We started and ended with jazz yesterday, so it’s worth noting that today is the anniversary of the release of the first jazz record, “Darktown Strutters Ball”:
The number eight single today in 1969 …
… the same day John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded …
If I were a state legislator, I would certainly vote for the income tax cut plan introduced by Rep. Dale Kooyenga (R–Brookfield).
That sounds like faint praise, but there doesn’t seem anything wrong with Kooyenga’s plan besides the fact that the tax cuts are too small. Politics is the art of the possible, after all.
The MacIver Institute describes it in nicely graphic terms:
Paid for in part by …
In a previous interview with the MacIver News Service, Kooyenga said little used tax credits should be removed from the tax code. The refundable credits that Kooyenga eliminates in his plan include the Dairy Manufacturing Tax Credit, the Meat Processing Investment Tax Credit, the Film Production Tax Credit, and others.
The Representative deletes the Jobs Credit from the tax code as well, which some say was a way that government would pick winners and losers. The Jobs Credit provides a wage subsidy to employers of up to 10 percent and a subsidy for certain employee training expenses for new hires. By deleting the credit, expenditures are projected to decrease by $1.75 million in 2014-15 and is expected to reduce annual expenditures by $7 million in 2015-16 and up to $17 million in 2021-22.
Kooyenga told the MacIver News Service that the Jobs Credit actually hurts businesses that made tough decisions and retained employees during the recession. He said businesses that fired employees and are now hiring them back would see a tax credit, which shows the unfairness in the Badger State’s tax code.
The non-refundable credits that would be deleted from the tax code include the Dairy and Livestock Investment Credit, the Post-Secondary Education Credit, the Ethanol and Biodiesel Fuel Pump Credit, the Water Consumption Credit, the Relocated Business Credit, the Community Development Finance Credit, and others.
Some of the credits that are repealed in Kooyenga’s plan have not been claimed for many years or have had very few claimants.
If I were a state legislator, I would certainly vote for the smaller income tax cut plan included in the 2013–15 state budget, if Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal were the only option besides keeping our taxes the fifth highest in the U.S.
If I were a state legislator, however, I would have introduced a far larger income tax cut plan. Remember that Gov. James Doyle increased taxes by $2.2 billion. Simply repealing Doyle’s tax increases would be worthwhile.
Another possibility would be to cut taxes by an equivalent amount, though different from the taxes Doyle increased. As I’ve written in this space before, the correct corporate income tax rate is zero. In the 2010–11 fiscal year the state collected $852.9 million, which is just 6.6 percent of total state General Purpose Revenues. So the state could cut that much by eliminating corporate income taxes (for one thing: no taxes, no tax breaks), and use the remaining $1.3 billion or so as investor-friendly income tax cuts, which would be nearly twice the size of Kooyenga’s proposed tax cut.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that wealthy taxpayers would see the largest tax cuts. Independent of whether Wisconsin actually has wealthy people (not really, with about 10 exceptions), the fact is that wealthy people pay the lion’s share of state taxes — specifically, the top 10 percent in income pay half of state income taxes. It is impossible to give tax cuts to people with zero net tax liability. The purpose of taxes is to raise funds for government operations, not redistribute income.
There are inevitably claims that tax cuts produce deficits. That is only the case if the tax cut isn’t accompanied by spending cuts. (Although the increased economic activity from people having more money means that tax cuts produce more tax revenue, and the decreased economic activity from tax increases means that tax increases fail to produce expected revenue.)
It isn’t within the province of a state budget, but as I’ve also previously written here, passing tax cuts is not enough, since future editions of the Legislature can undo them. (As the 2009–10 Legislature, which passed Doyle’s tax increase, demonstrated. How the voters felt about that was demonstrated by the fact that the Legislature has been controlled by Republicans since the 2010 election.) This state continues to need permanent (as in constitutional) limits on spending and required voter approval for tax increases. Without them, state and local governments spend twice what they would have spent had their spending increases been limited to population growth plus inflation since the late 1970s. And since the late 1970s, this state trails the national average in per capita personal income growth.
While one can argue that advocating on behalf of a law enforcement agency’s budget is well within the purview of the duties of the chief-of-police, in an interview with a reporter from the local newspaper, the thinly veiled political attack on the state legislature by Milwaukee’s chief-of-police—done under the guise of good government—illustrates that Chief Ed Flynn is all too willing to pony-up to the bar of the public trough in search of yet another free drink.
As the impetus for his tirade, Flynn cites the expiration of a $445,000 grant for SharpShooter—a computer program that can pinpoint an area where gunshots emanate, which has been funded by the state legislature. Often times these awards, such as the COPS grants funded by the Clinton administration in the 1990s, cover the first three to five years of a program, at which time the agency receiving the grant money is expected to assume the cost.
The $445,000 needed to fund SharpShooter could easily be achieved by Flynn streamlining his already top heavy command staff. The Milwaukee Police Department has three assistant chiefs of police. Why a city the size of Milwaukee has more than one defies logic. Two of these positions could easily be eliminated by placing just one assistant police chief in charge of the north, central, and south commands, since all three are currently overseen by an inspector of police. By eliminating the two assistant police chiefs’ positions, the Milwaukee Police Department could save nearly $300,000 in wages and benefits.
Flynn also ripped the legislature’s decision to allow one of the state’s regional crime labs, currently located in cramped quarters near Lapham Blvd., to search for a new location, possibly outside Milwaukee. Having worked closely with technicians from the crime lab in the past, the location of this building really has little to do with efficiencies within the Milwaukee Police Department. For the sake of argument, if the Wisconsin Regional Crime Lab is moved from its current location to the Milwaukee County Grounds in Wauwatosa—near an area where the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee is constructing research facilities—how would this hamper the crime fighting efforts of Milwaukee police? Clearly, making the location of the crime lab an issue came directly from a Barrett administration talking points memo.
Yet even a low information voter could see through Flynn’s water carrying exercise as the chief feigns outrage over the elimination of the residency requirement for City of Milwaukee employees. Of course, the reporter fails to ask the police chief how this change would affect the overall operation of his department. Why? Because this rule change, in the long run, might actually benefit the Milwaukee Police Department, as solid, young potential recruits, unwilling to raise their families in the confines of the city, might now be encouraged to apply.
The real hypocrisy, in my opinion, comes not from the state legislature, but from the chief of police himself. If Flynn believes so strongly in Milwaukee, why hasn’t he put his money where his mouth is and purchased a home in the city? Instead, the chief has chosen to rent a condo in the trendy Third Ward. Moreover, Flynn’s family, specifically his wife, does not reside in Milwaukee. Surely, once the chief’s contract expires or he chooses to retire, his lease on his Third Ward condo will lapse and, once his payroll checks from the City of Milwaukee stop coming, he will move out of state, probably back to the east coast or Florida, with his pension checks in tow.
Two more Beatles anniversaries today: “Love Me Do” hit number one in 1964 …
… four years before the Beatles started work on their only double album. Perhaps that work was so hard that they couldn’t think of a more original title than: “The Beatles.” You may know it better, however, as “the White Album”:
Individually, Americans do not deserve to be subservient to such a fear-mongering, intimidating and powerful agency as the Internal Revenue Service; but collectively, we do. Let’s look at it.
Since the 1791 ratification of our Constitution, until well into the 1920s, federal spending as a percentage of gross domestic product never exceeded 5 percent, except during war. Today federal spending is 25 percent of our GDP. State and local government spending is about 15 percent of the GDP. That means government spends more than 40 cents of each dollar we earn. If we add government’s regulatory burden, which is simply a disguised form of taxation, the government take is more than 50 percent of what we produce.
In order to squeeze out of us half of what we produce, a government tax collection agency must be ruthless and able to put the fear of God into its citizens. The IRS has mastered that task. Congress has given it powers that would be deemed criminal if used by others. For example, the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment protects Americans against self-incrimination and being forced to bear witness against oneself. That’s precisely what one does when he is compelled to sign his income tax form. However, a Fifth Amendment argument can’t be used as a defense in a court of law. The IRS will counter that you voluntarily provided the information on your tax return. …
Our Founding Fathers feared the emergence of an agency such as the IRS and its potential for abuse. That’s why they gave us Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution, which reads: “No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.”
A capitation is a tax placed directly on an individual. That’s what an income tax is. The founders feared the abuse and the government power inherent in a direct tax. In Section 8 of Article 1, they added, “But all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.” These protections the founders gave us were undone by the Progressive era’s 16th Amendment, which reads, “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” …
The bottom line is that members of Congress need such a ruthless tax collection agency as the IRS because of the charge we Americans have given them. We want what the IRS does — namely, to take the earnings of one American so Congress can create a benefit for some other American. Don’t get angry with IRS agents. They are just following orders.
Paul Fanlund, editor of The Capital Times:
I was in airports and out of touch Monday before settling in front of my home computer to explore coverage of the Oklahoma tornado devastation from that afternoon.
Like most of you, I suspect, I was horrified by early accounts of dead and unaccounted-for children at two flattened elementary schools, a dread much like that distinctive despair I felt after last December’s school massacre in Newtown, Conn. …
My go-to source for online national and international news, The New York Times, provided thorough and sensitive coverage, but then I began exploring the reader comments there and on other sites.
Predictably, I suppose, many comments had zoomed right past the first phase of the news-tragedy checklist: counting and recovering bodies, caring for victims, assessing scope of damage, expressing sympathies and offering help.
No, many were already on to the second phase, and this time it was the left-leaning crowd asking questions: I wonder what those global-warming deniers will say this time? I wonder what those small-government Oklahoma Republicans who griped about federal spending after Hurricanes Katrina (gulf coast) and Sandy (the “liberal” northeast) will say about federal aid now?
Here in Madison, former Mayor Dave Cieslewicz was already online Tuesday morning with an Isthmus column headlined “Don’t blame God for the Moore tornado” discussing climate change.
This, I conclude, is what it has come to.
On almost any news event — local, national or international — we react for what seems a millisecond as Americans (or Wisconsinites or Madisonians). Then we split into our two massive left and right ideological tribes to determine how the news fits our master narrative and suggests blame for the other side.
In fact, it’s impossible to recall a major news story during the past year in which we all simply reacted as Americans for very long.
Perhaps 9/11 was the last time we reacted in unison. Americans rallied around President Bush after deaths of about 3,000 Americans even though reports suggested Bush had been slow to take seriously threats from Osama Bin Laden.
It’s as if there is no news, just red-state news and blue-state news, conservative Fox news or liberal MSNBC. While much of this journalistic reality is not new, what does seem different is how the demarcation occurs almost instantly.
Not that long ago there was, more or less, an agreed-upon set of facts around news events. Opinions would flow some time later. Even longer ago, there were trusted national voices such as Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley delivering what seemed largely undisputed facts. …
Here in Madison and Wisconsin generally, this penchant for instantly shifting news for viewing through partisan lenses has been exacerbated by Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who seems oddly proud that nearly half of his constituents disagree with him on almost every issue. He then leverages the fact that he survived a recall effort as a badge of honor to enhance his national right-wing credibility.
Republican Tommy Thompson, who seemed to relish impressive approval ratings among Democrats while governor, was a product of his times, and Walker is a product of his.
Within the fortress of liberal Madison, the rush-to-judgments are slower and elbows predictably less sharp; our disagreements are more about narrower cultural divides and leadership styles. But, we must remember, we mostly belong to the same tribe.
Oh, I imagine I will be called hypocritical for this column, given that The Capital Times has a century-old reputation for progressive editorial viewpoints. Moreover, our central focus is the progressive enclave of Madison, so some of that criticism is to be expected. …
For decades, journalists have worked to craft stories that answer questions about who, what, when, where, why and how.
Sadly, in my view, today’s news consumer seems most interested in jumping — even before bodies are counted — to “who can I blame?”
This is more a pop than rock anniversary: One of the two funniest songs Johnny Cash performed, “One Piece at a Time,” hit number 29 today in 1976:
Birthdays start with Gary Brooker of Procol Harum:
Luke Hilgemann of Americans for Prosperity repeats something this blog noted last week:
What if I told you that as a typical, middle class Wisconsinite, playing by the rules and working hard to support your family and live a comfortable life in the Badger State, you are paying a larger percentage of your income than a millionaire in Illinois – would you be shocked, amazed, and distraught?
The stark reality is that an individual that makes just over $11,000 in Wisconsin pays a higher income tax rate than a millionaire in Illinois.
In fact, four of our five tax brackets are higher than the 5% flat income tax rate paid by our neighbors to the south. And while most Wisconsinites know that Illinois has higher taxes and a lesser professional football team, what they don’t realize is that Wisconsin’s long time progressive tax code is much more unfair to low to middle income families than those living in the “tax hell” Land of Lincoln. …
The good intention of a progressive system has turned into a code that picks winners and losers and makes the government the arbiter of right and wrong. Over the last 100 years, our tax system has become a complicated web of loopholes, credits, exemptions and exclusions.
Overturning the complicated weave of 100 years of political tinkering by our politicians in Madison isn’t going to be easy. It will take years to unravel the web of our tax system, but we can’t wait any longer to start that process. Gov. Walker’s budget reforms have helped stabilize Wisconsin’s state budget that was riddled by deficits and debt under both Republican and Democrat administrations.Wisconsin is on sound financial footing having started the budget process with the first surplus in decades. This is the perfect platform to start the work on reforming how we collect taxes and how the government treats individuals and businesses. The key word in this process will be “fairness”. …
Our economy is showing steady signs of improvement, but to continue on the path to recovery we need to create a system that allows small business to grow and attracts new employers to Wisconsin. We have to remind our legislators that additional credits and exemptions are not the path to bringing employers to the Badger State. A fair, flat and predictable tax code is what will attract businesses and create jobs.
Why don’t you hear Wisconsin Democrats talk about income tax reform? John Torinus has an answer:
You want progressive taxes? You want to sock it to the rich?
Well then, you should be right at home in progressive Wisconsin. The 3940 fat cats with more than $1 million in income in 2011 (.1% of the total taxpayers) paid 11.5% of the state incomes taxes that year. That’s 115 times their population weight
Those with incomes above $500,000 (.4% of the total) paid 17.3%. They are punching 43 times their weight.
In contrast, at the other end of the income scale, filers with incomes of $30,000 or less – about half of all filers – paid just 3.8% of all state income taxes.
These numbers from the non-partisan Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance showed that taxpayers in the high income brackets paid at an average rate of about 6.5%. The top rate is 7.75%.
These high rates explain why we have so few rich people in Wisconsin. When they retire, they move to Florida or Arizona for at least six months and one day to avoid the 6.5% hit. Wouldn’t you if you were in their shoes? …
The high end taxpayers in Wisconsin won’t be impressed by small cuts in the middle and lower brackets. Their attorneys and accountants will be advising them to take up residence in states with no or low income taxes. Florida and Texas are at zero, and Arizona’s top rate is 4.54%.
I disagree with a few of Hilgemann’s points. When you have a single-budget-cycle surplus, that’s a sign that taxes are too high; it is not necessarily a sign of economic “recovery.” (The more accurate term for the current economy is Recovery In Name Only.) The state surplus could be called a Surplus In Name Only, because the state continues to run a nine-figure deficit under the correct measure of government finance, Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.
I’m not a fan of the political concept of “fairness.” Hilgemann wrote:
It’s not fair for politicians to force average Wisconsinites to pay more taxes while providing loopholes for certain corporations to pay less. Often times these decisions are made not based on who provides the best product or service at the best prices, but instead on who cuts the largest check to their political campaigns. We need to get our elected officials out of the business of handing out favors.
You can agree with his last sentence and the premise of the second sentence without necessarily agreeing with the first sentence. Tax breaks to businesses mean businesses are more profitable, and profit is always good no matter where profit goes — to the business’ owners in dividends, to employees in higher compensation, or back into the business. Business taxes are part of the cost of a product or service, so businesses do not pay taxes; their customers do. The way to increase business profits and simultaneously simplify the tax system is to not tax business profits. The correct corporate income tax rate, in the U.S., Wisconsin or anywhere else, is zero.
The purpose of a tax system should be to raise necessary revenue for the functions of government, not for any other purpose, including “fairness.” A system where everyone pays the same tax rate is “fair” because people with more income or who spend more pay more in, respectively, income and sales taxes.
Reducing income taxes is necessary but insufficient by itself. This state is a tax hell because government spends too much money. Hilgemann wrote about taxes, not what taxes pay for, but a tax cut is useless without permanent (that is, as permanent as possible in our flawed democratic republic) controls on spending, specifically restricting government spending increases from one budget cycle to the next and requiring taxpayer approval of tax increases. If this state had restricted government spending increases to the inflation rate plus population growth, for example, since the late 1970s, state and local government today would spend half as much as it does now.
My appearance on Wisconsin Public Radio Friday went much better than my previous appearance, even though my opponent remains excessively long-winded. (She’s a lawyer, so this shouldn’t be a surprise.)
One of the subjects we didn’t get to was U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D–Rhode Island), who chose the exact moment the F5 tornado was hitting Moore, Okla., to claim that Republicans are wrong about global climate change, which is causing storms like the Moore tornado. (Whitehouse later apologized, his spokesman claiming Whitehouse didn’t know the tornado was taking place. If your default position is that politicians lie, you have no problem with Whitehouse’s flack’s statement.)
Had the subject come up, I would have said that the most objectionable part of Whitehouse’s verbal diarrhea was that Whitehouse is flat out wrong. My evidence comes from meteorologist Mike Smith, proprietor of the Meteorological Musings blog.
The first chart shows that there is no trend of increasing numbers of tornadoes since 1954, despite continued improvement in meteorological technology. There are active years (1973 and 2012), but there are also inactive years (including 2012).
I would have also mentioned this: The National Weather Service Milwaukee/Sullivan office handles tornado warnings for four of the counties most frequently visited by tornadoes since 1950 — Dane, Iowa, Dodge and Fond du Lac counties. (I’ve lived in three of those counties, plus Grant County, which is also top five. I have yet to see a tornado.) The NWS Sullivan office has not issued a tornado warning in two years.
The second chart shows, again since 1954, that the trend of tornadoes EF3 or stronger is downward, not upward, since 1954.
Another meteorologist, Joe Bastardi, was a guest on “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News Channel:
Well, there have been major tornadoes before. As a matter of fact, the charts of the major tornadoes show they’ve been decreasing over the years. They reached their peak in the 50s, 60s and 70s. And if you remember, during the 70s, we were in a global cooling scare. I’m not here to demean anybody. I will debunk them with facts, though. This is not the first time we’ve heard this situation, comments made. It’s almost like ambulance chasing after these devastating events that cause misery to people, and then trying to tie an agenda into it. …
About five years ago, I came on your show, Bill, and told you we were going into a time of climatic hardship because of the shift in the cycle in the Pacific to cooler while the Atlantic was still warm. This happened in the 1950s. It’s why the 1950s were so volatile with the tremendous tornado activity. The heat and drought in the center of the country and, of course, the hurricane activity up the Eastern Seaboard where Senator Whitehouse seems to be ignorant of his own state of Rhode Island was hit four times in the 1950s. There were eight major hurricanes that ran the Eastern Seaboard from 1954 to 1960. Just what do you think is going to happen if the same pattern shows up again? …
O’REILLY: Well, this storm that we’re looking at right now, that’s one of the most powerful tornadoes ever to hit the USA, right?
BASTARDI: Yeah, it is, there’s no question, but the 1925 Tri-State tornado had a path of 180 miles from Missouri into Indiana, and was two miles wide. When you go back and look at the history and the deaths of, the tornado deaths, which have been decreasing in large part to NOAA and the storm chasers who are seeing all these things before they happened.
Smith wrote a column for Sunday’s Washington Post on five tornado myths:
The scene in Moore, Okla., this past week was hauntingly familiar. The images of clean-up crews picking through the wreckage of two elementary schools transported me back to 1957, when an F5 tornado struck my Kansas City neighborhood, destroying my kindergarten and leaving 44 people dead. Thankfully, we’ve learned a lot since then that can help limit tornado casualties. But many misconceptions persist — misconceptions that can encourage bad policy and put lives at risk. I’d like to dispel some of the myths.
1. Meteorologists aren’t any good at forecasting these storms.
How does 99.3 percent sound? In 2011, 553 people lost their lives in tornadoes. For all but four of those victims (99.3 percent), both a tornado watch and a tornado warning were in effect before the storm arrived.
Modern tornado warnings are Nobel Prize-worthy endeavors that combine weather science, social science and technology. As recently as 1990, people in the path of a tornado were lucky to get five minutes’ warning. Now, thanks to advances in radar, computer simulations and research on how tornadoes develop, the average “lead time” is 12 minutes — and more than 15 minutes for major tornadoes. The city of Moore had a stunning 36 minutes of warning.
In addition to the explicit warning to take cover, there was a tornado watch out more than two hours before the tornado arrived in Moore, allowing people to move their valuables into storm shelters or even drive out of the area. There were also tornado “outlooks” four days before the Moore tornado. Those stated, in words and graphics, that central Oklahoma had an elevated risk of major tornadoes Monday.
The one area where weather science needs to improve is false alarms: For every four warnings issued, only about one tornado touches down. Those false alarms can cause people to question the credibility of the warning system. That said, if a significant tornado is headed for your area, the chance of an advance warning is excellent. …
2. Warning systems don’t work.
Since Weather Bureau civilian tornado warnings (as we would think of them today) began in 1957, there has never been a tornado that claimed more than 100 lives — with one notable exception.
On May 22, 2011, an F5 tornado struck Joplin, Mo., population 50,000. This was one of the rare times when almost everything went wrong with the warnings. The National Weather Service misreported the location and direction of the tornado. The sirens were not sounded in a manner consistent with the warnings, leading to confusion. And the tornado was enshrouded in rain, so people couldn’t see it. One hundred sixty-one people died.
On Monday, a tornado of equal strength and larger physical size struck Moore, population 55,000. It was similarly difficult to recognize along its path because of rain and debris. Yet the warnings went out as they were supposed to, and Moore experienced one-seventh the number of deaths in Joplin. …
5. Climate change is producing tornadoes of increasing frequency and intensity.
There have always been F5 tornadoes, and we will continue to experience them regardless of whether the Earth’s temperature rises or falls. National Weather Service figures show, if anything, that violent tornadoes — F3 or greater on the Fujita scale — are becoming less frequent. There is no trend, neither up nor down, in the frequency of all tornadoes.
The Capital Weather Gang’s Ian Livingston tweeted after the Moore tornado: “Climate change people do themselves a huge disservice by running to that after every disaster.”
I heartily concur.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 
