As I stated in a previous blog, “To my friends who voted for Governor Walker, all three times, I often asked and still do, has your quality of life improved? Does me having to pay more for my healthcare make yours any better? Does weakening my job security strengthen yours? Did my pay cut help to get you a raise? Usually I get blank stares, but the point is that the reasons for voting for Governor Walker in the first place run much deeper. One of the most effective messages Governor Walker used against public sector employees was to tap into the deep resentment that many people feel/felt toward those they perceived to be an elitist class apart. As he stated, it was a fight between the ‘have-nots’ vs. the ‘haves.’ To many who voted for Walker, it wasn’t about making things better for your fellow Wisconsinites, for Wisconsin’s economy, or improving misguided policies. Walker supporters wanted to even the playing field through shared misery. Instead of working together to get better healthcare, job security, and pay in the private sector, instead, voters wanted some kind of justice where everyone suffered equally. Public workers were and still remain an easy scapegoat with our ‘Cadillac benefits’ and ‘job security for life.’ Even though tenure is not job security for life and those ‘Cadillac’ benefits were bargained for in exchange for lower wages, most have no idea of those realities unless they know someone or personally work in higher education or in the public sector.”

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Many have called this a historic month for progressives. The United States Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, the Affordable Care Act survived its second Supreme Court test in three years, and the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 5.3%, its lowest level since April 2008. But here in Wisconsin, it doesn’t seem as if we’re making the same progress. It is, in fact, and has felt as though we’ve been living in an alternative universe for years now. A recent study by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that Wisconsin’s middle class — households earning between about $34,500 and $103,000 — has shrunk at a faster rate than any other state in the country. As the Journal Sentinel reported in June, “Wisconsin was 35th out of 50 states in private-sector job growth over the four years of Walker’s first term, according to government data released Wednesday. The numbers came as no surprise. The state was 35th in 2011, 36th in 2012, 38th in 2013 and 38th in 2014, based on the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. Wisconsin has persistently lagged behind the nation and most nearby states during Walker’s time in office, and a sizable chunk of the state’s voters are aware of that trend, polls show. Walker’s unmet 2010 campaign promise of 250,000 new jobs and the partisan war over his governorship has turned Wisconsin’s employment picture into an ongoing political saga fueled by chronically tepid jobs reports.” As Christopher Flavelle notes there has been low wage growth, job growth, and “state tax revenue increased just 4 percent between the first quarter of 2011 and the third quarter of last year, compared with a 20 percent increase for the median state. So the news this month that Wisconsin was skipping a scheduled $108 million debt payment, owing to an unexpected budget shortfall, only underlined a trend that’s been years in the making. Of the 40 states with general-obligation bonds, 25 have credit ratings from Moody’s that are better than Wisconsin’s.” In addition, he states that “measured by relative economic outcomes, Walker’s tenure falls somewhere between lackluster and a failure.”

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What has garnered the most attention was the issue of open records. As The Green Bay Gazette, pointed out, strange bedfellows lined up against the open records gutting in the biennial budget including the Center for Media and Democracy, WI Attorney General Brad Shimel (R), State Sen. Robert Cowles, (R-Allouez), The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, the Madison chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, One Wisconsin Now, the conservative think-tank, the MacIver Institute for Public Policy and the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. Not shockingly, none of the lawmakers that slipped the measure in were willing to take credit for it.

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Walker supporters, if you are not swayed by facts, by frames, by narratives, and by language, then let me attempt to appeal to your most base patriotic notions of what is good, fair, just, and democratic. In an excerpt from a blog written specifically in regards to the Declaration of Independence and Walker’s policies in Wisconsin, the author writes, “‘Consent of the governed’ is a key phrase, because it implies that in the mind of the Founders legislators would have told the people how they intend to govern, and that people should have approved of the policies and actions that are taking place, likely through elections. Does that sound like this crew, who have governed by surprise and instituted numerous policies in this budget that they never ran on last November . . . .Think about the state’s secretive gerrymandering and numerous examples of the overriding of local initiatives and powers. These moves have skewed the makeup of the state’s legislature and laws to something that does not reflect the views of the state and local areas.