Kremer, WisGOP can't admit the failure, can they?

Another day, and more proof that Wisconsin Republicans are economically illiterate when it comes to the 21st Century. Take a look at this rant from Jesse Kremer (R-Washington County), where he tries to explain the current problems in Wisconsin’s economy. I have added my notes in italics.

Wisconsin has a jobs crisis. A lack of workers to fill skilled trades, lofty expectations from recent college graduates and public benefits are stifling a will to work here in our great state. According to a 2012 report produced by the ManpowerGroup, “Wisconsin will have fewer than half the metal manufacturing professionals that it needs by 2021...” Because Wisconsin is still very much a manufacturing center, we must continue to encourage our youth to consider opportunities for skilled-trade apprenticeships to help fill these jobs. It has also become apparent that many recent college graduates feel their degree entitles them to cushy, white collar jobs with $50,000+ salaries. This is not the real world! In fact, many graduates will often have to begin at the ground floor until they learn the ropes and garner experience. Public benefits are also contributing to our jobs crisis. I recently requested a study from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau which revealed that a family of four, earning $30,000 per year could receive $36,000 in state and federal benefits! (The study is not included in Kremer’s press release. Be verrry skeptical.) Some local employers (which ones?) have told me of potential prospects who turned down an offer because additional, non-cash earnings would cut into their benefits. As a state, we must continue to have serious discussions and encourage ideas to reform these social engineering experiments.

Actually Jesse, Wisconsin has been in a “social engineering experiment” for the last 5 years, and you’ve been part of it. Worker power over wages has been diminished and corporations and other businesses have been bestowed with numerous tax cuts in an alleged attempt to encourage them to expand and add jobs. The result? The worst job growth in the Midwest, and the skills wage gaps that you are describing in your press release.

And by the way, $50,000 is not an unrealistic request for a salary in many types of jobs for college graduates. I just went to payscale.com, punched up “less than 1 year experience”, and numerous job titles come back with expected salaries between $50,000 and $68,000. These include jobs like Financial Analysts, Software Developers, Engineers and Registered Nurses. And the U.S. Census Bureau reports that the average salary for people age 18-24 with a bachelor degree in 2014 was over $45,000 for men and just under $40,000 for women. That includes U of Phoenix grads and other second-rate schools- you’d imagine a degree from a top-flight school like UW-Madison would command more than that. Also worth noting, the average salary for men 18-24 with bachelor’s degrees was much higher in 2013- $49,212, and women were over $41,000.

So Jesse, the reason that new college grads feel “their degree entitles them to cushy, white collar jobs with $50,000+ salaries,” is BECAUSE IT OFTEN DOES. And if Kremer and the mediocre businessMEN that make up the corporate community of SE Wisconsin don’t understand that fact, and don’t compete on salary, then no wonder they can’t fill jobs and why young people are leaving the state for better job prospects.

And the lack of competition on salary isn’t the only reason this state can’t attract or retain talent. Defunding schools and regressive social legislation are two big ways to make sure no one with an open mind, a science-based skill set, and/or a sense of decency are going to want to stay in Wisconsin. Not only has Jesse Kremer backed the K-12 and higher education funding cuts that have been part of the ALEC/WisGOP agenda, he was the author of the bigoted “bathroom bill” that discriminated against transgender high school students. If the GOPs are allowed to stay in power, you can bet Kremer will be pushing harder in 2017 to pass the same type of homophobic and hateful legislation that has led to entertainers and government officials announcing boycotts of North Carolina in recent weeks.

As for the dog-whistle complaint of state benefits “stifling the will to work,”? Funny how Kremer releases this on the same day that the Wisconsin State Journal noted that a state report said nearly 2/3 of certain Food Share recipients could not find work through a state job training program in the last year, and over 41,000 ended up losing their food assistance. Even a rare “success story”, as quoted in this Wisconsin Public Radio news article, had to earn his position by working for free. That is not a luxury most adults can afford.

However, some Wisconsinites have been able to gain employment through the FSET program. Shawn Mattson completed the training and is now employed at Empire Screen Printing near La Crosse. He said he wasn't a fan of the new work requirements at first.

"I always don't like being told what to do," he said. "But I do get the free benefits, so why not? And as it turned out, it was a great opportunity."

Mattson said he worked at Empire Screen Printing for 3 months without pay during a resume building program, and was then hired to work full-time for the company. He said FSET lead to a better job than the ones he was applying for before enrolling in the program.

Remember, these are the “success stories” that Walker is spending taxpayer dollars to promote throughout the state this week. And they’re covering up the massive failures of his administration and Wisconsin employers in not hiring the majority of these applicants.

So yet again, Wisconsin Republicans like Jesse Kremer show that they really don’t understand that low pay and other regressive policy choices are a main reason behind Wisconsin’s “jobs crisis.” That, or their WMC paymasters are telling them not to mention what is obvious to anyone that has an ounce of legitimate business sense. Which is that Wisconsin needs to be offering higher pay to skilled workers, and encouraging high-quality education and innovation to meet the needs of the 21st Century economy. Instead, the ALEC crew has done the complete opposite, and keeps on trying to make excuses and deflect from their failures to make Wisconsin truly “open for business”, and the state’s economy continues to suffer under this Reign of Error. 

In praise of his Funky Purpleness

I was going to post about more right-wing stupidity, but that went out the window after I got the awful news around Noon. Where arguably the greatest musical and cultural artist from the Upper Midwest (yes, including Dylan) has now left this earth. It doesn't seem right- it doesn't seem comprehensible to me that Prince could ever leave this planet in this life form.

The first clip I want to show is from Prince's unbelievable performance in the 2007 Super Bowl in the middle of a rainstorm. I happened to be in Indianapolis with friends to watch the Colts win their first (and to date only) Super Bowl that night, and while being around so many of my friends from my great years in Indy and the celebration itself was memorable, I still remember how the whole BW-3 stopped and went silent when Prince took the stage, and absolute KILLED IT in a downpour. And how us Gen Xers exploded in applause as this performance ended.



I still rate U2's post-9/11 performance as the best Super Bowl halftime ever, but you could certainly talk me out of it with this one. So incredible.

And the other clip I want to show may not be one of the Purple One's classics, but it's a great memory for me. This one hit as I was graduating high school and heading into college, and was a standard of any Witte 6B dorm party that we were at. It also became unofficial intro bumper music of mine in my few random times as a radio talk show host. (language may be NSFW, but who the fuck cares?)

In the beginning God made the sea
But on the seventh day he made me
He was tryin' to rest y'all when He heard the sound
Sound like a guitar cold gettin' down
I tried to bust a high note, but I bust a string
My God was worried
'Til he heard me sing...

The world is worse off today, and not by a little.

"Starving the Beast" rears its ugly head at the UW

After having its budget cut by $250 million for the 2015-17 biennium by Governor Scott Walker and the Wisconsin GOP-controlled Legislature, the UW Board of Regents planned to have an item during its meeting this month that allowed for UW chancellors to describe the impact of the cuts and what adjustments might need to be made for the rapidly-arriving 2016-17 fiscal year. And the chancellors gave the Regents the truth.

UW-Eau Claire, for example, has cut 179 full-time positions, about half of those through a voluntary separation program. Twenty-five faculty have resigned, up 150 percent from last year, and class sizes are 14 percent larger on average.

It’s a similar tale at other UW campuses, with some such as UW-Green Bay and UW-La Crosse cutting some databases and other resources that students can access for research.

UW-Madison, which has spent almost $9 million on keeping faculty, expects to cut 418 positions over the biennium.

The flagship campus said it’s been unable to expand programs with high student demand, such as business, engineering and nursing. It also said it’s cut back significantly on advising services and maintenance, as did other campuses. UW-Platteville is also delaying major renovation projects at buildings that it says are significantly outdated.

The UW Board of Regents (stacked with Walker appointees) didn't want the public to find out about this, so they responded in classic GOP "party of responsibility" fashion- they scrapped the presentation right out of the meeting. And the "out of sight, out of mind" act hasn't stopped there, as these guys are apparently so intimidated by Walker and WisGOP that a story broke today describing how UW System officials erased a video where UW chancellors described the impact of the budget cuts, keeping them from being acquired in open records requests that may come.

[UW] Spokesman Alex Hummel said he never saved the video of chancellors rehearsing their presentations because the talks were canceled, and later deleted the files to clear space on a camera so he could record the Board of Regents meeting where the chancellors planned to speak.

UW System institutions have eliminated hundreds of jobs, reduced course offerings and cut services such as advising and maintenance as they absorb their shares of a $250 million decrease in higher education funding in the 2015-17 state budget.

Hummel said last week that erasing the videos was “a mistake.” On Monday, however, UW System officials said they were not required to keep the videos, and Hummel said his actions were not in error…

But state Rep. Terese Berceau, a Madison Democrat who has called for a public hearing on the budget cuts, said the decision to delete the videos followed what she described as a trend of UW officials being afraid to talk about the impact of reduced state funding because they fear “retribution from the Legislature.”

“It’s part of regular practice now to make sure that the Legislature is not going to hear or see anything that might anger it,” Berceau said.

I can't begin to tell you how infuriated this makes me. Not just due to the regressive policies Walker and the ALEC Crew have put in, as the UW is one of the best uses of state tax dollars, directly generating economic activity and cultivating talent that pays back that investment many times over, and cutting its budget is the exact opposite direction that we should be going in if we truly want to be "open for business."

But I also see that the State Legislature and Governor's Office have completely intimidated UW System officials, and are keeping them from being honest about what effects these policies are having on their campuses, to try to keep the public in the dark. This is the outcome that results from GOP dominance of state government, where they abuse their power and divert resources away from institutions they do not like, and/or neuter and devalue those organizations if they feel they may tell inconvenient truths to others, which may threaten the GOP's stranglehold on government. This is the way authoritarian governments and Banana Republics operate, where they silence potential pockets of dissent, instead of working with those organizations to improve outcomes.

And why did these cuts happen in the first place? Tax cuts passed by the Walker/ALEC crew over these 5 years of error reduced revenue, putting the state budget in such a deficit in 2015 that they "had" to cut $250 million to the UW System to balance the books. These are the same tax cuts that Walker was bragging about as part of a PR tour that went to multiple locations around the state yesterday (at taxpayer expense, I will add). Those same tax cuts have "led" us to dead last in the Midwest for job growth since Walker and WisGOP came to power in 2011, and a bleeding of qualified workers from the UW System and K-12 schools in response to the defunding and devaluing of those institutions.

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin rightfully hammered on this strategy with a press release today.

On the heels of Tax Day, we are reminded that Governor Scott Walker slashed $250 million from the University of Wisconsin’s budget in order pay for the millions in tax breaks he has given to special interests and greedy out of state corporations. Instead of prioritizing the needs of Wisconsin’s students and building on what was the gold standard of public higher education, Walker has gutted the UW system to pay for tax giveaways to the richest of the rich.


“Scott Walker has slashed the UW system’s budget to ribbons while giving millions in tax breaks to his special interest and out of state corporate buddies,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Executive Director Kory Kozloski said on Tuesday. “He is placing the unfair burden of $250 million in budget cuts on the backs of students who are only trying to better themselves with a higher education.”

Kozloski is correct to connect the tax cuts to the defunding of the UW, as what's happening to the UW is a clear example of a longtime right-wing strategy known as "Starving the Beast." This is intentional vandalism, and it results after tax cuts and other reductions in revenue are imposed. This leads to deficits that force spending cuts which just happen to be targeted for services that right-wingers may not like and/or want to see privatized out to their campaign contributors.

"Starving the Beast" is also the title of a movie playing tomorrow night at the Barrymore Theatre as part of the Wisconsin Film Festival. The movie talks about the defunding and devaluing of the UW, as well as similar efforts being done at the University of North Carolina, Louisiana State, Arizona State, and other public colleges. I'm going to it, I recommend you go to it, and I recommend that we recognize that this cancerous "Starve the Beast" mentality is not just a localized disease to Wisconsin, but one that is being put upon pretty much any state run by ALEC Republicans these days. Because other than ethnic diversity, nothing endangers the GOP staying in power more than an educated public that can think for themselves, and who uses their added talent in the workforce to innovate and create competition for the old guard.

On Sunday before Tax Day, remember the churches aren't paying

As the tax filing deadline hits on Monday, it's worth remembering that there are a whole lot of people and organizations who won't have to file like you and me. On Friday, Bill Maher called out one of the largest categories of tax-exempt organizations. No, not corporations this time- religions, and this being Maher, the language is likely NSFW.



The "Forever 21" vs "Forever 33" line is quite strong, by the way.

Not surprisingly, this tax-free status for religious organizations can allow for abuses. With that in mind, here is John Oliver and Rachel Dratch announcing the end of the tax-free "Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption" (started from Oliver's epic segment last year on money-grubbing televangelists, and how they don't have to pay taxes on it). Our Lady got plenty of donations- both the monetary kind and, uh, in-kind. And yes, this segment becomes very NSFW.



So keep this tax-free status in mind as you see the creepiness of fundie Moms pulling kids out of school for Jesus lunches in Middleton. Then ask yourself why you're paying so much in taxes and getting so little political influence, while the religious organizations pay nothing, but seem to be getting a lot more than they deserve. This needs to be evened out on both fronts.

The more we look at March's WIsconsin job report, the less we believe

I touched on this a bit in my rundown of the alleged huge March Wisconsin jobs report that came out on Thursday, but Chris Walker at Political Heat expanded on it (with a great Scooby-Doo visual). Chris's story gives needed extra background info that likely gives a clue into how deceptive the Scott Walker Administration is being, in the hopes that you'll be tricked into their confidence game on the state's economy.

First of all, that "largest 12-month jobs increase since 2004" that the Walker boys are claiming? It's actually less than the increase these guys were bragging about this time last year.

But there’s a problem -- though the year-to-year private sector job numbers do show more than 47,500 jobs being created from March 201[5] to March 201[6], they are unrevised, and thus unconfirmed. Indeed, look at the same jobs report put out by DWD from a year ago -- the March 2014 to March 2015 data -- and you’ll see that the Walker administration says pretty much the same thing.

Wisconsin added 48,200 private sector jobs from March 2014 to March 2015, ranking third in the Midwest for rate of job growth.

Now if you’re like me, you just made the “huh” sound along with a very quizzical look. How could the current jobs report (47,500 jobs created) be the best since 2004 when last year’s report (48,200) showed a better performance?

The answer is simple: the numbers had been revised since that time. In fact, last year’s jobs report was revised down by more than 16 percent of its original projection.

Chris goes on to note that a similar thing happened in the "number of people working" part of the report, with that increase being revised down by more than 30% later on.

And a look at the state-by-state jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics yesterday should make you even more suspicious of Thursday's Wisconsin jobs figures. Nationwide, the manufacturing sector seemed to contract in the 1st Quarter of 2016, with the latest bad news being the 6th drop in 7 months for industrial production. In fact, the Federal Reserve reports March to have the largest decline in production more than a year. Employment has also nose-dived in manufacturing, with 29,000 jobs being shed in that sector in March alone.

Most of the Midwest reflected that drop in manufacturing, with 5 of the 7 states losing jobs in that sector, and a combined total of 11,500 jobs lost in the 6 states that aren't Wisconsin. But the DWD says we went the other way in Dairyland, and allegedly saw factories hire all over the place last month.

Change in manufacturing employment, March 2016
Ill. -3,100
Ind. -1,500
Iowa -3,000
Mich -600
Minn +1,000
Ohio -4,300
Wis. +4,200

We seem like quite the outlier, don't we? And February's manufacturing employment figures were also revised up for February, making the gain even larger. Knowing what is going on in the rest of the country and especially the Midwest, does that manufacturing number ring true to anyone here? It certainly doesn't to me.

Oh wait, I know what's caused the turnaround in Wisconsin jobs. All of these increases have happened since former DWD Secretary Reggie Newson abruptly quit in January as the state's jobs numbers were set to be revised and benchmarked for 2015 (showing the state to be among the worst in the Midwest). Maybe the huge increases for the first three months in 2016 are all due to new Secretary Ray Allen, and there's some great new strategy that has been unlocked in that time.



Yeah, that's the ticket. It can't be that these Wisconsin jobs numbers are BS, soon to be revised downwards, and the flailing Walker Administration is desperately trying to convince an increasingly disapproving public that yes, this time "it really is working," could it?

Lincoln Hills scandal blowing up? Ex-DOC Secretary blowing whistle on Walker Admin?

The scandalous treatment of youth at Wisconsin Department of Corrections' Lincoln Hills facility in Irma has been awful enough. But now it looks like the fallout from Lincoln Hills might be getting to the upper reaches of the Walker Administration.

In a classic Friday news dump, Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel announced the firing of already-demoted ex-DOC Secretary Ed Wall. And Matt DeFour of the Wisconsin State Journal reported that Wall is responding by suing Schimel and the Wisconsin DOJ, claiming he was improperly fired, and that he is being thrown under the bus for what went on in Irma.

In a Feb. 10 letter to Schimel asking for his old job, Wall said he only accepted the job at Corrections, the state’s largest cabinet agency, “because the law and civil service rules guaranteed my ability to return to my classified civil service position.” Wall noted he sought the DOJ investigation into Lincoln Hills, that he was not a target, witness or in any way involved and that the investigation involved staff nine levels below his office.

Wall was to start the new job at a $108,076 annual salary on Feb. 28, but the next day he was reassigned to a deputy division administrator position at the same pay rate effective March 20. He was instructed not to communicate with any DOJ employees except a department lawyer and Deputy Attorney General Andrew Cook.

Wall’s lawyer Dan Bach said Wall plans to file a whistleblower retaliation complaint because his termination commenced after Wall gave a draft copy of his WERC appeal to DOJ. That appeal alleges DOJ violated state law in not letting him keep his former job.

“Although DOJ was very specific that this disciplinary action was focused solely on the letter and not the draft appeal document, certain allegations against Mr. Wall were derived from the positions expressed in his draft appeal,” Bach wrote in a letter to DOJ last week.

Doesn't sound like former Sec. Wall is going quietly. Now would be a great time to let everyone know what really went on at Lincoln Hills, and who made the call to cover up the bad things that were happening behind the walls. These include the bad things that a Racine County judge was informing the Walker Administration about 4 years ago- claims the judge said the Walker Administration "swept under the rug."

Keep an eye on this one folks. Feels like it might be ready to blow up, and it could be verrrrrry interesting to see whose inaction (or action ordering inaction) allowed the evil to continue to flourish.

Is Wisconsin lagging in jobs? Or booming? Or what?

Within 2 hours of each other today, we had two bits of reports and analysis that give directly opposite indications of how Wisconsin is faring when it comes to job growth.

On the “bad” side is columnist Bruce Thompson of Urban Milwaukee, who wrote an article titled “Road Map to Economic Failure,” which ripped the job creation approach of Governor Walker and the Wisconsin GOP, using numbers to show just how badly Wisconsin has lagged over the last 5+ years. Thompson’s essay begins as follows.

By this time, it should be evident that Gov. Scott Walker’s job-creating plan has failed. So why does an approach with so little success or supporting evidence for it continue to be followed by Walker and other conservative leaders?



Wisconsin continues to lag behind most of its neighboring states and the nation in job creation. The graph to the right shows percentage growth since the end of 2011 in Wisconsin and states bordering us. While Wisconsin has added jobs since the Great Recession, it has done so at about half the rate promised by candidate Walker in 2010.

Wisconsin’s only competitor for the bottom of the list is Illinois. Illinois has struggled with the worst-funded public employee pension system in the nation. Finding a solution has become nearly impossible because of an impasse between its Republican governor and Democratic legislature. By contrast, Wisconsin’s public pension system has long been among the best-funded in the nation. (a trend that started well before Walker took office, by the way).

And then on the same day, the Walker Administration’s Department of Workforce Development releases a blowout March jobs report, with the following stats.

Place of work data: The state added a statistically significant 13,100 private sector jobs from February 2016 to March 2016 on a preliminary basis, including a significant gain of 4,200 jobs in manufacturing.

Wisconsin also added a significant 47,500 private-sector and 51,200 total non-farm jobs over the year ending in March 2016, the best year-over-year growth since August 2004 in both categories. Additionally, revised February private-sector job counts swung from a gain of 8,000 to a gain of 10,500 private sector jobs, a difference of 2,500.

·Place of residence data: A preliminary seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 4.5 percent in March 2016, down from 4.6 percent in February 2016. The 4.5 percent rate is lower than the 4.6 percent rate in March 2015 and lower than the national unemployment rate which increased to 5.0 percent in March 2016. Based on preliminary estimates, Wisconsin's total employment grew by a statistically significant 58,000 year over-year to more than 3 million, an all-time high. Additionally, the state's labor force reached an all-time high in March 2016.

"Today's report shows that Wisconsin's employment was higher than ever in March, our unemployment rate dropped over the month while the national rate increased, and the state experienced the best 12 months of job growth since 2004," Secretary [Ray] Allen said. "All indicators show that under Governor Walker's leadership, Wisconsin's economy is expanding and adding jobs in 2016.

First of all, that’s classic cherry-picking from Walker’s DWD to say this is “the best 12 months of job growth since 2004.” They’re going on total (alleged) private-sector job gains (47,500), but not the rate of growth, which is 1.92% after this report. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a very good number if it holds, but it’s also not as strong as the 1.94% we had on these same month-to-month reports in April 2014, and other months have been at or near thisrate. And we’ve also seen similarly high year-over-year numbers in other recent years, only to see those gains revised down in the future.

But what gives with these divergent numbers, and why the state jobs report looks so good these days? I took a look inside the March Wisconsin jobs report, and the first item that jumped out at me is the manufacturing number. While some of that 4,200 gain reflects seasonal adjustments (non-seasonal jobs gained were 2,500), February was also revised up by 1,400 manufacturing jobs. That seems like an awful lot of hiring at Wisconsin factories in a month when the U.S. lost 29,000 manufacturing jobs. I literally find that incredible, and I want to see if there are revisions coming over the next few months, as more refined data comes in.

The other big gainers in Wisconsin jobs for March include Professional and Business Services (+4,100) and Leisure and Hospitality (+2,400), which seems a little more believable. But you combine the first three months of the year, and if you buy what the Wisconsin DWD’s reports are claiming, then Wisconsin has added 29,400 private sector jobs in the first three months of 2016, and 30,300 overall.

That’s more jobs than were added for the entire 12-month period between Sept 2014 and Sept 2015, according to the Quarterly Census on Employment and Wages (QCEW). Take a look at the Walker jobs gap chart, and look at the right-hand part of the chart, and how the state figures have jumped since the end of 2015. Do we really think things have changed so suddenly and by so much?



In addition, DWD Secretary Ray Allen tries to claim these alleged job gains are due to “Governor Walker’s leadership.” How can he say that when there were few if any policy changes that went into effect at the start of 2016? The state budget was so screwed up that there wasn’t room for many tax cuts (other than a giveaway for the rich on the AMT, which wouldn’t be realized until tax refunds came back in February and March at the earliest), and most public spending changes started on July 1, with the start of the state fiscal year. You can’t credit (right-to) work-for-less, because that was law in Wisconsin dating back to March 2015, and job creation sucked in the last 9 months of last year.

This huge jobs figure makes me even more antsy to see what the revenue numbers look like for March. You may remember that there was a significant revenue shortfall in February, but that some of that may be due to more tax refunds being sent out in Feb 2016 vs Feb 2015. If that is the case, and if we truly are booming in jobs, then we should see a strong rebound in revenues for March, and not be in danger of having a massive in-year budget deficit spring up.

Likewise, I want to see what the upcoming reports from the “gold standard” QCEW has to say about these alleged job gains. The last QCEW report went through September 2015, and was miserable, with Wisconsin ranking 36th in private sector jobs, and next-to-last in the Midwest. And that’s worth noting because the last QCEW report led to flattening of some of the state’s job growth up through that point, and it’s noteworthy that it doesn’t include the massive jump of 15,400 private sector jobs that was reported by the Wisconsin DWD for October, as well as the alleged gain of over 10,000 jobs a month for this year.

The next QCEW will go through December, and we should see that officially released in early June, with the March 2015-March 2016 report to follow in September. If this job growth is legitimate, it’ll be reflected there. Likewise, if it falls short, there’s going to be some serious ‘splaining for the Walkers and WisGOPs to do ahead of the November elections.

So my best advice is to “stay tuned” when it comes to evaluating how Wisconsin’s economy is really doing in 2016. Especially given that the warm winter we saw through mid-March turned snowy and dreary in the month after, which could skew both seasonally-adjusted jobs figures on a short-term basis (March higher, and April lower).

And lastly, no matter how much the Walker boys try to play a confidence game of “it’s working” and that they claim to be focused in on job growth, Bruce Thompson ends his column by reminding you what this crew is really about when it comes to economic policy. And it tells you why they had such a lousy record in their first five years.

The simplest explanation for the failure of the Wisconsin jobs plan—and others of its ilk—is that it was never really about creating jobs. Rather, the underlying purpose was to further transfer income and resources to very wealthy people.