Wisconsin Road funding

Admittedly our road funding is a mess, and now that we are experiencing unprecedented rainfall the lack of maintenance has really shown up.  There are those who think that the problem stems from not raising the gas tax for many years.  That is certainly one component of the problem.  A bigger source of the problem is when under the Thompson administration we began defunding the schools by allowing vacant land (including farms and forests) to be taxed at a lower rate.  This resulted in a big tax increase to people living in the cities and on rural developed land.  Well those taxes paid for more than schools, they also cover the roads.  Counties and townships now had less money coming in from taxes, less money from federal and state grants so they deferred the maintenance on roads.  The counties and townships could have solved this problem by funding their roads the way cities fund theirs by making each landowner pay half of the cost of the road.  The large landowners didn't think that this was fair and got their way.  Now we have reached the tipping point where the roads are crumbling and the GOP has no idea what to do.  It is clear that a gas tax increase would help but it is not the answer due to more fuel efficient vehicles.  Cutting what people are paid would also help (the GOP likes this idea because they believe that people working for the government shouldn't get paid).  Increasing the cost of car registration and linking it to vehicle weight would also help.  So would a use fee for farmers and loggers who drive heavy unlicensed equipment on the roads.  And I think that we'll need to make all highways toll roads.  That combination is the only way to get the money that we need.

Anti-healthcare argument

The new argument against healthcare is that we don't pay for stuff (birth control) that we don't agree with.  My question is that if this is repealed can those of us that disagree with the current wars quit paying for them and ask for a refund?  Conservatives are all about rights and freedoms as long as it is for things that they believe in but when someone disagrees with them they are demonized and expected to go along with with the government.  That is just wrong thinking you are either for civil society or you are against it.  The Republicans campaign as if they are against civil society but spend like crazy when they govern.  It is just that their spending priorities tend to move the country towards a police state, which is never very free.

The Problem with Wisconsin Cities

A lot has been made about the sorry state of Milwaukee by the Pro-Walker forces.  The seem to delight in this telling of how Milwaukee is going to fail.  I say then what?  You have the state's largest city in ruins, how exactly is that good for the state or the economy?  The reasons for Milwaukee's and by extension Madison's problems are relate to the party in charge and the fact that a lot of the workers live outside of the city.  You have Governors and legislators who dislike these cities and cut how much tax money is kicked back to them.  This leaves the city with no choice but to raise property taxes, but the people with the money have left for other communities.  But, these are the same people who need better roads, so we tax the residents of the city to pay for this, which drives more people out of town.  This spirals out of control causing the city to decline to the delight of Republicans who seem to only represent the burbs which are full of people who work in the city and won't pay for anything.  Just what are we going to do with the empty shells of cities in the state?

Why Don't conservatives Understand Insurance?

Once again conservatives are proving that they don't understand insurance or taxation for that matter. The latest issue is the "mandate" that health insurers must cover birth control. Their objection is either equating birth control to abortion and hence they don't want to pay for on moral grounds. The other objection is that people are being forced to pay for something that they are not going to use. But, yet in both cases they have no trouble paying for births. Insurance works on the concept of shared risk. They get a lot of people to pay in and then they use that money to cover losses. When the cost of losses goes up so does the premium. The cost of a birth far exceeds the cost of birth control. So, in theory the cost of insurance could go down with this mandate, it probably won't but it could. Interestingly enough sterilization is a covered cost as is viagra so why not birth control?

Taxes work the same way. There are a lot of people who object to paying for war for example. Generally conservatives say that paying for war is the cost of living in America but funny how that same argument doesn't apply for liberal expenditures. Like insurance, taxes are about sharing the risk (cost). If want to be the rugged individuals that Conservatives talk about we should move to eliminate the government and other cooperative arrangements (insurance, farm coops, unions,...) and see how that works for people.

Maybe the Country Deserves It

I keep hearing people calling into talk shows who are just parroting the Republican talking points that I think maybe the country deserves their plan. I hear a lot about taxes, raising taxes. Except we are talking about letting the Bush tax cuts expire on incomes over $250,000. Most of these callers can't imagine what $250,000 looks like but yet go to the mat to defend those individuals. This is just crazy, but it is a large percentage of people. So, let's give them what they want, even lower taxes to create jobs (just don't mention that we have had 10 years of tax cuts which created exactly negative 3 million jobs), more deregulation of business (don't mention that this deregulation led to the economic collapse), and more tax breaks for corporations (don't mention that they are making record profits and doing zero expansion in this country or giving their employees raises). All we need to do is look at the South American countries that have tried essentially the same thing. They all wound up broke with a huge disparity between the haves and have nots with almost no one left in the middle. These economic policies are a big reason why so many of those countries are led by socialist governments today.

Tim Pawlenty What Happened?

Tim Pawlenty went from being dull to being crazy overnight. Gov. Pawlenty has introduced his economic plan and it makes the Ryan plan look reasonable. He would change Medicare immediately, he would eliminate capital gains taxes, he would lower the top tax rate to 25%, he would deregulate business more, and he would privatize all functions of government except the military. The theory is that if the wealthy just had more money they would finally create jobs. His plan would cost $7.8 trillion dollars over 10 years. This plan does nothing to increase demand for goods or spending which is what drives this economy. The rich cannot possibly spend enough of their money to keep the economy afloat. Until we get more money into the hands of more people this economy will stagnate.

Shared Sacrifice

OK, I have finally reached the breaking point on state of Wisconsin employee salary and benefits.  I was reading Saturday's Wisconsin State Journal where it was reported that average salaries are projected to increase 3.8%.  An intrepid reporter could look back over the last 20 years and look at the average increase in private sector wages versus the increase in State employee salaries.  But, you know what it would show that with the exception of the last 2 years (we got 0% the private sector took big hits) the private sector wage increases have far outstripped the public sector wage increases.  Sure, you can make it look a little better by looking at benefits but the reality is that in the stuff that you can spend State workers have been losing ground for years.  What doesn't seem to be getting much press is the fact that we have already taken an effective 3% cut with the furloughs and that all powerful union that the public is afraid of couldn't stop it or get employees unemployment or make the government follow the labor law.  We are considered salaried except in weeks where we take a furlough day, labor law does not allow for your employment classification to change within a pay period.  Now we are willing to do our part again and take an effective 8% pay cut.  Don't get me wrong I'm thankful to have a job.  I work for the State because in my field there are not many jobs in this State.

The war on State workers is somewhat misguided.  There is very truly a belief that the budget can be balanced on the backs of the workers.  No it can't!  We could volunteer our time for a year and the budget wouldn't come into balance.  The solution is to decide what we need in this State and quit giving away the store to the real haves.  Then we need to figure out how to fund that, it might mean increases in taxes for the real haves but we keep hearing about shared sacrifice.  Right now the sacrifices are being felt by the State workers, the Governor has proposed taking more from the working poor but he has given more tax breaks for the "job creators" (a group of people who over the last 10 years have seen substantial tax reductions without creating anything except personal wealth).

Deja Vu

A new contract on America, hooray!  This promises to be better than the one in 1994.  We're going to cut taxes, eliminate Obamacare, cut spending.  Happy days are here again, just don't look at the details.  We're going to cut spending everywhere except defense, medicare, and social security.  Gee that doesn't leave much of the budget.  Maybe if we make that part of the budget zero we can cover the increase in defense and if there is any money left over we could give the richest 1% another couple of percent reduction in taxes.  The wealthy in this country are struggling so hard just to put food on the table that they can't even think about hiring anyone.  This plan is crazy.  If cutting taxes is so great why don't the Republicans join Alan Grayson in his plan to exempt the first $30,000 in income from taxes paid for by cutting defense 1%?  Why are we building a strike fighter plane when we have enemy that we can't defeat with existing aircraft?  We are told that if we would just make the tax cuts permanent everything will be ok.  We have had the tax cuts for 10 years and everything is not ok.  In fact everything fell apart under Bush.  You can't even blame Obama's spending.  It all happened before.  If those tax cuts didn't work may be we should have bigger tax cuts and revenue will magically appear.  Keep hoping.

Dane County Sheriff

I was reading the local paper Thursday and there was a great letter to the editor on the race for sheriff of our little county.  Like elsewhere in the country the county has fallen on hard times.  So, the sheriff race is going to turn on hiring more officers and giving those officers a raise.  The current sheriff is a Democrat, the challenger is endorsed by the Republicans (its a non-partisan office).  The incumbent has gone along with a hiring freeze and the pay reductions that the rest of the county employees took.  The challenger will hire 14 new deputies and has promised to increase wages.  This from a candidate who is backed by the Tea Party.  The party that is all about cutting taxes and spending.  Just how exactly are we going to pay for these people?  How do we fund pay raises?  What are we going to cut?  How much do we need to reduce other salaries to cover the raises in the sheriff's department?  Yes, the sheriff's race is only about running one department, but when you are advocating a large expansion of that department I believe that you better address the budget side.  By taking this tact you are not only running against the sheriff but also against the county executive.  I would hate to put someone in this position who has not thought out how to pay for his campaign promises.  He will need county board and county executive cooperation and I don't see that happening.