Jay Bullock has his panties in a twist, calling Scott Walker (or more accurately his communications director) a "damn liar", over emails sent by the Walker Campaign regarding jobs... the loss of jobs to be specific. In that email, the campaign says that Walker won't "sacrifice your job to score political points".  He then goes on to list how Scott Walker has sacrificed jobs in Milwaukee:

But here is a partial list of jobs that Walker has sacrificed in his time as Milwaukee County Executive:

• All of the security guards at courthouses and other buildings
• All housekeeping staff
• All food service jobs
• Most of the parks workers
• Staff at BHD: nurses, CNAs, specialized therapists and doctors
• Clerical staff who help the few remaining county workers get the job done
• Highway workers
• Firefighters at the airport
• Economic Support staff (until the state takeover)
• However many people lost their jobs when 20,000 of them had their transit routes cut off

That's a lot of jobs. But wait a second. Does that mean that the courthouses have no security at all? I can just take a gun in there right now and go crazy? Am I to assume that no county owned buildings are being cleaned? If I walk into one this morning, will trash be piled everywhere? Is food not being served anywhere? You mean county employees are starving?! And the parks... aren't being taken care of at all? You mean the Award Winning Milwaukee County Park system?!

Of course not... because those jobs were not lost! Union jobs were eliminated, and were replaced with non-union jobs from a private firm. For example, security at county facilities is now provided by G4S Wakenhut. Housekeeping was similarly privatized last year. And guess what... the companies hired to provide those services didn't have staff just sitting around waiting for work when they got hired. They actually had to go out and hire people to fill the new work they were contracted to do.

Now we can argue until we're blue in the face about whether it's better to have those jobs unionized, or not. We can argue ad nauseam regarding the higher cost of employing union workers because of steep medical benefits and pension plans. But the fact remains... those jobs still exist. People are still performing those duties. You may not like who is doing the work... but its getting done.

The fact is, this sort of debate is raging at all levels of government... especially in the federal government where employment is booming... to the detriment of the private sector.

Yeah... they pretty much all sound like this:

In keeping with my promise to cover each of the candidates equally when examining an issue, today I'll take a look at the companies (and more specifically the locations of the companies) who have designed each of the campaign web sites for the governor's race.

Scott Walker:

WISN has already covered the fact that Scott Walker's site was designed by a firm in Ohio.  It's a nice site, though I have some minor issues with it. For one, the site improperly asks Twitter users for both their Twitter name and password in order to "Tweet for Scott Walker". This is highly insecure, and nobody should use this. The proper method would be to use OAuth, which allows users to Login into Twitter, and then authorize the campaign site to publish to Twitter with their name. The myscottspot.org site also has users create user names and passwords, but has no SSL option. This is also insecure.

Tom Barrett:

Tom has just revealed his new website design. And guess what... it was designed by a firm in Boston! Kind of puts a little wrinkle in Tom's entire section he devotes to creating jobs in Wisconsin doesn't it?  What's the matter Tom, aren't there any qualified Wisconsin companies who can do website work for you?  Ironically enough, Liberty Concepts also lists the Wisconsin Democratic Party on it's portfolio as well. Apparently the entire Wisconsin Democratic block would rather create jobs out of state too.  I'm sure my friend Chris (Capper) will be sure to equally criticize Barrett for sending jobs out of Wisconsin.*

Mark Nuemann:

Mark Nuemann's website interesting enough says "Made in Wisconsin", although I couldn't easily find any details about which firm created the site. If you happen to know, be sure to drop a comment.

Reality:

* I really don't give two figs about which design firm created the campaign's websites... except that this should expose a little hypocrisy among those who criticized Walker for going out of state. While I think there are plenty of quality design firms in the area (and I've worked with several), there are many reasons to go with one company over another.  These include cost, staff who may have worked with a company previously and have a relationship with them already, as well as a pre-existing platform that others may not offer.  In fact, the entire concept of laws that require that a certain amount of work, or products, be made in state, or in this country, goes against the very concepts of free markets and optimal utilization of resources... you know... good economics.

Being an uncommitted voter, I'm really going to take the time to investigate all the candidates' issues and policies as we come up to the election.  I'm going to make an effort (though I'll probably slip now and then) to only compare the candidates on different positions, instead of only talking about one candidate when they put out a press release.  Mark Neumann recently unveiled his "Strong Wisconsin Reform", so I thought I would take the time to compare that with what Scott Walker and Tom Barrett have proposed thus far.

Strong Wisconsin Reform

Mark's reform is summed up as part of a 5 Point plan.  Why 5 points?  Because 14 points is apparently too many to work, and 5 points fits on your hand. I really don't know.  The first thing I see as I read Mark's Five Point Plan is that it really boils down to "supporting someone else doing something".  He will "ask" the legislature to amend it's rules and require five days of public review before a vote on a bill.  He will personally promise to limit himself to two terms (I'll believe it when I see it) and support term limits if passed by the legislature.  He will support the concept of allowing ballot initiatives (more on that later).  Pretty much every point in his "reform plan" involves him saying "pretty please with cherries and sprinkles on top" to someone else.

I understand that this is a tough row to hoe.  As President Obama found out, you can promise the world as a candidate for an executive office, but you are often times hamstrung by what the legislature does.  After all, in our system of government, the legislature passes the laws and the executive (Governor in this case) is in charge of carrying them out.  With that said, there are certain things that an executive can do to reform government using the powers of his office.  Unfortunately, none of the things he mentions really fit that bill.  Moreover, none of these concepts are very new.  Not that they're all necessarily bad (a 5 day review period is generally good), but when you combine old ideas with a lack of a proactive plan, it leaves me pretty unimpressed.  Many of these ideas could be turned into a proactive plan.  For instance, a promise to veto any bill that has not had a 5 day review period would be a way for the governor to enforce certain ideas, instead of simply suggesting a rule change to the legislature.

Citizen referendums, though a popular idea among many, are simply a bad, bad idea.  Zach of Blogging Blue does a good job of covering the issue.  The primary problem with ballot initiatives can be seen in California.  In that state, people tend to create initiatives that require the legislature to do something (usually an expensive something), but don't include a way to pay for it.  The legislature is then bound to implement the ballot initiative, and also figure out a way to pay for it.  That is one of many reasons why California has a massive budget deficit.  Granted, California has one of the highest (if not the highest) percentage of public sector employees belonging to a union than any other state which probably causes more problems.  The salary and benefits of the unionized public sector vs. non-unionized public sector is insane.

Walker's Plan

Scott's reform doesn't have a fancy name, but it does have 5 points!  It must be good then.  Scott is a little more vague than Mark in how he'd carry out some of his reforms (which I didn't realize was possible), but all the things that Scott mentions are at least things a Governor can do.  Never once do I read "ask the legislature to".  That's a good thing, because it means that Scott can be directly held accountable for the things he says he'll do in office... and he can actually do them!

These things include using General Accepted Accounting Principles during budget creation, "stripping policy and pork" from the budget (I assume through judicious use of the line item veto, but I'd like to see that specifically mentioned), and the pledge to end raids on segregated funds.  I would simply like to see more details behind the concepts.  For instance:

Start the state budget at zero. Just because a government program has a vocal constituency and a high-priced lobbyist does not mean it should continue, let alone receive automatic funding increases. Every dollar spent should be scrutinized and justified, not simply given a blind percentage increase.

Well, how will it be scrutinized and how will it have to be justified?  I understand that websites and campaigns are bad platforms for delivering details, but come one... give me something.  It's way too easy to just say "we'll cut the pork" or "I'll go over the budget with a fine toothed comb".  Maybe the campaign could list a few examples from the current budget that Scott would have scrutinized and decided to veto, along with an explanation as to why.

Barrett's Plan

I'm not sure what Tom's plan is, or if he even has one. His website has nothing but his announcement to run for governor, and a place to send money.  He may not have a plan to reform government, or it could be that his plan will include a pledge to have cute kittens perform line item vetoes with ink stained paws.  We'll see, and I'll be sure to post about it when it appears.