“Scott Walker’s Little-Known Scandal”: When He Treated Welfare Recipients Like Dogs
Among the racist jokes and emails found in recently released documents connected to the criminal probe of Gov. Scott Walker’s 2010 campaign, one stood out: A “joke” about a woman trying to sign up her dogs for welfare, because “my Dogs are mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can’t speak English and have no frigging clue who their Daddys are. They expect me to feed them, provide them with housing and medical care, and feel guilty.” The punch line: “My Dogs get their first checks Friday.”
Walker’s deputy chief of staff Kelly Rindfleisch replied: “That is hilarious. And so true.”
The joke is bad enough on its own, but it’s also worth noting: Back when Walker was Milwaukee county executive, and Rindfleisch was a top aide, he managed the county’s welfare programs so abysmally that after lawsuits by local clients, the state was forced to take them over. “They didn’t just call people dogs, they treated them like dogs,” one Milwaukee elected official recalled angrily.
“Milwaukee County has demonstrated a sustained inability to successfully provide services to its (poor) customers,” state health services director Karen Timberlake wrote in a February 2009 letter to Walker announcing the state takeover. Milwaukee became only one of 72 Wisconsin counties to wind up with its programs for poor people under state control.
It’s a chapter in Walker’s career that shows why, to many in Milwaukee, his staff’s racist jokes aren’t funny.
At the height of the recession, in 2008 and 2009, requests for aid in Wisconsin, and throughout the country, soared. But in Milwaukee, where 41 percent of African-Americans live below the poverty line, people had trouble getting help. Roughly 95 percent of calls to the county’s client-intake call center went unanswered in 2008, a state probe later found.
The social services department budget funded 25 positions at the intake center, but a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter found only seven staffers working among empty cubicles when he visited. Advocates and the county workers’ union complained, but Walker stonewalled. Aided by the outcry, Walker began arguing for privatizing the social services intake unit. “He was managing it to fail,” charges AFSCME contract administrator Dave Eisner.
In June 2008, Legal Action of Wisconsin sued on behalf of thousands of needy people who couldn’t get benefits even though they qualified, because they couldn’t get their eligibility verified.
“Milwaukee County has reached a low point in its [welfare] delivery service,” Legal Action lawyer Pat DeLessio wrote in a letter to the County Board. “It is almost impossible to get through to anyone on the phone” to apply for or verify benefits.
But the problems weren’t just at the call center. In 2008, one out of five food stamp recipients dropped for ineligibility were in fact eligible, and wrongly cut from the program. In 2007, 60 percent of county decisions to cut food or other aid were overturned on appeal within two months. Roughly 30 percent of needy applicants were waiting more than two weeks for aid. Two-thirds of all complaints received by state welfare agencies involved Milwaukee County residents having problems obtaining Medicaid, food aid and child care services. And while the state paid a higher share of Milwaukee’s income-maintenance program costs than in other counties, Walker complained that state funding was inadequate.
With the call center problems and need rising, clients took to lining up at county offices for services before they even opened, DeLessio recalled, because by midday workers would declare the building was full, and turn away new applicants. In June 2008 at least 3,000 people showed up before dawn seeking food vouchers in what was later called a “food riot.”
“The food crisis in Milwaukee and throughout the United States is worse than many of us have realized,” said Milwaukee Common Council president Willie Hines. “We expect long lines for free food in third-world countries.”
Walker’s answer was to privatize the intake unit and other services. His proposed September 2008 budget featured his privatization proposals, but the county board blocked him. “It was clearly a game – he didn’t give a damn about poor people,” Eisner charges.
State officials repeatedly complained about the service inadequacies, and eventually threatened to take the programs away from the county. Politics clearly played a role in the conflict; in 2006 Walker had planned to run for governor against incumbent Democrat Jim Doyle, but soon dropped out of the Republican primary. “I believe that it was God’s will for me to run,” Walker said at the time. “After a great deal of prayer during the last week, it is clear that it is God’s will for me to step out of the race.” It was an open secret that Walker was planning another run for governor in 2010, and if his skirmishes with the Doyle administration hurt Milwaukee’s poor, they helped its county executive with the state’s conservative GOP primary voters.
After a series of tense meetings between county and state administrators, when it was clear the state was going to take over the anti-poverty programs, Walker made a brazen move. He wrote to state social services director Karen Timberlake and invited the state to take over the county’s income maintenance program.
“This is a state mandate,” Walker wrote, in a letter he immediately released to the media. “It’s amazing state government has been such a lousy partner on this.”
County board chair Lee Holloway told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that Walker invited the state in, over his and the board-majority’s objection, to preempt the state’s embarrassing announcement that it was taking over Milwaukee’s programs. “Holloway said he thought Walker’s letter was meant to upstage state officials ‘before they make a move on him,’” the paper reported.
“The county board didn’t want the takeover,” recalls Legal Action’s Pat DeLessio. “There’s a strong system of county control in Wisconsin. But Walker just gave up.”
No one was fooled by Walker’s letter. A day after he released it, the state announced its takeover. In her letter to Walker explaining the move, Timberlake wrote that Wisconsin state government “has in fact expended millions of additional dollars and thousands of hours of staff resources to assist your county over a period of years. Despite these efforts, Milwaukee County’s performance fails national and state standards and is failing the people of the county.” Yet two years after the state took over his social service programs, Walker took over the state as governor.
Kelly Rindfleisch, who found the joke about welfare-receiving dogs “hilarious” and “so true,” was Walker’s deputy chief of staff while he was mismanaging the county’s welfare programs. Her boss, chief of staff Tom Nardelli, himself circulated a racist joke about the “nightmare” of waking up black, gay, disabled and HIV-positive while working for Milwaukee County. Against the backdrop of the way Walker treated welfare recipients, their joking is even less funny.
Rindfleisch was eventually convicted of illegal campaign activity on public time, a felony conviction that she is appealing. She and Nardelli paid no penalty for enjoying racist jokes on public time.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, March 3, 2014
“Country First, Fellas, Country First”: Republicans Blow The Response To Putin’s Aggression
With nothing to offer beyond what the Obama administration is already pursuing in terms of tough economic recriminations in response to Russia’s offensive moves on the Crimean Peninsula, leading GOP elected officials took to the airwaves on Sunday to do what they always do when they have little in the way of constructive ideas—blame Obama.
The favored GOP meme pursued on the Sunday morning talk circuit revolved around suggestions that Obama’s tendency to draw “red lines”, only to back away from confrontation when possible, has led foreign leaders—including Russian strongman Vladimir Putin—to disrespect the American leader and presume they can do as they please without interference or response from the USA.
Appearing on CNN’s State of The Union, Senator Lindsey Graham had this to say when giving a bit of unsolicited advice to President Obama:
“Well, number one, stop going on television and trying to threaten thugs and dictators. It is not your strong suit. Every time the president goes on national television and threatens Putin or anyone like Putin, everybody’s eyes roll, including mine. We have a weak and indecisive president that invites aggression. President Obama needs to do something. How about this, suspend Russian membership in the G-8 and the G-20 at least for a year starting right now. And for every day they stay in Crimea, add to the suspension. Do something.”
Of course, had Senator Graham reserved comment in a manner more befitting of one who is alleged to be a seasoned statesman and foreign policy ‘expert’, he would have discovered—in but a few short hours—that the White House was way ahead of him. Indeed, the administration had already been hard at work lining up support from the G-8 to suspend preparations for the upcoming talks in Sochi, Russia and was doing so well before Graham threw in his two cents.
But then, I suppose that there is no such thing as statesmanship and commitment to the Commander–In-Chief during a foreign crisis when it is an election year, right Senator Graham?
In a joint statement from the G-8 countries issued on Sunday afternoon, the organization condemned Russia’s “clear violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine” and informed Putin that the remaining G-8 nations were suspending their participation in preparing for the upcoming summit “until the environment comes back where the G-I is able to have meaningful discussion.”
We are now left to await the Republican effort to take credit for the American policy—despite the fact that achieving such an agreement had to take the White House considerably longer than the couple of elapsed hours between the GOP criticism-fest and the jointly made G-8 announcement.
Even more interesting is the fact that Graham’s idea of playing hardball with Russia, as expressed on CNN, involved suspending the nation from the G-8 group for at least a year plus however many days Russia remains in Crimea.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry was on television suggesting that Russia’s actions could actually lead to a far, far tougher punishment for the Russians—the potential that the country could be permanently tossed out of the G-8. This would mean that, after years of effort on the part of Russia to become a member of the economic elite, they would permanently be booted from the fraternity of top players in the world’s democratic nations and left to take a seat at the loser table after once being a part of the “in crowd”.
The simple reality is that were you to apply any sort of logic to the scenario, it becomes more than clear that a ‘tougher’ US policy towards Russia before the Ukraine crisis might have given John McCain some emotional satisfaction, but would have had zero impact on Putin’s decision to move against Crimea. This is the reality due to a very simple reason—the Russians, Americans and Europeans all know that there is not a viable military option to be pursued in this situation.
While Vladimir Putin is many undesirable things, he is likely not an idiot. He knows his importance to Europe is waning now that Europe has developed other ways of obtaining natural gas. Where Europe might have been far more timid when it comes to administering some pain on Russia in the past, they are in a far better position to do so today given their growing ability to stick their noses up at Russian energy. And while Putin may not have known the degree to which the West might turn the economic screws on his country, he had to know that his actions in Ukraine would bring an economic response in some measure.
This being the case, just what do these Republicans believe would have been different had President Obama taken a harder line against Russia during his years in office?
Making the GOP reasoning all the more ridiculous is their willingness to pretend that any weakness Putin may have sensed was the fault of Barack Obama.
If, somehow, Putin was led to believe that there would be no significant economic price to pay in response to his actions—as noted, nobody, including those in the GOP who never met a war they didn’t like, believes there is a military option on the table—why would he be looking at Obama?
It wasn’t President Obama who failed to do much of anything at all when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. That would be President George W. Bush. And while I know that the reaction to this statement on the part of some will be to carp that I am just one more Obama apologist who wants to blame Bush for everything, I’m afraid one cannot escape history—and history tells us in great clarity that, just six years ago, Putin experienced the opportunity to invade a neighboring nation without any real US or European response whatsoever.
It may be great political fodder for Republicans to blame a president that super-hawk John McCain has now called “the most naïve president in US history” but it certainly appears that it is actually the John McCain line of reasoning that has been hobbled by naivety. Your first clue that this is the case would be the unwillingness of any of the President’s critics to offer up anything in the way of a sophisticated explanation as to how things might have been different had Obama played it rough and tough with Putin.
Given that the White House is showing signs of taking a much harder line and showing a readiness to enforce economic and political sanctions against Russia that go beyond what most Republicans spent the weekend proposing, would it not have been the wise political move for Republicans to simply chill on the useless criticism as the “go to” response and get behind the President? It might, in fact, have very much helped Republicans running for office this year—like Lindsey Graham—to show their constituencies that they can be reasonable and supportive of the President during a crisis, thus adding credibility to their positions where they have opposed the President.
Of course, to do that requires an actual commitment to the advancement of the national interest rather than advancement of personal, political interests—and that is something that has long been in short supply in Republican circles.
Country first, fellas….country first.
By: Rick Ungar, Op-Ed Contributor, Forbes, March 3, 2014
“He’s So Vain”: McCain Has It All Figured Out
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), you’re so vain, you probably think this invasion’s about you.
Sen. John McCain sharply condemned President Obama on Monday, blasting the administration’s foreign policy as “feckless” and partially responsible for the mounting crisis over the advance of Russian forces into Ukraine. […]
“Why do we care? Because this is the ultimate result of a feckless foreign policy in which nobody believes in America’s strength anymore,” McCain said to the annual gathering of Jewish leaders in Washington.
McCain was apparently quite animated on the subject, going on (and on) about how President Obama is personally responsible for shaping world events in a way McCain disapproves of.
Reality, meanwhile, points in a very different direction. As David Ignatius explained this morning, “There are many valid criticisms to be made of Obama’s foreign policy … but the notion that Putin’s attack is somehow the United States’ fault is perverse.”
First, I’m struck by the curious application of McCain’s outrage. When Russia went to war with Georgia in 2008, ignoring the concerns of the Bush/Cheney administration and the international community, the senior senator from Arizona had precious little to say about blaming the United States for Putin’s ambitions. Now that there’s a president McCain doesn’t like in office, apparently he has fewer qualms about blasting the man in the Oval Office – even as the crisis is still unfolding, even when it appears Putin’s flailing desperately in search of a coherent strategy.
And second, whether McCain appreciates this or not, Russia’s interest in Ukraine predates Barack Obama’s presidency. Come to think of it, given the fact that the president was born in 1961, Russia’s interest in Ukraine predates Barack Obama, too.
It’s unsatisfying for many, especially the most aggressive foreign policy hawks in the U.S., to think world events unfold for reasons that have nothing to do with us. But foreign countries really don’t much care whether it’s unsatisfying or not – their geopolitical agendas exist without any real regard for what Americans are going to think about their decisions.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 3, 2014
“It’s Getting A Bit Old”: Conservatives Condemn Weak Weakness Of Weakling Obama
Am I the only one seeing a new sense of purpose in the old neoconservative crowd, an almost joyful welcoming of a good old-fashioned Cold War showdown with the Russkies? Nobody’s saying they don’t love the War on Terror, but let’s be honest, it’s getting a bit old. Best to forget all about Iraq, and Afghanistan isn’t much better. That jerk Barack Obama ended up getting Osama bin Laden, which was—well, let’s be kind and call it bittersweet. But this Ukraine thing is just like old times. It’s us against them, a battle of the big boys! Well, sort of anyway. So now is the time for action! Aren’t there some missiles we can move into Turkey or something?
Ukraine is providing a great opportunity for the muscle-bound manly men of the right, who are totally not overcompensating so shut up, to demonstrate how tough and strong they are. Action!, they demand. Not words! We have to show Putin who’s boss! He thinks we’re weak! Obama is weak! We must be strong! Strong strong strong!
One big problem when you’re demanding strength is that there’s only so much we can do to affect this situation if we aren’t actually willing to start World War III (back in the day, seeming willing to start World War III was an essential component of our strategy). So you see things like Marco Rubio strongly demanding “8 Steps Obama Must Take to Punish Russia,” and they’re, well, pretty weak. There’s “speak[ing] unequivocally,” introducing a UN (!) resolution, sending Secretary of State Kerry to Kiev (which Obama is doing), and my favorite, holding up the confirmation of Rose Gottemoeller to be Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. That’ll show ’em! Sure, Gottemoeller is already serving as acting Under Secretary, but just imagine when Putin picks up his copy of Pravda and sees that Gottemoeller will have to have that “acting” before her title for a few more months. He’ll crush the paper in his hands and bellow with rage. “Damn you, Americans! You will pay for this!”
But never mind that. In the last couple of days, Republicans have been united in their conviction that this whole thing is happening for one reason and one reason only: Barack Obama is weak. Let’s look at just a few examples:
- “We have a weak and indecisive president that invites aggression,” says the strong and decisive Lindsey Graham.
- Representative Tom Cotton says this is happening because Putin was “Emboldened by President Obama’s trembling inaction.”
- Here’s Jonathan Tobin in Commentary: “Obama, Ukraine, and the Price of Weakness.”
- Here’s Heritage Foundation chief Jim DeMint instructing Obama that “Weak statements, history has proven, only invite aggression,” also noting that Obama has “plans to neuter our military might.” Nothing Freudian going on there.
- Here’s Charles Krauthammer: “The Ukrainians, and I think everybody, is shocked by the weakness of Obama’s statement.”
- Here’s a former Bush administration official writing in the Washington Times: “There is no substitute for strength in world affairs, and regrettably, this White House seems to prefer projecting weakness.”
- William Kristol, neocon extraordinaire, stands in awe of Putin’s manly decisiveness, and laments that under Obama, we will “be all talk, no action.”
- Here’s another conservative dude, writing in Forbes: “Leonid Brezhnev would not have ordered the invasion of Afghanistan if he had sized up Jimmy Carter as a strong president. Vladimir Putin would not be invading Ukraine if he thought that Barack Obama had a backbone.”
And there you can feel the ghost looming over this affair, history’s manliest man: Ronald Reagan. If Reagan were here, the conservatives know, he’d march right over to the Kremlin, give Putin a steely stare and say, “You got a problem, mister?” Putin would take one look in those strong, determined eyes, stare down at his shoes and say, “No sir, no problem,” then slink back to Siberia. Because that’s what happens when you’re strong. The whole world just bends to your will. Right?
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, March 3, 2014
“Putin’s War, Not Obama’s”: Hear This Republican’s, Putin’s Halo Will Disappear The Moment Russian Troops Kill Innocent Ukrainians
There’s a fallacy afoot in the efforts to blame President Obama for the crisis in Ukraine. It goes like this: Because American’s hand on the global tiller is unsteady and President Obama failed to enforce his “red line” in Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin feels empowered to threaten and perhaps make war with Ukraine because he does not fear repercussions. Moreover, by letting Russia invent the solution to Syria’s transgression, Putin has earned some political capital that he feels he can spend. There’s a veneer of plausibility on these allegations. The president’s refusal to endorse some type of kinetic, military punishment against Bashar al-Assad stands as a moral failure to many, and could conceivably have further opened the aperture for murderous misbehavior by other tyrants. And Russia enjoyed its (rare) moment in the sun as the international peace-broker.
But the “if we had only done this” school of foreign policy can easily hang itself by its own noose. The reason why President Obama did not intervene in Syria has more to do with domestic and international norms collected after the disaster of the Iraq War. For the sake of argument, it is more plausible to assume that Americans would be less opposed to military action in Middle Eastern counties if the torment of Iraq were not on their minds. Also plausible: Had the military not learned about modern Middle Eastern adventurism and had generals not developed their own (probably correct) biases against one-off “signaling” military strikes outside the realm of counter-terrorism, Obama’s military advisers might well have forecast different outcomes had he decided to punish Assad by, say, airstrikes against the command and control structure, or by a bigger commitment to Syrian rebels.
One undeniable truth: Iraq weakened the U.S. more than anything done since. Maybe Obama overlearned its lessons; maybe we all have. But nothing empowered Vladimir Putin more than America’s squandering of moral standing in the early part of this century.
I also find Ukraine and Syria to be different genotypically and phenotypically. Syria was never part of the Soviet empire. The Ukraine was a critical part of it. There is no equivalent Crimean problem in Syria; the duly, if unappealingly elected president of the Ukraine, has asked for Russia’s help here. (Yes, we might think that Viktor Yanukovych’s election was not legitimate, but that is not a very solid principle upon which to base a recognition of legitimacy; if it were, America really should never attend U.N. generally assemblies and ought to withdraw from half of the treaties it has negotiated.) Crimea has also directly appealed for Russia’s military assistance.
None of this is to say that Putin faces a clear path forward. Any post-Sochi halo will disappear the moment Russian troops kill innocent Ukrainians. The West will regroup against Russia for the duration of the conflict. Putin’s domestic political standing is at stake, too. War would be disastrous, but Russians don’t want to lose Ukraine to the West, and they are particularly protective of ethnic Russians in the Crimea. What I don’t know, in other words, is whether the United States’s protests would have mattered any more to Putin if Obama had somehow used the U.S. military to punish Syria.
By: Marc Ambinder, The Compass, The Week, March 1, 2014
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