WisGOP's solution four our lousy economy? LOWER PAY!

You want to know why this state continues to flail economically? Take a look at these two items released in the last 2 days.

The first came from the Bradley Foundation's lawsuit mill and stink tank, which released a report showing that Wisconsin teachers are taking home a lot less money than they were 5 years ago.

Full-time teacher salaries declined by an average of about $2,000 after Gov. Scott Walker signed Act 10 [in 2011], restricting collective bargaining rights for most public employees, according to a study from a conservative legal group.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty report released Tuesday called the average inflation-adjusted base pay decrease "statistically significant." Over the same period, the average years of experience for state teachers dropped less than a year, to 14.2 years of experience....

The study says that the average salary and fringe benefits were $2,095 and $5,580 lower, respectively, when averaging the salary level of the three years before Act 10 and during the three years after the law passed.

That'll encourage the talent to enter the teaching profession!

Amazingly the WILL stink tank and righties are trying to use this report to imply that less classroom experience and less pay for teachers is a good thing for Wisconsin, because it allegedly saved a handful of dollars in property taxes. Or something about how it's not so bad because the state is merely mediocre and not a full-fledged disaster (yet). Nice value system, dumbasse. And you wonder why people with talent don't want to locate here?

The other absurd and telling statement comes from another Bubble-Worlder, State Sen. Duey Stroebel. Herr Stroebel went on Mike Gousha's TV show over the weekend and said that studies from the US Department of Transportation which say Wisconsin has the 3rd worst roads in America aren't worth listening to. Instead, we should trust right-wing stink tanks to give us the "facts," because they say things aren't so bad.

Stroebel opposes tax or fee increases to help pay for what some claim is a crumbling state transportation system. He said other studies show a different picture for Wisconsin's roads.

A report by the conservative Reason Foundation showed Wisconsin's highway ranking improving from 31st in 2009 to 15th in 2012.

Stroebel said that in the Reason Foundation report, the four states ranked as having the worst roads have prevailing wage laws and no right to work law. The 10 states with the best roads, he said, do not have prevailing wage and have instituted right to work.

This is quite reminiscent about how ALEC rates bankrupt, failing states like Kansas and Louisiana in their top 10, while booming states with surpluses like California and Minnesota rank in the bottom 10. Anyone who trusts a right-wing stink tank's ratings as a basis for policy is either a paid-off liar or a blubbering fool who couldn't get elected in any part of the state worth a fuck (in Stroebel's case, I'll go with the latter).

But Dewey wasn't done. He has a solution to the state's huge Trasnportation Fund deficit.

Prevailing wage sets a minimum pay level for construction workers on state projects, while right to work laws prevent workers from being required to pay union dues as a condition of employment.

"That is a place that we need to move to," Stroebel said. "We've begun to move there now with right to work and a partial repeal of prevailing wage, but we need to go all the way there. And then those are the things that are going to help us stack up better."

Yes, because rating higher with the "Reason" Foundation is a much more important thing than having stable revenues to fix roads or encouraging high quality on those repairs through better standards of pay. These people don't have a goddam clue about attracting that talent that produces a quality produce or service, do they? Nor do they seem to understand that an economy generally does better when everyday workers are paid more and are treated with respect.

With these dimwits in charge and being the "thought leaders" of today's Wisconsin GOP, is it any wonder we're dead last in the Midwest in jobs over the last 5 years?