Two anniversaries today in 1965: The Beatles’ “Beatles VI” reached number I, where it stayed for VI weeks …
… while the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” was their first number one single:
No comments on Presty the DJ for July 10
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Today in 1955, “Rock Around the Clock” was played around the clock because it hit number one:
One year later, Dick Clark made his first appearance on ABC-TV’s “American Bandstand”:
Today in 1972, Paul McCartney and Wings began their first tour of France:
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To be indicted for drug trafficking is not generally considered to be a good career move, but that’s what happened to Jonathan “Chico” and Robert DeBarge today in 1988:
Birthdays begin with Jaimoe “Johnny” Johanson, drummer for the Allman Brothers:
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At the start of the Brewers season I confidently predicted the Brewers would be trailer trash as they have been for several years.
And so heading into the final weekend of the first half of the season the Brewers are …
… in, uh, first place by four games.
How the hell did that happen? Chris Cwik says …
After Thursday’s 11-2 thumping, the Brewers extended their lead in the division to 4.5 games.
Unless you drink out of a bubbler or pronounce the beginning of the word “bagel” like “bag” — like the fine people of Wisconsin — there’s no way you saw this coming.Any time a team defies the odds, analysts delve into their performance looking for one magical explanation. But that’s not the case here. The Brewers’ success isn’t built on one huge discovery. They haven’t discovered “the next Moneyball,” which has become baseball’s “one weird trick” attention-grabbing headline.
No. The Brewers’ rise to prominence is due to multiple factors that, when added together, explain how they’ve turned themselves into a legitimate playoff contender.
Let’s explore each of those reasons now.
THE BREWERS HIT ON SOME KEY ACQUISITIONS
The team’s scouting department deserves a lot of credit for recommending both Travis Shaw and Eric Thames. Shaw was coming off a disappointing season in which he hit just .242/.306/.421. The Boston Red Sox, who could desperately use a third baseman now, didn’t think he would recover, so they traded him to Milwaukee.They were wrong. Shaw has been Milwaukee’s best position player according to fWAR. He’s on his way to his finest offensive season, posting a .296/.362/.564 slash line with an already career-high 18 home runs over 318 plate appearances. Shaw has made more contact, pulled the ball with greater frequency and cut down on his strikeouts with the Brewers. They deserve credit for identifying him as a strong buy-low candidate, and getting him to make the necessary adjustments to break out.
The same thing happened with Thames. Even though he put up Bonds-ian numbers in Korea, there was still a fair amount of skepticism over whether those numbers would carry over to MLB. The Brewers were willing to take that chance, and based on Thames’ three-year $16 million price tag, it’s fair to assume other teams had some concerns. He’s already justified that contract, hitting .245/.375/.566 with 23 home runs. The batting average might be low, but his plate discipline and power are elite. Thames is second on the team’s offense in fWAR, and a big reason they are second in baseball with 133 home runs.
TWO PITCHING BREAKOUTS HAVE STABILIZED THE ROTATION
Jimmy Nelson and Chase Anderson haven’t received a lot of love, but both have legitimate All-Star cases. Nelson has been the best player on the team according to fWAR. His 2.8 figure ranks fourth among pitchers in the National League.After two average seasons in the team’s rotation, Nelson has taken a huge step forward this year. He’s striking out more than a batter per inning for the first time in his career while cutting down his walk rate dramatically.
A big part of his success has been adjusting his approach against left-handers. From 2012 to 2016, lefties hit .268/.361/.352 against Nelson. That performance resulted in a .353 wOBA, an advanced stat that measures offensive performance. Basically, every lefty turned into Adrian Beltre when they stepped in against Nelson.
Those numbers have plummeted to .233/.296/.394 in 2017. Nelson has found a way to turn Beltre into Gordon Beckham. He’s accomplished that by cutting down on his sinker in favor of a four-seam fastball and mixing in more curveballs and changeups. It’s worked. Lefties are hitting the fastball for a .261 clip, but that’s an improvement over the .281 average against his sinker last year. Both his curve (.057) and change (.111) have been un-hittable by southpaws this season.
Multiple factors have helped Anderson become a better pitcher. His velocity appears to be up significantly, and while that could be misleading after MLB altered pitch tracking software, Anderson said he worked on strength training to improve his velocity this winter.The result has been better effectiveness from nearly all of his pitches. His whiff rate on his fastball has risen, leading to a career-best 23.4 strikeout rate. His curveball has improved, and he’s using his cutter a lot more.
All three of those things have helped Anderson keep righties off balance this year. Anderson is one of those rare pitchers who actually performs better against opposite-handed hitters, likely due to his excellent changeup. Because of this, righties have hit him much better over his career. Prior to 2017, righties posted a .361 wOBA against Anderson. He’s lowered that to .305 this season.
Before his injury, Anderson was in the middle of a brilliant stretch, in which he posted a 1.56 ERA in June. While you could write that off as small-sample nonsense, Anderson also showed a change in his approach during that period.
As Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs pointed out, Anderson started standing in different spots on the mound when facing lefties and righties. He stands on the third-base side of the rubber with righties at the plate, and shifts to the first base side when facing lefties. Anderson wasn’t doing that in April. Even if you wanted to write off his June hot streak, that’s at least proof that he’s actively making changes in order to try and correct flaws.
Matt Garza also deserves an honorable mention here. After being written off during 2015 and most of 2016, he’s been effective in 2017. His numbers aren’t eye-popping, but he’s already produced as much value as he gave the Brewers in 2016, and he’s done so in 30 fewer innings. He’s become a solid third option, and the team needs that after both Junior Guerra and Zach Davies failed to build on their promising 2016 numbers.
THEY EMBRACED STRIKEOUTS ON OFFENSE
Striking out isn’t the worst thing in the world. It’s no different than popping out to short, really. Both plays result in an out.The Brewers realized this, and have taken shots on some talented young players who have shown a major predilection toward whiffs. It’s not just Shaw or Thames, either. The team acquired Domingo Santana in a trade with the Houston Astros and picked up Keon Broxton from the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Most importantly, though, they stuck both in their lineup and let them play. That’s been huge for Santana. He’s made strides with his strikeout rate in 2017. While he’s still whiffing 26.8 percent of the time, it’s been enough to make him a serious offensive threat.
Broxton hasn’t seen the same improvement, but his power and speed have turned him into a useful player. That’s a significant development, considering they picked him up for nothing.
While Jonathan Villar has collapsed this year, you could argue the Brewers employed the same tactic with him, and were rewarded greatly in 2016. As Villar shows, this can be a risky approach. But when it pays off, you can get superstar seasons out of guys who were thought to have limited value.
THEY DIDN’T GO FULL FIRE SALE
Stay with us on this one. While the Brewers parted with some significant talent in recent years, they never went the route of the Cubs or Astros. They kept enough valuable players around to at least make things interesting. They didn’t just deal Ryan Braun to clear salary. They waited, and now he could be a major factor for them in the second half.The team could have tried to capitalize on the success of the number of players last winter, but chose to remain patient. In the cases of both Villar and Guerra, it hasn’t worked out, but both could get back on track in the second half. They were also wise to hold Anderson who, while under control for a long time, is already 29. To most rebuilding clubs, these players would have been shipped off for anything of value.
There are certainly benefits to both approaches. The Cubs won the World Series in 2016, and the Astros might be on the way to a championship this season.
But in the era of the second wild card, it’s not the worst idea for teams to take chances with talented players and hope for the best. While little was expected of the Brewers this year, they didn’t fully punt on the season.
THEY’VE LUCKED OUT
It’s always tough to attribute success to luck. It can be a dirty word to fans who think it means their favorite team is a fluke.The truth is, every good team experiences luck in some way. The team took a lot of risks, and many of them paid off. They hit on Shaw and Thames, saw huge improvements from Nelson, Anderson and Santana and held firm on Braun. If one of those things went down differently, perhaps we’re not having this conversation.
The Brewers have found themselves in an enviable position of contending before anyone thought it was possible. Now, they’ll be faced with the delicate balance of trying to win the division without sacrificing significant future talent.
To do so, they’ll have to walk a thin line. That was always the case, but there’s a big difference between saying that in March and sustaining it into July.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has this interesting story:
For those who wondered if the expectations of Milwaukee Brewers principal owner Mark Attanasio’s have been raised by the unexpectedly solid showing of his first-place team, the answer is yes.
“I’ll admit my expectations are higher. How could they not be?” said Attanasio, who was at Miller Park on Friday to participate in the Wall of Honor ceremony for Corey Hart.
“This team plays with energy. The guys pick each other up. If we have a couple of bad games, we seem to finish out strong. The team seems to be quite resilient. So, sure, my expectations are greater but I think that affects how frustrated I get when things go against me. That’s not going to affect how we address the team.”
In other words, don’t look for the Brewers to scrap the long-term vision they have in rebuilding the club into a perennial contender. Thank in large part to the inability of the Chicago Cubs and others to put together a hot stretch, the Brewers have been in first place in the NL Central for much of the season while being only a few games over .500.
Attanasio did say there have been discussions about whether the ahead-of-schedule success should change the way the Brewers go about their business.
“I had a meeting with (GM) David (Stearns) and (manager) Craig (Counsell) about a week ago, and I was very clear there would be no pressure from me to divert from the plan,” Attanasio said. “If they want to divert, that’s different.
“One of the things I challenge David and Craig with is whether we do anything different now that we’re in first place. From Craig’s standpoint, he said he’s out there every game, trying to win that game.
“David is always, especially for a younger person, agnostic in his decision making. He’s as agnostic as anyone who has ever worked with me, including on Wall Street, where he just wants to objectively assess the facts. That’s very hard to do but very helpful because he’s saying, ‘Let’s assess every day where we are. What the opportunities are.’
“If David wants to come to me and say, ‘I want to blow up the big plan,’ his batting average is so high now, we’re going to listen to anything he recommends. But, just from ownership to him, there has been no pressure to divert from the plan.”
As with any club in a contending position at this point of the season, the Brewers will see how things play out in the weeks leading up to the July 31 trade deadline. A hot stretch over that period sometimes convinces clubs to add talent. Cold streaks often prompt teams to sell off players.
The Brewers certainly aren’t going to start trading prospects for veterans to any extent at this point of their process, but they will remain open-minded.
“We have to take it a game at a time,” Attanasio said. “We’ll see where we are on July 31, where we are in mid-July.
“As someone said to me, the only thing that’s certain in baseball is uncertainty. We just have to come in and be smart every day. I think we’re going to assess things at the time we have to assess things.”
It is certainly true that the Brewers could collapse like the 2014 Brewers did; they had, at one point according to the supposed statistical experts, an 87 percent chance of winning their division, and did not. It is also true that the other NL Central teams, particularly the Cubs and the Cardinals, may get hot later this season; the Brewers have the smallest lead in a National League division, and the two teams currently leading the NL wild card race have better records than the Brewers. So one should not be too enthusiastic.
Still, the Brewers have gotten this far with all those touted minor leaguers mostly still in the minors, except for the brief major league stints of outfielders Brett Phillips and Lewis Brinson. Of course, if the players you have are playing better than expected, that gives you more options.
As far as that “delicate balance” goes, Brian Foley reports:
It seems unlikely that the Brewers will be able to hold off the Chicago Cubs for the entire season with the pitching as currently constituted; the defending champs figure to make a run at some point. Milwaukee is armed with a wealth of prospects, so its minor league system will be able to withstand a trade for a legitimate starter.
Here are five starters general manager David Stearns could target this month …
Jose Quintana
Quintana is the perfect fit for Milwaukee. The Chicago White Sox are in a clear rebuild and looking to acquire assets for the future, which the Brewers have plenty to offer. Quintana has not pitched up to his usual standards this season (4.45 ERA in 2017, 3.35 ERA from 2013-16), but that might keep his price down a little, even though the South Siders clearly won’t just give Quintana away.
Quintana is the type of pitcher you move prospects for. He is just 28, and on a bargain contract through 2020. He fits the timeframe and cost of the franchise. The Brewers have piled up so many outfield prospects, that they are destined to make a trade. Quintana could be it.
Sonny Gray
It is time for Oakland to move Gray. He is 27 years old and signed through 2019, meaning the Athletics can still get good value for him, even though his numbers have been fairly pedestrian over the last 18 months compared to his sparkling first three seasons.
Gray won’t cost as much as Quintana, though he could be just as effective. In his last seven outings since the start of June, Gray has a 3.45 ERA with a nearly 3:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio. At the very least, Gray is a significant upgrade on Guerra or Davies right now, while also having ace potential on any giving night.
Jason Vargas
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David Gelertner manages to criticize everyone in this column about this country’s cold cultural civil war:
Democrats, in their role as opponents of President Trump, have taken to calling themselves “the resistance.” But I was startled a few days ago when a thoughtful, much-admired conservative commentator used the same term on TV—casually, as if “the resistance” was just the obvious term. Everyone is saying it. It’s no accident that the left runs American culture. The right is too obsessed with mere mechanics—poll numbers and vote counts—to look up.
“Resistance” is unacceptable in referring to the Trump opposition because, obviously, it suggests the Resistance—against the Nazis in occupied France. Many young people are too ignorant to recognize the term, but that hardly matters. The press uses it constantly. So when a young innocent finally does encounter the genuine French Resistance, he will think, “Aha, just like the resistance to Trump!” And that’s all the left wants: a mild but continuous cultural breeze murmuring in every American ear that opposing Trump is noble and glorious. Vive la Résistance!
This abuse of “the resistance” happens everywhere. Many Republicans hate Mr. Trump and love to denounce him—which lets them show their integrity and, sometimes, a less-praiseworthy attribute too.
Many intellectuals think Mr. Trump is vulgar. That includes conservatives. They think he’s a peasant and talks like one. Every time he opens his mouth, all they hear is a small-time Queens operator who struck it big but has never had a proper education, and embarrasses the country wherever he goes, whatever he says. It never dawns on them that the president can’t stand them any more than they can stand him. Yet they expect him to treat them with respectful courtesy if he ever runs into them—as he should, and on the whole does. Conceivably they should treat him the same way.
Conservatives regret the collapse of authority, dignity and a certain due formality in the way Americans treat each other. They are right to complain when any president diminishes his office. Mr. Trump ought to think more seriously about what he owes the great men among his predecessors, and the office itself. But it’s not clear that commentators make things any better when they treat the president himself like a third-rate clown.
I’d love for him to be a more eloquent, elegant speaker. But if I had to choose between deeds and delivery, it wouldn’t be hard. Many conservative intellectuals insist that Mr. Trump’s wrong policies are what they dislike. So what if he has restarted the large pipeline projects, scrapped many statist regulations, appointed a fine cabinet and a first-rate Supreme Court justice, asked NATO countries to pay what they owe, re-established solid relations with Israel and Saudi Arabia, signaled an inclination to use troops in Afghanistan to win and not merely cover our retreat, led us out of the Paris climate accord, plans to increase military spending (granted, not enough), is trying to get rid of ObamaCare to the extent possible, proposed to lower taxes significantly and revamp immigration policy and enforcement? What has he done lately?
Conservative thinkers should recall that they helped create President Trump. They never blasted President Obama as he deserved. Mr. Obama’s policies punished the economy and made the country and its international standing worse year by year; his patronizing arrogance drove people crazy. He was the perfect embodiment of a one-term president. The tea-party outbreak of 2009-10 made it clear where he was headed. History will record that the press saved him. Naturally the mainstream press loved him, but too many conservative commentators never felt equal to taking him on. They had every reason to point out repeatedly that Mr. Obama was the worst president since Jimmy Carter, surrounded by a left-wing cabinet and advisers, hostile to Israel, crazed regarding Iran, and even less competent to deal with the issues than Mr. Carter was—which is saying plenty.
But they didn’t say plenty. They didn’t say much at all. The rank and file noticed and got mad. Even their supposed champions didn’t grasp what life under Mr. Obama was like—a man who was wrecking the economy while preaching little sermons, whose subtext was always how smart he was, how dumb they were, and how America was full of racist clods, dangerous cops and infantile nuts who would go crazy if they even heard the words “Islamic terrorism.” So the rank and file was deeply angry and elected Mr. Trump.
Some conservatives have the impression that, by showing off their anti-Trump hostility, they will get the networks and the New York Times to like them. It doesn’t work like that. Although the right reads the left, the left rarely reads the right. Why should it, when the left owns American culture? Nearly every university, newspaper, TV network, Hollywood studio, publisher, education school and museum in the nation. The left wrapped up the culture war two generations ago. Throughout my own adult lifetime, the right has never made one significant move against the liberal culture machine.
So go ahead, proclaim it from the rooftops: the anti-Trump opposition is a virtual French Resistance! If we’re not going to fight anyway, let’s surrender and get it over with.
Hmmm. Which party does Trump (ostensibly) belong to? Which party controls both houses of Congress? Which party has 33 governors? Which party controls five times as many state governments (governor and both houses of their legislature) than the other? And, remember, the House of Representatives and most of those states’ Republican control (oops, I gave it away) preceded Trump.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds passes on this tweet following Donald Trump’s speech in Poland yesterday …
… and adds:
Some idiot at Vox — but I repeat myself — is calling it an alt-right speech. You want to ensure the alt-right wins? Define three-fourths of the country as alt-right.
Here, however, is an interesting comment on Gelertner’s piece:
The left runs American culture because the right is too prudish. It’s no coincidence that the more conservative members of Hollywood are libertarian. You can’t be creative when you’re too preoccupied with sanctity and propriety.
Or, at least, others’ sanctity and propriety, perhaps, even though David French points out:
Family dissolution is perhaps America’s foremost driver of poverty and dependency. The rules are simple. Follow the “success sequence” — graduate high school, get a job, get married, and then have kids — and your poverty rate is extremely low. Deviate, and the problems magnify. Now, between the two parties, which one has centered its appeal around married parents with kids and which party has doubled down on single moms? Even worse, the Democrats’ far-left base has intentionally attacked the nuclear family as archaic and patriarchal. It has celebrated sexual autonomy as a cardinal virtue. Then, when faced with the fractured families that result, it says, “Here, let the government help.”
Thus we have the 2012 Obama campaign’s celebrated “Julia,” the single woman who never needed a man. Like nuns marrying Christ, single moms were bound to big government, and to the many bountiful benefits it provides. Yet the fracturing of the family is not in the best economic interests of women. Sure, some of those women will let bygones be bygones and rally around the party that most celebrates the sexual revolution while expanding public assistance. Others, however, will reasonably look at a bigger picture, one that asks whether government dependency helps perpetuate the larger and worse crisis besetting America’s families.
Margaret Thatcher was fond of saying that the facts of life are fundamentally conservative. Spend more money than you can have and can earn, and make other bad decisions — have children without marrying their father, get yourself serially fired from work, commit crimes — and your life will turn out badly, including the lives of your children. So it drives social conservatives batty that progressives celebrate “alternative lifestyles” that are objectively bound to lead to not merely personal failures, but societal problems.
Everyone reading this knows single parents who have done a good job raising their children. But it’s an error to generalize that because you know some good single parents, the second parent is optional as a whole.
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Mike Nichols of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute on the 2017–19 state budget and efforts by Republicans to increase taxes:
Badger State residents still pay a mother lode of taxes — way more, given how little the average Wisconsinite makes, than almost anyone else in America. That is not hyperbole. Our total state-local tax burden per capita as a percentage of income, 11 percent, is the fourth-highest in the United States, according to the Tax Foundation’s 2017 Facts & Figures report.
If you work for the government or represent a special interest and want to put a better spin on it, ignore how little money most Wisconsinites make in comparison to most other Americans, and just flat-out compare our tax burden to everyone else’s. Wisconsinites pay more per capita in state and local taxes — almost $4,600 — than residents in all but 17 other states.
Our problem isn’t just how much we pay — it’s also the way we pay.
Wisconsin continues to have very high income taxes and property taxes in comparison to other states. High income taxes are particularly destructive because they diminish the incentive to work and also erode savings and investment. High property taxes, especially when levied on business property, can create a powerful disincentive to invest and thereby grow employment and output.
Unfortunately, over 36 percent of state and local tax collections in Wisconsin, based on 2014 figures, come from the property tax, nearly 26 percent from the individual income tax and nearly 4 percent from the corporate income tax. Approximately 19 percent, meanwhile, comes from the general sales tax and the rest from other miscellaneous taxes.
All in all, Wisconsin is:
- 12th in the country on individual income tax collections per capita
- 16th in corporate income tax collections per capita
- 13th in state and local property tax collections per capita
- 4th in property taxes paid as a percentage of owner-occupied housing value
- 43rd in state and local sales tax rates
- 34th in state and local general sales tax collections per capita
- 17th in state gasoline tax rates
- 11th in state cigarette tax rates
- 41st in state spirits excise tax rates
- 48th in state beer excise tax rates
In a revenue-neutral world, Wisconsin would clearly be better off with lower income taxes and property taxes and a broader-based sales tax. And, by the way, legislators should be very wary of borrowing exorbitant sums. Wisconsin already has the 18th-highest state debt per capita, according to the Tax Foundation.
Here’s hoping that legislators in Madison in the coming days can keep their eyes focused on some of these numbers and their fingers from extending any further into our wallets.
Let’s rearrange Nichols’ list in order:
- 4th in property taxes paid as a percentage of owner-occupied housing value
- 11th in state cigarette tax rates
- 12th in the country on individual income tax collections per capita
- 13th in state and local property tax collections per capita
- 16th in corporate income tax collections per capita
- 17th in state gasoline tax rates
- 34th in state and local general sales tax collections per capita
- 41st in state spirits excise tax rates
- 43rd in state and local sales tax rates
- 48th in state beer excise tax rates
The alcohol tax rates are the only way Wisconsin could be described as remotely libertarian. The state is only as low as 17th in gas taxes because gas taxes are no longer indexed to inflation, but there is a big push from the road-builders to reindex gas taxes. The state is ranked as low on state and local sales taxes because only counties can assess sales taxes without referendum (and to no one’s surprise most of them have), and other municipalities are limited to referendum-approved projects such as Miller Park and the Lambeau Field renovations.
Taxes are as high as they are because there are no effective limits on tax or spending increases in this state. (Spending and tax limits by legislation are not effective because legislation can be reversed.) That’s why a Taxpayer Bill of Rights within the state Constitution is mandatory to prevent Wisconsin from reaching number one in every tax.
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Today in 1967, the Beatles released “All You Need Is Love” …
… which proved insufficient for the Yardbirds, which disbanded one year later:
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Ronald Reagan was fond of saying that Republicans believe every day is July 4, and Democrats believe every day is April 15.
Case in point, according to Capitalism:
On Sunday, the Illinois House of Representatives considered legislation that would increase tax revenue by $5 billion adding tax rate increases on personal and corporate income taxes and adds services taxes on previously untaxed service industries, among other reforms. Lawmakers passed the measure; however, Rauner has vowed to veto the bill coming from the General Assembly because it would raise taxes drastically—a 32 percent tax increase was attached to this bill.
Illinois is ranked as the most tax-burdened state in the union, according to a WalletHub analysis, with an average combined tax rate–state income tax, local property taxes, other taxes–of 14.76 percent.
Because of the already high tax burden, several Illinoisians wish to leave the state for relief, according to a survey by the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute in October 2016. In fact, that survey reports that 47 percent of respondents wish to leave the state.
Migration out of the state isn’t just reserved for the citizens as several companies are shuttering operations or are moving out of state to more business friendly environments.
Taxes would increase for individuals and corporations who wish to remain to shore up the loss of revenue. Simply put, the debt of the state government will drag the state’s economic health down with it as corporate, sales, and personal tax obligations continue to increase. …
The proposal serves as the Democrat’s budget proposal despite Rauner’s, and other Republicans, wish to balance the budget without increasing taxes. Ultimately, the wish of the governor’s administration was to advocate for and ensure the passage of a budget proposal that has several cuts in select areas of the state government’s operations.
To make matters worst, the state legislature failed to reach a budget agreement before the new fiscal year began on July 1st. Such a failure marked three years without a budget.
The Illinois Senate overrode Rauner’s veto on, of all days, Independence Day. The Illinois House hasn’t voted, but could as early as today, according to the Chicago Tribune, and the tax increases passed with a sufficient margin to override Rauner’s veto.
North of the state line, The Capital Times reports:
Gov. Scott Walker has made a career out of cutting taxes. And with $4.7 billion in tax cuts over the span of his two terms as governor, he’s not done yet.
Walker’s proposed 2017-19 budget would bring that reduction to a total of $8 billion since he took office in 2011. The governor argues those cuts, along with other major initiatives including his signature Act 10 legislation, have driven up revenue — a concept he has dubbed the “reform dividend.” While the catchphrase hasn’t quite caught on, the argument has. Conservatives point to the state’s low unemployment rate and proposed investments into education as evidence that Wisconsin is, as Walker puts it, “working and winning.” And with that “reform dividend” comes his justification for even more tax cuts, including a proposal to eliminate the state’s portion of the property tax entirely. …
Meanwhile, within the Legislature — with its largest Republican majority in decades — momentum is growing behind what could amount to more significant changes to the way Wisconsin taxes its residents, including an effort to move the state toward a flat income tax and a proposal to eliminate the personal property tax.
Todd Berry, a longtime tax policy analyst and president of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, is “not inclined to predict” any major changes to the way the state raises revenue. A proposal to repeal the personal property tax would require an adjustment in priorities. Moving to a flat tax requires more support than currently exists. Even a significant change in transportation funding — the largest source of discord among lawmakers and the governor during the budget process this year — is unlikely, he said.
What is significant in the current climate, Berry said, is that so much of the push for major tax reform is coming from lawmakers, particularly from a group of trained accountants known as the “CPA Caucus.”
The four-member group is composed of three certified public accountants — Sen. Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, and Rep. Dale Kooyenga, R-Brookfield. Rep. John Macco, R-Ledgeview, is a financial adviser. Marklein and Kooyenga both sit on the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee, which reviews, refines and rewrites the state budget after it is introduced by the governor.
The accountant-lawmakers have led the charge on tax policy changes large and small: eliminating 18 tax credits in three years, reducing the number of income tax brackets, reducing the number of people required to pay the alternative minimum tax and reducing the so-called “marriage penalty.”
While Walker typically speaks in general terms about simply cutting taxes, the measures coming from the CPA Caucus are more about the particulars of tax policy.
Historically, major tax policy initiatives have come from governors, Berry said, in particular changes made under Warren Knowles, Patrick Lucey, Lee Sherman Dreyfus, Tony Earl and Tommy Thompson.
“When we really had pretty dramatic tax law changes, from both parties, those proposals have come from the governor,” Berry said. “What is somewhat different about, particularly income tax policy in the last several budgets, is that the big change that we saw in 2013-14 and now this new change in 2017-18-19, both came not from the executive branch, but from a small group of Republican legislators with professional tax background.”
Kooyenga, a U.S. Army Reservist and potential U.S. Senate candidate with a penchant for quoting the Broadway musical “Hamilton,” said his goal is to pull back on efforts made by politicians to “move levers” and control behavior through tax policy.
“I’m a firm believer that there should be less power in Madison and less power in D.C. And one of the ways that even Republicans have tried to assert their power is by creating mechanisms in the tax code to try to get people to do what they want to do,” Kooyenga said. “And I think that people should decide what they want to do and try to minimize the government trying to penalize or reward certain actions.” …
“Locked myself in the office this evening to develop a plan to eliminate the state’s personal property tax,” Kooyenga tweeted at 9:48 p.m. on June 6.
Kooyenga has since completed his plan, which he said is now being reviewed by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester.
The personal property tax, implemented in the early days of Wisconsin, when most of its governmental revenue came from property taxes, began as a tax on items like livestock, furniture, jewelry and vehicles. Its property tax counterpart — real property — covers land and buildings.
The list of exemptions to the personal property tax has grown to include, among other items, clothing, personal items, stocks and bonds, vehicles, farm and manufacturing machinery and business computers. The tax now applies, in general, to furniture, equipment, machinery and watercraft owned by businesses.
According to an analysis by the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, personal property has accounted for between 2.2 and 2.6 percent of the state’s property tax base since 2005. Compared to the 40 other states with some form of a personal property tax, Wisconsin taxes less than most, but more than most of its neighbors.
While the personal property tax brings in a relatively small sum compared to other taxes, the state Department of Revenue estimates eliminating it would result in a loss of about $261 million per year in funding for schools and local governments. That’s based on a proposal introduced in April by Sen. Duey Stroebel, R-Saukville, and Rep. Bob Kulp, R-Stratford.
Depending on the proposal, the money would either be gone or accounted for with an increase to real property taxes — paid by homeowners and business owners, rather than only business owners, as it is currently.
Kooyenga said in an interview that his plan would reclassify some personal property items as real property, putting the fiscal impact below $240 million. It would also eliminate and reduce some tax credits.
“We would be replacing (the revenue),” Kooyenga said. …
Walker is supportive, with conditions.
“I don’t mind chipping away at that. I’ve said all along, if I started from the ground up and had to build something, there’s no way I would create the personal property tax because it doesn’t make any sense,” Walker said in an interview.
Walker said he would “love” to get rid of the tax, but not at the expense of his other changes, including income tax cuts proposed in his two-year budget.
Competition with other priorities is why the tax remains on the books despite a century-long desire among people of varied political perspectives to get rid of it, said Berry.
“The problem is, it’s never anybody’s top priority for tax cuts, because it’s not sexy,” Berry said. “The sticking point simply is if you get rid of it you’ve got to come up with several hundred million dollars of money so that local governments are made whole, so they don’t lose revenue. And of course there are always other, better things to do.”
In Walker’s 2017-19 budget proposal, income tax cuts fall into the “better things to do” category, as does eliminating the state’s portion of the property tax, known as the forestry mill tax.
His plan would reduce income tax revenues by about $203 million, in part by cutting rates for the two lowest brackets by one-tenth of a percentage point.
Walker’s plan to eliminate the forestry mill tax would amount to a reduction of about $180 million over the two-year budget period. While most property taxes are levied by local governments and school districts, the state’s portion goes to fund the acquisition, preservation and development of forests in the state.
That move helps the governor make good on a campaign promise to keep property taxes on a median-valued home at or below where they were in 2014, when he was last elected.
“That’s just been a target of ours,” Walker said. “It’s not just keeping a political promise, but it’s the one area where people are seeing a tangible difference. I always like to warn lawmakers to be cautious because sometimes people say, ‘Well, we don’t hear as much about property taxes as we used to.’ That’s because we’ve lowered them.”
If property taxes were to increase again, Walker said, it wouldn’t be long before lawmakers would start hearing about them.
Simplicity is listed by those on the left and right as a quality to strive for in tax policy. The disagreement lies in how to achieve it.
Kooyenga’s vision involves gradually adjusting the state’s tax brackets until the income tax reaches a flat 3.95 percent rate for all income levels in 2029. That proposal was included in a sweeping transportation funding plan the lawmaker introduced in May as an alternative to Walker’s budget. …
“A lot of Republicans were upset, as they should be, with (Democratic Gov. Jim) Doyle for raiding the transportation fund. Now the opposite is happening. Now we’re transferring general fund money into the transportation fund,” Kooyenga said. “One could argue that we’re raising too much money in the general fund, by evidence that we have plenty leftover to move to the transportation fund … If you look over the last 10 years, there’s actually been $715 million net that has gone from the general fund to the transportation fund.”
Walker is intrigued, but not committed to supporting the shift to a flat tax. In general, he said, it would be good to have “one simple rate” for income and sales taxes, with limited exemptions and loopholes. Current law places taxpayers in four brackets, with rates ranging from 3.95 percent for the lowest earners to 7.65 percent for the highest earners.
“I think the concept’s a good one,” Walker said, adding that he would want to see a proposal that includes a substantial enough deduction to make sure taxes weren’t increased on working families. “There’s ways you could make it work so the average citizen would either see it as a tax cut or tax-neutral.”
At the heart of the debate are questions about what makes a tax policy fair. These questions are framed around terms like “horizontal equity” and “vertical equity.” A tax policy that is horizontally equitable taxes people within a similar income or wealth range at the same rate. A tax policy that is vertically equitable taxes people with more wealth or income at a higher rate than people who make less money.
Within that framework, there are progressive taxes, which tax higher incomes at higher rates; regressive taxes, which take a larger percentage from low-income earners; and proportional taxes, which apply the same rate regardless of income.
Opponents of a flat, or proportional tax, say income should be taxed progressively — people who have more resources should contribute at a higher rate. Supporters argue that higher earners would still pay more money than lower earners under a flat tax, just not at a higher rate.
Kooyenga’s plan would scrap the state’s alternative minimum tax, capital gains exclusion, property/rent tax credit, married couple credit and others.
By the time the plan would fully take effect, in 2029, 1.9 million taxpayers would have their taxes cut by $2.8 billion, an average of $1,436 per person, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
About 340,000 people would see their taxes go up by $53.7 million, or $158 per person. About 30 percent of the increase, or $15.8 million, would be paid by people earning between $30,000 and $50,000.
About 18 percent of the tax cut, or $6.5 million, would go to people earning more than $1 million, and about 28 percent, or $383.4 million, would go to people earning between $100,000 and $200,000. …
Asked what’s good about the state’s tax code, Kooyenga struggled to find an answer. After a few seconds, he named the governor’s efforts to lower property taxes and rattled off some of the changes pushed by the CPA Caucus, like the elimination of some credits.
“I know I’m never going to reach what my utopian tax policy is for the state of Wisconsin,” Kooyenga said. “But definitely we’ll be closer. We have less brackets, less tax credits. That’s what I’m trying to move towards. I don’t think I’ll ever get to exactly what I think the income tax and corporate tax and sales tax should look like, but I think with a lot of my colleagues, I’m doing a good job of playing defense and making the tax code work, and making it fairer, flatter and simpler.”
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Can one wish a happy birthday to an entire band? If so, wish Jefferson Airplane a happy birthday:
Or perhaps you’d like to celebrate Bill Haley’s birthday around the clock:
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Britain’s Guardian writes:
Sgt Michael Verardo, who lost an arm and a leg while serving with the US army in Afghanistan in 2010, says he was failed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He had to wait 57 days to get his prosthetic leg fixed and three and a half years for adaptations to his home. But then came Donald Trump.
“Thank you, President Trump and [Veterans Affairs] Secretary [David] Shulkin for ensuring that we are not forgotten and that we will receive the care we need and deserve,” Verardo said at the White House recently.
Trump, signing an act to protect VA whistleblowers, revelled in the moment, using his fingers to mime a gun and mouthing his catchphrase “You’re fired!” at Shulkin. Then he smiled: “We will never use those words on you, that’s for sure.”
The audience in the East Room laughed dutifully. This is the parallel universe that Trump occupies whenever he can, a universe of achievements, applause and adoration, a safe space where he is monarch of all he surveys and his punchlines land. In his version of Washington, he is the Henry V-style man of action to Barack Obama’s indecisive, cripplingly intellectual Hamlet.
Trump’s self-belief appears to get a shot in the arm from every victory, real or imagined. This may go some way to explaining why, even as his approval ratings fall off a cliff and some call for his impeachment, he sees no reason to course-correct, as he and a noisy caucus around him seem to become ever more self-righteous.
Trump is “much more resilient” than his opponents allow, said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, before pivoting to a plug for his new book, Understanding Trump.
The past two weeks illustrate how, when on the ropes, Trump can still throw some punches that at least get him to the bell. And he makes sure his 33 million Twitter followers know about it. When Republican Karen Handel beat Democrat Jon Ossoff in a Georgia race much-hyped as a referendum on his presidency, Trump tweeted: “Thank you @FoxNews ‘Huge win for President Trump and GOP in Georgia Congressional Special Election.’”
Then the president headed to Iowa to bask in the adulation of his supporters in the forum he likes best, a campaign-style rally. When he ranted against the “dishonest media” and floated the idea of solar panels on his border wall, the crowd lapped it up. Trevor Noah, host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, commented: “You know what was really impressive to see last night? How Trump supporters are so onboard with their dude he can say anything and they’ll come along for the ride.”
Then came the veterans event at the White House where, under the gaze of portraits of George Washington and Teddy Roosevelt, Trump projected himself as a man who gets things done.
“We’ve announced that the VA will finally solve a problem that has plagued our government for decades,” he said, referring to the transfer of veterans’ medical records from the Department of Defense to the VA – a seemingly simple process that has earned comparisons to the incompatibility of the Xbox and PlayStation.
Meanwhile, Trump finally caught a break on the worst crisis facing his presidency, the multiple investigations into his election campaign’s links to Russia. First, David Brooks, a Trump critic and New York Times columnist, suggested that the scandal may be overblown.
“There may be a giant revelation still to come,” Brooks wrote. “But as the Trump-Russia story has evolved, it is striking how little evidence there is that any underlying crime occurred – that there was any actual collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russians. Everything seems to be leaking out of this administration, but so far the leaks about actual collusion are meagre.”
Then, the Washington Post published a major investigation that raised questions over whether Obama could have done more to stop Moscow’s interference in last year’s poll, quoting one former administration official as saying: “I feel like we sort of choked.”
That gave Trump the opening he needed, to deflect and disrupt the prevailing narrative.
“The real story is that President Obama did NOTHING after being informed in August about Russian meddling,” he tweeted. “With 4 months looking at Russia… under a magnifying glass, they have zero ‘tapes’ of T people colluding. There is no collusion & no obstruction. I should be given apology!”
He was handed another gift when CNN was forced to retract a report, citing a single anonymous source, that Congress was investigating a “Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials”. It changed nothing about the Russia-related cloud over Trump but it did feed into his narrative that untrustworthy media organisations are conspiring against him.
The president gloated: “So they caught Fake News CNN cold, but what about NBC, CBS & ABC? What about the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost? They are all Fake News!”
Politico reported that Trump and his allies “believe he’s gained a tactical advantage in his war with the media” – which intensified over the weekend – adding that many White House staff members were “elated” by the CNN blunder, reckoning it will prove to sceptical voters that the mainstream media has a “vendetta” against the administration. The president’s supporters seized on the incident to plant seeds of confusion and false equivalency: if that Russia story was wrong, perhaps all of them are wrong?
Yet another lifeline was thrown to Trump from an unexpected quarter. The supreme court partially restored his executive order imposing a travel ban on six Muslim-majority countries and said it would hear arguments in the autumn. After setbacks in lower courts, the president was quick to crow about a “clear victory”.
Trump’s parallel universe also consists of speeches, bill signings, Oval Office photo ops and meetings with foreign leaders with whom he has, of late, stopped taking questions from the media, preferring to be lavished with praise that often jars with the national conversation. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, for example, thanked Trump for “having spent so much time with me, for having spoken such kind words about me and my country … In this journey of India-America relations, I think I would like to thank you for providing great leadership.”
None of these examples comes without caveats. Handel’s victory in Georgia was in a seat that Republicans have held since 1979. Democrats say Trump’s proposed budget will make it harder for veterans to receive care. The Russia investigations are likely to drag on for years and could find that Trump obstructed justice when he fired FBI director James Comey. The supreme court did not fully reinstate his travel ban, granting exemption to people with a “bona fide relationship” with someone in the US. And his campaign promise to repeal and replace Obamacare remains in limbo on Capitol Hill, while the president has been condemned by both parties for a crude attack on TV host Mika Brzezinski.
But politics, after all, is often a battle of perceptions. Niall Ferguson, a British historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, California, said in May: “I think one of the things Guardian readers, and their counterparts on the American coasts, don’t want to think about is the possibility that despite his obvious ineptitude, Trump might actually be successful.
“I said last summer to a bunch of liberal friends: ‘Your worst nightmare is not a Trump presidency; it’s a successful Trump presidency.’ The successful Trump presidency scenario is one in which, despite it all, the economy does better thanks to deregulation and tax cuts, foreign policy delivers some big wins on North Korea, the Middle East.
“It doesn’t take an awful lot for a president to start looking good. If the expectations start really low, which they have done, it may be one win, and I definitely don’t rule out a kind of ‘success in spite of himself’ scenario. And then you begin to wonder if a left-of-Clinton Democrat in 2020 would be blown away. We’ll see. The fun thing about doing history is you really can’t tell at this point which way it will go. It could quite easily go Jimmy Carter and he could be a lame duck.”
The president has not given a solo press conference since 16 February. Since 11 May, he has not given a TV interview to a channel other than the staunchly supportive Fox News. Combined with increasingly terse White House press briefings, often off camera, the pattern suggests that Trump is focused on firing up his base and has all but given up on reaching beyond it.
Michael Barnett, chairman of the Republican party in Palm Beach County, Florida, said: “I haven’t seen Trump lose any bit of support on the ground here. I hear people say he’s not presidential but it looks like he is beginning to redefine what it means to be presidential. He’s not going to take it lying down but he’s going stand up for himself and give it back.”
He added: “We believe, just as President Clinton said, it’s all about the economy. That’s what people care about most, not Russia or climate change, but things that affect them personally like putting food on the table. If Trump focuses on that, he’ll win again in 2020.”
A successful Trump presidency would enrage liberals (if that’s possible beyond current derangement levels) because liberals don’t support what Trump said he wanted to do, in the same way that conservatives (correctly) didn’t support what Barack Obama wanted to do. So far the Trump presidency has been a giant exercise in undoing Obama, which conservatives should support, even if Trump is just a conservative by convenience, similar to how Bill Clinton’s ideology was based on whoever was in office in Congress.
Here are multiple examples of undoing Obama, from Reuters:
President Donald Trump on Thursday promoted a “golden era” of the U.S. energy business by seeking to assert power abroad through a boost in natural gas, coal and petroleum exports.
In what he called a policy of “energy dominance,” Trump re-branded efforts to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) to markets in Eastern Europe and Asia that had been set in motion during the previous presidential administration.
The United States also will offer to export coal to Ukraine, where energy consumers often have suffered from cuts in natural gas supply by Russia.
“We are here today to unleash a new American energy policy,” Trump said at an event at the Department of Energy attended by oil and coal executives and union members who build pipelines. “We will export American energy all around the world.”
Trump plans to promote U.S. LNG exports at a meeting next week in Warsaw with a dozen leaders from central and eastern Europe, a region heavily reliant on Russian supplies. Trump then will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of a Group of 20 summit in Germany, in the first meeting between the two leaders, coming amid rising tensions over interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
After decades of being a major importer of natural gas, the United States is set to become a net exporter of gas later this year or in 2018 thanks to the boom in fracking in states such as Texas and Pennsylvania.
There is currently one operating U.S. LNG exporting facility in Sabine Pass, Louisiana, with four others currently under construction that are expected to become operational between 2018 and 2020. …
While many of Trump’s opponents have said his plan to pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate has the potential to harm the country’s relations around the world, Energy Secretary Rick Perry said at the event that energy exports will strengthen ties with allies.
The United States is in a position “to be able to clearly create a hell of a lot more friends by being able to deliver to them energy and not being held hostage by some countries, Russia in particular,” Perry said.
Whether it is sending LNG to Poland or Ukraine, “the entirety of the EU totally get it that if we can lay in American LNG … we can be able to have an alternative to Russia,” for natural gas sales to Europe, Perry said.
Earlier this month, Cheniere Energy Inc (LNG.A) delivered the first U.S. cargoes of LNG to Poland and the Netherlands.
The Energy Department on Thursday approved additional LNG exports from the Lake Charles project in Louisiana, which is under development.
Trump announced plans to offer coal exports to Ukraine, as well as lift restrictions on U.S. lending for coal projects overseas.
“Ukraine already tells us they need millions and millions of metric tons (of coal),” he said. “Right now, there are many other places that need it too and we want to sell it to them and to everyone else all over the globe who need it.”
The Trump administration will launch a review of the ailing nuclear power industry, which has experienced a slew of closures due to stagnant electricity demand and low natural gas prices. Trump’s 2018 budget included $120 million for addressing nuclear waste at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain and other projects, but most of the state’s politicians oppose that project.
In addition, the State Department issued a permit for a NuStar Logistics LP for its New Burgos Pipeline oil product pipeline from the United States to Mexico with a capacity of up to 180,000 barrels per day.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 