Scott Walker has spent his political career ostensibly crusading for taxpayers (mostly wealthy ones) and lamenting the persistence of government waste. In fact, Walker overhauled the Wisconsin budget to give massive tax cuts to the rich at the expense of education funding — an overhaul that has led to huge budget shortfalls.
But when it comes to facilitating a controversial iron mining project — one that happens to benefit a company that gave massive donations to help Walker and other Republicans during their 2012 recall elections — suddenly Walker’s concern for Wisconsin taxpayers vanishes.
The mining company behind the project, Gogebic Taconite, contributed $700,000 to Wisconsin Club For Growth in 2011 and 2012, who spent heavily to save Walker and GOPers in the state legislature. Gogebic used their influence to help craft the legislation that would loosen the state’s environmental standards and allow them to move forward on their $1.5 billion endeavor.
And today, we come to find out, that on top of all that, the state of Wisconsin has spent more than a quarter-million taxpayer dollars on environmental work to pave the way for Gogebic’s project. Much of that money is being rerouted from license fees, taking money from hunters and fishers to aid a private company’s controversial iron mine.
It’s possible that Scott Walker truly does care about the burdens faced by Wisconsin taxpayers, but clearly not as much as he cares about returning a favor to a private company that helped him keep his job as governor.
Published: Dec 15, 2014