Scott Walker’s Staff Demeans Mental Illness: ‘No One Really Cares About Crazy People’
Among the emails in the trove released concerning Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, concerns how his staff responded to problems at a mental health facility.
Emails released this week show that in the months before the 2010 gubernatorial election, Walker, his campaign, and his Milwaukee County Executive staff coordinated regularly on their response to problems at the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex. A 33-year-old woman dying of complications related to starvation while under the County’s care, staff failing to prevent patient-on-patient sexual assaults (including one patient who became pregnant), and other controversies had made the facility a campaign issue.
“We need to continue to keep me out of the story as this is a process issue and not a policy matter,” Walker wrote on March 27, 2010, about the sexual assaults…
“[opponent Tom] Barrett is going to make this the center of his campaign,” Rindfleisch wrote in another email.
“yep and he is still going to lose because that is his base,” replied Joan Hansen, a County official.
“Yep,” Rindfleisch wrote. “No one cares about crazy people.”
