Ed Schultz prides himself on all the time he's spent in Wisconsin over the last year, acting as bellicose cheerleader for its public-sector unions.
Alas, much of that time was wasted as shown by Schultz ignoring or not catching a blatant falsehood about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker from Leo Gerard, president of United Steelworkers (audio after page break)
SCHULTZ: Here you have Wisconsin's governor taking it and putting it against his general budget to make his budget look better, instead of using it for what it's intended for.
GERARD: And, and when he created that deficit, remember, let's not, again, I keep using this term economic amnesia. When Walker took office, Wisconsin didn't have a deficit. He quickly created one by giving the unwarranted tax breaks to corporations, multinational corporations, he didn't do it to the small guys, and to the already rich and powerful, and the middle class and people trying to get in the middle class got a pittance, got nothing and now he's taking their money.
Don't you love it when someone afflicted with a deceitful memory alleges "economic amnesia" in others?
It was all of last week that Rachel Maddow, one of Schultz's colleagues at MSNBC, was railing against Walker for ads claiming he's balanced Wisconsin's budget from a $3.6 billion deficit when he took office. Not true, not true, Maddow quibbled. There's still a $143 million deficit for the current two-year budget cycle to end in 2013. In other words, even by Maddow's far-left reckoning, Walker hasn't eliminated the multi-billion deficit Gerard denies even existed, he's trimmed it by only 96 percent. And did I mention Walker did this while lowering business and property taxes?
