You can’t expect wealthy corporations making out like bandits to turn down their ill-gotten gains, but at some point intelligent conservative Republicans have to realize the growing political corruption under Gov. Scott Walker is a problem.
We should totally reject the cynical belief there are no intelligent conservative Republicans anymore who aren’t openly corrupt themselves. But it really is long past time for them to step forward.
It’s now obvious Walker’s spectacular failure at job creation in Wisconsin wasn’t simply the result of incompetence, but the consequence of a politically corrupt jobs agency intentionally funneling money to large corporate donors instead of creating jobs.
There’s very little attempt even to hide the graft when Walker’s Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) loans a half-million dollars in tax funds without any collateral to a state tax delinquent businessman whose company was facing multiple lawsuits. The loan was made after a meeting with two of Walker’s closest political operatives.
Walker’s former Chief of Staff Keith Gilkes and former Secretary of Administration Mike Huebsch, who facilitated the deal for William Minahan, the owner of Building Committee Inc., couldn’t have been terribly surprised when Minahan defaulted on the $500,000 loan without creating any of the promised 150 jobs.
The only apparent justification for shoveling so much state money to such a dubious applicant appeared to be Minahan’s $10,000 political contribution, the maximum legally allowed, to Walker’s campaign just in the nick of time on Election Day 2010.
Whenever Republicans are caught in these shady deals, their reaction is to attack anyone who criticizes Walker as a sore loser Democrat motivated by Walker hatred. But hatred of political corruption should be bipartisan.
Nonpartisan legislative audits have repeatedly documented WEDC’s failure to follow common sense business practices in tracking tens of millions of dollars in public money passed out to political donors and the agency’s flagrant violations of state law in failing to require recipients to verify any jobs created in return.
When Walker took office, he destroyed the previous Department of Commerce and installed himself as chairman of his own WEDC, promising to create 250,000 jobs in his first term.
Now into his second term, Walker has created barely half that many, ranking Wisconsin 40th out of the 50 states in job creation. Last week his own Republican Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee removed him as chairman of the scandal-plagued, failed WEDC.
There’s no evidence Walker really cares. He’s ready to continue the pattern from every political office he’s ever held—parlay his damage to government into a better job somewhere else. His work here is done.
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But any intelligent, honest Republican businessman should be appalled at the flaming wreckage scattered across Wisconsin by the inept, unethical and unlawful activities of Walker’s WEDC.
Political Corruption Harms Legitimate Businesses
Why should wealthy Republicans care about political corruption in Wisconsin as long as they’re winning and have a Republican Legislature to shower millions of dollars upon them anytime they want?
Because a corrupt system puts legitimate, honestly run businesses at a disadvantage. In this age of globalization, ask any U.S. company that has found itself drawn into the corrupt practices of foreign governments that are basically fronts for criminal activities and drug cartels.
In that shadowy world, the line between bribery and extortion, player and victim, can be difficult to distinguish.
If government investment intended to create a healthy, thriving economy instead gets diverted to political cronies or bought outright by political donors without providing any jobs, it’s not only Wisconsin workers who suffer. So do Wisconsin companies.
The fewer jobs created for Wisconsin workers, the less money those workers have to spend buying the goods and services of Wisconsin businesses.
The failure of Walker’s corrupt jobs agency compounds the economic damage to the state from the governor’s agenda of reducing the pay and bargaining power of workers and slashing education funding that puts young people on a path to family-supporting jobs.
No state can be successful by continuing to inflict so much economic damage upon itself. That’s why Walker is so eager to get out of here before his entire economic house of cards comes crashing down.
At this point, corporate donors to Walker’s political campaigns seem to have hijacked about as many millions of dollars in job creation funds as Republican legislative leaders can pretend to justify.
It’s amusing to hear Republicans say publicly they’ve never really believed in government spending to create jobs anyway.
Government spending to create jobs during hard times definitely works. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proved it by ending the Great Depression. So did President Barack Obama in ending the Great Recession.
To create jobs and improve Wisconsin’s lagging economy for everyone, Walker just needs to start putting millions of dollars into the pockets of workers who need it instead of the pockets of wealthy political donors who don’t.
Image by Gateway Technical College via Flickr and a CC License
