...as in at least 60-percent of his Milwaukee County staff engaged in rampant waste, fraud and abuse.
[img_assist|nid=129643|title=Walker office suite circa January 2010|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=300|height=190]
Walker office suite circa January 2010
During his State of the State address Wednesday, Scott Walker touted his commitment to eliminating waste, fraud and abuse from government.
Because I respect the hard working people of Wisconsin, I will continue to be a good steward of the taxpayers' dollar. Eliminating waste, fraud and abuse is a top priority of my administration.
Well, the very next day two more of Scott Walker's staffers from his days in the County Executive's office were charged with doing political work on government time. Not sure how Scott Walker expects to root out waste, fraud and abuse from state government when in 2010 he didn't stop his staff of 5 people from having a waste, fraud and abuse percentage just 9 points shy of Barry Bonds's 2004 on-base percentage (an equally corrupt stat, if you ask me). If Walker can't be trusted to be “a good steward” of a 5-person staff, why should he be trusted to do so with 40,000 state employees?
Of course, waste, fraud and abuse has always been a shallow conservative talking point. You'll remember Rebecca Kleefisch's paean to redundancy in government--her proposal that the state add a duplicatative waste, fraud and abuse hotline. It also turns out the 400 million dollars in savings Scott Walker trumpeted during the State of the State is not really attributable to cutting WFA; it's actually a bunch of accounting tricks.
You see, for Scott Walker, waste, fraud and abuse is useful for two purposes: one, as a hallow phrase, the boogeyman for government run amok, and two, as government run amok. By this second purpose I mean government run amok becomes useful when impropriety is the mechanism used to finance political campaigns, as in, “My political operatives make their living defrauding the taxpayers (oh, and veterans too!).