Like Scrooge awakening on Christmas morning, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has had a sudden change of heart. He now believes government spending on social programs is a good thing.
Faced with the prospect of being recalled from office in the very near future, Walker has launched a last-ditch effort to rehabilitate his image. An image tarnished by cutting over $800 million from education, over $500 million from Medicaid, and eliminating collective bargaining rights.
Gov. Scott Walker on Monday unveiled a $100 million two-year "Transform Milwaukee" plan aimed at focusing his administration's top economic resources on one of the poorest sections of Milwaukee's inner city.
The plan is meant to coordinate the resources of multiple state agencies with the city and other economic development entities.
It includes efforts to reoccupy foreclosed and vacant properties, provide loans and venture funding for small businesses and industrial development, and improve freight and intermodal transportation to foster the revitalization of industry. [...]
Other elements include a survey of the inner city workforce to inventory worker skills and learn what existing skills can be leveraged, as well as a proposed new job training center.
If these proposals sound familiar, it's because they sound a lot like the president's proposals which have been opposed at every turn by the Republicans, including Scott Walker.
The proposal to revitalize the transportation industry is particularly amusing, as it was Governor Walker who lead the charge to reject federal stimulus funds allocated for the state to revitalize transportation. Funds which the state of Wisconsin would later have to cover themselves absent the federal grant.
Or as Charles Pierce puts it
In what has to be one of the most remarkable accidents in American politican history, Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by the Koch Brothers to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, just happened to be in Milwaukee today and announced that he was going to save the poor folks. This has nothing to do with the fact that his likeliest opponent in the recall election in June is Tom Barrett, who just happens to be the mayor of Milwaukee. Nothing at all....
I'm confident Milwaukee will see right through this.