I have tried to avoid commenting on whatever happened between two members of the state Supreme Court June 13 until I could get an original take beyond:

1. Justice Prosser should resign.
2. Justice Bradley should resign.
3. Chief Justice Abrahamson should resign.
4. All of the above.

Before I begin: Proving that either it’s a small world or I’ve been around a long time, I have met most of the principals in this rasslin’ match. I have heard Shirley Abrahamson talk about what the Supreme Court does on a couple occasions, and although I don’t particularly care for her politics, I found her very personable, and she deserves credit for trying to show taxpayers what the Supreme Court does. (I also took a UW genetics class taught by her husband. For six weeks, until I concluded either I needed to drop the class, or I would fail the class.) I was at David Prosser’s victory party when he lost to Democrat Jay Johnson in the 1996 Eighth Congressional District election. (Victory parties by losing candidates are not much fun.) I have jousted with Bill Lueders, who broke the story Saturday, on Wisconsin Public Radio. I haven’t met Ann Walsh Bradley, but I have met her husband, Mark, who heads one of the state’s biggest law firms (as Marketplace Magazine readers know).

First point: The lack of criminal charges having been filed immediately after the incident means whatever happened did not rise to the level of criminal activity (i.e. assault or misdemeanor or felony battery charges). Neither Prosser nor Bradley will get awards for good workplace conduct or self-control, but ordinary police or sheriff’s departments are able to recommend charges to district attorneys sooner than two weeks after incidents take place. (Which makes one wonder why we have a Capitol Police Department.)

That brings to mind a second question: Who cares if Justice A cannot get along with Justice B? Regular readers know that I dabble in and have a broader interest in sports broadcasting. Over time, I have read rumors about how some nationally known sports broadcasters have a reputation for being difficult to work with. (Examples can be read in Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN. Or follow the career arc of Keith Olbermann of CNN, ESPN, Fox, MSNBC and, for now, Current TV.) And every such rumor makes me yawn, because I can think of no media consumer who cares whether the two news anchors get along, or if the editor and reporter don’t speak to each other, or if the radio show host and news person swear at each other off-microphone, or whatever — they care about what they are watching or listening to or reading, not the personalities on the other side of the fourth wall. Put it this way: I didn’t vote for Justice Prosser April 5 because of whether he got along with his coworkers.

Speaking of the media: It is not uncommon for the initial story (Prosser’s chokehold on Bradley) to be at odds with subsequent versions (Bradley lunged at Prosser first) of that same story. The former summarizes the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism’s first report, published online by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel earlier Saturday; the second summarizes the story the Journal Sentinel’s own reporters did Saturday. Without the Internet, TV and radio (that is, those radio stations that actually have bodies in their newsrooms on weekends), the electronic media would have reported version one, and the newspapers would have reported version two Sunday.

Everyone must be a discerning media consumer, which is why it is important to point out that Lueders, who broke the story (or was given the story by Supreme Court sources), appears to have sources on only one side of the political spectrum willing to talk to him, based on his initial reporting. For its reputation as a liberal newspaper, the Journal Sentinel appears to have sources on both sides of the political spectrum willing to talk to them. Regardless of whether a reporter expresses his or her own opinions on the stories he or she covers, it is important to have enough credibility to be able to get information on all sides, not just the side that supports your own agenda.

To me, this is the state judicial recipe variation of the toxic cocktail that is politics at an increasing number of levels, and particularly in Wisconsin. (Even local, and if you don’t believe me, you should have been in Ripon around the last mayoral election. Or observe politics in Waukesha.) Background reporting about Prosser v. Bradley has demonstrated that the mid-June outburst was only the latest symptom of the festering feud between the liberal and conservative wings of the state Supreme Court.

Political observers have this gauzy idealism that the Supreme Court impartially judges the burning constitutional issues of the day. Not to call that view naïve, but if that was ever the case, it hasn’t been the case for decades. That is the fault of the judicial system as a whole, because over the past century or so the judicial system has increasingly legislated from the bench (for instance, Roe v. Wade, a bad decision regardless of how you feel about abortion rights) and taken on issues properly decided by the legislative branch. (However you feel about same-sex marriage, at least it was legalized by the legislative process in six states, not their courts.)

Everyone knows who are the conservatives (Prosser, Roggensack, Ziegler and Gableman), who are the liberals (Abrahamson and Bradley, who was marketed as a moderate when she was first named to the Supreme Court), and who is the turncoat (Crooks, who claimed to be a conservative when he lost to Bradley in 1995 and beat Court of Appeals Judge Ralph Adam Fine in 1996). And like everything else in politics, it is the result, only the result and nothing but the result that counts.

Regarding my multiple-choice question at the start of this blog: When a Supreme Court justice resigns before his or her term ends, the governor appoints a replacement (something to keep in mind for those espousing choice 1), but that replacement serves only until the next scheduled judicial election when no other justice is standing for election. If a justice were to resign today, the appointed replacement by Gov. Scott Walker would serve only until April 2012. And regarding choice 3, this irony: The Chief Justice in Wisconsin is the longest serving justice. Should Abrahamson resign, the next longest serving justice is … Bradley, elected in 1995. (Followed by Crooks; the three liberals are also the three longest serving justices.)

All of this is also another symptom of government’s increasing its tentacles into all aspects of our lives, which has increased the stakes in elections and the political process, which has increased political spending and nastiness of political campaigns and politics generally. Gov. Lee Sherman Dreyfus had two beliefs that seem contradictory today, but are not. On the one hand, he believed the federal government’s role was “defending our shores, delivering our mail and staying the hell out of our lives.” On the other hand, he also believed that “there are some questions the government has no business asking.” Unfortunately, neither side of the political aisle is following Dreyfus’ advice.

The latest consequence of the previous governor’s and Legislature’s tax-happiness comes from Kiplinger’s Retiree Tax Heavens (and Hells).

Even had you not seen this on the news, given Kiplinger’s headline, you probably could choose one and have nearly a 100 percent chance of being right.

Wisconsin is one of the 10 worst states for retirees, according to Kiplinger. The other nine are California, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oregon and Vermont. (Which gives the lie, at least in those states, to the claims of the outsize political influence of senior citizens.)

The list of 10 best states for retirees actually does not include many states where one would think elderly people are moving in huge gray waves for retirement — Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Wyoming. (Arizona, Florida, Nevada and Texas are not on the list.)

Wisconsin’s approach to taxing retirement income is similar to the federal government’s, according to Kiplinger. While Social Security and Railroad Retirement income is not taxable, and “all retirement payments from the U.S. military employee retirement system, the Coast Guard, the commissioned corps of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Public Health Service” are exempt from taxes, most other retirement income is taxable at up to 7.75 percent.

(An intriguing half-sentence on this page: “Certain Wisconsin state- and local-government retirees qualify for a tax exemption …” One wonders how those who paid the salaries of state and local government retirees who do not get that tax exemption feel about that.)

Wisconsin probably ranks closer to 41st than 50th given that the state did not make the lists of the five states with the top income tax brackets, highest sales taxes or highest median real estate taxes, or the six least pension-friendly states, or the 23 states with estate or inheritance taxes. On the other hand, Wisconsin also did not make any of the opposite lists, and Wisconsin’s lack of estate and inheritance taxes is the case only until the end of 2012.

If your goal is merely to maximize revenue from taxpayers, being on Kiplinger’s bottom 10 list makes sense. Despite what you read from demagogic Democrats about failure to tax enough resulting in senior citizens’ living on the street and eating cat food, the fact is that the retirement generation as a generation is the richest in this country. They’ve had their entire working lives to invest income and accumulate wealth, they’ve paid off most of the big bills (their homes, children’s college, etc.), and the past three years of stock market doldrums took money from a vastly larger base of investments thanks to the economy of the 1980s and 1990s.

What is particularly unfair about high retirement taxes is that many retired people feel unable to leave Wisconsin because Wisconsin is where their family is. (Particularly in the case of retired people with grandchildren, and particularly where their children are single parents.) The nature of retirement is much different from the days of retirees’ parents; retirees from the full-time grind can usually expect enough years of good post-retirement health to make such contributions as starting a business or getting heavily involved in volunteer work. Encouraging retirees to leave, which our tax structure clearly does, means those contributions go to another state too.

As is always the case, when you want less of something, you tax it.

Former Milwaukee Braves manager Fred Haney was once quoted as saying that anyone can be an example — an example of how to do things, or an example of how not to do things.

Guess which state the latter applies to in the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Rich States, Poor States? When one of the chapters is titled “Wisconsin Exposes Deeper State Budget Crisis,” you’re definitely an example.

Fortunately, Wisconsin as bad example is limited in the text to this:

In the wake of the recent protests in Wisconsin and several other states, Americans are taking a much closer look at the grim budget realities facing our states today. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker correctly points out that his state’s current budget trajectory is unsustainable, and he is not alone.

ALEC Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force director Jonathan Williams, economist Arthur Laffer, and Wall Street Journal senior economics writer Stephen Moore compiled their fourth ranking of the states in two listings — their State Economic Competitiveness Index and their Economic Outlook Index.

The first index “is a backward-looking measure based on a state’s performance on three important variables: Personal Income Per Capita, Absolute Domestic Migration, and Non-Farm Payroll Employment—all of which are highly influenced by state policy. This ranking details states’ individual performances over the past 10 years based on this economic data.”

In terms of economic performance between 1999 and 2009, Wisconsin ranks 44th of the states — 30th in absolute domestic migration (between 2000 and 2009, 18,365 more people left Wisconsin than moved to Wisconsin), 40th in per capita personal income growth (33.2 percent), and 41st in non-farm payroll employment (3.4 percent less).

Thanks to Gov. James Doyle and the previous Legislature, Wisconsin has the 15th highest top personal income tax rate, the 21st highest top corporate income tax rate, the seventh highest property taxes, and the fourth highest increase in taxes for the 2009 and 2010 tax years. Wisconsin ranks 20th in progressivity of income taxes.

Why did I write “Thanks to Gov. James Doyle and the previous Legislature?” The answer is found on page 98, where you’ll note that the state’s nosedive in income growth and non-farm employment below even the (increasingly weak) national economy came in 2008 and 2009, when Democrats controlled the state Senate (from 2007 to 2010) and Assembly (in 2009 and 2010). And how did that work out?

The conclusion is getting to be nearly inescapable that states with high and rising tax burdens are more likely to suffer in an economic decline while those with lower and falling tax burdens are more likely to enjoy robust economic growth. Here is a quick synopsis of the results:

•  The overall level of taxation has an inverse relationship to economic growth in a state.
•  The change in the level and rate of taxation impacts state economic performance.
•  High tax rates are especially harmful.
•  Some state taxes have a more negative impact than others.

Next is the Economic Outlook Index, which is “a forecast based on a state’s current standing in 15 state policy variables. Each of these factors is influenced directly by state lawmakers through the legislative process. Generally speaking, states that spend less—especially on income transfer programs, and states that tax less—particularly on productive activities such as working or investing—experience higher growth rates than states which tax and spend more.”

Wisconsin ranks 30th in its Economic Outlook Index, based on a combination over the past decade of gross state product growth (34.6 percent), personal income growth (35 percent), per capita personal income growth (33.2 percent), population growth (5.2 percent), net domestic in-migration (0.9 percent), non-farm payroll employment growth (0.8 percent), and 2010 unemployment rate (9.1 percent). Utah ranked first, and New York ranked last. And 30th is a significant downgrade from a year ago, when Wisconsin ranked 23rd.

Population growth and in-migration (the difference between people moving into Wisconsin and people moving out of Wisconsin) is a particularly interesting measure. There is one particular political impact from those two numbers: Since the 1960 Census, Wisconsin has gone from having 10 Congressional seats to having eight. Only 12 states have lost as many Congressional seats since 1960. Given that the House of Representatives has 435 seats and does not grow in size, one state’s loss is another state’s gain, which means that one state’s loss of Congressional power is another state’s Congressional power gain.

The usual suspects will … actually, the report nails it:

Some dedicated class warriors will angrily attack proponents of these business friendly, progrowth tax measures. However, as we have said for years, businesses do not pay taxes, people do, and economists from all parts of the political spectrum agree. Don’t take our word for it—even the left leaning Tax Policy Center Blog recently admitted that states need to rid themselves of corporate income taxes: “State corporate income taxes are lineal descendents of the federal version and share many of its flaws. They doubly tax income at the firm and individual level, penalize businesses that organize as corporations, and reward debt versus equity finance. They also are very sensitive to the business cycle, and tend to plunge when the economy sags.”

(It’s like they live in Wisconsin or something.)

The other thought from the preceding paragraph is that, contrary to the views of the class warriors and the other Madison protesters, is that their view of the purpose of government is wrong. The purpose of government is to provide government services. It is neither to serve as employer you’d most like to work for (or employer, period, beyond the absolute minimum of employees needed to perform government services), nor to redistribute income, nor to effect social change popular with those in power.

I wrote last week about those decrying the widening gap between the rich and the poor. There is a widening gap, but it isn’t just that gap:

The top 1 percent of earners nearly pays a larger share of federal income taxes than the bottom 95 percent. This happened for the first time in American history in 2007, even after tax rates were cut under President George W. Bush. Some critics argue that the rich pay most of the taxes because they make most of the income. Indeed, the top 1 percent of earners makes about 25 percent of income, but their share of the federal income tax is much higher than their share of earned income. It is also worth noting that the bottom 50 percent of Americans now pays less than 3 percent of the total federal income tax. The U.S. tax system is highly progressive already.

We already know what our state economy has been like with Doyle and Democrats in charge; the 44th ranking just quantifies what happened in our own Lost Decade. The more important number for the future is the 30th ranking. In order to do better than a 30th ranking over the next few years, the report suggests several principles that are obvious and yet escaped the attention of the now-minority party in state government (which led to the Nov. 2 election results):

1. Keep tax rates low.
2. Guard against inflation. (The report notes that education and health care, “two industries largely provided by government, particularly state government … have had nearly the highest rates of inflation over the past decade. The third-party-payer system in both industries is one of the biggest reason for this.”)
3. Balance the budget.
4. More spending is not the answer.

The third point isn’t happening because I believe state finances will show a continuing GAAP deficit as of June 30, the end of the 2010–11 fiscal year. The jury is still out on the other three points. It’s not clear to me that those extremist, divisive radicals (have I gotten in all the Dumocrat pejoratives?) in the Walker administration and the state Republican Party have gone nearly far enough to erasing years of bad policy.