Walker and Pizza

From Governor Scott Walker’s upcoming memoir Unintimidated: A Governor's Story and a Nation's Challenge, The Cap Times highlights the unique business advancement of Ian’s Pizza, from parlor to palace, during the organized protests against Act 10, Walker’s unprecedented reforms of public employee collective bargaining rights.

In 2011, Republicans in the Wisconsin State House realized that public employee unions were taking bigger pieces of the state’s financial pie, so to speak, while cutting out the man and women kneading the dough and pouring the sauce: the taxpayers. Thus, Walker and colleagues needed to order a different menu of governance: one which placed the needs of the taxpayer and the public interest on top, without the additional toppings of red tape and bloated, unionized bureaucracies.

To feed the protestors who resisted these reforms, contributors from all over (including France and Bosnia) sympathetic to public sector unions donated funds to the nearby establishment Ian’s Pizza during the height of demonstrations.

Protestors dined on pepperoni and sausage from Ian’s while peppering the state capital with shredded posters and cheesy monikers decrying a subtle rise of fascism because of Walker’s necessary budget reforms.

Walker should be proud that his reforms of the political scope of Wisconsin’s public sector union cabal fired up liberal interests globally, yet Walker stood up to them, as well. Even if the governor has not reached the 250,000 mark for job creation, he at least delivered on cooking up more business for his state, especially during those fractious days in Madison.