Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Question Time?

I know, I know. If we start asking questions, we won't get anywhere. There is far too much second-guessing going on around here. But while we're waiting for our next directive, let's have a little fun with numbers: Roughly fifty percent of the registered voters in Wisconsin voted in last November's election. That was the one that put Scott Walker into office. Fifty-six percent of those people who dragged themselves out to the polls that day were responsible for that. Or, to be slightly imprecise, one quarter of the eligible voters put Scott Walker in the Governor's Mansion. That's how numbers work. That's how elections work. We get the government we deserve.
But let's go back to that mansion thing. This is a state, like so many others in our great union these days, in financial chaos. What can one man do to keep the wheels on the bus from falling off and leaving one hundred percent of the registered voters without a pot in which to put their collective chickens? Sorry, for the question there, but it was rhetorical, since you could do what California's Jerry Brown is doing by living in a loft in downtown Sacramento, avoiding the need for massive renovations and upkeep required to make the Governor's Mansion livable. Even our previous Governator did his part. Arnold Scharzenegger chose not to take the one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollar a year salary for doing the job. I call that fiscally responsible. Which brings us back to Mister Walker. The one hundred and thirty-thousand dollar a year salary for being governor of Wisconsin ranks nineteenth out of fifty states. While he's proposing budget cuts of all sorts, and an end to collective bargaining by government workers' unions, he's still cashing his checks and living in a mansion. It is from there that he gives his fireside chat updates beneath a portrait of another California governor, Ronald Reagan. It is also the place he took a call from a prankster who called posing as gazillionaire David Koch. And for the record, that call lasted just under ten minutes without Governor Walker figuring out that he had been duped. Just another number. Questions. I've got a lot of them, but they can wait for another time.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

One-quarter of the eligible voters, or one-quarter of the registered voters?

Kristen Caven said...

Did you know Ronald Reagan raised taxes during every office he held?