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Gov. Scott Walker (WI) used an interview with Ron Meyer from the conservative Young America's Foundation to blame unions and government for preventing job creation for young people. Walker spoke as if he was having a casual conversation about ideas that he has developed on his own, but he went down a long list of conservative talking points that have been repeated over and over again by conservatives funding by the Koch Brothers and other right-wing financiers. Among Walker's comments:
"The climate out there is one in which job creators want to create more jobs."
"They believe that government creates jobs, I think people create jobs."
"Our entire focus is on how to make it easier for the people of our state to specifically create 250,000 or more jobs. You do that by getting government out of the way, you ease the tax burden, you ease the regulatory burden, you ease the litigation burden."
"In contrast, you see at the federal level, the president's pouring more money into layers of government, more often than not not even into infrastructure but into bailing out failed state and local governments in terms of budget problems of the past and that's only got us from a point from when he proposed the stimulus to now much higher unemployment rate and one that's not headed in the right direction."
"In the past seniority and tenure trumped everything else...under collective bargaining, her union contract says last in, first out. Doesn't account for the quality of teaching she provided or the skills she brought to the table, it always said that seniority and tenure trumps out there."
"Most people I talk to, particularly those just entering the workforce, want is they want a chance to compete, they want to be hired based on merit and they ultimately want a chance to be able to be paid based on performance. You can't do that under collective bargaining, that is inherently contradictory."
"Higher taxes or lower quality -- that's a false choice, because the private sector never says, you know times are tough and we're going to double the price of our product and cut in half quality of our product. People would run to your competitor if you did that. You use things like lean manufacturing, lean six sigma to put in place processes that provide for better, more efficient, more streamlined services. Government has refused to do that because the mistake in government is historically governments say what do I want to spend and how do I go out and get it. Everywhere else in life, in business and in our own homes, we first say, what do we have to spend, and then we have a budget that goes from that. We only spend what we have. Government's the other way around. What do you want, what do you dream, what do you want to spend, then you go out and figure out how much you can tax or fee to get that. That's a reverse philosophy. It's a philosophy, I think, doomed to fail over time and one in which we need to regin in."
"What's failing us is not our people or our places, what's failing us is our government. And the best way to unleash the talents of our people is to get government out of the way. And that's what conservatives are all about. We believe in people, not in bureaucracy. We believe in the power of freedom and liberty, not more bureaucracy and government regulation."
