Today in 1963, Paul McCartney was fined 17 pounds for speeding. I’d suggest that that may have been the inspiration for his Wings song “Hell on Wheels,” except that the correct title is actually “Helen Wheels,” supposedly a song about his Land Rover:
Today in 1984, John Lennon released “I’m Stepping Out.” The fact that Lennon stepped out of planet Earth at the hands of assassin Mark David Chapman 3½ years before this song was released was immaterial.
Birthdays today start with David Pack of Ambrosia:
This week’s entry in the Don’t-Ask-Questions-You-Don’t-Want-Answered category goes to President Obama:
In an interview with CBS News, Obama again invoked Ronald Reagan as an example of how a president and a Congress controlled by an opposite party can find common ground.
“Ronald Reagan repeatedly took steps that included revenue in order for him to accomplish some of these larger goals. And the question is, if Ronald Reagan could compromise, why wouldn’t folks who idolize Ronald Reagan be willing to engage in those same kinds of compromises?” Obama said.
Independent of the fact that Reagan had more love of his country in his left middle finger than Obama has in his entire marriage, and clearly didn’t hate his political opponents (something that cannot be said of Obama’s allies), when Reagan agreed to tax increases — which he called “revenue enhancements,” bowing to his inner euphemist — it was clear that tax increases were a last resort, not a first option. Recall that two major tax cuts occurred during Reagan’s presidency: the 1981 reduction and then tax reform and simplification in 1986. All that has happened tax-cut-wise in the Obama presidency is the politically expedient extension of the George W. Bush tax cuts to the end of 2012.
And I do not want, and I will not accept, a deal in which I am asked to do nothing, in fact, I’m able to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income that I don’t need, while a parent out there who is struggling to figure out how to send their kid to college suddenly finds that they’ve got a couple thousand dollars less in grants or student loans.
Well, Mr. President, if you’re really interested in tax increases, you first. How about taxes on union dues? How about surtaxes on government employee salaries? Why don’t you send your $400,000 paycheck and all your book royalties to the Bureau of the Public Debt? Why don’t you ask your buddies Warren Buffett and Bill Gates Sr. and Jr. to send all of their money to your government?
But, unlike Scrooge McDuck, the rich do not put the excess in a vast money bin and frolic about in it. They invest it. What a concept! Where does Obama think new capital comes from, the tooth fairy? It’s nothing more than the excess of income over outgo. Take away the income the rich “don’t need” and spend it on social programs, and capital formation in this country drops to zero.
The nonideological issue around taxes is that taxes unquestionably reduce economic output. (Even the Keynesians agree with that statement.) And you may have noticed that our economy is not exactly robust these days. The federal government has given Americans absolutely no reason to believe that increasing government revenues will result in those revenues’ not being wasted on … well, finish this sentence yourself.
As usually happens during crises, ideas are suggested that are simple yet wrong. The latest related to business is a proposal from a University of Texas professor to tax the market capitalization of public companies:
General Electric Co. paid essentially no tax in 2010. A 35% tax on GE’s economic income would have been $6.8 billion, or $4.7 billion with inflation adjustments. Generally accepted accounting principles and tax accounting allow too much expensing of investments, and ignore predictable future income, the use of tax havens, and accelerated depreciation.
The government can most easily and fairly collect the requisite tax from GE by imposing a tax on the fair market value of its capital. The government can charge GE $6 billion to $7 billion a year for access to public markets and GE and every corporation would be willing to pay that much to give its shareholders access to ready liquidity.
I’m not a tax professor, but all I see out of this proposal (besides a pile of manure as tall as the Texas Tower in that “every corporation would be willing to pay that much” statement) is a powerful inducement to take publicly traded companies private. That would substantially reduce the ability of Americans to buy stock. Regardless of what you think GE’s or any other company’s tax bill should be, any public company that doesn’t try to reduce its taxes is abrogating its fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders. Concerned about concentration of wealth? This proposal is a good way to make it worse.
If Obama’s statements sound disingenuous, they are as disingenuous as his suggestion earlier this week that the next Social Security payments would be suspended without a debt deal. That is necessary neither in the short term nor in the long run. Jim Pethokoukis passes on a Goldman Sachs analysis that shows that the feds will have enough money to fund Social Security, Medicare, defense and interest payments in August.
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R–Wisconsin) pointed out last week that if the federal government does nothing at all, the feds will receive $2.6 trillion in revenue in the 2011–12 fiscal year. That is sufficient to fund all Social Security payments for the next fiscal year, plus about 60 percent of other federal spending. Johnson, an accountant by training (amazing what happens when you elect business people instead of phony maverick gadflies, isn’t it?), likened federal finances to a business bankruptcy reorganization, and he said in the latter situation most creditors would gladly take 60 percent of what they’re owed in the short term.
There is a more interesting question about what would happen in the event of real, substantial federal budget cuts. Too bad David Frum didn’t overstate when he made this argument:
The US government is the largest purchaser of goods and services on planet earth.
The government buys everything from equipment for cancer research to metal for warships to toothpicks for federal cafeterias. Suppose the governmetn had to cut 44% from its budget on 2 weeks notice? How sharp a shock would that be to the world economy?
Here’s a comparative. In the worst quarter of 2009, American consumers cut their spending by … not 44%, not even 4.4%, but 1.2%. That 1.2% drop in consumer spending helped tumble the US economy into the worst collapse since the 1930s. …
If a cut of 1.2% from $10 trillion was an economic shock, a cut of 44% from $3.4 trillion will be a much, much, much bigger shock. …
If it’s right that on Aug. 2, the federal government will have income of $140 billion a month to cover $300 billion of obligations, then we’re going to see some scramble among the creditors, won’t we? …
Perhaps it’s true that such an event would be “less bad” than a straightforward debt default. That’s hard to estimate. No question: it would be plenty bad enough. Harder question: why are conservatives – supposedly the party of business and the private sector – so sanguine about heedlessly provoking an entirely unnecessary crisis that will bear so hard on so many businesses and the whole private economy?
The response from someone smarter than Frum (or me) about economics, Larry Kudlow:
The public wants deep spending cuts. That’s their first priority and that’s why polls overwhelmingly show opposition to a debt-ceiling increase. So regarding those spending cuts, the only thing that matters is the first-year spending decline. That would be 2012. If the spending baseline is brought down significantly in year one, then the out-years will follow suit. The government’s cost curve will ease down. …
As the congressional negotiators negotiate with President Obama, we the taxpaying public have no idea what they’re cooking up on 2012 spending. It could be a worthwhile reduction or not. Out-year-discretionary decreases and small entitlement cuts for 2019 to 2021 are simply not reliable or credible. Congresses change. Deals are broken. Outcomes are, well, kind of like a scam.
And the public is onto this. The highly accurate IBD/TIPP pollsters have just released an incredible result. Get this: The public rejects a debt-ceiling increase by a huge 58 to 36 percent. That includes 59 percent of independents and even 38 percent of Democrats. That is the Tea Party revolt.
I believe the public agrees with people like Michele Bachmann. She told me in an interview this week that Congress can direct the Treasury to “first pay off the interest on the debt, make sure our military men and women get paid, and then deal with our priorities. Yes, we have very sacrificial consequences, but when are we going to get serious about deficit reduction?”
On this logic, Bachmann and other Tea Party Republicans — including most on the presidential campaign trail — oppose a debt-ceiling increase. This populist spending revolt runs directly counter to the Tim Geithner, Wall Street, big-business view that we must at all costs have a debt-ceiling increase to make good on our federal debt.
Tea Party populists are saying no, no: We can still make good on our debt, but this debt bill is the only leverage we have to force Washington to cut spending.
The other thing that has to happen is identified by Rich Galen:
Everyone is talking about jobs and tax rates; government spending and entitlements. All symptoms. No one is talking about the cause of the problem: The economy is creaking along barely above water, businesses are frightened, and Americans are uncomfortable buying things because they aren’t sure they will have a job next month.
Jim Glassman, who is the executive director of the George W. Bush Institute, got it right the other day when he made the case that growing the economy would significantly reduce unemployment (and unemployment benefits) thus increasing tax revenues without increasing tax rates. …
Rather than chiding the Congress and going for cheap laughs among a press corps held hostage in the briefing room (you don’t laugh at the Presidential jokes, you don’t get called on next time), President Obama should be showing some leadership by utilizing the millions of very smart people in the Executive Branch to figure out how to get this economy moving again.
That would require actual leadership instead of wasting your time figuring out how to score cheap political points against your political enemies. I guess Galen is an optimist.
As I was finishing the script for last weekend’s Ripon Channel Report (which can be viewed on The Ripon Channel, channel 97 or 986 on Charter cable in the Ripon area, or seen on the Ripon Channel’s Facebook page), the Legislative Reference Bureau released the Legislature’s proposed Congressional and legislative redistricting maps.
This is the every-decade legislative exercise that follows the every-decade U.S. Census. (Which is why election years ending in zero are so important.) This is a new era for Wisconsin in a sense because this is the first time since 1951 that both houses of the Legislature have been controlled by the same party as the governor in a legislative session that will deal with reapportionment.
Redistricting has two goals, of course: (1) Reinforce the power of the majority, and (2) protect incumbents. Goal number two has been the primary focus of the previous five legislative reapportionments since neither R nor D dominated. (The state Supreme Court had to step in and create its own “temporary” redistricting plan for the 1964 elections due to lack of agreement between the Republican Legislature and the Democratic governor; said “temporary” plan was in force for the 1966, 1968 and 1970 elections too. The federal courts had to do the redistricting work after the 1990 and 2000 Censuses.)
Having the courts create redistricting plans is not ideal. For that matter, having legislative bodies decide their own districts’ boundaries isn’t ideal either. Since legislative boundaries are created as laws, Otto von Bismarck’s line about laws and sausages applies to redistricting plans too.
Kevin Binversie has a thoroughly cynical, and thus undoubtedly accurate, view of the whole thing:
1) – Of course it’s a gerrymander…and I don’t care.
As someone who’s heard of the rumored “Chvala Map” and it being in the hands of either former State Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker (Chuck Chvala’s wife was on his state Senate staff) or Madison’s Jon Erpenbach, you know these ideas have been kicked around for years, by both sides.
You’re a naive, bumbling fool to think it’s only one side with “Evil, diabolical plans for total state political control” when it comes to redistricting. …
3) – Action now sought by Democrats makes them look “A Day Late, and a Dollar Short.”
Wisconsin Democrats controlled the State Senate after the 2006 elections, they controlled the State Assembly after the 2008. So any calls for any sort of “Redistricting Commission” right now are hollow. Democrats had their chance to enact one when they ran Wisconsin government and they didn’t do it. …
4) – Movers and Realtors to Benefit.
Yeah, this happens often. The question is now, do you want to fight it out in a primary or is moving just smarter to do. I think Wigderson has a solid list of those who will be putting “Two Men and a Truck” on speed-dial.
That being said, the fact they redistricted [Democratic recall candidate Nancy] Nusbaum out of the 2nd State Senate District by mere blocks is pretty damn funny. …
This is how the law works in a number of states. Screaming, holding ones breath, and jumping up and down won’t change it. Win elections, then you get to draw the lines!
Binversie’s comment about movers and real estate agents is correct. When former Sen. Richard Kreul (R–Fennimore) retired in the early 1990s, the two Republicans who wanted his seat were Reps. David Brandemuehl (R–Fennimore) and Dale Schultz (R–Hillpoint), who came from the western and eastern reaches, respectively, of the 17th Senate District. After Schultz won the primary (a mistake by 17th Senate District voters, as we have come to see from his conversion from R to RINO) and general election, he moved to Richland Center to be more centrally located. Getting elected does not give you a guarantee that you won’t have to accommodate your constituents.
When the state lost one Congressional district after the 2000 Census, potentially pitting two Milwaukee Democratic Congressmen, Gerald Kleczka and Tom Barrett, against one Menomonee Falls Republican, James Sensenbrenner, the solution was for Milwaukee to be put into one Congressional district — now represented, if you want to call it that, by Rep. Gwen Moore (D–Milwaukee) — and to have the suburbs in either the First, to the south, or the Fifth, to the west and north, while Barrett ran unsuccessfully for governor and successfully for mayor.
Moreover, redistricting does not trump elections. After the redistricting following the 2000 Census, again done in the courts, Democrats took control of the Senate in 2007 and the Assembly in 2009 … and lost control of both after the Nov. 2 election.
I find personally interesting the proposed Ripon-area map:
After Rep. Red Fred Clark (D–Baraboo) loses the 14th Senate District recall election to Sen. Luther Olsen (R–Ripon), Clark will still have to wander around the Ripon area because the 42nd Assembly District’s boundaries (purple on this map) are as far north as the town immediately south of Ripon, Metomen. That’s after Clark moves back into the 42nd, because Clark’s house reportedly isn’t in this version of the 42nd Assembly District. Go one town to the east of Ripon (the Town of Rosendale), and you’re not in the 14th Senate District or the 42nd Assembly District, you’re in the 18th Senate District and the 53rd Assembly District (shown in pink).
Meanwhile, the proposed 41st Assembly District (shown in tan on both of these maps) will run from the Wisconsin River between Adams and Juneau counties east to Ripon …
… and the proposed 14th Senate District (shown in the medium of the three blues) continues to be the We Hope You Enjoy Driving district, from Clintonville to the northeast, to the Wisconsin River to the west, to the village of Dane to the south:
Regardless of which party does it, when redistricting is done to benefit either a party or incumbents, that does not benefit the voters. The interests of people who live on the North Shore north of Milwaukee are not necessarily the same interests of those who live in Wild Rose, but they will be in the same Congressional district if that map comes to pass. The fact that I will be able to stand at the top of the hill at Ripon College and look into three Assembly districts and two separate Senate districts seems odd, too.
The state of Iowa has a nonpartisan redistricting commission whose charge is first to draw up geographically contiguous districts. With Iowa losing one Congressional seat, the commission first came up with a redistricting map that put two Democratic Congressmen in the same district and two Republican Congressmen in the same district.
Something similar to Iowa’s redistricting process needs to be put into place in Wisconsin, and put into the state Constitution, not merely created for a future Legislature to dismantle. The redistricting process should be part of the state Constitution because spending and taxation limits need to be in the Constitution too. The U.S. Constitution was written to define and limit government’s power over the citizens. Creating Assembly and Senate district boundaries for the purpose of partisan advantage is the political equivalent of a pure democracy’s ability to imprison 49 percent of citizens based on the votes of 51 percent of citizens. Given the voters’ trend of quickly changing their minds (as shown in the swing between the 2008 and 2010 elections), Republicans eventually will fall on the wrong side of the redistricting process.
So how do we accommodate this idealistic view of redistricting and Binversie’s cynical observations on gerrymandering? Simple. After the Legislature passes redistricting, start the constitutional amendment process (which requires approvals of successive Legislatures and then voter approval) for a nonpartisan redistricting process to begin after the 2020 Census. As Binversie pointed out, that will only do what Democrats should have done when they last controlled the Legislature.
The latest state business climate comparison is the eighth annual Council on State Taxation study of state and local taxes, prepared by Ernst & Young on the 2009 fiscal year.
The study ranks the 50 states on tax liabilities for “headquarters operations, research and development facilities, durable and non-durable manufacturing facilities, and office and call center activities” — that is, “the percentage change in the rate-of-return over the 30-year period analyzed” when state and local taxes are factored in.
Wisconsin ranks, or more accurately ranked — surprise! — fourth in state and local business tax competitiveness based as weighed by both capital investment and by jobs. Wisconsin’s effective tax rate was 4.5 percent on capital investment and 5.7 percent on job creation. That is 50 percent and 33 percent, respectively, higher than the number one state, Maine, but it is 75 percent and 25 percent , respectively, lower than the national average.
This study is unfortunately two fiscal years out of date. That’s because the 2009–10 Legislature idiotically raised taxes by $2.1 billion. (Which is why numerous state legislators found themselves former legislators after the Nov. 2 elections.) If Wisconsin ranked fourth in the 2009 fiscal year, we certainly did not rank fourth in the 2010 fiscal year.
Nevertheless, the study shows that Wisconsin does some things right in terms of business taxation. Wisconsin taxes only in-state sales, not employment or facilities, as the state used to do. (Until single-sales-factor became state law, corporate income taxes used to be 50 percent based on in-state sales, 25 percent based on in-state facilities, and 25 percent based on in-state employment. Great recipe to discourage locating in the state, wasn’t it?) The state also taxes only corporate income (that is, profit), not gross receipts (that is, revenues), and the state has no franchise tax, a tax on the net worth of a corporation. (I hesitate to bring that up because Wisconsin Democrats will want to introduce franchise taxes next.)
The study includes sales taxes, and Wisconsin’s 5 percent rate and relatively limited local sales taxes (the 0.5 percent county rate in most counties) ranks better than all of our neighbors — Minnesota (7 percent), Michigan (6 percent), Illinois (7.3 percent) and Iowa (7.8 percent). Wisconsin also does fairly well in business property taxes thanks in large part to the state Machinery & Equipment property tax exemption.
One problem with the study is that it measures business taxes and not total taxes. Most businesses are small businesses, and small businesses set up as S corporations or other pass-through entities pass on tax liability to the owners. And recall that Wisconsin has the fourth highest state and local taxes in the country, which means the taxes people directly pay. (People also indirectly pay business taxes given that they are part of the cost of businesses’ products and services. So perhaps Wisconsin deserves credit for having more transparent taxation.) The taxation numbers may be artificially low not just because of the aforementioned idiotic tax increase, but because state and local governments have been piling on so much debt, which of course is future taxation.
The second problem is that the study measures only one aspect — perhaps the most important aspect, but certainly not the only aspect — of business climate. In economic performance comparisons, Wisconsin does better than other states in only one area, unemployment. In other areas — business start-ups and incorporations, number of corporate headquarters and venture capital spending, to name three — Wisconsin trails the nation as a whole, and has for quite some time. That may be an indictment of the previous Department of Commerce, which as of July 1 was replaced by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. Wisconsin is also below par in in-migration — people moving into Wisconsin vs. people leaving Wisconsin — and people always vote with their feet when deciding where the land of opportunity is.
Taxation studies by definition do not take into account other business burdens, principally regulation, and Wisconsin is really, really good at overregulation. Recall the kerfuffle over the proposal to build a Bass Pro Shops store in wetlands — more accurately, unused, unproductive trash-filled land — near Lambeau Field, proof positive that to environmentalists, plants are more important than people. (Then again, this is a state that budgeted $86 million per year for this decade to buy land and take it off the tax rolls.) The aforementioned former Department of Commerce was the Peter and Paul of state government, simultaneously promoting and overregulating state business with the overt or covert approval of our elected officials.
Ultimately, judging a state’s business climate — which includes but is not limited to state taxation — must be based on performance. A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel letter-writer makes this inconvenient point:
… the number of people under 65 in households in Wisconsin with incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level have increased 5% in the past decade while the number of people in households with higher incomes in Wisconsin fell about 5% in the same period and the drop in people with higher incomes in Wisconsin was greater than in the country overall.
The facts are undeniable, but the explanation requires an opinion. I submit that in a state where the predominate mantra for the past several years under Gov. Jim Doyle was make the wealthy pay “their fair share” and make certain that every business and corporation be bled for every possible dollar while increasing support for nonproductive individuals is the reason for the facts.
The important question is not whether a tax rate is this number or that, but how are people doing. People voted about that with their votes Nov. 2, didn’t they?
Today is the anniversary of the Rolling Stones’ first public performance, at the Marquee Club in London in 1962. They were known then as the “Rollin’ Stones,” and they had not recorded a song yet.
If you’re going to record just one song that gets on the charts, ending at number one would be preferable, whether in 1969, or in the year 2525:
Birthdays start with Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac:
John Wetton played bass for Asia and King Crimson:
The most complicated opinion piece I’ve ever written was before a 1993 five-part statewide referendum on gaming.
One of the five referendum questions was a constitutional amendment; the other four were advisory referenda. In a stunning example of small-R-republican cowardice, the Legislature of the time couldn’t decide how much gaming should be legal or not, and so they threw the whole mess at the voters. I wrote for three weekly newspapers that voters should vote Yes on three questions and No on two to essentially maintain but not expand the amount of legal gaming in Wisconsin at the time. (And that is how voters voted.)
The second most complicated opinion piece I’ve ever written was a Marketplace of Ideas column for an issue that fell in between the November 2000 presidential election and the U.S. Supreme Court’s finally deciding the 2000 presidential election. The nightmare of every opinion-writer, of course, is that he or she writes a piece that, between when it’s published (or, now, is posted but hasn’t gone live yet) and when it gets read, something happens to invalidate the premise of the opinion piece. (Such as writing about why the Packers lost Super Bowl XLV.)
Since when Marketplace went to press no one had any idea when or how Bush vs. Gore would finally be decided, I wrote a do-it-yourself column. The left column was headlined “If Gore wins, read this,” the right column was headlined “If Bush wins, read this,” and the center column was headlined “… and then read this.”
That long preamble is my introduction for a series of columns I’ll be writing about the marathon of state Senate recall elections that will start with six primaries Tuesday and end with two Senate elections Aug. 16. When I was the editor and publisher of Marketplace, I would preface election columns by saying that my opinion thusly expressed was only my own opinion, and not the opinion of Marketplace, Add Inc/Journal Community Publishing Group, Marketplace’s advertisers, etc., etc., etc. It was not, in other words, an endorsement in the traditional newspaper sense that “the newspaper” as an institution endorsed candidate A or a Yes vote on referendum B.
Now, of course, I am 100 percent responsible for this blog, so let me make myself perfectly clear: you absolutely must vote exactly the way I tell you to vote over the next few weeks. Your life, your fortune and your sacred honor depend on it.
There will be six Democratic primaries Tuesday: Nancy Nusbaum of De Pere vs. Otto Junkermann of Allouez in the 2nd District, Rep. Sandy Pasch (D–Whitefish Bay) vs. Gladys Huber of Mequon in the 8th District, Shelly Moore of River Falls vs. Isaac Weix of Menomonie in the 10th District, Rep. Fred Clark (D–Baraboo) vs. Rol Church of Wautoma in the 14th District, Jessica King of Oshkosh vs. John Buckstaff of Oshkosh in the 18th District, and Rep. Jennifer Shilling (D–La Crosse) vs. James D. Smith of La Crosse in the 32nd District.
You may conclude that my voting recommendations make a mockery of the primaries. The reason is that, as I’ve argued before and will argue again, the recalls of the Republicans make a mockery of the democratic process. Recalls are intended for those who engage in actual misconduct in office — leaving the state to prevent a quorum, for instance, or, say, drunk driving (see Wood, Jeff) — not because of votes you don’t like. The recall effort is because those who didn’t like the Nov. 2 election results, as well as the April 5 Supreme Court results, are trying to undo those elections in a red-faced, screaming, crying, shaking-their-fists, punching-holes-in-the-wall, obscenity-filled tantrum of Democrats, public employee unions and their apparatchiks. Any other explanation is disingenuous. It takes naïveté of sky-high levels to suggest that voters didn’t know that Gov. Scott Walker and Republican challengers were going to do things differently if elected Nov. 2.
Misuse of recalls practically begs a tit-for-tat response when the tables are turned and Democrats return to power. And hanging this sword over the heads of legislators may make them even less likely than they are now to confront controversial issues. We need more courage in governance, not less.
The easy part first: The three people for whom you should not vote — whether this month, next month or in November 2012 — are Pasch, Clark and Shilling. Those three were all in the majority party of the Assembly when the then-majority party in the Legislature worked hard to permanently ruin state finances and the state’s economy, as in $2.1 billion in tax increases, a GAAP deficit of $2.9 billion, and a structural deficit that maxed out at $3.6 billion. Under the Democrats’ watch, in fact, Wisconsin had some of the worst finances of any state in the country, but Wisconsin also had a business climate that, at best, ranked in the bottom fourth among the states. If fiscal incompetence were a crime, Pasch, Clark and Shilling would be in prison, along with Gov. James Doyle and other Democrats in the 2009–10 Legislature. (The added bonus is that we 14th Senate District voters have seen revealing glimpses of Clark’s character since he started running.)
And WEAC respected taxpayers exactly when, Shelly? It shouldn’t surprise you that Moore the Mouth is now part of the new 9.2 percent unemployment rate, having been fired in January for using school district computers to organize Protestarama in Madison.
King has a compelling personal story but offers no evidence that she would do anything other than what Democratic leaders tell her to do. (And we’ve seen where that got Wisconsin.) In fact, based on her website, her sole reason to vote for appears to be that she’s not Sen. Randy Hopper (R–Fond du Lac), who’s not even named. As Walter Mondale said of Gary Hart in 1984, where’s the beef?
The one race that presents a bit more of a dilemma is the 2nd Senate District primary. Nusbaum has had an interesting career, having run as a Republican against U.S. Rep. Toby Roth (R–Appleton) in 1994 and then running in the Eighth Congressional District Democratic primary against Steve Kagen in 2006. In between, she did a good job as Brown County executive and before that as De Pere mayor. Eighth District Democratic voters made the profoundly wrong choice in 2006; whatever Kagen’s qualities as an allergist were, his poor intellect but outsize ego made watching him repeatedly insert his foot into his mouth made him an entertaining embarrassment to Northeast Wisconsin.
(I should point out that Nusbaum favored in 2000 extending the 0.5-percent Lambeau Field sales tax to provide more revenue for Brown County. I favored the sales tax for Lambeau Field but not anything else. I think Nusbaum dropped out of my fan club after the referendum, in which Brown County voters approved the sales tax only for Lambeau Field.)
I’m running to be the next State Senator for the 2nd Senate District because I believe we can do better in Wisconsin. We need to bring change to Madison now before they do anymore damage to the values we know are so important. And we need a state senator who will always put the people first.
Independent of the typo (“any more” should be two words in this sentence), I’m curious as to what “the values we know are so important” are. Clearly fiscal responsibility is not one of them, as demonstrated by Nusbaum’s current party’s reprehensible state fiscal record. If “we can do better” means creating budgets that are not awash in red ink and increasing government debt to one of the highest per-capita levels in the country, well, I’m all for that. To me, putting “the people” first means not overtaxing the 85 percent of Wisconsin workers who aren’t government employees but whose taxes pay the salaries and (much better than private-sector) benefits of government employees. To me, putting “the people” first also means more consideration for the employers of those 85 percent of Wisconsin workers beyond puerile “Tax the rich!” slogans.
Note that two losing Democrats, Kagen and former Assembly Majority Leader Tom Nelson (who now is Outagamie County executive apparently because Outagamie County voters didn’t pay attention to his work in Madison), are endorsing Nusbaum. I would be more comfortable with Nusbaum’s candidacy if 2nd District voters had actual evidence that Nusbaum would represent a different approach from Democrats’ bending over to public employee unions at non-public-employee taxpayer expense. I would be interested in what Nusbaum, who had to deal with union employees both as De Pere mayor and as Brown County executive, would suggest to deal with spiralling public employee compensation costs other than what the Legislature did. But we’re apparently not going to get the answer to that, which brings up another point …
King’s issues-free website and Nusbaum’s issues-free website demonstrate a reality of all the Republican Senate recalls. They are only about getting Sens. Robert Cowles (R–Green Bay), Alberta Darling (R–River Hills), Sheila Harsdorf (R–River Falls), Luther Olsen (R–Ripon), Hopper and Dan Kapanke (R–La Crosse) out of office, as if that’s going to undo the current Legislature’s first steps toward fiscal responsibility. Among other things, the current Legislature balanced the budget (though only on a cash basis) without raising taxes and without large-scale state employee layoffs. (At $71,000 on average per state employee, the state spends nearly $4.9 billion on state employee compensation every year.) Would Democratic recall candidates have favored further dumping on Wisconsin’s economy by raising taxes, or tens of thousands of public employee layoffs?
Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as doing the same thing repeatedly but expecting different results. That is what a vote for Pasch, Clark or Shilling represents. “Insane” is also a good word to describe anyone who votes for Moore. As for King and Nusbaum, neither has proven so far that voting for them would represent a third-way approach that isn’t as extreme as Republicans are accused of being (as if a 1.1-percent state budget increase is “extreme”) and doesn’t represent the unconditional surrender to public employee unions that is the official policy of the state Democratic Party.
Business people know the term “pass-through” refers to the finances of subchapter-S corporations — for tax purposes, profits and losses are assessed directly on an S corporation’s shareholders, not on the corporation itself.
This is my elongated and probably tortured way to suggest you go to the MacIver Institute website and read my Special Guest Perspective about how the state budget isn’t really balanced, despite the claims of Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans. (Hint: It has to do with how you measure finances.)
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 