The state news media, as enamored with Mary Burke as the national news media is with Barack Obama, has failed to do actual reporting about Burke’s positions on issues.
Collin Roth has 10 questions the rest of the media isn’t asking:
1.) Do you support the Affordable Care Act? Is there anything you would change? Do you support the single payer option?
2.) Do you support the new EPA regulations recently approved by the Obama administration? Do you support a cap and trade policy to curb greenhouse gas emissions?
3.) What is your position on the Kenosha Casino? How would you deal with the Potawatomi’s power play?
4.) Would you have supported Act 10? And if not, how would you have made up for the $3.6 billion budget hole?
5.) If we were to restore collective bargaining as you propose, how would you make up the nearly $3 billion in savings at the local level attributed to Act 10?
6.) Can you name a school district or local government hurt by Act 10?
7.) Do you support Gov. Walker’s four year tuition freeze at the University of Wisconsin system?
8.) You say property taxes are too high but the caps are “strangling communities,” what is your solution to keeping property taxes down?
9.) Do you support public dollars for a new Bucks arena?
10.) How can you support a $10.10 minimum wage in Wisconsin when your company Trek moved manufacturing jobs to China in order to pay less than $5.00 per hour? Is that not hypocrisy? Wouldn’t your position of a higher minimum wage incentivize more companies to do what Trek did?
The questions to 1, 2 and 9 certainly are yes. Burke would punt on 3, 5, 7 (with the inner thought “gee, I wish I had thought of that”) and 10. Burke’s answer to 6 would be “yes, they are hurting school districts, because school districts no longer have as much money as they want to do whatever they want.” The answer to the first part of 4 would be no, and the answer to the second part of 4, 5 and 8 would be “raise taxes.”
A Facebook Friend found the essence of Burke’s campaign:
My question comes from this Washington Free Beacon characterization of a story the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel apparently reported grudgingly:
Democratic candidate for Wisconsin governor Mary Burke took a two-year break from her career for a “snowboarding sabbatical” and a decade later expressed doubts that she ever wanted to have a full-time job again.
Burke’s career has come under scrutiny after it was revealed that her résumé includes a two-year gap between positions at Trek Bicycle Corporation, which was founded by her father.
After working in Europe for Trek overseeing operations in multiple countries, Burke decided she “needed some time off,” according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal. Explanations of what Burke was actually doing from July 1993 to September 1995 vary, largely because Burke’s explanations have varied.
Burke at one point said that, feeling burnt out from her job, she and a group of friends went off to a popular Argentinian mountain resort to snowboard for three months. At another point she said that her time spent in Argentina was because she was “going out with this guy.”
Her actual “snowboarding sabbatical” lasted two months in Argentina, though it remains unclear who she was with.
She then headed to the Breckenridge Ski Resort in Colorado, where she says she spent her time “traveling and relaxing” and also teaching snowboarding part time for a couple of months.
She even considered going back to school at the University of Colorado in Boulder but ultimately decided not to, and went back to Trek, putting an end to the two year period of snowboarding, traveling, and relaxing. …
Burke was considered in 2004 after her second stint with Trek to be part of Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle’s cabinet, but she expressed doubt that she would want a full-time job.
“I do not know at this point whether I will want to re-enter the full-time work force,” wrote Burke in a December 2004 email. “ I would appreciate being kept in mind but I don’t want anyone wasting their time.”
Burke was appointed secretary of commerce by Doyle and accepted the position. She resigned in 2007 citing her desire to “spend more time” on “other interests.”
How can Burke claim to know what working families deal with in this state? She is in a family that apparently allows her to enter and leave the family business whenever she wants. (If Burke were a Republican, Democrats would tear her and Trek Bicycle to shreds. To quote her favorite president, she, and they, didn’t build that.)
Moreover, Burke has no children. She’s never had to deal with the effects of long-term unemployment in the Obama economy. She’s never had sick children. She’s never had children in bad schools. (Even though she’s on the Madison school board, in a school district with an increasing number of bad schools.) She’s never had to worry about the safety of her children in an unsafe neighborhood. She’s never had to try to juggle kids’ activities and her own work. Only parents really know what parenting is like.
For that matter, how can Burke claim to know what small businesses deal with in this state? (Yes, that’s now two questions.) As I’ve pointed out before, Trek sells high-end bicycles for serious cyclists. Most Wisconsin families don’t own Trek bikes because they can’t afford bikes with four-digit price tags given all their other financial commitments. And I wonder how she thinks the bike shops that sell Treks will do with a mandated 40-percent increase in wage expenses (her minimum-wage increase proposal) without corresponding added business.
I’ve written here that Republicans have made a mistake in attacking Trek Bicycle. But if Burke were a Republican, the Democrats would be using all the class warfare rhetoric in their How-to-Attack-the-1-Percenters manuals against both Burke and her family’s business. They’d probably call the campaign “Occupy Burke.”
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 
Leave a comment