Scrooge McDucey -- Beware of Bait and Switch

There are clues hidden in Scrooge McDucey's public statements during debates and other joint appearances with opponent Fred DuVal. Perhaps we should consider them Freudian slips in order to understand the significance.

This was one of the first debates between Fred DuVal and Scrooge McDucey. We know (from his endless repetition) that McDucey wants to "kickstart the Arizona economy."

We also know based on disclosure of a secret recording from a Koch retreat in California that McDucey, to do the kickstarting, wants to implement Koch brothers' blueprint for state economic policy. You know, like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback. From The Nation,

Scott Walker is a model governor.

Not in every sense, as critics of the Wisconsin Republican’s anti-labor extremism, ethical lapses and failed experiments with economic austerity will remind you. But he is certainly a model governor in the eyes of billionaire conservative donors David and Charles Koch and their acolytes. This well-understood reality has led Republican gubernatorial candidates who seek the billionaire blessing that is so essential for conservative politicians in state races to make reverential references to Walker when appealing to the Koch brothers.

Secret tapes of a June summit of wealthy donors organized by the Kochs reveal that top Republican gubernatorial prospects—including Nebraska’s Pete Ricketts and Arizona’s Doug Ducey—appeared before the group, as did Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and a cavalcade of Senate candidates that included Iowan Joni Ernst, Arkansas Congressman Tom Cotton and Colorado Congressman Cory Gardner. All were solicitous. But few were so blunt as Ducey, a wealthy former business executive who thanked the Kochs directly while declaring, “I have been coming to this conference for years. It’s been very inspirational.”

In public, Scrooge McDucey puts on a happy face, claiming his voodoo economics plan will benefit everybody. But as his remarks when replying to Brahm Resnik in the video at the top of this post show, at minimum, his advisors know that it does not matter what he says during the campaign (when voters set the agenda), once he gets to the 9th Floor, Scrooge McDucey sets the agenda.

This is bad news for Arizona and it's of the utmost urgency and importance that YOU get the message out to your neighbors, family and friends. Or else we go the way of Kansas and Wisconsin. From USA Today regarding Kansas,

Brownback, 58, who briefly sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, has put in place deep tax cuts that have contributed to budget shortfalls and raised questions about the state's ability to maintain spending on education and other programs. 

About Wisconsin,

Wisconsin families just can’t catch a break under Scott Walker. After three and a half years of his failed economic experiments, families struggling to keep their heads above water are not saying that they are better off now than they were four years ago. Not only are families not feeling a turnaround, the economic data doesn’t indicate things have improved either.

The most accurate and reliable jobs numbers show that over the last three years, the state continues to sit at dead last among its Midwestern neighbors and lags behind most of the nation in job creation.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Wisconsin reported more lackluster job creation numbers with the news that it gained just 28,753 private-sector jobs in the 12 months from March 2013 to March 2014.

Wisconsin only posted a growth of 1.2%, which is about half of the national average.

When Scott Walker ran for governor in 2010, he promised 250,000 new private-sector jobs by the end of his first term and sold the idea of economic resurgence to voters in every corner of the state. Nearly four years later, Scott Walker isn’t even halfway to his promised jobs goal and Wisconsin’s economic growth continues to lag behind the rest of the Midwest.

Yeah, Scott Walker and Sam Brownback are the models Scrooge McDucey wants to emulate. If you are a working person trying to raise a family, isn't austerity the economic equivalent of oppression?

Then there was Bully McChristy from New Jersey who came to our state to help out his pal Scrooge. In the azcentral.com video, Bully McChristy does an excellent job of making McDucey look like a wuss. He was apparently trying to rescue him from a "bullying" Brahm Resnik who tried to ask McDucey about the Koch brothers. Resnik handled it with grace but you can see McDucey's furrowed brow as the camera pans over to McChristy.

The bottom line is that McDucey cannot justify imposing austerity on Arizona even though that is exactly what he intends to do.

In the last minute of the recording from the Koch retreat in June 2014, Scrooge McDucey says,

The real action is in the governor's office. And I have to tell you, uh, Charles Murray, if you want to lead a textured life and get out of Paradise Valley, Arizona you can come to Kingman and Bullhead City and Lake Havasu. But by and large this year will resonate because no one, whether they are in a Republican room, or a Kiwanis Club or a Rotary Club is happy with what's going on in our economy, or what their children are learning in traditional k-12 classrooms. So, I'm very confident we're going to take back the Senate here in 2014. But then the battle for freedom comes back to the states and who's in the governors' offices is important.  

Who the hell is Charles Murray?

By the late 1970s, Charles Murray was drawing up plans for the US Justice Department that called for massively increasing incarceration rates. In the 1980s, backed by an unprecedented marketing campaign, Murray suddenly emerged as the nation's most powerful advocate for abolishing welfare programs for single mothers. Since then, Murray revived discredited racist eugenics theories "proving" that blacks and Latinos are genetically inferior to whites, and today argues that the lower classes are inferior to the upper classes due to breeding differences.

From the Southern Poverty Law Center,

Murray advocates the total elimination of the welfare state, affirmative action and the Department of Education, arguing that public policy cannot overcome the innate deficiencies that cause unequal social and educational outcomes. 

Remember, (at 1:40 into the Koch event recording) Ducey embraced -- rhetorically -- those at the retreat, including Murray, when he said, "in this business, you are known by the company you keep."

Oh, and about Scrooge McDucey and Bully McCristie brown nosing the Kochs, I'll leave you with this video of President Bill Clinton putting perspective on a related statement made recently by Mitch McConnell.





Scrooge McDucey, a Koch brothers stooge, is the living antithesis of egalitarian society in Arizona.