Tax Protest

April 16th marked the third straight year that the Tea Party has had a tax day protest in Madison. This is fine except where have these people been? I used to attend the Libertarian protest at midnight at the Milwaukee St. Post Office with all of about 20 people when I lived closer to the post office. Where were they when George Bush (both of them), Bill Clinton, or even Ronald Reagan were President? What, you woke up in 2008 realizing that you paid taxes? The tax rate has in fact gone down, explains why the deficit is big. A lot of why the deficit is so big is related to the last President Bush's spending. The wars used to be off budget, they are now on budget. The TARP funds, the bank bailouts. Obama gets credit for bailing out GM (should have made it contingent on getting a new management team) and the stimulus package which has allowed construction projects to move forward.

I Should be a Tea Party Member?

I was told over the weekend that I should be a member of the Tea Party because I'm in that group that always pays. I'm not retired, on Medicare, unemployed, or disabled unlike so many in the Tea Party. I said that I would join if they weren't so stupid. The above list of people don't realize that those are government programs paid for by people like me. My children also went to private school for most of their school years but unlike the super wealthy I didn't whine about the need to get public money. I took another job instead.

Special report in the Wisconsin State Journal

Once again the State Journal is showing how the editorial page and the news page are separate. Much like they did with their series on rural health care (which made a really strong case for National Health Care) they are doing with a series on public employees. In Sunday's article they ran a graphic that showed exactly what the unions have said all along. First that there are more employees with college degrees and advanced degrees than in the private sector. Furthermore, these pubic employees with degrees earn less than their private sector equivalents. The only group of public employees earning more are the employees without college degrees. Maybe the news writers can write about how much economic impact an effective 8% pay cut for 300,000 people is going to have on the State.

Financial Managers here they come....

In reporting by Forbes (Ed Garvey has blogged as well) Scott Walker is drafting legislation patterned after Michigan that would allow the Governor to appoint someone to oversee the running of a city, village, or town that fails a financial stress test. This will actually work better in Wisconsin than Michigan because the budget cuts State aid to schools and municipalities and further prohibits them from raising taxes to off set the loss. So, most should become financially unstable pretty quickly. Talk about a big Government, anti-democratic measure. The plus side to this system is that we will only have to deal with one government body.

Our Own Paul Ryan

It is good to see one of our own garnering all of the media attention. The problem is that his plan for the future would be disastrous for the country. Okay, it cuts $4 trillion in spending, it reduces revenue collections (tax cuts) by almost an equal amount. He leaves defense alone at $724 billion. This is more money than any other country spends and it certainly more than the guys that we are fighting spend. What it does cut is everything else including the taxes of the wealthiest Americans. The thinking has got to be that we have had these tax cuts for 10 years and they have not created jobs in fact the opposite happened with the recession in 2008, the bank collapse, and the housing market collapse so we need to give them even more of a break. Wait hasn't the amount of money available to the top 2% of Americans increased exponentially but yet they won't hire people. Interesting, a thinking person would say that the tax cuts didn't work, but not Paul Ryan he says we need more. We also need less help for people who have not shared in the concentration of wealth. It is really too bad that Milton Friedman didn't live to see his policies enacted in the US. You would have thought that we would have learned something from South America.

Looks Like Theft

Breaking news that the County Clerk of Waukesha (a Republican) realized that she didn't submit 14,000 plus ballots from Brookfield. Really, no one noticed that when Waukesha reported 100% counted that Brookfield had zeros? Those ballots show Prosser beating kloppenberg almost 3 to one. There is enough weird about this situation that it looks like a stolen election.

DNR hire unqualified?

Okay, I believe that in order to work for the DNR in charge of regulation you should have a college degree. In response to my ramblings about Brian Deschane's lack of a degree I was told that a college degree was not the end all be all but being qualified was and Brian is just not qualified. If that is the standard that statement is just not true. What the Governor and the Secretary (also without degrees) want from that position is someone who will change the regulatory nature of the department. In that case he is perfect for the job. In the last 2 years he has worked for the Wisconsin Builders Association, working to change the burdensome rules and regulations covering construction in the State. These are regulations such as set backs, runoff protection, and filling in of wetlands and shorelines. This is the small government conservatism, why should government tell a private individual what they can do with their property? So what if it affects others, Wisconsin is open for business and someone without a college degree is qualified to undue burdensome regulation.