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"Wisconsin is broke!" (wink, wink)

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by ifilus, Apr 4, 2011.

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  1. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    Typically though, there's a resume that has at least a tangential relationship to the job at hand. And not much of a criminal record.
     
  2. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    Agreed.
     
  3. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    I never said anything like that.

    I think it sucks when either side does it. They should hire the best available candidates for the job. But, as long as government has as much influence as it does, there will be people with interests before the government who will fund campaigns and who will be looking for payback.

    That's just one reason why government should be smaller and have less influence.

    And, you can question this guy, that's fine. But, the article doesn't even attempt to say that he's doing a poor job in his position.

    How do you propose to quantify performance? There would be a revolt if we tried to quantify a teacher's performance. Who gets to decide how good this guy is at his job?

    Aside from the lack of a college degree, his resume sounds pretty normal for a political appointee:

    Now, should the lack of a degree disqualify him? I don't know. But, Bill Clinton's Director of Emergency Management in both Arkansas and at the White House had no degree. Was he unqualified for the job?

    And, if we're going to disqualify anyone without a degree, then we should also weed out folks with degrees from diploma mills too. They're not worth the paper they're written on, but lots of civil servants use them to get hired and/or promoted.

    So, I'm all for standards, but this is a can of worms that, if opened, needs to be applied equally across the board.

    As long as everyone else is on board with this, let's start a witch hunt.

    Who's with me?
     
  4. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    YF, and I'm sure you know this but it doesn't fit with your narrative, but reading Teh Google, James Lee Witt was born in 1944 -- would have put his college years between 1962 and '66 when it was perhaps not a rarity for someone to go to college but not the norm, certainly not for someone from rural Arkansas. He built a successful construction business, showing high-level management capabilities. He was 44 years old when he got the Arkansas job. And, just as an incidental, he is widely credited with revolutionizing FEMA, turning it from an ineffective bastion of cronyism into a model for effective government agencies -- at least until Brownie traded in the horsey reins for disaster-relief reins.

    So, yeah, not exactly the same profile, in qualifications or responsibility, as a twentysomething college dropout who's the son of a builder and who has two DUIs recently.
     
  5. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    So, what you're saying is that it's ok for Bill Clinton to put someone without a degree in an important position.

    You can try to rationalize it, but it's either ok, or it's not.

    Witt, did get a lot of credit. I wonder how much of it was deserved, but maybe it was. If so, it just goes to show that college isn't the be all end all.

    And, I believe that Brown had been the General Counsel at FEMA before being named the Director, so it's not like he was unfamiliar with how the place operated.

    He also had no direct ties to GWB.

    Also, FEMA was blamed for not doing things in the aftermath of Katrina that had never before been in their job description.

    But, the point is, that I'm sure we could look at every single Governor and Mayor and find someone with a resume that matches this guys.

    Witt was just such an easy example because people were harping on the lack of a degree and mentioned Brownie (who had a Law Degree).
     
  6. Pastor

    Pastor Active Member

    I'm quoting myself since it seems that this exceedingly obvious fact was ignored by YF, who would much rather move the goalposts than accept that a Republican did something wrong...

     
  7. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    I'm saying that you are making James Lee Witt -- accomplished man of industry and non-drunk, who came from a time when college was far less attainable -- an analog to Brian Deschane and that that is falling woefully short as a comparison. There might be an equivalent out there that would prove your point, in fact I'm sure there is, but James Lee Witt isn't it.
     
  8. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    Unless the Governor is fucking this kid, I'm not sure how it's comparable.

    He's also not heading up Homeland Security for the state, he has a middle level job in the Commerce Department, which is a perfect place to burry an idiot political appointee. How much damage can he do?

    Witt, headed up emergency management in Arkansas and on the Federal level. He had no college degree.

    I'm not sure where you want to draw the line, but so far, you're not drawing it straight.
     
  9. J-School Blue

    J-School Blue Member

    As fun and informative and I'm sure related to the topic as all these examples of nepotism and favor-trading by Democratic and Republican politicians who are no longer in office are...

    The lede of the story here isn't that the governor of Wisconsin hired Drunky McSonofdonor for an administrative job (though that is in and of itself worth reporting).

    He did it, and paid him more than twice what a teacher in the first several years of their career makes, after weeks of chest-thumping about how broke his state was and how public school teachers were to blame for it.

    This, to me, is the story of and context to the douchebaggery on display, and what to me makes it particularly striking. The particular unqualified drunken spawn hired is incidental to the amount of money he was hired for and the context of the particular political boob who did the hiring.
     
  10. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    That is the heart of it, you're right. People are looking to jump on Walker right now and they are certainly not having trouble finding the ammo.
     
  11. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    That's the least of it and it's a ridiculous comparison.

    If you want to say that his job should be eliminated, make that case. Until then, someone is going to hold it, and it pays what it pays.

    (This is also where I usually like to point out that the University of Chicago Hospital decided that they didn't need to backfill Michelle Obama's $300,000 a year job once she left. That must have been a critical job.)

    But, the whole, "if you're going to cut jobs and expenses in one area, then you can't spend money or hire people in another area" argument makes no sense.

    It's like when people argue that companies should cut their marketing when they lay people off, because that would save jobs. Sure, it will. Until sales go down as a result of a lack of marketing.
     
  12. Pastor

    Pastor Active Member

    The affair isn't the issue. The issue was qualified or not. McGreevey's boyfriend wasn't qualified. Neither is this drunk driver. McGreevey resigned. Walker is crying poverty.

    Why are you incapable of admitting that it is wrong for Walker to make this hire?
     
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