“When some think tank comes up with the legislation and tells you not to fool with it, why are you even a legislator anymore? You just sit there and take votes and you’re kind of a feudal serf for folks with a lot of money.” - Former Sen, Dale Schultz
By The Middle Wisconsin Editorial Board (12/27/14)“We are now literally dismantling the state government, and people need to think long and hard about what they want for a future in our state,”
“The K-12 system in the last few years has laid off 3,000 personnel, and it looks to me like that’s going to accelerate. Out my way, I would not be shocked if a huge percentage of school districts wind up going to referendum to have the privilege of raising their own property tax because the state has walked away from its principal responsibility of providing for a free, appropriate and near equal education for everybody.”
“The university has been absolutely eviscerated in the last budget,” “And now we have a situation where we’re in a position to do real damage to a world-class university.”
“What I hear from are people who are unionized workers in the private sector who are sitting on pins and needles and are wondering why is this happening to them [right to work legislation] when they just got done supporting the governor. And they can’t understand why he won’t stand up”
“I think Gov. Walker’s playing very dangerously here because the electrical workers, the plumbers union, the carpenters in this state, the Transportation Local 139 guys all supported the governor in his reelection.”
“Here’s how I see the enemy. The enemy is poverty in a country and a state that has no business having kids and families go to sleep hungry at night or in their cars.”
Keeping citizens undereducated
“The enemy is those who encourage an undereducated citizenry. Education is the key to helping give people a hand up and a better future.”
“The most dangerous enemy of all…is the enemy closest to us. It lives with us and within us. The real enemy is fear. We fear what we do not understand. We fear those who are different. We fear losing what we have. When we take away our masks, and face each other…without judgment, fear of loss or recrimination, then we can begin to listen, we can begin to talk, and then we can begin to build a better future.”
“ It’s just, I think, sad when a political party — my political party — has so lost faith in its ideas that it’s pouring all of its energy into election mechanics. And again, I’m a guy who understands and appreciates what we should be doing in order to make sure every vote counts, every vote is legitimate. But that fact is, it ought to be abundantly clear to everybody in this state that there is no massive voter fraud. The only thing that we do have in this state is we have long lines of people who want to vote. And it seems to me that we should be doing everything we can to make it easier, to help these people get their votes counted. And that we should be pitching as political parties our ideas for improving things in the future, rather than mucking around in the mechanics and making it more confrontational at the voting sites and trying to suppress the vote.” “It is all predicated on some belief there is a massive fraud or irregularities, something my colleagues have been hot on the trail for three years and have failed miserably at demonstrating.”
“More than anything else proposed in this budget, the statewide expansion of the Milwaukee School Voucher Program is the reason I can’t support this legislation. As I said on the floor of the Senate:
“So, now, in the bill before us today, we use the phrase of “failing schools” as an excuse to further tear apart and divide our communities and to justify creating a parallel school system that will suck money away from public schools.`
Deathknell for rural schools
A lot of my constituents believe that what we are witnessing is the beginning of the dismantling of the public school system.
People are worried that this initial expansion is the death knell for small school districts, districts like Weston and Wonewoc and Cassville and Potosi. We can’t adequately support one statewide school system. Why on earth would we want to create a second one? It just makes no sense.”
“But I don’t quite understand – when the facts are in, when we know that our public schools are doing a superior job – we put the money in the other pot.” “how’s that conservative?”
“Failing schools, hell,” he said at a recent public forum. “Would you like to take me and show me, in my district, where are the failing schools?” –
“When some think tank comes up with the legislation and tells you not to fool with it, why are you even a legislator anymore? You just sit there and take votes and you’re kind of a feudal serf for folks with a lot of money.”
