You may not win a prize, but Powerball mania might still help

Props to the Wisconsin Lottery for busting out this fact sheet as Powerball mania peaks. As part of this sheet, the Lottery gave stats on how ticket sales have grown exponentially in recent weeks as the jackpot has spiraled higher. As a sort of "base amount", look to the weekend of Thanksgiving, were barely $1 million in Powerball tickets were sold in Wisconsin. Then watch the growth throughout December, particularly the last 2 weeks.

Powerball sales, Wisconsin
Week ending Dec. 5 $1.26 million
Week ending Dec. 12 $1.37 million
Week ending Dec. 19 $1.59 million
Week ending Dec. 26 $2.00 million
Week ending Jan.2 $3.46 million
Week ending Jan. 9 $21.71 million

The Wisconsin Lottery also gives this little reminder to Wisconsinites about how much the Lottery retains in the multi-state game of Powerball.

Wisconsin must contribute 31.29% of its sales to the national jackpot. The rest of the money stays in Wisconsin. Note: 100% of Wisconsin lotto and instant games stays in our state.

But 31.3% of over $21.7 million in tickets sold is still nearly $6.8 million, and likely well above what is being sold in Megabucks and every other Wisconsin lottery game this week, so the Wisconsin Lottery is still adding quite a bit to its revenue line items this week.

And that could make up for the smaller Lottery credit that taxpayers got this year in Wisconsin. As the Legislative Fiscal Bureau notes, one reason Scott Walker’s claim of “lower property taxes every year I’m in office” didn’t come true this year is because the total 2015 statewide Lottery credit was reduced by $1.9 million vs 2014, reducing the write-off that homeowners get from the lottery.

If nothing else, this huge bump in sales for Powerball might prevent another decrease in the lottery credit for next year, as October's projections indicated that the lottery credit was projected to go down by another $4.8 million next year, if the trend of sales continued. Obviously, a wild card is how many of those millions in Powerball tickets end up getting paid back in prizes (the Lottery's report from March indicated that Powerball has about 1/2 of its sales come back in winnings, and the Wisconsin Lottery has a payout of around 59% in all of its games), but that number could be greatly changed if a lot of the non-jackpot winnings end up in Wisconsin.

There's also a legitimate question that many have broached about lotteries throughout the years, and especially with the craziness of the last couple of weeks, asking whether these games of chance are a regressive tax and promotion of a destructive activity, and whether it is coming at the expense of other potential economic activity. Related to that, lottery tickets aren't part of Wisconsin sales tax, and those who don't win obviously don't have lottery proceeds to pay income tax from, so you can see where the risk comes in from a budgetary side if other economic activity is displaced as a result of people buying lots of lottery tickets. But by the same token, if some lottery retailers have to give a few more hours to workers to handle the extra customers, that could be a slightly positive effect for the state budget (even if it stresses out those clerks, as you may have seen if you've been buying tickets in the last week).

We likely won't know in the near future what overall economic and fiscal effect (if any) will come from the lottery ticket sales resulting from the huge Powerball jackpot, mostly since the lottery credit isn't determined until the Fall, as part of the year-end property tax bills. But now you know where all this ties together, and how Wisconsin's bottom line may be affected, and you can impress your workers at the water at the (probably figurative) water cooler tomorrow if they ask "Is this really going to change anything for the state?"

Bowie thoughts

Very sad day for anyone with a soul, as the great David Bowie died last night, after privately battling cancer for 18 months.

The word that keeps coming back to my head when I've thought about Bowie is "brilliant." Brilliant musician, brilliant performer, brilliant lyricist. There truly has been and never will be an artist like Bowie, and he kept producing strong work and performances through the end of his life (just releasing an album and haunting video last week).

There are tons of Bowie songs to choose from, but one that's hit a nerve with me in the last dozen years is one of his later songs- "I'm Afraid of Americans." Here's the tremendous video for that 1997 tune, which includes a supporting role from a worthy Gen X successor to Bowie's intersection of unique music and visual art- Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails.



And here's another great one, from Bowie's 1980 release Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) , "Ashes to Ashes", where the older, wiser Bowie tells us what happened to Major Tom 10 years after "Space Oddity." Sure, the video's a little cheesy, but the song is still awesome, and would be well ahead of most anything else if it was released brand-new today.



An associate of mine summed it well on Twitter this morning, and part of the reason Bowie's death might be hitting some of us a bit harder than it should.

It never dawned on me that David Bowie was mortal.
- Amos Posner

Strong December jobs report adds to impressive Obama record

Despite the plummeting stock market last week, there was one significant bit of good economic news. The U.S. jobs report for December 2015 was released on Friday, and the numbers surprised to the upside.

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 292,000 in December. Employment rose in several industries, including professional and business services, construction, health care, and food services and drinking places. Mining employment continued to decline. In 2015, payroll employment growth totaled 2.7 million, compared with 3.1 million in 2014....

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for October was revised from +298,000 to +307,000, and the change for November was revised from +211,000 to +252,000. With these revisions, employment gains in October and November combined were 50,000 higher than previously reported. Over the past 3 months, job gains have averaged 284,000 per month.

So add in the revisions, and that's 342,000 jobs above where we thought we were last month (325,000 in the private sector). It also soothes some concerns that the economy may be stalling out toward recession, at least in the short term, given that job growth like that wouldn't happen if the economy was in decline. Yes, some of this December gain could be attributed to the warm December (remember when it was 50 degrees a months ago vs the 5 degrees we have today?). That helped raise seasonally-adjusted construction jobs by 45,000, while the amount of non-seasonally-adusted construction jobs went down by 151,000 (indicating the usual amount of December construction layoffs would be around 200,000). Some of that may cancel itself out with higher "losses" in seasonally-adjusted construction jobs in January. But there were still another 247,000 jobs added outside of construction, and it's still a very strong finish to 2015.

If you add in those upward revisions to US jobs, it also adds to the Walker jobs gap here in Wisconsin. If Wisconsin would have kept up with the US job numbers in the first 5 years of Scott Walker's regime, the state would have added over 270,000 private sector jobs. Instead, the private sector jobs gap is now over 100,000 jobs, and nearly 96,500 overall.





And it's not just over the last 5 years that U.S. jobs has been on the upward trend. Paul Waldman of the Washington Post added these most recent numbers in to President Obama's record with 7 full years of job stats in office, and found that it puts Obama in elite company for jobs for presidents that have served over the last 40 years. Here are the figures going back to Obama's inauguration in January 2009.



   Not bad, but remember that Obama took office, the country was losing 700,000-800,000 jobs a month. Waldman takes that into account, and includes a one-year lag, so job stats that happened in the first year of a president's term is "credited" to the previous president. This would give the job losses of 2001 to Clinton instead of Dubya Bush, and give the 2009 job losses to Bush instead of Obama, for example. Take a look what happens when you do that.



  This puts Obama in the same area as Reagan and Clinton for job growth, and Waldman says that Barack's standing could go even higher if job growth stays on track in 2016. And Waldman also notes the irony that GOP presidential candidates don't want to continue Obama policies, but instead go back to the supply-side BS of the 8 years prior to Obama's inauguration, which were terrible for job growth.

We don’t know what will happen this year; there could be another recession, or there could be an economic boom. But let’s assume for the moment that the economy goes along pretty much as it has been for the last few years. If we see the creation of just 200,000 jobs per month — not bad, but not spectacular either — that would add 2.4 million jobs to Obama’s total, giving him 16 million jobs created since the bottom of the Great Recession. That would put him right around the same total of job creation as Reagan, and somewhat less than Clinton. Even if we counted from the beginning of his presidency, he’d still have seen the creation of almost 12 million jobs. And in the last five years, the economy has averaged 2.3 million new jobs per year, which among these presidents only Clinton exceeded.

So we can say definitively that no matter what else you think, you simply cannot say that Barack Obama hasn’t been a great president for job creation. There’s also no question, no matter how you measure it, about who the worst jobs president in recent history was: George W. Bush.

This isn’t just a matter for historians to mull over, because right now we’re in the midst of a presidential campaign, one in which — and I can’t stress this too emphatically — every Republican candidate is essentially promising to bring back George W. Bush’s economic policies. There is some variation in their particular plans, but all the candidates say basically the same thing: if we cut taxes (particularly for the wealthy) and scale back regulations, the economy will positively explode in a supernova of job creation and prosperity.

And both in Wisconsin and in the U.S., we know these policies do not work, either for balancing the budget, or in job growth. So why the hell would anyone who believes in results want to put those clowns in power at a state or federal level?

WisGOP Leggies try to sneak through more reckless corporate tax cuts

Props to the Wisconsin Budget Project for calling out a bill that Assembly Republicans jammed through in a public hearing last week which could cost the deficit-ridden state of Wisconsin as much as $384 million a year in revenues.

The bill in question is Assembly Bill 623, which is a ALEC GOP-sponsored bill that has a number of tax “modifications- all of which just happen to result in corporations and businesses paying fewer taxes. The largest of these provisions is a nearly $300 million tax reduction that would come from the federalizing of a rule regarding a concept known as “economic substance,” which the Wisconsin law defines as a “transaction [that] changes the taxpayer’s economic position in a meaningful way, apart from the federal, state, local and foreign tax effects,” and has a potential for profit. The Wisconsin Department of Revenue analyzed this provision in AB 623, and basically admitted that this change would allow Wisconsin businesses to write off expenses for almost any reason they wanted to.

Under the bill, current state economic substance provisions would be repealed. Instead, the state would adopt, by reference to Section 7701 (o) of the Internal Revenue Code, federal economic substance provisions.

The bill as written would only apply to transactions that have economic substance as it relates to the transaction’s federal tax effect. The Internal Revenue Code’s economic substance provisions do not apply to state tax effects. There are numerous ways in which taxpayers could structure transactions that would have no federal income tax effect and therefore not be subject to the federal economic substance doctrine, but which could significantly reduce the taxpayer’s income that is taxable to Wisconsin. The potential reduction in income and franchise tax revenue could reach $296 million [annually].

There are also several other smaller provisions in this bill that are special-interest legislation intended to shelter other types of costs and transactions from taxes, as well as several items that lessen the chances of DOR getting back money as the result of a tax audit. The tax audit items are especially intriguing, since many of these same GOP legislators signed off on the 2015-17 budget, which counts on $113.5 million in increased tax collections resulting from…..DOR hiring more tax auditors (as noted at the bottom of Page 3 of this PDF).

In addition to the large budget hole AB 623 would cause, Jon Peacock at the Wisconsin Budget Project has issues with the sneaky way this corporate tax cut bill was put together without the public being notified about it.

The Assembly version of the bill is AB 623 and was introduced last week on December 29th. Early this week the chairperson of the Ways and Means Committee amended the agenda for [Thursday]’s public hearing to add the new bill. The quick scheduling suggested that the bill might be on a fast track, and perhaps that will still be the case; however, the DOR fiscal estimate is likely to complicate any plans to rush the bill to the floor of the Assembly or Senate.

For many different reasons, I find it distressing when legislators rush consideration of major pieces of legislation and minimize the opportunities for meaningful public involvement. AB 623 is one of numerous examples of how that can create problems. I’m sure I’m not the only person who would have liked to testify at the hearing if the public had been aware that a large tax cut was being considered and had such a huge price tag. (I heard about the fiscal estimate well after the hearing began and rushed up to the Capitol, but I got to the meeting just as it was ending.)

Of course, that was probably the intent- to hide the bill as long as possible and then jam it through before too many people could speak up about it, and draw the attention of the press (Peacock’s article was the first I had heard of it, and I bet this post is the first time you’ve heard of it). This is the way the ALEC crew works, hiding as much as they can from the taxpayers that pay their salaries, while giving additional tax breaks to their cronies and campaign contributors.

And look who one of the co-sponsors of this legislation is- State Rep. Dale (Koo-Koo) Kooyenga, seen earlier this week posing for holy pictures about how the State Legislature should allow time for budget motions to be made available to the public. Maybe Koo-Koo didn’t fully know what was in this corporate tax cut bill when he backed it, like he claims he didn’t know what was in the notorious 999 measure that tried to gut the state’s open records laws last Summer, and maybe it’s just bad luck that the bill fast-tracked for a hearing in less than a week, with most of the time in-between being the New Year’s holiday weekend.

Or maybe Kooyenga had a bit too much of the Holiday Cheer, like he was during the final debate over the state budget, and couldn't get in contact with the Assembly committee to tell them to delay the hearing.



That, or maybe Kooyenga is a two-faced sack of shit who wants to hide his corruption and fiscal illiteracy in hopes the public will buy his BS of “reformer,” and not boot him out of the Assembly this November. One of the two.

These are the types of bills we have to vigilant about in the coming months, because I think the Wisconsin GOP knows they have fallen out of favor with the public, and are going to try to do as much damage and crass giveaways to their allies as they can in the remainder of this session. That way, it becomes a lot harder for the Dems that replace them to fix all of the damage, and they get to blame the Dems for the rough adjustments and “higher” taxes that are going to have to have to clean up the GOP vandalism. And AB 623 is the type of budgetary bomb that would be right in line with the ALEC/ Grover Norquist strategy of FUBARing a functioning government, and increasing the cynicism that today’s GOP relies on to keep getting more votes than they deserve.

Walker hints at more self-inflicted pain on Transportation

Our fair Governor has been making the rounds this week with hand-picked interviews trying to convince the public that things are OK in Wisconsin as 2016 begins. And in the process of one of those interviews with WisPolitics.com, Walker may have just committed a major gaffe on transportation funding that has angered politicians on both sides of the aisle.

Gov. Scott Walker suggested in an interview Thursday the state could simply spend less on roadwork in his next budget considering his pledge to not raise taxes or fees without an offset and the reluctance of lawmakers to continue bonding….

Walker noted his 2017-19 budget is still more than a year out, and revenues could pick up by then. But he said his bottom line on transportation is he won't support a gas tax or registration fee increase unless there is a tax cut elsewhere, vowing to stick to a pledge he made during his 2014 re-election campaign.

"When you do it under that context, one of the options is -- if people don't want to borrow and they're not willing to raise the gas tax -- is to adjust the plans in terms of how much money is spent on projects going forward," Walker said.

In other words, Walker wants to go down the same foolish path he had laid out in his last proposed budget, which offered no fee or gas tax increases, but instead proposed $1.3 billion in borrowing to continue various road projects. That amount of borrowing angered many Republicans in the Legislature, and was a big reason why the budget was held up past the July 1 start of the Fiscal Year, despite complete Republican control of the Legislature and the Governor’s Office.

Eventually a compromise to allow for $500 million in borrowing was reached in the final 2015-17 budget, but that (ahem) “adjustment in plans in terms of how much money was to be spent to projects” meant delays on numerous key expressway and maintenance projects. That wasn’t acceptable either, and the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee went along with Gov Walker’s request to borrow another $350 million in November.

Now Walker’s statements sets things up for a repeat of the DOT’s budget problems for 2017-19, and 2 GOP members of Joint Finance expressed their displeasure with Walker’s no-tax pose in that same WisPolitics article.

Sen. Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, said he regularly hears complaints from constituents that roads are crumbling.

"Spending less is not an answer," said Olsen, who has said he would support raising the gas tax…

Rep. Mary Czaja, R-Irma, also has expressed an openness to raising revenues. She sighed when asked if she would accept more borrowing in the next transportation budget, though she said the guv's no tax increase pledge has backed lawmakers into a corner.

U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Madison) also noticed what Gov Walker said, noted that Wisconsin’s roads were already rated 3rd worst in the nation by the U.S. DOT, and added the following statement today.

“Gov. Walker’s last budget failed to provide critical infrastructure investments that the people and businesses in Wisconsin deserve,” said Rep. Pocan. “Important construction projects have already been delayed. Our state should not have to endure dropping down to very last in the nation due to short-sighted budget promises the governor made while eyeing a presidential bid.”

“Last month, Congress finally passed a long-term, bipartisan Highway Funding bill. There is no excuse for not adequately funding Wisconsin’s highways, bridges and roads,” continued Rep. Pocan. “To follow Gov. Walker’s budgeting advice would jeopardize public safety and disrupt economic growth in our state which has already dropped from 11th to 37th in job creation on his watch.”

This transportation funding gap in Wisconsin is the direct result of what happens when you elect dimwits like Scott Walker who are more worried about what right-wing DC Bubble-Worlders like Grover Norquist and the Club for Greed think, as opposed to the needs of the Wisconsin taxpayers that voted Walker into office, and pay his 6-figure salary with those taxes.

Since Scotty’s hopes of an increase in revenues to free up money to be funneled into the Transportation Fund in the next budget aren’t likely to happen (in fact, I’d say revenues are more likely to be revised down than up by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau later this month), it’s going to be up to the Legislature to tell this foolish Governor to “DEAL WITH REALITY” when it comes to funding roads. And I it’ll likely take a lot of new faces in the Legislature to make that a reality, since the current GOP majority isn’t willing to take on the people who hold their campaign’s purse strings.

Hey Dems, here’s another issue to pound on for the next 10 months. And this time, don’t let these careless fools off the hook for what they’ve caused, like you did in November.

Liberal Wisconsin counties are fine- Gannon should care about his own backyard

You may have heard about State Rep. Bob Gannon's racist press release that tried to deflect from the failure of Scott Walker and WisGOP policies to grow the economy in Wisconsin. In addition to being yet another reason to avoid Right Trashington Washington County and the rest of the 262 area code outside of the cities of Racine and Kenosha, Chris Walker at Political Heat actually looked into the numbers and says Rep. Gannon is DEAD WRONG in his assertion that the Milwaukee area is what's dragging the state's economy down.

Walker went directly to the recently released Quarterly Census on Employment and Wages looked at private sector job growth for the June 2014 - June 2015 period, and found that economically Milwaukee County is doing just fine.

...the violence in Milwaukee County, while a major problem that needs to be fixed right away, isn’t driving away jobs. The yearly rate of private sector jobs growth in Milwaukee County (1.2 percent) is similar to the rate seen statewide (1.3 percent), which places the county at the median for all counties [in] Wisconsin.

In other words, while half the state’s counties are doing better than Milwaukee in producing a higher rate in jobs, half the state is doing worse than the county overall.

Additionally, Milwaukee County accounted for more than 16 percent of the net jobs growth in the state over the past year as well, a good rate to have considering that the county has 16 percent of the state’s population base.

More new businesses are being created in Milwaukee County. In fact, Milwaukee County saw 1,175 net new businesses spring up over the past year, an increase of total businesses in the county of about 4.9 percent.

Contrast that to Washington County, where Rep. Gannon is from. That county saw an additional 93 net new businesses from June 2014 to June 2015, a yearly rate increase of only 3.1 percent.

Yes, Washington County added jobs at a higher RATE in the June 2014-June 2015 time period than Milwaukee County (2.0% vs. Milw Co's 1.2%), but Milwaukee County added a lot more total private sector jobs in the 12 months measured (over 5,000 vs less than 1,000 in Washington County). And let's not forget that Milwaukee County gets the most tourism dollars in the state, and had an increase in local county 0.5% sales taxes in 2015 that was nearly $360,000 more than Washington County's - a figure that translates into higher growth in state sales taxes of $3.6 million.

If Rep. Gannon wants to talk about areas of the state that aren't pulling their weight, why isn't he talking about his neighbors to the west in Dodge County, who lost 53 jobs in the last 12 months (0.2%), and had local sales taxes drop by 3.7% in 2015? And he definitely should talk about Wood County (Marshfield area), which lost 75 private sector jobs in the last year (0.2%) and has lost more than 5,500 private sector jobs in the last 3 years, as well as had sales taxes drop in Wood County by more than 8% in 2015?

Or what about Rusk, Marinette, and Richland Counties, Bobby? They also had private sector job losses and sales tax decreases in the last 12 months measured? It couldn't be because all of those counties are more than 90% white and represented by Republicans, could it? NOOOOOOOO!

And if he wants an example of what Milwaukee could do to get ahead, why doesn't he discuss Dane County? After all, Dane County had a solid private sector growth rate of 2.5% (nearly twice the state rate), added nearly 6,100 private sector jobs (the most of any county in Wisconsin), and has added over 22,000 private sector jobs in the last 4 years. Oh, but we're just elitist smarty-pantses that are over-ejukated and there's NOTHING you "real Wisconsinites" in Washington County would want to learn from our booming economy and high quality of life, is there?

But let's give Bobby Gannon the benefit of the doubt. If "one cannot ignore the correlation between jobs and crime, [and] employment opportunities will only expand in these neighborhoods when the violence is stopped," then why not take some steps to do so? Like having large-scale infrastructure projects in poor Milwaukee communities that clean up wrecked neighborhoods, and allowing the City of Milwaukee to raise its own revenues so it becomes easier to hire the cops and improve the services that can cut into crime and the desperation that leads to it.

Oh wait, that would require actually giving a crap about the problem of poverty and lack of job opportunities, instead of using the majority-minority city of Milwaukee as a boogeyman to distract your right trash constituents from the fact that their lives in the 262 suck as well and aren't getting any better. And so things never do seem to get much better, either in Milwaukee (at least as long as GOPpers like Bob Gannon and Scott Walker are in charge), or in Washington County, even if they get minor short-term benefits from increasing sprawl. Then you wonder why the big cities have been kicking your 262 suburb trash asses up and down the lot when it comes to attracting young people and talent, while anyone with a brain is moves out of racist, cultural cesspools like West Bend and Slinger as soon as they can?

You know what's funny, Bob Gannon and the 262 trailer trash know this fact as well as anyone, and that the 2010s are leaving their mentality behind (not fast enough mind you, but it is happening). And that's why they resent us like they do, and why they try so hard to point out problems in "liberal big cities", because it keeps them from admitting their way of life and their economic policies are massive failures for anyone other than a well-connected few.

UW Extension: Fitzwalkerstan failing at producing real job creators

Steven Elbow of the Capital Times has an excellent, in-depth article out today discussing a recent report released by the UW Extension’s Center for Community Economic Development on the sources of job growth in Wisconsin’s economy in the 2000s.

The authors of the UW Extension study also included a number of short Fact Sheets that go into the various subjects of the report. One of these fact sheets notes that most of Wisconsin’s job growth comes from the smallest businesses.

For Wisconsin in 2012, 91% of job creation came from businesses with less than 500 employees (Figure 1). Indeed, when compared to our neighboring states, Wisconsin has the highest share of employment creation being driven by firms with less that 500 employees. If the vast majority of job creation comes from businesses with less than 500 employees, then which size category generates the most job creation? Wisconsin firms that have between 250 and 499 employees accounted for between 6 and 8% over the study period of 2000 to 2012 and firms with between 100 and 249 employees contributed about 15% of job creation (Figure 2)…..Clearly, smaller businesses, those with less than 100 employees, accounted for the majority (two-thirds) of job creation in Wisconsin.

Now consider even smaller classification of businesses: firms with between one and four employees, what might be considered “microenterprises” accounted for 14% of job growth and firms with between five and nine employees also accounted for about 14% of job creation in 2012. This means that small firms, those with less than ten employees account for just less than 30% of job creation in Wisconsin. The category that accounts for the single largest share of job creation could be classified as small to medium size, those with between 20 and 49 employees. In another analysis of small businesses we found that in 2013 71% of all businesses in Wisconsin are classified as nonemployer businesses (businesses with no employees other than the proprietor) and when we combine that observation with the results visualized in Figure 2 it becomes clear that smaller businesses are a vital component of the “jobs, jobs’ jobs” emphasis in economic policy.

But here’s the problem. That 71% rate of “nonemployer businesses” is one of the lowest in the country, which goes along with last year’s Kaufmann Foundation Report which showed Wisconsin had the worst entrepreneurial ranking in the U.S. The authors of the UW Extension note that awful Kaufman Foundation report, and say that Wisconsin can’t even measure up to the rest of the Midwest when it comes to start-ups.

If we compare Wisconsin to the other states we find that Wisconsin has one of the lowest nonemployer business rates in the U.S. (Figure 1). In 2013 Wisconsin ranks 41st in terms of nonemployer businesses as a share of all businesses. Compared to our immediate neighbors Wisconsin consistently has the lowest share of businesses that are classified as nonemployer (Figure 2). The geographic concentrations of nonemployer businesses generally fall in the lower and coastal U.S., perhaps reflecting relatively large immigrant populations that tend to be especially entrepreneurial. In general, states that are considered entrepreneurial such as California, Colorado, North Carolina, and New York, also tend to have relatively high shares of nonemployer establishments.

So we have a situation where we know that new and small businesses grow the most jobs in Wisconsin, but the state lacks in starting up those new and small businesses. And what is the Walker/WisGOP regime’s strategy to encourage job growth? The complete opposite of what needs to be done to fill this gap.

Study co-author Steven Deller points out in Elbow’s article that the Walker-created Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) spends most of its time and effort bolstering established businesses and industries, instead of trying to help new businesses get off the ground in Wisconsin.

[Deller] points to Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. policies that favor larger manufacturing firms over smaller startups. While WEDC boasts some startup successes, the bulk of its efforts focus on “larger established firms, a lot of paper making and manufacturing."

Indeed, while a WEDC webpage touting the agency's successes includes some high-tech examples, it's heavy on large corporations or multinationals like papermaker Pratt Industries, global manufacturer Gardner Denver and Ireland-based Kerry Ingredients.

And WEDC’s tax incentives come with requirements in terms of the numbers of jobs created that very few startups meet.

And why is that? Deller says it comes back to a simple phrase “Follow the money.”

In today’s increasing pressure to raise money, politicians are drawn toward those larger, established firms because they have the resources to make significant contributions,” he said. “Smaller startup firms are not in a position to be proactive in terms of significant donations.”

Add to that the fact that startups — unlike large corporations on a continual hunt for policies that boost their bottom lines — don’t lobby. They’re “too focused on the business and do not have the resources to actively lobby,” Deller said.

Which goes back to why WEDC really exists- not to create jobs and improve Wisconsin’s economic competitiveness, but to serve as a taxpayer-backed slush fund for WisGOP campaign contributors.

And it also shows the backwards thinking that has been part of the Walker/WisGOPs since they took power after the 2010 elections. Time after time, these people have lowered corporate taxes, lowered workers’ wages, and given every advantage they could to the connected, established and powerful (in other words, the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce crowd). It’s a mentality that cares only about maximizing profits, and doesn’t care about what is left as a result of that mentality as long as the same men (gender used intentionally) can stay on top. At the same time, the real job creators have been neglected- small businesses and individual owners who rely on customers with good wages, with growing communities that have strong infrastructure, schools, and stable services.

But making the real job creators go over more barriers than is necessary to succeed is OK with the Fitzwalkerstanis, because they care only about how to obtain money and power, and they way they do that is by getting more money from oligarchs and old businessmen. However, I think the vast majority of people in this state want something other than what the WMC/Fitzwalkerstani cabal does, and it’s well past time they start electing public officials with the same economic values that they have.