National Media Seeks to Rehabilitate Governor Jim Doyle

File this under it takes a lot to laugh, it takes a meme to cry.

Slate's news aggregator is the latest to get in on the act with this:

Meanwhile, the commentariat is lambasting Walker for creating a fiscal disaster and then trying to punish public-sector unions for it. Ezra Klein points out that Walker actually inherited a surplus, but eviscerated it with business tax cuts and a "conservative health care policy experiment." "That's how you keep a crisis from going to waste," Klein says. "You take a complicated problem that requires the apparent need for bold action and use it to achieve a longtime ideological objective." Steve Benen agrees, characterizing the situation thusly: "a far-right governor inherited sound state finances, made them worse on purpose, and now [expects] public employees to fix his problem

Got that? It's a Governor and GOP legislative majority that is six weeks old that have created the current budget situation.

No mention of the $58 million the state of Wisconsin owes Minnesota as part of a now defunct tax reciprocity agreement.

No mention of the $200 million that Governor Doyle transferred from the patient compensation fund to avoid cutting spending. An amount that the State Supreme Court has ordered must be returned with interest.

To his credit, Ezra Klein came back with this update (my bold):

I've been persuaded that the surplus-to-deficit picture is more complicated that I initially understood. The budget report is working with two time periods simultaneously: 2010-2011, and then 2011-13. The $130 million deficit now projected for 2011 isn't the fault of the tax breaks passed during Walker's special session

Despite Klein's laudable effort, it would appear that the protests have claimed at least one casualty, the truth.