If we can agree on one thing it is that we all love Wisconsin because it is a great place to live and raise a family. Unfortunately, disdain for Wisconsin's most important traditions and the politics of division have severely damaged the state we know and love.
Tonight’s State of State Address should be renamed the State of Denial Address. The fact is, Wisconsin is in a state of discomfort. Our citizens are more divided than ever and our Governor is in a state of denial about the harmful consequences of his policies, which have clearly moved Wisconsin in the wrong direction.
The Governor is disconnected from the real world and he is painting a false picture of the state of Wisconsin by perpetuating false illusions in place of the painful truth. His simplistic request for every small business to add a job shows just how disconnected from reality he is.
Governor Walker says that Wisconsin must do something to address our lack of skilled workers. He is right but he fails to take responsibility for the destructive cuts to the Vocational College system included in his budget that eliminated welding and health care courses.
Despite his oratory about jobs, Wisconsin lags far behind the rest of the nation in job growth. We’ve seen six straight months of private sector job losses here in Wisconsin, while the rest of the nation saw 200,000 new private sector jobs in December alone. He focuses on declining unemployment numbers and ignores the realty of declining wages and reduced job opportunities.
Despite his recent, overly simplistic claim that public education in Wisconsin is as good as or better than before he took over, our excellent public school system is facing a crisis. Despite claiming to want the best and brightest teachers in our classroom, his assault on public education forced thousands of the best of our teachers into retirement.
If the Governor really cared about economic growth, he would not have included another round of devastating funding cuts for the University of Wisconsin System, long considered to be Wisconsin’s real economic engine. The stark contrast between tonight’s speech and his decision to provide over $2.3 billion in tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy at the expense of our schools, affirms that he simply doesn’t understand or care about the opportunities that education can provide our citizens.
The Wisconsin way has always inspired the nation. Now the nation is wondering just what is wrong with Wisconsin.