WEDC - Voucher School of Crony Capitalism

When I made the presentation of the first Manitowoc Dems Proxmire Golden Fleece Award I thought we had heard everything about the WEDC and that perhaps at least some steps would have been taken to staunch the bleeding.  But in the Walker administration presentation is everything and delivery is for schmucks.  The stories of confusion, incompetence and malfeasance just keep piling on.

Last week we heard that the new CEO lasted exactly one day after first accepting the job and then reneging taking the CEO position at his former employer instead leaving most to believe he was never serious and was probably using the Walker

people as a stalking horse to get the real job of his dreams.

This week we learn that the Legislative Fiscal Bureau has flunked the fledgling pseudo agency for a phalanx of gross mismanagement of public funds.  Their list of sins is long.
They....

• Had no policies in place to handle delinquent loans
• Ignored State Statutes for financial verification of recipients.
• Gave loans and tax credits to companies for ineligible projects, recipients and projects.
• Exceeded set limits for awards.
• Handed out awards for job creation when the jobs had already been filled prior to execution of the contract.
• Sent awards to companies for investments without any verification of the incurred expense.
• Used public funds for things like alcohol and Badgers season tickets.

In short is has been little more than a cash pipeline for the well connected.
See report highlights here:  http://legis.wisconsin.gov/lab/reports/13-7highlights.htm

But why is this any surprise?  Walker is noted for passing the loot to close cronies simply because they asked for it.  As Milwaukee County Executive he simply handed over their Purple Hearts fund to another crony Tim Russell who looted it for his own political and pleasure purposes and is now serving a stiff prison sentence.

The WEDC has become the voucher school of crony capitalism, funded by taxpayers, entirely unaccountable with no evidence of success.

Like voucher schools much was promised but we have not seen it in practice.  The Republican propaganda machine has achieved a great deal of electoral success in simply making wild claims of opportunities with little or nothing to back it up.  But in the absence of success after the election that can only last so long.  When the failures begin to pile up people learn and a well educated public even from the school of hard knocks is much harder to be sold on the same bill of goods again.  It is up to us, those who already learned those lessons to drive them home.  No outsourced agency is going to take up that curriculum for us.  The real vouchers are redeemed in the voting booth.

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Current WEDC corporate logo

A more appropriate logo

The logo of the organization is a silhouette of Wisconsin inside a circle with the word "in" imprinted in the middle.
I have no bloody idea what this means!

I suggest that we expand that logo to "in like Flynn".  For the younger readers out there this is a reference to the actor Errol Flynn - star of swashbuckle movies like Robin Hood and Captain Blood back in the
40's who had a reputation to be able to bed any starlet he chose at will and was even accused of molesting a girl scout.

Errol Flynn

The Republican penchant for raiding the state's coffers has no less libido that Flynn's when it comes to money and how to get it for themselves and their friends.