DPW Blog

This legislative session has been defined by lost opportunities, bad choices and an agenda that has hurt working families across Wisconsin. The most important issue by far is jobs for struggling families. Unfortunately, this has been Gov. Walker’s biggest shortcoming.

Scott Walker's base $144,423 salary is nearly three times the median household income in Wisconsin. Add in his annual $9,604 in taxpayer-funded pension contributions and $17,688 in taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits and Walker's total compensation package balloons to $171,715.

Rep. Chris Taylor (D- Madison) wrote a hard-hitting editorial this morning highlighting the GOP’s repeated assault on women’s rights.

After months of hysterical claims, Scott Walker acknowledged last Monday that his campaign failed to produce any challenges to the more than one million signatures our grassroots volunteers submitted to force a recall.

Now, despite Scott Walker's failure to challenge even one signature, he has asked the Government Accountability Board to accept challenges from an extreme, right-wing Tea Party group from Texas called the King Street Patriots, whose supporters believe that registering the poor to vote is "un-American" and will "destroy the country." 

Remember last year? The Packers had just won the Super Bowl and all across our state, Wisconsinites were united in celebration over the return of the Lombardi Trophy to Titletown, USA. Wisconsin was #1.

Then, Scott Walker "dropped the bomb" on the people of Wisconsin by publicly announcing his secret plan to eliminate the rights of Wisconsin workers and hand over our state to powerful Koch-backed special interests.

Scott Walker's "bomb" tore Wisconsin apart, pitting Packer backer against Packer backer, neighbor against neighbor, and Wisconsinite against Wisconsinite.

A week after the latest charges in the John Doe criminal corruption probe revealed a secret computer network erected to evade the laws of the State of Wisconsin, Scott Walker has still not answered four key questions that would reveal the true nature of his role in the crimes alleged. 

In my house, the holiday season has always been a celebration of family, community and generosity. It's about a spirit of togetherness -- a recognition of the feeling we get when we treat everyone with dignity, respect and love. It's about the people whose very presence warms our heart and puts a smile on our face. And it's about the remarkable and extraordinary ways we show our appreciation for others without expecting anything in return.

Thinking back over this past year, it is easy to get disheartened, discouraged ... even upset. Wisconsin has changed dramatically, and there is much I no longer recognize about our state.

Wisconsin used to be among the leading states in the nation in education, in health care quality and access, and we had a reputation for clean and open government, civil dialogue and reasonable political solutions.

As 2011 comes to a close, unfortunately we now lead the nation in job loss. We are second in the nation in cuts to public education. And, we lead the nation in political polarization. Wisconsin is, sadly, a state divided.

From day one you’ve been on the front lines in the fight to defend our shared Wisconsin values from Scott Walker's unprecedented assault on the working people of our state.

Your efforts have been directly responsible for helping collect us more than 507,533 signatures to recall Scott Walker in just one month.

But we can't stop and we can't let up. We have to reach our goal of collecting more than 720,000 signatures before January 17th.

Earlier today, along with our partners in the grassroots, we announced something truly amazing: In just one month, in just 30 days, in less than half the time granted, your strength and determination has helped us collect more than 507,000 signatures to recall Scott Walker. We are now well on our way to beating our internal goal of collecting more than 720,000 signatures!