Category Archives: Wisconsin politics

04.20.13
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Happy (?) Tax Freedom Day

As you know, the Tax Foundation’s Tax Freedom Day is the day when we taxpayers are done paying our federal, state and local taxes for the year, and everything from here until Dec. 31 goes to such frills as housing, food and clothing.

As you know, Wisconsin has the fifth highest state and local taxes in the country.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that today, Tax Freedom Day in Wisconsin, is the 11th latest Tax Freedom Day in the nation.

I bring this up not just because Tax Freedom Day is today, but because of a snarky comment The Capital Times made about a blog of earlier this week:

Wisconsin right-wing bogger Steve Prestegard, convinced that Wisconsin under Scott Walker is doing just fine, quotes another right-wing blogger, Christian Schneider, to explain why Wisconsin is lagging so far behind other states in job creation and economic growth. The conclusions are, well, interesting.

At the risk of appearing to not appreciate the attention for my “bog,” whoever wrote this clearly didn’t read what I wrote, which was that things under Walker are not just fine, but they have been not just fine well before Walker took office. My proof is in this appalling comparison of taxes to personal income dating back to the days of Gov. Patrick Lucey:

state vs nation income

This graphic (from this page) shows this state’s percentage of income in taxes, and (in the third column) its national ranking. (We are apparently supposed to believe that ranking fifth is better than first or second.) The last column is national average per capita income, and two columns to the left is Wisconsin’s average per capita income for that same year.

Since 1977, when Jimmy Carter was president and Martin Schreiber (who took over as governor after Carter named Lucey ambassador to Mexico), and I was in middle school, Wisconsin’s per capita average income was higher than the nation’s in only three years, 1978 through 1980. Every year since then, Wisconsin’s per capita average income has been less than the national average. (And the gap was particularly bad between 2005 and 2009, when James Doyle was governor. Contrary to Christian Schneider‘s assertion that Wisconsin fared relatively well in the late 2000s recession, state per capita average income was $6,700 less than the national average between 2008 and 2010.)

Think you could have used another $1,600 of income (the 2010 difference between Wisconsin average income and national average income)? Well, thanks to the state government and the 3,120 local governments, you can’t have it. (Imagine what the state’s economy might be like if every Wisconsinite had $1,600 more in his or her wallet every year. Well, you can’t have that either.)

Politicians who oppose radical state and local tax reform would claim the link between high state and local taxes and below-average personal income is correlation, not causation. That link has been the case every year since 1980. That’s not an accident, and that’s not a coincidence. Remember the economic rule that if you want less of something, tax it? Apparently Wisconsin voters are fine with less income; they’ve been voting that way for decades.

So, for the illiterates at The Capital Times: No, Wisconsin is not “just doing fine.” Wisconsin hasn’t been “doing just fine” for a long, long time. Wisconsin will not do “just fine” until Wisconsin takes the radical step of substantially lower taxes (how about ranking 25th in state and local taxes instead of fifth?) and a much smaller government to match. That means cutting taxes a hell of a lot more than 27 cents per day and making it impossible to raise them without taxpayer approval (remember the Taxpayer Bill of Rights?).

04.16.13
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Job one: Fire the government

Christian Schneider tries to explain job growth, or lack thereof:

Conservatives tend to believe that Obama’s policies have cut off the air supply to the national economy, and states such as Wisconsin are left gasping for breath. This seems to ring a little more true, as the state economy tracks with the national economy — Wisconsin’s jobs numbers don’t drive the numbers around the country. But that doesn’t explain why Wisconsin’s private-sector job growth is slower than 43 other states, according to numbers released in late March.

Walker’s critics believe the governor’s collective bargaining reforms are to blame for the state only picking up 20,479 jobs between September 2011 and September 2012. Public workers, now forced to pay into their pension accounts and kick in more for health benefits, have less money to spend, creating less economic activity, they say. But the numbers belie this claim: According to the state Department of Revenue, state income and sales taxes are up 5% in 2013, and new business start-ups were up 8.4% in 2012, compared with 2011. People are spending and making money, but the jobs continue to lag behind other states. (Interesting that the “people have less money to spend” argument vanishes when the left argues for higher property taxes.) …

For one, although it’s hard to tell this to a Wisconsinite who has lost his or her job in the past four years, the bad economy didn’t damage Wisconsin as much as it did other states. The crash of 2008 eviscerated some states, while Wisconsin was able to hold fairly steady; since Wisconsin didn’t fall as far, it doesn’t have as far to snap back. Naturally, if Wisconsin is able to mitigate the effects of the downturn and remain on an even keel, it is going to look better during the bad times and worse during the good times.

The numbers tend to bear this out. Between January 2009 and January 2011, Wisconsin either was gaining more jobs than the national average or not losing as many as other states were nationally. Thus, while the state only gained jobs at a 0.9% clip in the last annual time period measured, it started at a much better place than other states.

Take, for example, Wisconsin’s neighbors, Michigan and Illinois – both of which were eviscerated by the recession. In January 2010, Michigan’s unemployment ballooned to 13.8%, while Illinois’ was 11.3%. As of September 2012 – the date of the most recent reliable numbers – Michigan’s unemployment rate was still at 9.2%, Illinois’ rate was 8.9% and Wisconsin’s was 6.9%.

Yet according to the jobs numbers just released, Michigan’s private-sector job growth in the last year was 2%, Illinois’ was 1.4% and Wisconsin’s was 0.9%. So Wisconsin lagged behind those two, but is still in total, in much better shape. Without question, the states hardest hit by the recession have to come back from much farther behind.

On the other hand, take a low-unemployment state such as Minnesota. The unemployment rate in Wisconsin’s neighbor to the west is 5.6% – and its recent private-sector job creation numbers only barely beat Wisconsin’s, 1% to 0.9%. Iowa’s unemployment rate is 5%, and its gained jobs at a pedestrian rate of 1.3%. It appears that states that didn’t lose a lot of jobs during the bad times tend to gain them back at a slower rate during the good times.

Further, some of Wisconsin’s sluggishness may have to do simply with demographics. According to the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, Wisconsin routinely lags behind the nation in job creation – since 1996, Wisconsin has outperformed the national job growth average in only 28 of 102 months, or 27% of the time. …

The WTA posits that some of this slow growth may be attributable to the graying of the Wisconsin population. Between 2002 and 2011, the state’s working-age group grew by only 5.9%, compared to 9.3% nationally. Further, they point out that new firm creation in Wisconsin in 2011 was second to last in the nation, beating only Iowa. Without new businesses, the jobs can’t follow.

Schneider follows up by comparing unemployment rates and job creation numbers.

First point from his original column: Schneider lets off Obama entirely too easily, probably because his piece really isn’t about Obama. When 15 percent of the population is either unemployed, underemployed, or no longer looking for work (what economists call the U6 measure of unemployment), you as president are a gigantic steaming pile of failure, and you deserve every negative thing that happens to you.

As far as Wisconsin is concerned, however, there is more to the story. Much of it is history, but most of it is bad policy. Note that since 1996, Wisconsin has outperformed the national job growth average 27 percent of the time. Since the late 1970s, Wisconsin has also trailed the nation in per-capita personal income growth. Counting Walker, that’s five governors worth of economic fail.

There has been little fundamental change in state government over those 3½ decades, and even before that. We have too many units of government (3,120 at last count), too many government employees, too many laws and too many regulations, all of which are poisonous to business and economic growth. (Not surprisingly, we’re poor in economic freedom within North America.) We have too few job creators in this state (partly due to our historic antipathy toward wealth), with obvious and not-so-obvious consequences.

We have spent more than nearly every other state on education. Improving your own education is great to improve your own economic opportunity. Spending on education has not, however, been proven to improve a state’s economic performance. (If proof existed, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers would be screaming from the top of the Wisconsin Education Association Council building about how we must spend more on education to improve our economy, with proof attached. He does the former lacking evidence of the latter.)

When one improves his or her education, that does improve that person’s economic opportunity. That includes the opportunity to leave for somewhere with, in that person’s opinion, more economic opportunity. (Or weather that is not shitty.) Improving education is a microeconomic benefit, not a macroeconomic benefit.

Despite our rankings of (as of 2010 or 2011) 20th in gross state product (1.7 percent of gross domestic product), 29th in per capita gross state product, 21st in median household income (below the national average), and 21st in per capita personal income (again below the national average), we have the fifth highest state and local taxes in the country. If we had the fifth highest gross state product, we’d have 2½ times our present economic output. If we had the fifth highest median household income, each family would have nearly $12,500 more money each year. If we had the fifth highest per capita personal income, each of us would have $5,500 more every year.

The Walker administration has not fundamentally changed state government to make this state actually business-friendly. (For instance: Nearly all of the Doyle administration tax increases are still intact. And with all the Act 10 screaming, the state has as many government employees as it did under Doyle.) The Walker administration appears to be the 21st century answer to Dwight D. Eisenhower as president — do the same stuff the Democrats did, but do it better (you hope).

I see no interest in fundamentally different, much smaller government in this state. So don’t expect real improvement in the state’s economy, regardless of Obama’s criminal maladministration of the national economy. Apparently people here are satisfied with mediocrity in their pocketbooks and from their politicians.

04.16.13
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You know what they say about assuming

After some assuming music …

… Gallup CEO Jim Clifton:

During my 40 years at Gallup, I’ve observed that one of the main reasons very talented leaders fail is because their thinking failed them. Not their leadership or management skills, which in many cases are just fine, but their thinking. Specifically, failed leaders in business and politics are usually wrong about a core premise that drives all their strategies. …

Many people in the highest levels of U.S. government think that 1.5 billion Muslims are uncomfortable with the West because they “hate us for our freedom” and that “religion divides us.” So, leaders build policy — war, economic sanctions, and anti-terror campaigns — around these assumptions. But Gallup World Poll data tell another story entirely.

The world’s Muslims don’t hate us because of our freedom or our way of life or because they’re religious fanatics. Gallup finds that their discomfort comes predominantly from a hopelessness rooted in economic despair and joblessness. This is an economic problem, not a religious one. Yet too often, policies are created around these wrong assumptions. …

Correct assumption No. 1: Entrepreneurship trumps innovation

Many thinkers and leaders in the U.S. and around the world have reviewed decades of America’s global economic dominance and concluded that the country has been a colossus because of superior innovation. That is the global conventional wisdom, the core assumption. Thousands of conferences around the world have been organized around this assumption. Some countries are even building “innovation cities.”

In my view, rooted in decades of Gallup research and our company’s work with many multinational corporations and city and national governments, this assumption is dead wrong. And I believe that America has stopped growing because leaders are governing from this faulty premise.

The U.S. cannot innovate its way out of its stagnant growth. It must enterprise its way to prosperity. Simply put, when it comes to fostering long-term economic growth, entrepreneurship trumps innovation. Put another way: An innovative product or service has no commercial value until a talented businessperson finds a customer for it. ,,,

The U.S. has no peer at high-level intellectual development. The country has many of the best universities in the world. And the best of America’s private and public K-12 schools do a marvelous job at intellectual development, which is nurtured systematically and intentionally. But entrepreneurial development is completely left to chance. Right now, if you’re a 12th-grader blessed with an unusually high IQ — perhaps even in an inner-city neighborhood like California’s Compton or Watts — testing will find you. And if you’re really brilliant, you’ll get extra special treatment and possibly scholarships to the best schools in the country. You may even get financial help all the way to a Ph.D. at MIT, then go off to NASA, the National Institutes of Health, or the like. If you’re blessed with real talent to think and learn, the system likely will find you. …

However, if you were born with rare entrepreneurial talent — unusual determination, optimism, and problem-solving skills — the system has no way of finding you, certainly not in Compton or Watts. Nothing finds you. There is no formal identification system. There are no formal special classes, no colleges bidding for you, no evening classes with the best teachers, and nothing sent to your parents that identifies you as gifted. Colleges and universities place tremendous weight on SAT or ACT scores. But nobody asks about the applicant’s ability to start a company, build an organization, or create millions of customers. America leaves that to chance. …

The U.S. Department of Education should lead the creation and passing of a bill that requires all high schools and middle schools to test every student for entrepreneurial aptitude. Gallup is working with some of the best test makers in the world now, and we are confident that the intellectual attributes of entrepreneurship are as testable as IQ, athletic “40 speed,” or vertical jump height. …

Correct assumption No. 2: Small businesses are the key to America’s economic revival

When small businesses boom, jobs boom, GDP booms, and exports boom.

There are approximately 6 million small businesses in the United States, and they are the very backbone of the country’s democracy. Those businesses fund significantly more American jobs and GDP than big business does. Here is something you likely don’t know: Of the 6 million small businesses out there, 75% of the owners or proprietors aren’t in business to build something big. They aren’t trying to build the next Intel or Waste Management. They’re not even in it for the money. Most small-businesspeople are in it for one reason: freedom. Almost no leader in the world knows that.

Three out of four entrepreneurs get up each morning with the simple yearning for total, complete, unimpeded independence. They must be their own boss or they can’t cope with the day. They cannot be employed at IBM or even at a local car dealership because they are like the coyote — they can never be domesticated. So let’s not try. Instead, let’s say, “God bless you for all the jobs and economic energy you create. It’s great to have you here.”

The remaining 25% of these small businesses do want to build something big. They do get up every day dreaming of creating an empire of customers and services. They are the most important people on the planet because when they win, America wins — and when America wins, so does the global economy.

When these 1.5 million businesses boom, jobs boom, GDP booms, and exports boom. In my view, nothing is more heroic in America right now than creating a customer abroad. The White House should give medals every Monday morning to small-business owners who are booming because they have found foreign customers to export to, and those exports are crucial to creating American jobs. It’s not too hard to believe that whether the U.S. goes broke or is prospering in 10 years lies predominantly in the American cultural phenomenon of small business — the 1.5 million empire builders.

Correct assumption No. 3: Entrepreneurship must be fostered at the city level

Let me narrow that 1.5 million number down to 1 million, because that’s probably a more accurate estimate of high-potential small-business boomers and empire builders. And I’d rather use a more conservative figure.

Here is an intervention that would help those 1 million small-businesspeople prosper and thrive and thus drive a resurgence of the U.S. economy: Cities should dedicate one great coach — a local star senior adviser, an executive or entrepreneur with a proven track record of success — for every 10 high-potential small businesses. This is not an activity for Washington or for the states. This must happen city by city.

What we need at the national level is a campaign that asks every single mayor and city councilperson in the country this question: What is your plan to boom high-potential small businesses? Although, in my opinion, many mayors and city council members likely will have little grasp of the subject of entrepreneurship. Still, they’re the place to start because the future of their cities depends on the degree to which they make their cities attractive to entrepreneurs. Those city leaders may think their job is negotiating union contracts and government-employee benefits, but they won’t be able to pay their employees, much less help their cities prosper and thrive, without a growing and thriving entrepreneurial sector. …

To jump-start a stagnant U.S. economy and put the country on a path toward long-term economic growth and prosperity — even global dominance once again — leaders must get their assumptions right. They must understand that entrepreneurship trumps innovation and that finding the next generation of great entrepreneurs means cultivating them in middle schools, high schools, and colleges and universities, just as surely and intentionally as the country cultivates innovators.

The college role in cultivating entrepreneurs is explained by Syracuse University Prof. Carl Schramm:

If one manages, using Facebook and other social media, to establish celebrity status, however restricted the province in which it is achieved, pre-college adolescents come to believe the world has deemed them somehow accomplished.  Narcissism is the result of a theorem of social engagement that sees successfully establishing a unique identity as the goal of life.  The achievement of objectively important things that are judged important because they advance the welfare of others – seems a terribly old fashioned, outdated and irrelevant way to order one’s life.  Beyoncé bests Ben Carson!

Thus, aspiring entrants are asked to write about, among other things, how something they have done has changed the world!  Anticipating such questions, and either affirming the values that are presumed to underlie them or knowing that their students have to play this game to successfully apply to college, something on the order of 80 percent of school districts require students to do “community service” projects as a condition for graduation. …

Given that getting into college no longer brings with it the expectation of a good job in an economy that is starting to appear as if it discriminates against too much education in entry-level positions, maybe an alternative question should be substituted.  Why not ask aspiring students if they ever started a business, worked in a new business, know an entrepreneur, or might themselves want to create a new business?  This simple change or addition to the required essays could be the first great lesson colleges might teach.

For one, it might cause students to think that their role in the economy is more up to them to make than for their college education to preordain.  Increasingly, in an economy that is changing in profound ways not the least of which is that productivity in all industries is reducing the demand for even highly trained labor, everyone will be more and more responsible for the opportunities they can make.  Perhaps the most successful applicants will write that their goal is to “make a job, not take a job.”  Come to think about it, the phrase has a faint community service ring to it.  Maybe existing jobs should go to those who can’t make their own.

Second, it would force high school students to consider that perhaps business is not such a bad career choice.  In fact 90 percent of graduates work in the private sector.  Surely they are creative people who have dreams of changing the world for the better.  And, can anyone say that working at Apple or Genentech, or Johnson and Johnson is not changing the world for the better?

Speaking of making jobs, a third benefit comes to mind.  Most of the new jobs made in America are in new firms.  About eighty percent of all new jobs are found in firms less than five years old.  So could it just be that entrepreneurs are doing the very best community service?  What does a phi beta kappa graduate starting an all night basketball league accomplish that is somehow more beneficial to society than the “B-“ graduate who undertakes the risk of starting a company that brings a needed new product to the world, and in the course of doing so gives ten unemployed people jobs that never before existed?  With employment these people can go on to earn dignity and support families and help break the cycle of poverty.

Finally, if colleges required students to write about their entrepreneurial aspirations, maybe high schools and universities might learn something about how to structure education in ways that really improve what students learn and need to learn.  The college that sets its sights on helping more of its graduates start businesses that can help the society become more robust economically might think twice about developing courses in any number of fields where students will never find meaningful work; teaching high school seniors how to write their community service essays being one.

04.10.13
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Halfway

Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker took the bold step of pledging the creation of 250,000 jobs during his first term in office.

How is Gov. Scott Walker doing? The MacIver Institute did some investigative reporting:

Wisconsin has 137,372 more private sector jobs than when Governor Scott Walker first took office in January 2011, according to the most recent data available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which puts him past the halfway point towards his goal of creating 250,000 private sector jobs in his first term.

This information was contained in the BLS’s Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. That census includes detailed information from more than 96 percent of employers. This is much more accurate than monthly jobs’ reports, which are compiled by surveying a fraction of employers.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel used the same data to determine Wisconsin ranked 44th in private sector job growth from September 2011 to September 2012.

John Koskinen, Chief Economist at the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, confirmed the private sector job growth numbers uncovered by the MacIver News Service, “That’s literally true,” however, Koskinen said economists typically use the same month from different years to avoid seasonal variations in employment.

Although Koskinen might be uncomfortable comparing jobs numbers from January 2011 and September 2012, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin felt those two months strengthen the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story.

“The day Scott Walker took office, we were 11th in job creation. Now, we are 44th, and it is a direct result of both his inattention and his policies. Those have included massive cuts to job-creating investments in education, health care, technology, infrastructure and vocational training,”reads a DPW release from March 28, 2013.

DPW neglected to mention the fact that during that same timeframe, Wisconsin added over 137,000 private sector jobs putting Walker well on track to meet his goal by the end of his term. And although the chief economist for DOR is wary of using such a timeframe, Koskinen completely rejects the statement that Wisconsin is 44th in job creation.

During a presentation in March, Koskinen pointed out Wisconsin’s unemployment rate is consistently lower than the national average. Also, previously the BLS reported Wisconsin was losing jobs, only to have to revise those numbers later and admit the state gained jobs.

The Dumocrats failed to report that the last Democratic governor, James Doyle, presided over a single-year job dump of 121,000 jobs.

Do the math yourself:

Of course, the politically unaligned might point out that those 137,000 created jobs merely make up for Doyle’s 2009, with a few more jobs thrown in. The 15 percent of Americans who are either unemployed, less employed than they want to be, or are no longer looking for work because there are no jobs (look up U6 unemployment) want a full-time job and don’t care who gets credit for it.

Media Trackers asserts:

For Democrats who have spent the better part of the last two years attacking Walker on various issues, including jobs numbers, the news is a blow to their political messaging. If Walker is halfway towards completing his goal, that is no small feat considering the fact that Wisconsin employers still struggle with relatively high taxes and what some experts have said is a burdensome regulatory climate.

If Walker and legislative Republicans moves to cut taxes, streamline the tax code by eliminating tax credits for government-favored items, they may actually get to Walker’s job creation goal. The numbers show them to be well on their way.

That, however, is a big if, and one piece of evidence that this is not necessarily good news. (Independent of the most recent monthly county unemployment rates, which are definitely not good news.) The worst thing that could happen here is for Republicans to assume the job numbers mean the Legislature doesn’t have to fix our “relatively high taxes” and “burdensome regulatory climate.”

There is nothing “relatively” high about Wisconsin’s state and local taxes. To have the fifth highest state and local taxes in the country means taxes are too high, period. The last time we had a Democratic governor and Democrat-controlled Legislature, taxes increased $2.1 billion. The Legislature has not eliminated those tax increases, which is one reason why Wisconsin ranks a miserable 43rd in taxes on business (also known as “job creators”). The only people who feel that Wisconsin’s “regulatory climate” is “burdensome” are those who have to deal with state regulators (also known as “job creators”).

Moreover, this state has trailed the nation in per-capita personal income growth since the late 1970s. Yes, that dubious accomplishment goes back to the days when Patrick Lucey was the governor. Every governor since then, including Walker, has failed to improve that. That has everything to do with this state’s business climate and the state’s continuing hostility to business (also known as “job creators”).

 

04.10.13
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The right to be visually left alone

(This originally ran in Right Wisconsin Friday.)

A Facebook Friend posted this on his wall one week ago:

I’m seeing people on both sides of the gay marriage debate taking potshots at those of us who have principled reasons not to get drawn into their statist political dispute. Please understand that we don’t owe you the support you resent not getting. It’s perfectly reasonable for you to make decisions about what you’re going to support politically, but please don’t be arrogant enough to tell us that we ought to support your position. You have your reasons for taking your position in the conflict. We have our reasons for staying out of it. Please respect our right to come to a different conclusion than you’ve come to.

This was written in response to last week’s inundation on Facebook of the support-of-same-sex-marriage symbol, a pink equals sign upon a red square, which same-sex-marriage supporters were using as their profile photo. The alternative logo was a white equals sign over a rainbow.

The observation that begins this piece could have been written well before Tuesday, however. Bumper stickers announcing the car owner’s political beliefs, or buttons announcing the wearer’s beliefs, far predate Facebook profile photos or memes, or Twitter hashtags. And buttons with punchy sayings or symbols predate bumper stickers because they predate cars.

Facebook and other social media give people the ability to put into symbolism the title of NBC and ABC commentator David Brinkley’s autobiography, Everyone Is Entitled to My Opinion. Of course, a photo or a pithy bumper-sticker slogan is not a logical argument; it’s a nonnegotiable demand. It is not possible to create a logical, factual argument (for instance, the “right” to marriage, for heterosexuals or homosexuals) within a one-quarter-square-inch space on a computer screen or part of the rear bumper or a window of a car.

I come from the People’s Republic of Madison, where people are so open-minded their brains fall out of their skulls. I became inundated with other people’s politics as soon as I became a UW student. In Madison, free speech rights include the right to run out onto the Camp Randall Stadium field during the playing of the National Anthem (specifically, at “and the rockets’ red glare”) before a nationally televised football game to stage an anti-nuclear “die-in” before a presidential election.

Go to any college town or any other liberal enclave and you will see Obama–Biden bumper stickers, the message of which is “We Won, You Lost, You Suck, Die.” Some printer in Madison is making a small fortune printing bumper stickers seeking to “Recall Walker,” “Indict Walker,” “Imprison Walker,” etc. (I suppose “Deport Walker” and “Assassinate Walker” are somewhere in the proofing process.)

As someone whose professional skills include award-winning headline writing, and as someone who blogs, I can appreciate catchy slogans. As someone who believes arguments based on fact and logic are superior to emotionalism, I find Facebook photo politics unconvincing, yet annoying.

This is the fault of liberals more than conservatives. Radical feminist (as self-described) Carol Hanisch is credited for popularizing the phrase “The personal is political.” (That’s a game conservatives can play too, as demonstrated by the efforts by some to de-Google themselves as a protest against Google’s commemorating Easter with Cesar Chavez’s face.) I assume bumper stickers on cars of conservative or libertarian drivers followed as a collective response to the lefty bumper stickers.

In both leftward and rightward cases, this is the logical result of too large government, to which both Democrats and Republicans contribute in different areas. And given the (lack of) respect for property we’ve seen during Recallarama, a bumper sticker is an invitation to vehicle vandalism. (That said, the National Rifle Association-member sticker might have some repellent use.)

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was quoted (though the phrase predates Holmes) that “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.” Having someone’s political beliefs jammed into your face — sitting in traffic behind a Toyota Prius festooned with various lefty bumper stickers, or various Facebook sloganeering — violates our right to free expression, as in our right to not express ourselves on every political movement or issue. It’s also an excellent example of our self-centered-to-the-point-of-selfishness society that some people believe their opinion trumps everyone else’s, including the rights of those who choose not to have an opinion, or choose not to pay attention to someone else’s opinion.

This may seem to be a strange position for someone who writes opinions every day to take. But my blog, steveprestegard.com, is there for people to read or not, and to agree with or not, as their choice. The same applies to Right Wisconsin. The only way to avoid the obnoxious Facebook face is to de-Friend them. (Which I considered doing before the equals signs started going away.) The only way to avoid the obnoxious bumper sticker is to obliterate the offending vehicle with your much-larger-than-theirs pickup truck.

The in-your-face Facebook profile photo actually prevents political discussion. In response to the pink-on-red equals sign, some people posted a cross, indicating to them that marriage is intended by God to be between a man and a woman. Others created an equal sign indicating a different sort of equality — revenues (should) = spending. Still others replaced the equal sign with two parallel guns, or two parallel strips of bacon.

There are interesting arguments for same-sex marriage on the part of conservatives. I’ve read arguments against same-sex marriage written by homosexual people. In neither case will you make an argument by sloganeering, or symbolizing. The writer at the beginning of this piece chose to not participate in the pro-vs.-anti argument because he has a right to be left alone, and he probably didn’t feel like being accused of being homophobic (an accusation hurled against basically everyone who dared express an opinion in favor of traditional marriage), or anti-Christian.

The First Amendment seems to me to include the right to not be drowned in others’ political opinions when you are not interested in seeing or hearing them.

Note: Steve Prestegard’s profile photo on Facebook is currently rotating among the three cool Steves noted in the film “The Tao of Steve” — Steve McQueen, Steve McGarrett of “Hawaii Five-O,” and Steve Austin of “The Six Million Dollar Man.” Along with his own handsome visage and graphics supporting, depending on the season, the Brewers, Badgers and Packers.
04.09.13
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Steve agrees with a Democrat!

Proving that good ideas do not have a specific partisan label, there is Rep. Leon Young (D–Milwaukee), as reported by the Wisconsin Reporter:

Seven days of actual debate does not a full-time Legislature make, and it’s certainly not worth the $49,943 annual salary paid to Wisconsin lawmakers,Rep. Leon Young says.

So the Milwaukee Democrat is floating an idea to make a Wisconsin legislator’s job a part-time gig – and he would slash lawmakers’ pay by 75 percent, to $12,000, as part of the deal.

“If you want to be streamlined, and both parties, especially Republicans, have always talked about saving money for the state, saving taxpayers, if you’re sincere about that, sometimes you have to look at your own house,” Young said Thursday.

Using data from the Assembly Chief Clerk’s office, Young said the Assembly only met in session for 34 days during the 2011-12 biennial session – including just seven days last year.

Yet a report from the National Conference of State Legislatures categorized Wisconsin as one of 10 states in which legislating is essentially a full-time job, requiring 80 percent or more of a lawmaker’s time.

States in that category pay their lawmakers more – an average of $68,599  each including salary, per diem and other benefits, as of 2008, according to the report.

There’s also an additional staffing cost: States with full-time legislatures have an average of 8.9 staff members per lawmaker, versus 1.2 per lawmaker in legislatures that operate part  time. …

The Reporter’s follow-up notes …

Alan Rosenthal, a Rutgers University political scientist and expert on state legislatures, said there’s “no evidence that I know of that full-time legislatures work better than part-time legislatures.”

“I think it’s likely that … full-time legislators do devote more time (to the job) because they have support, they have staff support and district office support, probably spend more time dealing with constituents and constituent services,” Rosenthal said.

“I think the largest part of that, the reason for full-time legislatures, is that legislators wanted to do politics full time,” he said. “That’s what they like.”

Such as Rep. Bob Jauch (D–Poplar):

Jauch called Young’s plan “a childish proposal.”

“It is maybe based on how hard (Young) works, but it doesn’t reflect the effort that I think most lawmakers, full or part-time, do,” Jauch said.

Young brushed off the criticism.

“Sometimes when you want to change government, streamline it, make it more efficient, you’re not always going to make people happy,” he said.

The Reporter notes that Young’s proposal is a constitutional amendment, which requires two consecutive sessions of the Legislature to approve it and a majority of voters to vote for it in a statewide referendum.

If the Republicans are serious about smaller government (and whether they are is an open question), the GOP should immediately jump on this. (If I were a Republican in the Legislature I’d double-down by reducing Young’s salary proposal by $12,000.) In fact, the GOP should jump on any and all ideas that reduce the size of government — for instance, combining the jobs of lieutenant governor, secretary of state and state treasurer into one position.

If the GOP doesn’t, Democrats can argue that Republicans say one thing about reducing government, but don’t follow through. (That’s along with the embarrassing number of Republicans who could reasonably be described as professional politicians — that is, they have done nothing other than run for or hold office.)

 

04.01.13
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Whom to vote for Tuesday

Tuesday is Election Day. Again.

There are two statewide races, for the Supreme Court and for Superintendent of Public Instruction.

I wrote about the former race the day of the primary election. The reason you should vote for incumbent Pat Roggensack is that you are much more likely to get the correct result from Roggensack than from Ed Fallone.

Among other things, Fallone appears to have issues with the truth, as chronicled by Collin Roth:

In 2010, Heidi Fallone appeared in a television ad for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett. The ad attacks Scott Walker for a position on stem cell research and concludes:

“Scott Walker says he would ban stem cell research in Wisconsin. That’s right, ban it.”

There was only one issue with the ad. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s PolitiFact deemed Heidi Fallone’s statement to be completely false. …

Ed Fallone serves as the President of Wisconsin Stem Cell Now, a stem cell advocacy organization. When the opportunity presented itself to attack Scott Walker on the stem cell issue, Heidi Fallone jumped at the opportunity. And when the ad was deemed completely false, it was Ed Fallone who was forced to back track for the ads claims.

Quoted in the Associated Press, Ed Fallone said that “Walker’s statements that he opposes embryonic research but that adult research is just as promising make it hard to know exactly where he stands.” But not knowing where a candidate stands and willingly having your wife and fellow Board member participate in an ad that charged Walker with wanting to “ban stem cell research” is very different.

Rick Esenberg adds this observation:

Supreme Court candidate Ed Fallone’s recent – and only – ad states that Judge Roggensack “refused” to hold Justice David Prosser accountable for his altercation with Justice Ann Walsh Bradley. The statement is combined with text suggesting that Roggensack declined to do so because she and Prosser are “allies.”

This is an extremely unfair attack. Roggensack recused herself because she was a witness to the incident in question. In doing so, she followed the traditional rule that a person cannot be a judge and witness in the same case. …

The same ad claims – through a combination of voiceover and text – that what Fallone has dubbed the “Roggensack rule” is “legalized bribery.” In fact, Roggensack supported a rule that says that a legal campaign contribution or independent expenditure would not – by itself – require recusal. A judge remains free to recuse if she thinks that a particular contribution or expenditure has undermined her independence or created an unacceptable appearance of bias. This is consistent with longstanding practice on the court. …

Ed Fallone is, of course, free to disagree. He may prefer a rule that automatically calls for recusal whenever someone potentially interested in the outcome of a case – a party or a lawyer or a group that prefers the law to move in a certain direction – makes a contribution or spends money. But to call these things “bribery” reflects a lack of the care and precision we expect from judges. A contribution – without more – is not bribery as anyone with even a passing familiarity with the legal concept of bribery knows. …

But here’s the sticky part. Is candidate Fallone willing to live by the rules that he would impose on others? For example, he has received substantial support from labor unions and others with a vested interest in invalidating Act 10. Indeed, it is almost certainly the case that the attack ad he is now running could not have been produced or put on the air without that support.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Yet Fallone has not – as far as I know – refused to say that he will recuse himself from any case involving Act 10. If substantial campaign contributions or expenditures constitute legalized “bribery,” he ought to be willing to do so.

I was lukewarm on the Superintendent of Public Instruction race. I am loath to vote for someone as deeply embedded in the education establishment as Tony Evers is. I also am loath to vote for Evers given that he clearly doesn’t grasp that, based on the 2010 and 2012 elections, Wisconsin voters demand more accountability, more choice for their children, and more cost-effective public education.

I was not, however, going to vote for Evers’ opponent, Don Pridemore, until I read this:

Rep. Don Pridemore (R-Erin), candidate for State Superintendent of Schools, on Thursday vowed to eliminate the Department of Public Instruction’s policy concerning allowable mascots.

“Under my leadership, DPI will not force policy onto the school districts where one bureaucrat has sole power to determine the fate of a school mascot,” Pridemore said. “This policy does not consider community standards, traditions or cost. Having one person to make a decision does not allow for due process or a public hearing. In my opinion it is unconstitutional and a great example of a bureaucracy that’s out of control.”

Pridemore thus earned my vote. In addition to being an example of misplaced outrage (schools choose mascots based on their positive attributes — in the case of Indian nicknames, strength, endurance and courage), the controversy over, around here, the Chieftains, Braves, Flying Arrows and others is an ideal example of mandates from afar egged on by the professionally aggrieved. (No, I do not care one bit about the feelings of those who complain about Indian mascots, anymore than Stoughton cared about my feelings when the Vikings nickname was adopted.)

Indian nicknames are not the biggest issue of this state. Evers, however, is an excellent example of the Tyranny of the Expert that infests state government. DPI is, not surprisingly, a captive of teacher unions, as demonstrated by its prevailing ethos: (1) Give us more money, and (2) leave us alone. We would not have a statewide school report card were it not for the Legislature’s actually insisting upon accountability in return for the billions of dollars the state sends every year to public schools.

The only people whose opinions should count in the schools are parents and taxpayers. Evers represents neither.

04.01.13
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Job one for UW

Priority number one for new UW–Madison chancellor Rebecca Blank, according to John Torinus:

There is a growing concern that part of the state’s laggard economic performance can be put at the doorstep of its flagship campus. The massive taxpayer inputs to that powerhouse campus don’t seem to match the outputs.

Put succinctly, the state has been losing GDP share for four decades or more. And it’s not getting better. The state ranks in the bottom ten year after year in job and business creation. …

Those graduates need jobs, and that comes from business creation. Even the jobs on the public side depend on business creation, the ultimate source of supporting tax dollars.

When the economy lags, businesses cut back on job creation, but cuts often follow on the public side not long afterward. That’s true almost everywhere, except in Madison where the public ranks grow in good times and bad times, under Democratic governors or Republican governors.

Maybe it’s that bubble around Madison that saps the urgency for growing the economy. Even there, though, the Madison economy hasn’t kept up with othr metro areas that are home to major research universities. …

Among her initiatives could be these:

  • Focus the campus on entrepreneurship in the mode of Stanford, Utah and MIT. We pale in comparison. Academic R&D, patents and licenses are great, but the payoff for citizens comes from business creation and the resulting job creation. Make the effort statewide.
  • Engage foundations affiliated with the UW in business startups. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation gave her a leg up, a starting point, last week by teaming with the state pension fund to launch a $30 million venture fund for IT startups. Great. But what about other foundations, like the UW–Madison Foundation with more than $2 billion in assets? Other foundations also could make alternative investments in the intellectual property of the state.
  • Lead the way back to the Wisconsin Idea. The time-honored state concept of pulling together the state’s best experts on different public policy issues should appeal to Blank, whose academic and government career centered on public policy. Since [former UW System president Katherine] Lyall and Gov. Tommy Thompson, that methodology has withered. Instead, cocooned governor staffs have dominated policy making. Organizations like Competitive Wisconsin have had to step into the gap.
  • Engage the private sector, standard operating procedure at Stanford, Utah and MIT. Take a page from UW–Milwaukee Chancellor Mike Lovell, who is getting that interaction into high gear. UW–Madison lags other Big Ten universities on industry-supported research.
  • Do a strategic study of the various departments, centers and institutes on the campus. Many of the centers that should be leading the thinking about the economy and driving innovation are invisible. What is the role of UW– Extension, for example? Where are the La Follette Institute and the Center on Wisconsin Strategy? We need a replacement for the late Don Nichols, who led pieces of economic thinking about Wisconsin.
  • Use public policy expertise to look at the under-managed benefit structure for university employees. Tens of millions of dollars could be saved for better purposes if public employees were on the same kinds of plans as private sector employee. That’s where the money is. Don’t complain about budgets until you have done so. FYI: that can be done while IMPROVING health care.

 

03.28.13
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The tyranny of the degreed

After my rather unpleasant hour debating Democrat Christine Bremer-Muggli on Wisconsin Public Radio Friday, I got this Facebook message:

It’s always a pleasure to hear you on Joy’s program, but I’m disappointed in you for not correcting your nemesis on this morning’s WPR show when she incessantly spewed out an oft-repeated fallacy about Governor Walker’s level of education. Christine said – no less than five times – that Scott Walker “does not have a college education.”

That is a blatant lie.

Scott Walker went to Marquette for four years. Folks who want to criticize him would be accurate in saying that he did not earn a degree from that university.

That’s a fact.

It’s not my intention to defend the governor; but instead, I’m pointing out the truth in the midst of the rhetoric. Christine spewed out misinformation, she said it with authority, portrayed it as fact, and nobody called her on it.

To say that Walker “did not get a college education” after sitting in a class room for four years is beyond comprehension.

Also, it’s offensive to all the people in the world who were alternatively educated — home schooled, Internet classes, or even the school of hard knocks.

What about Abe Lincoln, who never went to college but eventually became a U.S. president? Bill Gates dropped out of college because he was too bored with the standard way of learning and became a self-made billionaire! Many very successful people never “got a college education,” including Mark Twain, Frank Sinatra, Michael Dell (Dell computers), Thomas Edison, Ernest Hemingway, George Washington, Andrew Carnegie, Orville and Wilbur Wright, and Steve Jobs. Where would we be without these very influential — and dare I say “educated” — people?

I can argue with nothing our listener/reader wrote, other than to add to her list a president who never got to college. I don’t think my WPR opponent will kick out Harry S. Truman from her party, but by her Friday standards he wasn’t qualified to be president. Nor was Abraham Lincoln.

As numerous unemployed college graduates can attest, a college degree guarantees nothing other than the fact you met the degree requirements of the institution. (The same can be said about master’s degrees, doctoral degrees, and yes, law degrees. The University of Wisconsin, from which my bachelor’s degree was earned, has among its alumni a large number of Ph.D.s working as Madison taxi drivers and waiters.) That means you attained the required number of credits by passing the required classes in the required subjects, including one or more majors and minors. Period. A college degree does not guarantee or demonstrate extraordinary intelligence, and it certainly does not prove wisdom.

It’s ironic, if you think about it, that a representative of the supposedly diverse, inclusive, tolerant, nondiscriminatory political party demonstrates a noted lack of tolerance toward someone with fewer degrees than her, beyond her willful falsehoods about Walker’s education. Then again, the diversity of the Democratic Party doesn’t include ideological diversity. (Bremer-Muggli respects neither the Second Amendment nor Article I, section 25 of the state Constitution either, but that’s hardly a surprise.)

One can ask if my microphone-hogging WPR nemesis actually intended to insult every listener without a degree, not to mention every potential legal client of hers without a degree. The charitable would assume the answer is no; she only intended to insult Scott Walker specifically and Republicans and non-liberals (including certainly myself) generally.

That makes her a victim of what Charlie Sykes calls Walker Derangement Syndrome, or the more scientific term, Reagan/Thompson/Bush/Walker Disease. Democrats believed, and believe in the latter’s case, that, respectively, a two-term president elected by larger margins than any of his Democratic successors, the longest-serving governor in Wisconsin’s history, our last two-term Republican president, and our current governor were, and in Walker’s case are, simultaneously stupid and evil. The victims not only spit contempt upon those who won, in order, two presidential elections, four gubernatorial elections, two presidential elections and a gubernatorial and recall election, they spit contempt upon those who voted for them.

Yesterday at work, for instance, I got an email from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin that could be described as slanderous toward Walker were it not for the fact that as a matter of law public officials generally cannot be the victims of slander. None of what the Democrats’ Baghdad Bob sent has a thing to do with issues facing this state. Other than possibly The Capital Times, Isthmus and some other Republican-hating publication, no publication would run this agitprop. Given the results of the 2010 and 2012 elections, the Democrats’ PR strategy, such as it is, isn’t working.

03.25.13
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From RINO to minority

Wigderson Library & Pub, where you can buy books or beer (or both), and perhaps books about beer, has a warning for two state Senate Republicans:

The announcement by a pair of Republican senators of an alternative budget plan for education spending should send shivers down the spines of their colleagues. The plan being touted by Senator Mike Ellis and Senator Luther Olsen would raise education spending by $382 million. That’s more than the $343 million tax cut proposed by Governor Scott Walker.

Public school spending would increase $150 more per student in each of the next two years. Ellis and Olsen would take $100 million from elsewhere in the budget and would allow local property taxes to go up $153 million.

So what Ellis and Olsen are proposing is not only a local tax increase but a tax shift from the state level to local property taxpayers. Yet these same two senators claim to be concerned about the effect of school choice on local property taxpayers even though school choice has proven to be an educational bargain for the state.

This is beyond hypocritical. This is duplicitous. …

In 2006, several Senate Republicans voted against a state constitutional amendment to limit state spending. State Senator Mary Lazich even issued a press release with a poem questioning the proposal early in the debate.

Certainly no small coincidence, Republicans lost control of the state senate later that year. In a sign of things to come, State Representative Ann Nischke lost a mayoral election in the heart of Republican territory, Waukesha, because the Democrat Larry Nelson attacked Madison Republicans for their spending and support for taxes.

Two years later, Republicans lost control of the state assembly and the Democrats were in complete control of Madison. If political parties don’t live up to the expectations of the taxpayers, the taxpayers will hold them accountable.

Those Democrats increased taxes by $2.1 billion, tax increases that the GOP has failed to erase, as I pointed out on Wisconsin Public Radio Friday. (More about that later this week.)

The taxpayers held Democrats accountable for that, too:

The re-energized party swept the state in 2010, electing Scott Walker as governor and winning back the senate and the assembly. Walker cut state spending and froze local spending while giving local governments the means to control costs with Act 10. As a result, the median property owner even saw a slight reduction in their property taxes. …

Now Ellis and Olsen, who were both senators the last couple of times Republicans lost the majority in the senate, want to raise local property taxes. They want to undo the work that has been done by the governor to show that state services can be maintained without raising taxes. In the process, they would render the proposed income tax cut meaningless, and actually hurt the tax reduction cause because of the perceived shift of the tax burden from the state level to the local level.

The voters held legislative Republicans responsible the last time they failed to control taxes and spending. They will hold legislative Republicans accountable again.