Tremendous stuff from the always-good Robert Reich. He exposes the Ryan-Romney for the deficit-raising, recession-causing feudal garbage that it is with 3 minutes of drawings and explanation.
I also love his usage of the phrase "left to the mercy of the insurance companies" when describing why replacing Medicare with Vouchercare is such a disaster for seniors. If Obama had straight, honest talk about the failure of corporatism, for-profit insurance and trickle-down economics, he'd coast to re-election.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Inequality is our real problem, and class warfare is real
The Pew Center released a fascinating report on entitled "The Lost Decade of the Middle Class." And it illustrates how much damage has been done to regular working Americans, not just in the last 10 years, but in the last 30.
There's a lot of good things in here. I'll start by pointing out is the damage from the lost decade itself.
Median household income, overall (2011 $)
1997- $51,705
2000- $54,842
2010- $51,006 (DOWN 7.0%)
Median Household income for 3-person family (2011 $)
2000 $63,277
2010 $59,127 (DOWN 6.6%)
And even more than incomes, the housing and stock market crashes destroyed the net worth of millions of Americans, putting them in a bigger hole to climb out of.
Median net worth from poll of middle-class
2001 $129,582
2010 $93,150 (DOWN 28.1%)
And you see that effect in people's increasingly concerned and pessimistic attitudes when polled by Pew for this study.
Among middle class, how are you since recession started?
Worse off 42%
Better off 32%
No change 23%
Maintaing middle-class lifestyle vs. 10 years ago?
More difficult 85%
Less difficult 9%
About the same 4%
More financially secure vs. 10 years ago?
More secure 44%
Less secure 42%
Age 50-64- 35% More, 52% Less
Age 65+ 23% More, 49% Less
Can most people get ahead if they work hard?
1999 74%
2003 68%
2007 67%
2011 58%
And this worsening status is despite tax cuts for both incomes and capital gains over the last 10 years, and I'd argue that last question shows that people are starting to get what that really means for social mobility. You'll see why with these next graphs, because the deregulation and tax-cutting of the last 30 years has not paid off for the everyday American- only the rich and the corporate. For example, since 1983, the middle and lower classes are really no better off when you adjust for inflation, but the upper class has seen their net worth double, even after the Great Recession hit.
Net worth by class level 1983-2010
And the same trends show in incomes, as the upper incomes continue to grab a higher amount of money from the middle class, to the point that the upper classes had more total income than the middle class by 2010. This amount of overall income for the U.S. between the middle and upper classes has been steady at around 90% for decades, but who got the money favored the middle class by 2 to 1 in 1980, before Reagan took office and started the 30-year trend of tax cuts and deregulation that continues to this day.
And the last 30 years has caused a vanishing of the middle class itself, as more people have either moved up into the upper classes, or back down into the lower ones.
As opposed to the "rising tide that raises all boats", our last 30 years (and especially the last 10) have been more like a Vegas casino, where the high rollers are going to be OK regardless of what happens at the tables, a few of the average bettors may win and move up to the big tables, but the average folks are more likely to break even. Or worse, they try to play the big-table games and get cleaned out.
I've seen a Teabagger bumper sticker that says "Redistribute my work ethic." Well, the last 30 years have shown that their work ethic has indeed been redistributed....to the rich and corporate that GOP panders to. This June, Business Insider released a report that put this all together, showing that corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are at an all-time high, and wages vs. GDP at an all-time low.
The wages part is especially worth mentioning because it has steadily declined from 1970's high of nearly 54% to today's 44%. The only exception to this decline in the last 40 years? When it rose 46% in 1992 to 49% in 2000...right when we had the Clinton tax increases on the rich. And they ended with the Bush tax cuts to the rich.
No, that's not a coincidence. And that's why the Bush tax cuts to the rich have to end, because the rich and corporate have been stealing U.S. worker's productivity and putting the proceeds into their pockets. They'll be a whole lot less likely to do that if they got taxed more, and might (juuust might) decide to pay their workers and expand their businesses instead of what they do today- funnel those profits into legalized Wall Street gambling and paying off politicians.
Class warfare is real, and it's being waged on the vast majority of us. We need to be honest about it, and fire back.
There's a lot of good things in here. I'll start by pointing out is the damage from the lost decade itself.
Median household income, overall (2011 $)
1997- $51,705
2000- $54,842
2010- $51,006 (DOWN 7.0%)
Median Household income for 3-person family (2011 $)
2000 $63,277
2010 $59,127 (DOWN 6.6%)
And even more than incomes, the housing and stock market crashes destroyed the net worth of millions of Americans, putting them in a bigger hole to climb out of.
Median net worth from poll of middle-class
2001 $129,582
2010 $93,150 (DOWN 28.1%)
And you see that effect in people's increasingly concerned and pessimistic attitudes when polled by Pew for this study.
Among middle class, how are you since recession started?
Worse off 42%
Better off 32%
No change 23%
Maintaing middle-class lifestyle vs. 10 years ago?
More difficult 85%
Less difficult 9%
About the same 4%
More financially secure vs. 10 years ago?
More secure 44%
Less secure 42%
Age 50-64- 35% More, 52% Less
Age 65+ 23% More, 49% Less
Can most people get ahead if they work hard?
1999 74%
2003 68%
2007 67%
2011 58%
And this worsening status is despite tax cuts for both incomes and capital gains over the last 10 years, and I'd argue that last question shows that people are starting to get what that really means for social mobility. You'll see why with these next graphs, because the deregulation and tax-cutting of the last 30 years has not paid off for the everyday American- only the rich and the corporate. For example, since 1983, the middle and lower classes are really no better off when you adjust for inflation, but the upper class has seen their net worth double, even after the Great Recession hit.
Net worth by class level 1983-2010
And the same trends show in incomes, as the upper incomes continue to grab a higher amount of money from the middle class, to the point that the upper classes had more total income than the middle class by 2010. This amount of overall income for the U.S. between the middle and upper classes has been steady at around 90% for decades, but who got the money favored the middle class by 2 to 1 in 1980, before Reagan took office and started the 30-year trend of tax cuts and deregulation that continues to this day.
And the last 30 years has caused a vanishing of the middle class itself, as more people have either moved up into the upper classes, or back down into the lower ones.
As opposed to the "rising tide that raises all boats", our last 30 years (and especially the last 10) have been more like a Vegas casino, where the high rollers are going to be OK regardless of what happens at the tables, a few of the average bettors may win and move up to the big tables, but the average folks are more likely to break even. Or worse, they try to play the big-table games and get cleaned out.
I've seen a Teabagger bumper sticker that says "Redistribute my work ethic." Well, the last 30 years have shown that their work ethic has indeed been redistributed....to the rich and corporate that GOP panders to. This June, Business Insider released a report that put this all together, showing that corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are at an all-time high, and wages vs. GDP at an all-time low.
The wages part is especially worth mentioning because it has steadily declined from 1970's high of nearly 54% to today's 44%. The only exception to this decline in the last 40 years? When it rose 46% in 1992 to 49% in 2000...right when we had the Clinton tax increases on the rich. And they ended with the Bush tax cuts to the rich.
No, that's not a coincidence. And that's why the Bush tax cuts to the rich have to end, because the rich and corporate have been stealing U.S. worker's productivity and putting the proceeds into their pockets. They'll be a whole lot less likely to do that if they got taxed more, and might (juuust might) decide to pay their workers and expand their businesses instead of what they do today- funnel those profits into legalized Wall Street gambling and paying off politicians.
Class warfare is real, and it's being waged on the vast majority of us. We need to be honest about it, and fire back.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
When cheating and Fitzwalkerstani hackery collide
Saw this freaky story about a guy trying to set his wife on fire in the papers last night, and once I clicked further, it got a whole lot freakier.
Smith is also the guy who helped orchestrate the Family Care debacle, when thousands of Wisconsinites were illgally kept from the care they were entitled to for months in a budget balancing pose. Smith also consistently has been less-than-forthcoming on DHS's Medicaid and Badgercare changes, leaving thousands more at risk, along with hundreds of millions in federal matching funds.
What he's also done is hired a number of out-of-state hacks whose main qualification seems to be that they would dismantle Wisconsin's strong safety net and 3rd-in-the nation standing for most people with health insurance. Among those were two hires from Texas in January 2012, which has the highest amount of UN-insured in the U.S. at 24.6%. One was an oncology nurse taking a high-level job, and the other was a health insurance lobbyist named...Mary Spear.
So in addition to Ms. Spear's lobbyist career and out-of-state background, we now find out that she was allegedly having an affair with the guy who gave her the big-money job at DHS- Dennis Smith. And that the job she was hired to do was to deal with other health-insurance lobbyists to work on policies that you can bet have very little to do with helping Wisconsin's poor and sick get the care they need and deserve. Sure, dealing with extramarital affairs is a bit seamy and usually has nothing to do with the ability of someone to do their job. But despite the awful abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband, we still absolutely should ask how Mary Spear got her taxpayer-funded job, and what her REAL qualifications were to do so, now that it seems she was banging the boss at DHS.
But we shouldn't be all that surprised by this incident (well, other than the husband beating his cheating wife and trying to set her on fire, that's pretty screwed up). This is just another case Fitzwalkerstani hackery, where you get the job "not on who you know, but who you blow!" Ain't I right, Ms. Valerie Cass?
After helping put out a fire that briefly went up her arms and legs, Andrew D. Spear, 59, told Mary Spear that the storage locker, where Spear had his wood shop, would be the last place she would see, according to a criminal complaint filed in Dane County Circuit Court.While there's nothing close to an excuse for taking out your jealous rage the way Andrew Spear did (read the criminal complaint, although it is quite disturbing, it almost reminds you of Michael Madsen abusing the cop in "Resevoir Dogs" without the ear-cutting), I couldn't help but make a sardonic grin when I saw the name of former Heritage Foundation think-tanker Dennis Smith mentioned. You know, the guy whose main experience before his DHS job was in demanding that certain health care programs be privatized and destroyed, and the guy who's worked with Gov. Walker to throw up every obstacle he can to avoid Obamacare being implemented in the state, including lying about the results of study which showed Obamacare generally would be a plus for Wisconsinites? Yeah, that guy.
"You're gonna die in here and nobody will never know," he told her, according to the complaint. "They'll never find your body."
The alleged incident happened after days in which Andrew Spear was alternately despondent and threatening over his belief that his wife was having an affair with her boss, state Department of Health Services Secretary Dennis Smith, according to the complaint.
Mary Spear, who told police that Smith is a longtime friend, is the chief legal counsel for DHS. According to the complaint, she denied to her husband the affair but later told him that she loved him and was sorry that she had lied to him.
Smith is also the guy who helped orchestrate the Family Care debacle, when thousands of Wisconsinites were illgally kept from the care they were entitled to for months in a budget balancing pose. Smith also consistently has been less-than-forthcoming on DHS's Medicaid and Badgercare changes, leaving thousands more at risk, along with hundreds of millions in federal matching funds.
What he's also done is hired a number of out-of-state hacks whose main qualification seems to be that they would dismantle Wisconsin's strong safety net and 3rd-in-the nation standing for most people with health insurance. Among those were two hires from Texas in January 2012, which has the highest amount of UN-insured in the U.S. at 24.6%. One was an oncology nurse taking a high-level job, and the other was a health insurance lobbyist named...Mary Spear.
So in addition to Ms. Spear's lobbyist career and out-of-state background, we now find out that she was allegedly having an affair with the guy who gave her the big-money job at DHS- Dennis Smith. And that the job she was hired to do was to deal with other health-insurance lobbyists to work on policies that you can bet have very little to do with helping Wisconsin's poor and sick get the care they need and deserve. Sure, dealing with extramarital affairs is a bit seamy and usually has nothing to do with the ability of someone to do their job. But despite the awful abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband, we still absolutely should ask how Mary Spear got her taxpayer-funded job, and what her REAL qualifications were to do so, now that it seems she was banging the boss at DHS.
But we shouldn't be all that surprised by this incident (well, other than the husband beating his cheating wife and trying to set her on fire, that's pretty screwed up). This is just another case Fitzwalkerstani hackery, where you get the job "not on who you know, but who you blow!" Ain't I right, Ms. Valerie Cass?
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Paul Ryan and other political media fails
It's really sad when you live in a reality-based world, because you see politicians clearly lying and/or covering up their records, and our media chooses to be an accomplice in these deceptions. You can see no more obvious evidence of this than in Paul Ryan, who's been sheltered for 14 years by a Wisconsin media who seems more concerned about Paulie's pretty face and P90X abs instead of his grotesque and hypocritical stands over the years.
For example, the 2012 Ryan is all about denigrating Barack Obama's successful stimulus and stabilization policies, and disliking "borrowed and spend" as a method of getting the economy going. The 2002 Paul Ryan? All about stimulus to get the economy going, as MSNBC's Chris Hayes exposes.
This proves yet again that Paul Ryan is no ideological true believer, but instead he's an opportunistic con man whose main talent seems to be saying his lines with a convincing face.
In fact, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel had to rely on an AP national media story to break the fact that Ryan asked for stimulus funds in 2009 to help Wisconsin organizations get green power grants. And where was the Journal-Sentinel to inform Paulie's constituents on Ryan's virulent anti-choice and anti-female views? This includes co-sponsoring bills on "personhood" with Tod Akin and agreeing to add the "forcible" modifier to rape (indicating that some other types of rape are OK'd by the victim). I bet this is the first time many people in Wisconsin knew about how the smiling boy is just as hateful and one-sided on these issues as say, Glenn Grothmann.
But there's a good reason the J-S has constantly covered for their boys Paul Ryan and Scott Walker - they make a lot of money off of them. And not just from the 9 Hours of Hate that they approve each day on WTMJ (with regular appearances from Ryan and Walker in the form of softball interviews). Last month Journal Communications announced a huge increase in 2nd Quarter profits, largely due to political ads resulting from the recall elections, and they stand to gain more later this year from more November election ads. Now did the J-S use those extra funds to beef up their reporting staff at 333 W. Wisconsin and improve their product? OF COURSE NOT. Instead, JournalComm spent nearly $32 million last week to buy back preferred stock in order to pump up their EPS for future quarters.
With Wisconsin now closer to toss-up status for both president and Senate with Ryan on the ticket, JournalComm stands to make even more money. And even if Obama pulls away over the next 11 weeks, you can bet JournalComm will go out of their way to continue to portray things as close even if they're not, just so they can have more ads thrown on TV-4, TMJ 620 and online at jsonline.com. Once Romney made Ryan his pick for VP, you can bet there were some serious cigars being fired up at JournalComm's corporate headquarters as the culmination of a multi-year strategy of allowing Bradley/Koch front men in Wisconsin to rise without challenge from the 4th Estate.
But JournalComm is hardly the only corporate insider media failing the public with awful political coverage. Ryan admitted on Fox News last week that he didn't know when his budget balances because they "hadn't run the numbers" on his plan. Well how the hell do you know the budget balances if you have no numbers saying so? I mean, I could say with a confident face that I'd be out of student loan debt next year, but it'll take a whole lot more than me saying so to make that true. Amazingly, the media lets Ryan's admission go, and continues to portray him as some kind of smart guy who has big ideas. HE'S A CON MAN, GUYS, and anyone with an ounce of sense sees it.
There's a great scene in the HBO show "The Newsroom" that illustrates why our media refuses to press Paul Ryan on his empty rhetoric and tell people the truth. Jane Fonda plays the CEO of a media conglomerate that owns the station which produces "Newsnight," which has been exposing Tea Party hypocrisy in unflinching terms. In this great scene between Fonda and the station's boss (played by Sam Watterson), Watterson tells her that our media needs to start telling it like it is, including the great line "Evolution? I think the jury's back on that one." Fonda replies (with the really good stuff starting around 2:40) that "Newsnight" needs to back off the Kochs and the Baggers, because "I have business in front of this Congress," and that she got ahead for "knowing who to fear."
As Rolling Stone brings up, broadcast media stands to make up to $3 billion in political ads for the 2012 elections, so do you think they're going to make that extra effort to expose who's fronting the bills for "dark money" SuperPACs and how paid-off their political front men and women are? Hell no, because "they have business in front of this Congress," and are getting a helluva return on it.
With "both sides to the story" stenographers like Catanese being the main sources of MSM coverage of politics, is it any wonder that our political media has a 10% favorable rating, which is worse than Congress? People can see they're not being given the real story, and rightfully have lost trust with a corrupt, paid-off media that cares more about gaining ad revenues over gaining readers and viewers through high-quality, honest reporting.
For example, the 2012 Ryan is all about denigrating Barack Obama's successful stimulus and stabilization policies, and disliking "borrowed and spend" as a method of getting the economy going. The 2002 Paul Ryan? All about stimulus to get the economy going, as MSNBC's Chris Hayes exposes.
This proves yet again that Paul Ryan is no ideological true believer, but instead he's an opportunistic con man whose main talent seems to be saying his lines with a convincing face.
In fact, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel had to rely on an AP national media story to break the fact that Ryan asked for stimulus funds in 2009 to help Wisconsin organizations get green power grants. And where was the Journal-Sentinel to inform Paulie's constituents on Ryan's virulent anti-choice and anti-female views? This includes co-sponsoring bills on "personhood" with Tod Akin and agreeing to add the "forcible" modifier to rape (indicating that some other types of rape are OK'd by the victim). I bet this is the first time many people in Wisconsin knew about how the smiling boy is just as hateful and one-sided on these issues as say, Glenn Grothmann.
But there's a good reason the J-S has constantly covered for their boys Paul Ryan and Scott Walker - they make a lot of money off of them. And not just from the 9 Hours of Hate that they approve each day on WTMJ (with regular appearances from Ryan and Walker in the form of softball interviews). Last month Journal Communications announced a huge increase in 2nd Quarter profits, largely due to political ads resulting from the recall elections, and they stand to gain more later this year from more November election ads. Now did the J-S use those extra funds to beef up their reporting staff at 333 W. Wisconsin and improve their product? OF COURSE NOT. Instead, JournalComm spent nearly $32 million last week to buy back preferred stock in order to pump up their EPS for future quarters.
With Wisconsin now closer to toss-up status for both president and Senate with Ryan on the ticket, JournalComm stands to make even more money. And even if Obama pulls away over the next 11 weeks, you can bet JournalComm will go out of their way to continue to portray things as close even if they're not, just so they can have more ads thrown on TV-4, TMJ 620 and online at jsonline.com. Once Romney made Ryan his pick for VP, you can bet there were some serious cigars being fired up at JournalComm's corporate headquarters as the culmination of a multi-year strategy of allowing Bradley/Koch front men in Wisconsin to rise without challenge from the 4th Estate.
But JournalComm is hardly the only corporate insider media failing the public with awful political coverage. Ryan admitted on Fox News last week that he didn't know when his budget balances because they "hadn't run the numbers" on his plan. Well how the hell do you know the budget balances if you have no numbers saying so? I mean, I could say with a confident face that I'd be out of student loan debt next year, but it'll take a whole lot more than me saying so to make that true. Amazingly, the media lets Ryan's admission go, and continues to portray him as some kind of smart guy who has big ideas. HE'S A CON MAN, GUYS, and anyone with an ounce of sense sees it.
There's a great scene in the HBO show "The Newsroom" that illustrates why our media refuses to press Paul Ryan on his empty rhetoric and tell people the truth. Jane Fonda plays the CEO of a media conglomerate that owns the station which produces "Newsnight," which has been exposing Tea Party hypocrisy in unflinching terms. In this great scene between Fonda and the station's boss (played by Sam Watterson), Watterson tells her that our media needs to start telling it like it is, including the great line "Evolution? I think the jury's back on that one." Fonda replies (with the really good stuff starting around 2:40) that "Newsnight" needs to back off the Kochs and the Baggers, because "I have business in front of this Congress," and that she got ahead for "knowing who to fear."
As Rolling Stone brings up, broadcast media stands to make up to $3 billion in political ads for the 2012 elections, so do you think they're going to make that extra effort to expose who's fronting the bills for "dark money" SuperPACs and how paid-off their political front men and women are? Hell no, because "they have business in front of this Congress," and are getting a helluva return on it.
In essence, broadcasters are now profiteering from a vicious circle of corruption: Politicians are beholden to big donors because campaigns are so expensive, and campaigns are so expensive because they're fought through television ads. The more cash that chases limited airtime, the more the ads will cost, and the more politicians must lean on deep-pocketed patrons. In short, the dirtier the system, the better for the bottom line at TV stations and cable systems.
According to an analysis by Moody's, political ads are expected to account for as much as seven cents of every dollar broadcasters earn over the full two-year election cycle for 2012. The influx of political cash also means that TV news divisions have what [the Sunlight Foundation's Bill] Allison calls a "huge conflict of interest" when it comes to reporting on campaign finance. The profit motive stifles critical coverage of top donors and meaningful reforms, such as public financing of elections. "Broadcasters have an incentive not to see the system changed," he says.So that's why we see such false equivalency BS, lies passed off as opinon, and punditry spoiling our political coverage in 2012. Because it's a nice symbiotic relationship for corporations, politicians, and corporate media. The D.C. media/politician incest is so thick that Politico's David Catanese spent numerous tweets yesterday trying to pass off Tod Akin's obscene comments about 'legitimate rape' as worthy of "nuanced discussion", and got his ass suspended after readers reminded Catanese and his seamy publication that RAPE ISN'T A NUANCE, IT IS RAPE.
With "both sides to the story" stenographers like Catanese being the main sources of MSM coverage of politics, is it any wonder that our political media has a 10% favorable rating, which is worse than Congress? People can see they're not being given the real story, and rightfully have lost trust with a corrupt, paid-off media that cares more about gaining ad revenues over gaining readers and viewers through high-quality, honest reporting.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Lying, stalling, cheating, frustrating - the WisGOP playbook
As I watch the latest Walkergate shenanigans (covered best by the real authority on this case, the Cognitive Dissidence blog. Read here for the latest installment. ), I see a familiar pattern taking shape.
Walker appointees Kelly Rindfleisch and Tim Russell continue to file motions and take actions that delay their cases. Rindfleisch's frivolous attempts to give herself immunity because of her Caucus scandal doings (she just pulled another soon-to-be-denied appeal last week), or through Russell being on his 5th defense attorney after the GOP lawyer that was in his most recent one left in order to take a job in Fond du Lac under sketchy circumstances. And as these Walker-appointee moves take place to slow the wheels of justice and keep more details of the Governor's involvement from coming to light, it then allows right-wing media and operatives to argue that there the John Doe case is a "witch hunt" because Walker hasn't been charged more than a year after the investigation started.
Well, of course there hasn't been a charge yet, because while the case against Walker is being strengthened with each revelation from his crooked former staff members, the accused are holding up the case with their stalling manuevers. Therefore, it takes longer than it would without all of the WisGOP/ Walker team intereference. Heck, remember how Charles Sykes complained about the John Doe investigation "leaking like a sieve," and then it turned out that Russell's lawyers were giving Sykes the leaks he was complaining about. But this is the GOP plan, to stall the John Doe case, lie and demean the motives of Milwaukee County D-A John Chisholm, and make people sick of hearing about it. Then if/when Walker does get charged, they can claim it is "desperation" or a "reach," and say "after all that time, THIS is what they came up with?" They know better, but are counting on you not to know better. Don't fall for it.
And it's the same routine they've pulled on events surrounding the Wisconsin recall. Remember that a Walker supporter filed the first recall petition 10 days before the Wisconsin Dems planned to, allowing Walker to start his fundraising advantage. Then once the recall process officially started, Walker supporters tried to set up fake organizations to claim all signatures were received, and similar fake signature collectors were organized to try to diminish the process.
Once the recall signatures were handed in, Walker supporters and RW organizations spent months claiming there was widespread fraud when the actual rejection rate was just over 3%, with more than 900,000 signatures approved of. But between Walker, WisGOP and out-of-state Astroturf groups, the certification of the recall against Walker and Lt. Gov Kleefisch was delayed for 2 1/2 months until late March, which meant that the recall primary was pushed into May, and the general election into June. It also allowed time for the GOP to push a meme that the recall was a waste of taxpayer dollars, as illustrated by this January rant from ALEC Cabin Boy Robin Vos in a Northwoods newspaper.
But that's NOT what WisGOP wanted. Not only did pushing the recall election into June make it much more difficult for college students to vote (because school was out and many of them were heading home for the Summer, making them have to re-register or vote absentee on campus), it also turned the recall into a war of attrition. As it wore on, WisGOP hoped that people would be frustrated by the whole recall process, and vote to retain Walker solely because they didn't want to go through a draining thing like this again. And by election day, that strategy of delegitimizing the recall through stalling maneuvers was successful for WisGOP, as evidenced by this response to an exit poll question.
When do you think recall elections are appropriate?
For any reason 27%
Only for official misconduct 60%
Never 11%
And guess what, because Walker and WisGOP have been stalling John Doe, Walker hadn't officially been charged with official misconduct at the time of the recall election (and still hasn't), and those 60% of "misconduct-only" voters voted for Walker 68-31, according to the exit poll. It also means many voters did not feel it was worthy to throw Walker out of office even if they disagreed with his policies or found his actions to be failing.
I have little doubt this was because voters fell for this message from WisGOP that the recall process had gone on long enough, needed to end, and was costing their communities more money than it was worth to remove this administration from power. I hope those people realize and regret that they got used by WisGOP. And they did get used, because the biggest reason the recalls got viewed as "frustrating and costly" were due to Republican stalling, lying, and game-playing, but many voters blamed the Democrats for it happening.
You can see the GOP trying to pull the same routine on a national level, as both Mitt Romney and U.S. Senate candidate Tommy Thompson refuse to release years of tax returns. They and their talk-show mouthpieces will stall, deceive, complain and whine about the process, and if they haven't released them in a couple of months, they will turn around and ask "Why are you still talking about this, no one wants to hear about it."
That's why we have to stand up and constantly hawk these people, because they will try to use their lying, stalling and cheating to turn voters against people like us who demand accountability and transparency from corrupt politicians. We need to remind media and the public at large that they are being played, and that the only reason these issues continue to exist is not because of the people pressing the issue, but because THE GOP REFUSES TO ANSWER THE ISSUE.
If we don't do this, we face the possibility of cheaters like Scott Walker staying in power, and liars like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan coming to power, because people into today's GOP will not play fair, and will not accept the defeat and consequences for rule-breaking that they so richly deserve. It is their fault, not ours, that these scumbags decided to flout the law and delay justice, and we need to constantly remind a passive public of that fact.
Walker appointees Kelly Rindfleisch and Tim Russell continue to file motions and take actions that delay their cases. Rindfleisch's frivolous attempts to give herself immunity because of her Caucus scandal doings (she just pulled another soon-to-be-denied appeal last week), or through Russell being on his 5th defense attorney after the GOP lawyer that was in his most recent one left in order to take a job in Fond du Lac under sketchy circumstances. And as these Walker-appointee moves take place to slow the wheels of justice and keep more details of the Governor's involvement from coming to light, it then allows right-wing media and operatives to argue that there the John Doe case is a "witch hunt" because Walker hasn't been charged more than a year after the investigation started.
Well, of course there hasn't been a charge yet, because while the case against Walker is being strengthened with each revelation from his crooked former staff members, the accused are holding up the case with their stalling manuevers. Therefore, it takes longer than it would without all of the WisGOP/ Walker team intereference. Heck, remember how Charles Sykes complained about the John Doe investigation "leaking like a sieve," and then it turned out that Russell's lawyers were giving Sykes the leaks he was complaining about. But this is the GOP plan, to stall the John Doe case, lie and demean the motives of Milwaukee County D-A John Chisholm, and make people sick of hearing about it. Then if/when Walker does get charged, they can claim it is "desperation" or a "reach," and say "after all that time, THIS is what they came up with?" They know better, but are counting on you not to know better. Don't fall for it.
And it's the same routine they've pulled on events surrounding the Wisconsin recall. Remember that a Walker supporter filed the first recall petition 10 days before the Wisconsin Dems planned to, allowing Walker to start his fundraising advantage. Then once the recall process officially started, Walker supporters tried to set up fake organizations to claim all signatures were received, and similar fake signature collectors were organized to try to diminish the process.
Once the recall signatures were handed in, Walker supporters and RW organizations spent months claiming there was widespread fraud when the actual rejection rate was just over 3%, with more than 900,000 signatures approved of. But between Walker, WisGOP and out-of-state Astroturf groups, the certification of the recall against Walker and Lt. Gov Kleefisch was delayed for 2 1/2 months until late March, which meant that the recall primary was pushed into May, and the general election into June. It also allowed time for the GOP to push a meme that the recall was a waste of taxpayer dollars, as illustrated by this January rant from ALEC Cabin Boy Robin Vos in a Northwoods newspaper.
"The citizens of Wisconsin should have known the estimated cost on local governments before a single petition was circulated," Vos said. "Is this how they want their valuable taxpayer dollars spent? At a time when local government budgets are very tight, this will have a dramatic impact on the dollars that pay for our streets to be plowed and our neighborhoods to be protected by police and fire departments."Well, if Wee Wittle Wobin and WisGOP really cared about the taxpayer cost, they would have accepted the inevitable recall, and had the primary election go along with the presidential primary on April 3, with the general election falling in May. This would have resulted in 1 fewer statewide election and saved millions of dollars.
Vos observed that few attempts to recall governors had been successful, and he said he expected this effort to fail as well.
"The real results of the statewide recall election will be a financial drain on our local governments and an emotional drain on our electorate," he said. "The recalls are not healthy for our state."
But that's NOT what WisGOP wanted. Not only did pushing the recall election into June make it much more difficult for college students to vote (because school was out and many of them were heading home for the Summer, making them have to re-register or vote absentee on campus), it also turned the recall into a war of attrition. As it wore on, WisGOP hoped that people would be frustrated by the whole recall process, and vote to retain Walker solely because they didn't want to go through a draining thing like this again. And by election day, that strategy of delegitimizing the recall through stalling maneuvers was successful for WisGOP, as evidenced by this response to an exit poll question.
When do you think recall elections are appropriate?
For any reason 27%
Only for official misconduct 60%
Never 11%
And guess what, because Walker and WisGOP have been stalling John Doe, Walker hadn't officially been charged with official misconduct at the time of the recall election (and still hasn't), and those 60% of "misconduct-only" voters voted for Walker 68-31, according to the exit poll. It also means many voters did not feel it was worthy to throw Walker out of office even if they disagreed with his policies or found his actions to be failing.
I have little doubt this was because voters fell for this message from WisGOP that the recall process had gone on long enough, needed to end, and was costing their communities more money than it was worth to remove this administration from power. I hope those people realize and regret that they got used by WisGOP. And they did get used, because the biggest reason the recalls got viewed as "frustrating and costly" were due to Republican stalling, lying, and game-playing, but many voters blamed the Democrats for it happening.
You can see the GOP trying to pull the same routine on a national level, as both Mitt Romney and U.S. Senate candidate Tommy Thompson refuse to release years of tax returns. They and their talk-show mouthpieces will stall, deceive, complain and whine about the process, and if they haven't released them in a couple of months, they will turn around and ask "Why are you still talking about this, no one wants to hear about it."
That's why we have to stand up and constantly hawk these people, because they will try to use their lying, stalling and cheating to turn voters against people like us who demand accountability and transparency from corrupt politicians. We need to remind media and the public at large that they are being played, and that the only reason these issues continue to exist is not because of the people pressing the issue, but because THE GOP REFUSES TO ANSWER THE ISSUE.
If we don't do this, we face the possibility of cheaters like Scott Walker staying in power, and liars like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan coming to power, because people into today's GOP will not play fair, and will not accept the defeat and consequences for rule-breaking that they so richly deserve. It is their fault, not ours, that these scumbags decided to flout the law and delay justice, and we need to constantly remind a passive public of that fact.
Saturday, August 18, 2012
You wanted Fitzwalkerstan, YOU GOT IT! Part Deux
I have a feeling this will be a recurrent theme, where pro-Walker areas get their asses kicked due to the Walker policies they supported. We saw this 2 weeks back with the drinking water disasters in Jackson and Oconomowoc, and the higher school levies in Shawano, and more news out this week added to this trend.
1. You may remember that I ripped WEDC and the Village of Menomonee Falls for their $100 million tax credit giveaway to Kohl's Corporation. Well, that Bagger town (voted 70-30 for Walker) suffered another setback this week when it was announced that Innoware paper was closing, taking 100 jobs with it.
So not only does Menomonee Falls lose jobs, it also loses that tax base from that Innoware Property, and given that Kohl's also isn't paying taxes in the next few years, guess who has to pay the difference? That's right, those same folks who voted overwhelmingly for Walker in June, because property tax rates will have to go up to make up for the lack of tax base these companies will contribute. And oh yeah, that's on top of Falls schools losing nearly $1.5 million in school aid from the state for this year, which means property taxes will have to be raised to make up the difference. And yet, a lot of Falls residents probably voted for Walker because they thought their property taxes wouldn't go up. SUCKERS!
2. And if you are a homeowner, chances are that you're less wealthy in the age of Fitzwalkerstan, as the Wisconsin DOR came out with their annual equalized values report, and it showed that Wisconsin property values dropped 3.2% in 2011, the largest one-year drop in decades.
And it's even worse when you drill down into the DOR's equalized values report. Check out some of the drops in the largest and most pro-Walker counties.
Residential property value change 2011-2012
Walworth -7.41%
Waukesha -4.44%
Washington -4.34%
Ozaukee -3.49%
Sheboygan -3.70%
Outagamie -2.91%
Marathon -3.08%
And when those property values go down, that means there's less value out there to tax, so everyone's rates has to go up just to stay level. Well if you're in a home that did keep value or wasn't revalued for 2012, that means your property taxes just went up, even with Walker's tax limits put in place. And oh yeah, good luck trying to sell that home now that you've defunded schools and devalued community services. But hey, people in those communities identified themselves as "taxpayers" and part of an "ownership society" instead of being people who cared about their community and investing in what makes it desirable and livable. So now they'll pay the price with higher taxes and underwater home values.
3. And Act 10 isn't "working" the way they thought it would. Remember when Act 10 was sold as a one-time fix to get costs under control, and that things would likely return to normal once the "tools" were put in place? Well, Walker's DOA sent out instructions this week to departments for their 2013-2015 budgets, and that isn't going to happen. But before we get to that, let's also note that much of this letter is a giant pile of garbage and spin that anyone who's followed the Fitzwalkerstan budget knows is false. The budget instructions letter quotes the "$3.6 billion budget deficit" figure that has been debunked, and also says it didn't do one-time gimmicks when the Walker folks borrowed more than a half-billion dollars to balance this current budget.
Anyway, the budget instructions tell departments they will get no increases in their budgets from the cuts given in the last budget. Which means that prisons will continue to get more money from the state than the UW System will. (Nice priorities, eh?) This 0% increase budget is despite the fact that the CPI is up 5% in the last 24 months, so this means further cuts in service will have to happen.
No, the Walker spin of "we put in Act 10 to save services" is not going to come to fruition. All Act 10 really did was take money out of the pockets of teachers, nurses, and other public workers and send it to Walker's cronies in the form of tax cuts and high-paying government appointments. And yet 38% of households with a union member voted to keep this bum in office (if you believe the exit polls). Hope that vote was worth it, you self-absorbed dingbats, because your community and your family's paychecks are declining as a result of votes like that one.
1. You may remember that I ripped WEDC and the Village of Menomonee Falls for their $100 million tax credit giveaway to Kohl's Corporation. Well, that Bagger town (voted 70-30 for Walker) suffered another setback this week when it was announced that Innoware paper was closing, taking 100 jobs with it.
So not only does Menomonee Falls lose jobs, it also loses that tax base from that Innoware Property, and given that Kohl's also isn't paying taxes in the next few years, guess who has to pay the difference? That's right, those same folks who voted overwhelmingly for Walker in June, because property tax rates will have to go up to make up for the lack of tax base these companies will contribute. And oh yeah, that's on top of Falls schools losing nearly $1.5 million in school aid from the state for this year, which means property taxes will have to be raised to make up the difference. And yet, a lot of Falls residents probably voted for Walker because they thought their property taxes wouldn't go up. SUCKERS!
2. And if you are a homeowner, chances are that you're less wealthy in the age of Fitzwalkerstan, as the Wisconsin DOR came out with their annual equalized values report, and it showed that Wisconsin property values dropped 3.2% in 2011, the largest one-year drop in decades.
And it's even worse when you drill down into the DOR's equalized values report. Check out some of the drops in the largest and most pro-Walker counties.
Residential property value change 2011-2012
Walworth -7.41%
Waukesha -4.44%
Washington -4.34%
Ozaukee -3.49%
Sheboygan -3.70%
Outagamie -2.91%
Marathon -3.08%
And when those property values go down, that means there's less value out there to tax, so everyone's rates has to go up just to stay level. Well if you're in a home that did keep value or wasn't revalued for 2012, that means your property taxes just went up, even with Walker's tax limits put in place. And oh yeah, good luck trying to sell that home now that you've defunded schools and devalued community services. But hey, people in those communities identified themselves as "taxpayers" and part of an "ownership society" instead of being people who cared about their community and investing in what makes it desirable and livable. So now they'll pay the price with higher taxes and underwater home values.
3. And Act 10 isn't "working" the way they thought it would. Remember when Act 10 was sold as a one-time fix to get costs under control, and that things would likely return to normal once the "tools" were put in place? Well, Walker's DOA sent out instructions this week to departments for their 2013-2015 budgets, and that isn't going to happen. But before we get to that, let's also note that much of this letter is a giant pile of garbage and spin that anyone who's followed the Fitzwalkerstan budget knows is false. The budget instructions letter quotes the "$3.6 billion budget deficit" figure that has been debunked, and also says it didn't do one-time gimmicks when the Walker folks borrowed more than a half-billion dollars to balance this current budget.
Anyway, the budget instructions tell departments they will get no increases in their budgets from the cuts given in the last budget. Which means that prisons will continue to get more money from the state than the UW System will. (Nice priorities, eh?) This 0% increase budget is despite the fact that the CPI is up 5% in the last 24 months, so this means further cuts in service will have to happen.
No, the Walker spin of "we put in Act 10 to save services" is not going to come to fruition. All Act 10 really did was take money out of the pockets of teachers, nurses, and other public workers and send it to Walker's cronies in the form of tax cuts and high-paying government appointments. And yet 38% of households with a union member voted to keep this bum in office (if you believe the exit polls). Hope that vote was worth it, you self-absorbed dingbats, because your community and your family's paychecks are declining as a result of votes like that one.
The theme rolls on- It still ain't working for Wis. jobs
I know this gets repetitive, but I guess I need to keep driving it home. The brutal July jobs report, with 6,500 jobs lost and unemployment rising 0.3% to 7.3%, continues a bad trend for the state of Wisconsin under Walker/ WisGOP policies. This means there has been 17,300 total jobs lost (on a seasonally-adjusted basis) in Wisconsin since the June 5 recall elections. Remember 2 months ago, when Scott Walker said would open up the floodgates with jobs being offered once the "election uncertainties" went away? Well, you've seen how the "job creators" have reacted to the certainty of Scott Walker being governor for the next 2 1/2 years- they're running away from Fitzwalkerstan.
Of course, the Walker folks tried to mitigate the awful job news by pulling the same stunt they did before the recall elections- releasing their own Quarterly Census job numbers before they were verified by the federal officials. And while the pro-Walker J-S might have dutifully accepted this BS in a classic false equivalency story, I won't do the same.
Why not? Because Walker lied about this report during the recall elections, and the feds showed that Walker's DWD inflated the jobs numbers by more than 15%. Sorry, I'll go apples-to-apples, and continue with the newly-released national numbers instead. Those numbers show that Wisconsin remains the Number 1 state for job losses over the last 12 months, with nearly 22,000 jobs gone since July 2011 (while the U.S. has gained 1.8 million jobs at the same time).
As a result, the Walker jobs gap has jumped in the last month, and now is at 85,000 private sector jobs, and 86,500 jobs overall.
And no, Governor, you don't get to make excuses like Obamacare or the presidential election as reasons for the recent losses. Everywhere else in the U.S, has these same variables going on, and most of those states are growing just fine (or as in the case of Ohio, more than fine, with 100,000 new jobs in 12 months. Guess that public sector collective bargaining's just a job-killer, eh?)
These failures are on Scotty and the WisGOP policies that changed the direction of those red lines starting in early 2011. PERIOD.
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