilling to utter the words ‘radical Islamic terrorists.’ ” Yeesh. Apparently the way to defeat ISIS is to have a president who makes clear that joining ISIS amounts to signing your own death warrant. That’s all the detail we get about defeating ISIS.

9:37 – Chris Christie wants more surveillance, not less. Rand Paul supports the Bill of Rights. Christie: “When you’re sitting in a subcommittee blowing hot air, you can say anything you want.” Paul: “I don’t trust President Obama with our records. I know you gave him a big hug. If you want to give him a big hug again, go right ahead.” Christie: “The hugs I remember are the hugs I got after 9/11.” Megyn Kelly finally steps in and breaks up the fight.

9:36 – Well, everyone is opposed to illegal immigration.

9:31 – No one really wants to criticize Trump for saying illegal immigration is all due to the fact that our government is stupid.

9:26 – Chris Wallace wants to know if Trump has any specific evidence that the Mexican government is sending criminals over? Trump says that “border patrol people that I deal with, that I talk to, they say this is what’s happening, because our leaders are stupid.” The Mexican government is much more cunning than ours. “That’s what’s happening whether you like it or not.”

9:25 –Trump seems to think that Republicans didn’t really care about illegal immigration until he came along. Um….

9:20 – Rand Paul: “We didn’t create ISIS. ISIS created ISIS.” Roger that. Then Paul suggests that the way to beat ISIS is to stop funding their allies. I’m not sure what he was getting at with that.

9:18 – Huckabee thinks the next president should just ignore the Supreme Court and ban abortion. Again, huh?

9:17 – Scott Walker defends his opposition to a life-of-the-mother exception for abortion because there are always ways to protect the mother. “That’s been proven.” Huh?

9:11 – Megyn Kelly wants to know why Trump insults women so much. Trump is Trump in response. He’s kidding! He’s having fun. America’s problem is too much political correctness. That’s ridiculous when America is losing to everyone—everyone!—and needs to be made great again. If you don’t like it, tough.

9:09 – Rubio: “How is Hillary Clinton going to lecture me about living paycheck to paycheck? I was raised paycheck to paycheck.”

9:06 – Rand Paul barges in to attack Trump. “He’s hedging his bets because he’s used to buying politicians.”

9:04 – First question: a handraising question. Is anyone unwilling to pledge to support the eventual nominee? Only Trump raises his hand. He’s not willing to make the pledge unless he’s the nominee.

8:55 – To my surprise, Carly Fiorina has been anointed the big winner of the happy hour debate. I can see the case for her being the winner by a bit—she was competent and on message and made no mistakes—but not by a landslide. But apparently the punditocracy has spoken. Fiorina is ready for the big show.

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Debate Liveblogging: The First GOP Presidential Debate of 2015

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Scott Walker Thinks Obama’s Climate Plan Will Jack Up Your Electric Bill. He’s Wrong.

by JanaShumway Posted on August 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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Today President Barack Obama released the final version of his signature climate plan, which sets new limits on carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector. Each state has a unique target, custom-built for its particular mix of energy sources. Each state also has total freedom to determine how exactly to reach the target. But the rules are clearly designed to expedite the closure of coal-fired power plants, the nation’s number-one source of CO2 emissions.

It took less than a day for the first legal challenges to the plan to emerge from coal interests. The news rules also attracted some pointed criticism from leading Republican presidential contenders, including Jeb Bush and Scott Walker. Here’s what Walker had to say on Twitter:

Neither of those predictions is likely to come true. Cries about job loss and high costs always accompany new environmental regulation. In the case of the Clean Power Plan, as the rules announced today are known, the fear revolves around the image of coal plants around the country going dark. Folks get laid off from the plant, there’s less electricity on the grid, so the price of electricity goes up, so factories can’t afford to pay their workers, so they lay them off…you get the idea.

But as I’ve reported in the past, that view of the plan is misguided for two reasons. The first is that Obama’s new rules, while an important and historic milestone in the annals of climate action, really aren’t much of a departure from the direction that the energy market is already going. As our friend Eric Holthaus at Slate points out, many states are already well on their way to achieving the new carbon targets simply because, for lots of reasons, making tons of inefficient energy from dirty old coal plants just isn’t economically feasible anymore. So you’d be hard-pressed to pin any particular lost job in the coal industry on Obama alone.

The second reason Walker and his ilk are off-base is that they focus too heavily on the coal-killing aspect of the plan, without also considering two equally vital aspects: (a) The building of tons of new energy supplies from renewables, and (b) big improvements in energy efficiency, which will allow us to use less power overall.

It’s true that by the time the plan takes effect, electricity prices will have risen steadily, as they always have for as long as we’ve had electricity. Because electric utilities typically have monopolies over their service area and prize reliability over affordability, power costs don’t naturally fall over time in the way that the costs of other technologies do. But even though electric rates will probably go up, monthly electric bills are likely to go down, thanks to efficiency improvements. The exact calculus will be different in every state, but to take one example, the Southern Environmental Law Center projected that in Virginia, the Clean Power Plan will lead to an 8 percent reduction in electric bills. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, savings like that add up to $37.4 billion for all US homes and businesses by 2020. The NRDC also projects that the plan will create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the energy efficiency sector, as homeowners, businesses, factories, etc. invest in upgrades that enable them use less power.

In any case, the solar industry alone already employs more than twice the number of people who work in coal mining. Making the energy system more climate-friendly is as much about juicing the clean energy industry as it is dismantling the coal industry.

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Scott Walker Thinks Obama’s Climate Plan Will Jack Up Your Electric Bill. He’s Wrong.

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Four Years Ago Scott Walker Promised This Woman He’d Bust Wisconsin’s Unions

by PVUMorris370 Posted on July 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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The super-PAC backing Scott Walker has many wealthy backers, but its single biggest contributor is Diane Hendricks, who ponied up $5 million. A billionaire through the roofing supply business she and her late husband founded, Hendricks has been one of Walker’s top benefactors since he first ran for governor. In 2012, Hendricks was the biggest donor to Walker’s campaign to stave off a union-led recall effort, and now she’s stepped up for him again. Out of the $20 million raised by the pro-Walker group Unintimidated PAC, 25 percent came from Hendricks.

If there was any question that Walker and Hendricks are on the same page, here’s a video of the two chatting in 2011 shortly after he took office.

“Good to see you!” Walker says, dashing through the door and hugging Hendricks and kissing her on the cheek.

Hendricks asks Walker about the possibility of turning Wisconsin into a “completely red state.”

“Oh, yeah,” Walker responds, going on to lay out his “divide and conquer” strategy for attacking public sector unions.

Despite her massive contribution, Hendricks still has some close competition as the group’s biggest funder. Marlene Ricketts, the wife of TD Ameritrade founder and Chicago Cubs owner Joe Ricketts, gave $4.9 million. And Joe Ricketts himself tossed in another $100,000.

Richard Uihlein and his wife Elizabeth, the founder and president of Illinois box company Uline, respectively, gave $2.5 million to the super-PAC as well.

Rounding out the list of seven-figure donors was Access Industries, a New York City holding company run by Len Blavatnik. Blavatnik is a Ukranian-born businessman who in April was named the “richest man in Britain” with an estimated net worth of $20.1 billion. Blavatnik, who is a US citizen, is also known for his lavish donations to universities including Oxford and Tel Aviv University. On Thursday, the super-PAC supporting Lindsey Graham reported receiving $500,000 from Blavatnik’s company.

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Four Years Ago Scott Walker Promised This Woman He’d Bust Wisconsin’s Unions

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Scott Walker Has a Texas-Sized Fundraising Problem

by AshleeBriggs Posted on July 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Before most GOP presidential contenders set foot in Iowa or New Hampshire, they typically first hit another pivotal state: Texas. The Lonestar State is the undisputed center of the Republican Party’s donor base, so almost all of the GOP hopefuls have trekked regularly there and established extensive fundraising operations in Texas. But there’s one big exception: Scott Walker, who formally announced his presidential bid on Monday.

The union-busting Wisconsin governor may be a conservative darling, but he’s way behind the curve when it comes to courting Texas’ biggest money men. Bill Miller, a top Texas lobbyist who regularly advises megadonors on their contributions, says he’s heard almost no buzz from the donor class about Walker. In the past, Miller has worked with major political benefactors including the late Bob Perry, a Texas home builder who gave more than $70 million to conservative causes over the years and was the major funder behind the 2004 Swiftboat Veterans for Truth group. This year Miller says he’s talked to clients about many of the Republican candidates, but not Walker.

“No one is asking about him,” Miller says. “None of our clients. We have a huge client base. It’s oddly quiet for a guy that’s supposedly top three among the potential nominees.”

Walker has previously received backing from the Koch brothers, and is said to be among the top contenders for support from their extensive donor network during this election cycle. But, if he’s unable to make inroads in Texas’ donor world, it could hurt his chances at the presidency—if only because his most formidable opponents will have the state’s deep reserve of money behind them.

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Scott Walker Has a Texas-Sized Fundraising Problem

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Quote of the Day: The Minimum Wage is Lame, Dude

by MaritzaDesroche Posted on July 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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From boring Midwestern governor Scott Walker:

The left claims that they’re for American workers and they’ve just got just really lame ideas — things like the minimum wage.

Well, there are some economists who would agree with him, but essentially no ordinary Americans. The minimum wage is almost as beloved as Social Security. In fact, ordinary Americans not only like the minimum wage, but about 70 percent of them think it should be raised. So Walker is definitely taking a bold stand here.

Oddly enough, as Steve Benen points out, this has become sort of a thing among Republicans lately. They’ve always opposed increases to the minimum wage, of course, but now a lot of them oppose the minimum wage itself. Where has this suddenly come from? Perhaps someone who follows the right-wing idea network can give us a rundown. I mean, sure, Milton Friedman opposed the minimum wage, but conservatives apparently abandoned anything remotely Friedmanesque during the Great Recession. So it can’t be that.

So what is it? Why has this suddenly jumped from mumblings in Heritage Foundation white papers to campaign platforms for presidential candidates?

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Quote of the Day: The Minimum Wage is Lame, Dude

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Today’s Proposal In Legislative Transparency: You Amend It, You Own It

by MargieIGTj Posted on July 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last week Wisconsin Republicans tried to sneak language into a budget bill that would have gutted the state’s open records law. Sadly for them, they got caught and had to withdraw the proposal—which, Gov. Scott Walker hastily assured us, “was never intended to inhibit transparent government in any way.” Uh huh.

This kind of sleazy behavior is hardly uncommon, but there’s one bit of it that’s equally common and even sleazier:

State Republicans have refused to disclose who inserted the language into the budget legislation, which was approved late Thursday evening. Before dropping the provisions entirely, the governor’s office said Friday it was considering changes to the proposals concerning public records law, but would not comment as to whether Walker was involved in the proposals in the first place.

Here’s my proposal for transparency in legislating: every change in every law has to be attributed to someone. There’s no virgin birth here. Someone wrote this language. Someone asked that it be inserted. Someone agreed to insert it. You have to be pretty contemptuous of your constituents to clam up and pretend that no one knows where it came from.

This kind of puerile buck-passing is way too common, and it needs to stop. Maybe if they knew their name was going to be attached, legislators would think twice before inserting egregiously self-serving crap like this.

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Today’s Proposal In Legislative Transparency: You Amend It, You Own It

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The Koch Brothers Usually Have Scott Walker’s Back. Not This Time.

by RosieDPFDpn Posted on June 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Koch brothers and their political machine have long been key allies of Wisconsin governor and presumptive 2016 hopeful Scott Walker. With the GOP presidential field getting more crowded by the day and political observers wondering who will with the Koch Primary—and the financial backing of these billionaires and their donor network—Walker has sparked a controversy in his home state in which and he and Team Koch are on opposite sides.

When Walker announced a plan last week to spend $250 million in taxpayer money for a proposed $500 million basketball arena in downtown Milwaukee, the local chapter of the Koch-founded advocacy group Americans for Prosperity joined the chorus of detractors who condemned the project. The National Basketball Association is demanding the new venue and is threatening that the Milwaukee Bucks franchise may have to move if the arena isn’t built by 2017. This has put Walker in a tough spot. The failure to retain the team would be an ugly black eye for Walker, but the plan to spend taxpayer funds propping up a highly lucrative private business is irritating Wisconsin Republicans and Democrats alike.

While Walker’s forays into union-busting had strong conservative backing, the political dynamics involved in the public financing of sports arenas and stadiums are much different. Across the nation in recent years, conservatives and progressive groups and activists have questioned the notion that financing arenas for lucrative sports franchises with taxpayer funds will spur the local economy. And Walker is feeling the backlash.

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The Koch Brothers Usually Have Scott Walker’s Back. Not This Time.

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