More cheesiness from Wisconsin

Scott Wa*ker (c'mon, go ahead and make the joke, it's easy enough) is being a bit less than truthful about the Wisconsin budget deficit and its causes, as Brian Beutler helpfully points out:

The previous governor, Democrat Jim Doyle, passed a budget that left the state poised for a surplus this year. When Walker took office in January he chipped away at that surplus with three conservative tax expenditure bills, but not severely enough to trigger a budget repair bill. The current, small shortfall was "manufactured by Governor Walker's own insistence on making the deficit worse with the bills he passed in January," (former state Senator Pat) Kreitlow said. But Walker cited that shortfall to introduce a "budget repair bill" anyhow -- a fully elective move that includes his plan to end collective bargaining rights for state employees.

"The trigger had not been reached prior to Governor Walker adding to the previous year's deficit by passing bills that didn't create a single job," Kreitlow said.

It's just another example of the latest crop of identikit Class of 2012 Republican governors (Christie in NJ and Kasich in Ohio being two obvious others) to use a budget shortfall or the recession to take us back to the Gilded Age, where the vast majority of us probably don't want to be - unless you're actually into living in crowded tenements and possibly dying of Cholera and the like, that is. 

Actual enjoyable stuff, for once

Ghod knows I've written some fairly grim stuff as of late. Again. In order to cure the impression that I'm taking a telecommuting course in Gloom and Doom 101, feel free to peruse BeerAdvocate.com, RateBeer and/or new find Imbibe at your leisure. And if you don't drink, there's always the screaming snark of the Buffalo Beast to content yourselves with.