Apparently everyone who didn’t vote for Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker in 2010 (minus the hundreds of thousands of fraudulent signatures, of course) signed a petition to recall Walker.

Then, on Wednesday, Kathleen Falk, former Dane County executive and twice-failed statewide candidate, announced she is running against Walker, assuming the number of fraudulent signatures doesn’t invalidate the recall drive.

As far as I’m concerned, Falk is a perfect candidate. Perfect, that is, to symbolize the stupidity of Recallarama, and to symbolize the theme of Madison vs. the rest of Wisconsin.

Falk — or as exiled Madison conservative blogger David Blaska calls her, The Kathleen — was the Dane County executive for 14 years, after she was the state’s public intervenor, a former state Justice Department position designed as an intentional environnment-motivated bottleneck. (One of Gov. Tommy Thompson’s greatest accomplishments was the elimination of the public intervenor position.)

Falk has one thing in common with another supposed recall candidate, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Both are two-time statewide election losers. Falk and Barrett both lost in the 2002 Democratic gubernatorial primary, then, four years later, after beating Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager in the Democratic primary due to the latter’s drunk driving conviction, in what was a very good year for Democrats, Falk nonetheless lost the general election to then-unknown Republican J.B. Van Hollen.

Falk started her political career as an environmental lawyer. The irony is that Falk undoubtedly will tout her economic development credentials, which in a county that includes state government and the state’s largest university is like opening a faucet and announcing that you’ve discovered water. Moreover, a drive through Dane County (which I do every few months,  most recently in December) shows a considerable amount of what the envirofreaks (which Falk used to represent) would call “sprawl.”

You should probably ask current and former Dane County supervisors from districts outside greater Madison what they think of her work. That is important because Wisconsin is still a mostly rural state. One wonders what kind of limits on growth in non-urban areas a Governor Falk would support. Falk supported the $800 million waste of taxpayer money that would have been the Madison-to-Milwaukee not-really-high-speed train, a train most Wisconsinites would not have used but all would have been required to pay for.

In doing research for my most recent anti-Madison blog, I came upon a University of Wisconsin master’s-degree thesis, Growth Machine Theory and Urban Political Decline: A Case Study and Empirical Review: The Madison South Beltline Highway, Madison, Wisconsin. (Only academics and would-be academics write 20-word titles that include two colons, by the way.) The thesis, available online from the UW Memorial Library, shows the opposition of the state Public Intervenor — Falk and her predecessor — on specious grounds that building a new South Beltline south of Monona’s East Broadway could lead to less consumer spending in downtown Madison and Madison population loss. So all the people killed and maimed on car crashes before the new South Beltline opened in 1988, well, ask The Kathleen about them. So should those who were victims of two-lane U.S. 12 between Middleton and Sauk City, whose upgrade Falk opposed.

Whatever hired flack wrote Falk’s Wikipedia page, which was updated Tuesday, notes her “balanced budgets and capped property tax levies,” which only means Falk did what she was required to do under state law. Falk also substantially increased Dane County government spending and employment, which serves as a nice preview for what she would do as governor. Some of that spending included using tax dollars to purchase wetlands to prevent development, including a parcel between Lake Waubesa and Upper Mud Lake that was under water. (Really.)

There’s also the laughable part about Falk’s being a “tough but fair negotiator” with Dane County’s unions. That sentence demonstrates the grotesque faults of government employment in Wisconsin — that (1) public employee unions exist and (2) negotiations take place instead of employees’ being given the choice of taking the offered salaries and benefits, or working elsewhere.  The fact that government unions will all endorse Falk also proves that state employee unions will get more than everything they could ever wish for should a majority of Wisconsin voters lose their minds and vote for Falk.

Since the Wisconsin Democratic Party is not being run by adults, as demonstrated every time party chair Mike Tate and mouthpiece Graeme Zielinski open their mouths, it’s probably a waste of my typing to suggest that Wisconsin Democrats need to find candidates for statewide office who do not reflexively support every idiotic idea that comes from Madison or Milwaukee at the expense of the rest of the state. On the other hand, maybe such non-Axis Democrats as Sens.  Dave Hansen (D–Green Bay), Robert Jauch (D–Poplar), Jessica King (D–Oshkosh) and Jennifer Shilling (D–La Crosse) and Reps. Penny Bernard Schaber (D–Appleton), Janet Bewley (D–Ashland), Jill Billings (D–La Crosse), Chris Danou (D–Trempealeau), Gordon Hintz (D–Oshkosh), Nick Milroy (D–South Range) and Donna Seibel (D–Wausau) are perfectly happy having their constituents dictated to by the People’s Republic of Madison on such issues as land use, hunting and their Second Amendment rights.

The gubernatorial recall has always been about who is in charge in Wisconsin — government employees or taxpayers. The state should be run for the benefit of the 85 percent of workers who do not work for government whose taxes pay for those who do. Vote for Falk, and the state will once again be run by the public employee unions.

Tim Nerenz reveals the people those who signed Scott Walker recall petitions are supporting, whether they admit it or not:

And kudos once again to opponents of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker who celebrated their Dr. Martin Luther King Day holiday yesterday by hissing and chanting at the Governor during a solemn proclamation honoring Dr. King at the State Capitol in Madison.

In doing so, the Democrats notched yet another important victory for loutish self-absorption over common decency in the continuing battle for the hearts and minds of independent voters in the Badger State.

The highlights of their perfect season, undefeated by couth, includes shouting down the Pledge of Allegiance, booing the National Anthem, disrupting a ceremony honoring Special Olympians, and hassling returning troops, just to name a few.  Their behavior in our Capitol rotunda would get them thrown out of Walmart.

Forget Scott Walker; you guys should recall your mom.

Or whoever it was that raised you to believe it was ok to interrupt ceremonies, hurl vulgarities at 14-year-old girls, disenfranchise cloistered nuns, bribe children with cigarettes to sign recall petitions, stalk the families of public officials, throw beer or coffee on opponents, make death threats, and try to shut down dissenting media outlets.  …

I can understand why Democrats and unionists might not think disrupting an MLK commemoration is any big deal; after all, Dr. King had to fight Democrats to get black people their right to vote, and he had to fight unions to integrate the workforce.  It is unlikely that the union/government schools tell students who was the party of the KKK and separate-but-equal back in the day.

So what if Dr. King gave his life?  That is nothing compared to having to pay 12% of a health insurance premium, right?  And how can we equate something trivial like institutionalized segregation with something really awful, like allowing school boards to compete those WEA trust insurance contracts now that the scam is blown?  …

We are about to waste $9 million of our hard-earned money to give our Democrats another mulligan, money that will not be available for education, the elderly, the environment, cancer research, bridge repairs, or bike paths.  Or, God forbid, tax relief for working people who can hardly make ends meet, thanks in part to one of the highest tax burdens in the country.

Two-thirds of that recall money will be paid by Republicans and Independents, both of whom overwhelmingly approve of the job Governor Walker is doing – the job he was elected fair and square to do. 

It will come out of township budgets across the state, townships run by common-sense people from both Parties who would prioritize snow removal over an unbudgeted election if it were up to them – and us.  If it were up to us, we would have the election to recall Scott Walker in November of 2014, when it was originally scheduled.

But it’s not up to us. It’s up to people whose moms did not teach them to wait their turn.  It is up to union bosses from out East, together with the Madison liberals who think everyone’s money istheir money, the Chicago urban vote factory which views Milwaukee as a colony, and out of state students who will leave us after graduation, taking with them the benefit of one of the best educations taxpayer subsidies can buy.

Many of those students putting their idealism and energy behind the Walker Recall will relocate to the low-tax, Right-To-Work, concealed carry, energy-friendly, business-friendly states where there is opportunity.  I wish they would use that enthusiasm to help Governor Walker and his successors turn Wisconsin into one of those states, so they could find opportunities here.

Gemma Carroll provides visual evidence of Nerenz’s points: