"Wisconsin is broke!" (wink, wink)

Ah fuck. You know what I meant.

If spell check doesn't catch it, I'm useless. I guess I should resign my job now.

Anyway, if you want this guy to resign, you are starting a witch hunt. Who else should we demand to be fired?

 

According to the article, he oversees dozens of employees, so the baseline should be that he is more qualified in some way than they are. More than that, you are plucking out one small attribute at a time and finding someone who doesn't conform and equating them, and it just isn't working. If you can find a Democrat appointee who has ALL those factors working against him, please post. (I'm sure they are out there. If they are reported as such, I say fire 'em.)

The lack of a college degree is not a huge stopper for me on this matter. I think in this day and age it's a strong indicator, but in a lot of industries it isn't required; in computer security, for instance, maybe the guy has a degree or maybe he has just been hacking and writing code since he's 12 and never needed a degree. I can buy that. But Brian Deschane has NOTHING that would recommend his employment. Not a thing. He can't even show evidence of a single job that doesn't trace to his dad.

On both sides of the aisle, I'm sure we could find people whose "college years" came before 1980 who never went to college because it wasn't the fact of life then that it is now. To say your James Lee Witt example is similar, given the different time frames, is not correct.

 

James Lee Witt had no emergency management experience either.

 

So your stance is that it's no big deal if one person is unqualified for a job as long as others before him were unqualified?

Maybe you can help him get his drunk driving convictions erased, too. Plenty of drunks have managed to weave home without getting arrested.

Just unfair that he got pulled over by the cops twice, I reckon.

 

But he was in his mid-40s and was a highly accomplished businessman, probably handling hundreds of employees and with broad knowledge of building, which would be one of the main functions of any emergency agency. Management skill transfers quite well from one area to the next, as I'm sure you know.

 

Do you have evidence that he was a "highly successful business man"?

His top qualification was that he was friends with Bill:

The Times doesn't even refer to the business as successful, just small. If it was very successful, I doubt he would have been looking for work as a judge or in the Governor's administration.

 

That's not my stance at all.

What's your stance?

I'd just like to know who else is not qualified. Let's throw them all out.

 

What do you mean who else is not qualified. You made the case that he could very well be qualified. You're just throwing all kinds of red herrings out there.

Seems to me in a broke state you take care of your own house first.

But once again, things aren't so bad for the rich and connected. Just the regular folks who will continue to get squeezed while the fat cats get fatter.

 

I say we draw the line at college degrees. I don't think that's asking too much of someone who is making that much money and feeding at the public trough. I'm pretty sure all those teachers who are costing the state so much have at least one degree and probably several. If we lose a few talented folks that way, so be it. I think it's a fair line to draw in 2011 though.

 

This is a ridiculous assertion. There are plenty of successful people that are not college graduates

 

I would say that he probably doesn't deserve a state job.

That said, how do you decide something like that? I know all of you who support unions would not like to see someone fired for subjective reasons, so we need criteria.

And, once we determine the criteria, my only request is that it be applied evenly, across the board.

And, if you're worried about the politically connected getting treated better, how can you be in favor of bigger government?

if government gets full control of health care, only the politically connected will get the best treatment and get to see the best doctors.

Already, the politically connected have preference when dealing with magnet school admissions. (It was a big scandal here in Chicago.)

And, now the government is going to decide who gets college loans. I'm sure that will never become politicized.

 

So, if Bill Gates wanted to give back and serve in a government role, say heading up IT or Cyber Security, you'd disqualify him, right?