NY Times: For Wisconsin Governor, Battle Over State Finances Was Long in the Making

[alp227]

MADISON, Wis. — Just last fall, people here were waving campaign signs. But the blocks around the State Capitol have been filled for the past week with protesters brandishing signs with a different message — demanding a recall of Gov. Scott Walker, calling him a bully and likening him to Scrooge, Hosni Mubarak, even Hitler.

Seemingly overnight, Mr. Walker, a Republican, has become a national figure, the man who set off a storm of protest, now spreading to other states, with his blunt, unvarnished call for shrinking collective bargaining rights and benefits for public workers to help the state repair its budget.

Wisconsin may seem to the rest of the country like an unlikely catalyst, but to people who have watched the governor’s political rise through the years, the events of the week feel like a Scott Walker rerun, though on a much larger screen and with a much bigger audience.

Critics and supporters alike say Mr. Walker has never strayed from his approach to his political career: always pressing for austerity, and never blinking or apologizing for his lightning-rod proposals.

He regularly clashed with the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors over the past decade when he was that county’s elected executive. He pushed to privatize cleaning and food service workers and sought changes to pension and health contributions and workers’ hours. At one point, he proposed that the county government might want to consider, in essence, abolishing itself. It was redundant, he suggested.

Full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/us/politics/20walker.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

This story will be published on page A16 of Sunday's Times.

[ananda]

1. He set the people up to destroy unions.

Walker needs to go.

At the least, recall his Reep enablers . . . .

[somone]

2. "out-right-wing the right wing on his way to the next lily pad"

pretty good depiction of an opportunistic soulless piece of trash