As if it's not enough that they rated "true" the obscene statement by Scott Walker that Wisconsin public employees are better off under Act 10, PolitiFact in Wisconsin (or, as usual, lack of facts) is at it again, propping up their pal, Scott Walker, Republican Governor of Wisconsin who is (only not) running for President whenever he's in Wisconsin (which is rarely).
This time they claim to be debunking the mystery of Scott Walkers sudden departure from Marquette University, which has been mysterious indeed not just because a lot of information is missing or because Walker himself has given differing accounts, but because student records are kept private unless the student gives consent for release. Walker hasn't given his consent.
In the PolitiFact article, while heavily laden with self-serving Scott Walker quotes is virtually absent in any critics. Criticism of Walker is couched in demeaning language or labeled as "unproven" such as:
Some Walker critics have engaged in a long campaign of unproven attacks, taking advantage of his reluctance -- until now -- to shed more light on this period. Walker has sometimes fueled the fire by shifting how he presents elements of his biography.
State Democrats cry the governor was "kicked out" of student elections at the Jesuit university in Milwaukee -- and maybe booted from Marquette altogether.
(bolding is mine)
While the article does go into his very early years at Marquette, becoming a McCarthyite style investigator in a student government scandal (recommending impeachment of student government leaders) only a few weeks after his enrollment in 1986 and then running for student government president the next year, it is lacking much on the main reason for concern - the reasons Walker left Marquette without graduating.
It does report on the unethical campaign Walker ran (and ultimately lost) including this:
The day before the election, the student-produced Marquette Tribune endorsed Quigley. That surprised Quigley, who expected that his rabble-rousing style would be frowned on. The paper, though, also said Walker was qualified.
That day’s newspaper became a limited edition, students told the Quigley campaign. They’d seen Walker workers and/or College Republicans emptying editions of the Tribune from racks in high-traffic buildings, according to Quigley. Administrators soon got involved in the dustup.
"I heard by mid-day that people couldn’t find it," Quigley told us. Tribune officials also complained to administrators.
Stung by the endorsement, Walker’s camp plastered campus with an election-eve flier criticizing Quigley’s political tactics.
The Rovian tactics, it seems, began early for Scott Walker. While Walker lost, his opponent didn't serve very long. He was impeached for joining a sit-in protesting the universitys decision to displace low-income residents at the nearby YMCA to house university students.
Sounds like Mr. Quigley was my kind of guy and joining a protest seems unworthy of impeachment, but, then again, Walker and his supporters likely began their "punish your enemies" tactic very early in his political career.
While the article does report on his failed attempt to unseat Gwen Moore, now a Congressional Representative, from her seat in the Wisconsin State Assembly (he lost) and later mentions that he ran again for an open seat in Wauwatosa, which he won, by moving into the district, which they fail to mention. After winning that election, he then took advantage of a recall election to run for Milwaukee County Executive, an election he won. The rest is history.
Walker has given several different answers as to why he left Marquette saying he left to take advantage of a job opportunity, to take advantage of a political opportunity, for economic reasons, for "family" reasons even though he didn't marry until 1993 and the first of his sons wasn't born until 1994. Marquette University can't comment because of their privacy policy - the best they can do is to state he was, prior to his departure, a student in "good standing" who needed 34 credits to graduate (at 16-17 credits per semester, a bit over 1 year). Walker has repeatedly contended that he left needing only 1 semester to graduate.
It might be impossible to determine exactly why Walker left Marquette, not only because of their privacy policy that requires the student or former students permission to release records, but because the records themselves may no longer exist.
Marquette officials told us that even if they once existed, records regarding disciplinary actions unrelated to academics are destroyed two years after a student or his/her class graduates, per the student handbook. Students who have completed a penalty for non-academic discipline are returned to good standing.
We may never know, but the pro-Walker treatment in this article evidenced by the massive numbers of Walkers own statements and few, if any, from others, is a good step in giving Walker a good "this has been debunked" meme should the subject get raised while he's (not) running for President. For anyone that reads the article, black holes and mist appear all over the place and instead of "demystifying" this shadowy period, the article seems to raise more questions.
It just might qualify as a pro-Walker ad.
Attaboy, PolitiFact. Just keep plenty of whitewash handy so you can keep on covering those Republican heinies.
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MORE!:
While the Walker Whitewash is top news on the newspapers web site like all pro-Republican news always is (and the print edition, too), bad news for the GOP is usually relegated to tiny articles (if they're printed at all) or buried in online blogs like Daniel Bices normally fine reporting.
So, no surprise here.
Buried in their online blog (no print edition article because this is bad, bad news for Scott Walker) is this post linking the Koch Brothers and ALEC funding a pro-Walker economic report. Yowsa!
Among all the myriad reports on the Wisconsin economy, few present as rosy a picture as the "Rich States, Poor States" study by a supply-side proponent who shot to fame during the Reagan years.
Arthur Laffer, the 73-year-old author of the famous "Laffer curve," concluded in his 128-page report that Wisconsin's economic outlook had jumped from 32nd in the country to 15th in the past year. In an interview this week, the conservative economist attributed the improvement to Gov. Scott Walker's legislation targeting unions.
"We find a very strong relationship between right to work and economic performance of states," Laffer said Monday. "Wisconsin did not do right to work, but they came so damn close it's literally right to work that you've got."
The annual report is published and distributed by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed group that drafts model legislation for state lawmakers. But it wasn't clear who exactly was footing the bill.
Now we know.
Records obtained and published by The Guardian, a left-wing British newspaper, show ALEC hit up two foundations for support for "Rich States, Poor States" this year:
The Searle Freedom Trust, a Washington, D.C.-based foundation that spends million of dollars annually promoting free-market ideas, and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, which is controlled and run by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.
(bolding is mine)
The sun-shiny report cost over a quarter of a million dollars.
Too bad that anyone who actually reads a newspaper in Wisconsin won't know how much the Kochs and ALEC are willing to spend to prop up their puppet, Scott Walker and his band of Not So Merry Men.
Things don't go better with Koch.
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