I have no problem with the fact that Wisconsin Governor
Scott Walker didn’t finish college. Having a college diploma is not an absolute
requirement for serving as assemblyperson, county executive, governor or even
president.
Of course our only president without a college degree since
the 19th century had a pretty shabby record: He helped to start the cold war. He selected
nuclear power over solar as the primary energy source for the government to
support. He nationalized steel plants to stop a strike. He let demagogue Joe
McCarthy walk all over the country and tacitly approved the red scare. His name was Harry Truman and he also
approved the two most barbaric single acts in human history: dropping atomic
bombs on two Japanese cities after Japan had started negotiating its surrender,
thereby killing from 150,000 to 200,000 innocent civilians in two fell swoops.
Just because most
elected office holders have college degrees doesn’t mean one has to have one to
succeed, just as the fact that the overwhelming number of business executives
have diplomas doesn’t mean that we can’t see the occasional Bill Gates, Michael
Dell or Mark Zuckerberg. That virtually all of these non-degree-bearing
business titans (Steve Jobs was the very rare exception) came from wealthy families
probably matters the same as the fact that many if not all of our past presidents
without degrees came from wealthy families. Of course, some might say that
Walker, even if born to a solidly middle class background, has been recently
adopted by the ultra-wealthy Koch family.
Thus, while I would
advise a young person who wants to go into politics to get a degree or acquire
a wealthy family, I am not opposed to Scott Walker merely because he dropped
out of college when he still had between one and two years worth of credits
left to earn a degree.
I do, however,
wonder what courses Walker missed by leaving Marquette University early?
He obviously missed
some economics classes. He buys into the Reagan program of lowering taxes on
the wealthy, cutting basic government services, killing unions and reducing
regulations—all the policies that have led to the greatest non-violent transfer
of wealth in world history over the past 35 years, taking wealth and income
from the poor and middle class and giving it to the wealthy. Study after study
disputes the economic premises of the rightwing, and yet they persist in
proposing lowering taxes, cutting money for public education, ignoring our
crumbling infrastructure of mass transit, roads and bridges, passing laws that
discourage unionization and opposing regulations that protect our environment and
create jobs in new earth-friendly technologies. We could cynically conclude
that these right-wingers are supporting a program that helps their major
constituency, the ultra-wealthy, but in Walker’s case, might it be that he
missed the econ classes that would help him through some of the more arduous
number-crunching of mainstream (read: Keynesian) economics?
Walker probably
missed some science courses, too. He has signaled many times that he doesn’t
believe in human-caused global warming. He promised not to support any legislation that would raise taxes to
combat climate change, and has spoken at the climate-denying Heartland
Institute. He is also on record as disliking resource recycling. No one knows Walker’s views on evolution,
because he keeps dodging the question. But his comment “Both science and
my faith dictate my belief that we are created by God,” seems to suggest that
he really doesn’t understand science, since science neither proves nor
disproves the existence of a deity. Science investigates how things work, not
why they do. Walker’s current attempt to turn the University of Wisconsin, one
of the world’s leading research institutions, into a glorified trade school
certainly shows a lack of understanding of the importance of new scientific
discoveries for the continued well-being and improvement of society.
Another class Walker
probably didn’t have a chance to take—or maybe he just didn’t attend the lectures—is
Ethics. His reign as Milwaukee County Executive was as full of scandals
involving his friends and cronies as has been the political career of
Republican Governor Chris Christie, and that’s not a good thing. Walker has
been investigated for illegally coordinating contributions from a super PAC. His
latest illegal and unethical shenanigan has been to refuse to pay the annual
Wisconsin state contribution to state pension programs, another Christie trick.
Finally, one has to question the ethics of any candidate who takes millions of
dollars from the Koch money machine, since the Kochs are known for injecting
false notions into our national discussions about the environment, global
warming, taxes and industrial policy.
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