Bucks arena update- BC losses and new site changing?

The Bucks arena issue hasn't had any formal legislation to fund it or a even a site finalized as of this time, but that doesn't mean there weren't some intriguing events that have been going on to get things lined up with this half-a-billion-dollar project.

Don Walker of the Journal-Sentinel had an interesting article up today going over the Bucks current facility at the Bradley Center, and noted that the facility had an operating loss of $1.9 million for fiscal year 2013-14. The operating losses come at a time when the facility’s debt is near $20 million, and that debt will have to be paid off with any deal that comes with a new arena.

The net loss, which includes depreciation of $3.3 million, was a decline of $3.1 million compared with the prior fiscal year. Total operating revenue was $18 million, compared with $20.7 million for fiscal 2013.

Steve Costello, president and CEO of the BMO Harris Bradley Center, said the arena continues to be in a stable fiscal position. And there is hope, he said, that a reinvigorated Bucks franchise and an uptick in concerts will translate into a better year in the current fiscal year.

Costello acknowledged the debt the arena owes to banks and the Bucks in the form of tenant-shared revenue was "significant but manageable."

The article mentions that the biggest culprits in the 13% loss in revenue was a horrible 2013-14 that led to the lowest home attendance for any NBA team, and a season when the Bucks had the worst record in the league. In addition, the facility only hosted 7 concerts, as opposed to the 10-12 it would usually host. It would have been even worse, if not for the facility hosting March Madness with the Badgers being part of 2 of the 3 sessions, leading to sellouts and obvious upticks in concessions and revenues for those days.

But things may look slightly better for the Bradley Center in 2014-15. The improved fortunes of the Bucks are certainly playing a role, as the Deer have played at or near .500 ball for the first quarter of the NBA season. While they are still 4th from the bottom for home attendance at this point in the season, one would think that the Bucks staying in the playoff hunt (a strong possibility in the very weak Eastern Conference) would encourage some people to check them out the last 3 months of the year.

The vibe definitely seems different than the empty-arena death march the Bucks had in 2014 on their way to a league-worst 15-67 record. ESPN’s Zach Lowe had an impressive, in-depth article breaking down the Bucks plans this week, and how their future seems brighter than what it offered two years ago. The team is also investing in new positions to improve the team’s product, as well as its visibility in the Milwaukee area.

The Bucks think they have two franchise players, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jabari Parker, super-young combo forwards with preposterous arms, a determined work ethic, and varied skill sets they’re only discovering. Any team built around 19- and 20-year-olds is a half-decade from anything like contention, and the Bucks under new ownership aren’t going to rush the process as they did in chasing the no. 8 seed under Herb Kohl….

Antetokounmpo and Parker are the only sure bets to be on this roster in five years. The franchise is content in the meantime to measure its other young players, especially Brandon Knight and Larry Sanders, and watch Jason Kidd imprint his identity. The team’s new owners, Marc Lasry and Wesley Edens, have spent millions building the infrastructure that must be in place if the Bucks hope to chase big things.

They’ve already hired about 50 new people, including a bundle of sales associates and a new sports psychologist. They’ll beef up the medical staff over the next few months, Lasry says, and they purchased a speedy new server for the team’s analytics department. They even hired the first director of merchandising in franchise history after Lasry became disenchanted at how difficult it was to buy Bucks gear.

Also in Lowe’s article is a discussion of the Bucks’ arena situation, which Lasry says he plans to build in the next two years, as he doesn’t want to be part of the team if it moves.

The need for a new arena and practice facility looms over everything. The BMO Harris Bradley Center is dull and outdated, and the Bucks practice 15 minutes from downtown in the back of a Catholic archdiocese. The NBA holds an option to buy the team back at a cheap price if the Bucks haven’t started construction on a new arena by fall 2017, and there will be a vigorous debate if the new owners request public funding.

Lasry is confident the Bucks will secure a deal, if only because the buyback clause and the looming Seattle threat have everyone backed into a corner. “The reason it’s gonna get done is that no one has a choice,” he says. He and [Bucks co-owner Wes] Edens are based in New York, and they will not entertain the idea of moving the Bucks to a West Coast market as long as they own the team. “I have no interest in being far away,” Lasry says. “The fun of owning the team is being part of the community. You can’t do that if you’re four or five hours away.”

Edens and Lasry have pledged $100 million to an arena project that could cost more than $500 million. Kohl made an identical pledge on his way out. It’s unclear where the rest of the money might come from, and any plan to divert funds from the coffers of a Rust Belt city into the hands of wealthy financiers will draw justifiable scrutiny. That is a real issue; sports are silly in comparison.

Speaking of the arena, Don Walker’s article on the Bradley Center also has an update on where that proposed arena might be sighted. Originally, the land that Journal Communications owns across from the Bradley Center was mentioned as a possible spot, but that option seems to be bogging down, and other sites in downtown Milwaukee are looking more likely, including the area just north of the BC, which heads out toward the Park East land on N. 6th Street near Juneau.

[Bradley Center president and CEO] Costello declined further comment on the arena land. Much of it is already vacant and could conceivably be the easiest path for the Bucks, which face an NBA-imposed deadline of the fall of 2017 to have a new arena in place.

Talks between Journal Communications, which owns a square block near the BMO Harris Bradley Center, and the Bucks have hit a snag. Sources say it is now unlikely Journal Communications, publisher of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the Bucks will be able to reach agreement on sale of the property as part of a new arena site. (Hey, I guess they’d know, right?)

For months, the Bucks targeted the Journal Communications land, plus the land now occupied by the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena and possibly the Milwaukee Theatre, as the preferred site. With that site now in doubt, the Bucks have focused on the BMO Harris Bradley Center land, as well as city-owned land at the corner of N. 4th St. and W. Wisconsin Ave., and land at the corner of N. 2nd and W. Michigan streets.

And of course, the financing is the other issue. I’ve previously discussed the mechanism of a “jock tax” to pay for the estimated $150 million of public financing a new Bucks arena is expected to cost, and I’m still very skeptical of the idea because it’ll take away those revenues for general usage throughout the state over the next 20 years. Wisconsin already has major fiscal issues from prior tax and voucher school giveaways to sort out before we can think about adding to those problems with a Bucks deal, and we should probably be dealing with other fiscal and social concerns in the state’s largest city and economic engine ahead of helping one specific company (the Bucks).

But the wheels are definitely still churning, and the Don Walker article indicates a site for a new Bucks arena is likely to be known in the next 3 weeks (!). Then it becomes crunch time with a new Legislative session in Madison and new state budget that will be part of these discussions, whether in the form of another subsidy from state taxpayers (as has been done under gubernatorial tenures of both Jim Doyle and Scott Walker), and/or a new funding mechanism for the arena project. If a deal does not get worked out, then we get to find out what might happen with the team’s future in Milwaukee.

Lots of things are going to heat up in 2015 when it comes to the Bucks, and it’s worth it to stay on top of the twists and turns, which will go well beyond the team’s development on the court.

U.S. economy strong through November. Wisconsin not so much

More reports were out today indicating that the U.S. economy is staying on a good growth track as 2014 draws to a close.There was good news on the retail sales front, as they rose by 0.7% in November even with falling gas prices dragging the number down a bit. So despite the worries about weak Black Friday sales, maybe this means the important Holiday shopping season was off to a better start than people thought. The labor market also is staying strong, as weekly jobless figures from the U.S. Department of Labor had seasonally-adjusted unemployment claims under 300,000 for the 12th time in the last 13 weeks, at 294,000.

But while the economic data is going up, and jobless claims are dropping throughout the rest of the nation, Wisconsin seems to be going the other direction for November. The unemployment claims report says that in the holiday-shortened week of Thanksgiving, Wisconsin stands out as an anomaly.

The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending November 29 were in New York (+2,979), Wisconsin (+2,293), Arkansas (+484), Vermont (+417), and Kentucky (+145), while the largest decreases were in California (-13,819), Texas (-6,313), Ohio (-4,284), Pennsylvania (-4,199), and Illinois (-3,359).

And yes, while some of the Wisconsin figures could be related to it being the full week of deer hunting season, the state had seen rises in unemployment claims throughout the month of November, with new claims doubling over the past four weeks. As this chart shows, this is an increase that goes well beyond the typical seasonality effects for November. This comes after year-over-year decreases of 10-20% being the rule for much of the year, matching the drops seen in the rest of the country. As you can see the last 2 weeks measured have had increases in unemployment claims in Wisconsin compared to the same time in 2013, in notable contrast to the continued decrease in year-over-year claims in the rest of the nation.





Wisconsin’s rise in unemployment claims for the week of Thanksgiving is especially noteworthy when you look at the same stat for that week among our Midwestern bretheren – many of whom also had deer hunting season around Thanksgiving. Which one of these is not like the other?

Change in unemployment claims, week ending Nov 29
Wis. +2,293
Ind. -1,507
Iowa -1,880
Mich -2,526
Minn -2,940
Ill. -3,359
Ohio -4,284

Total unemployment claims, week ending Nov 29
Wis. 15,336
Ill. 14,741
Ohio 11,224
Mich 10,824
Minn 7,347
Ind. 5,052
Iowa 4,108

With these recent increases in jobless claims, it makes me very intrigued by what Wisconsin’s November and December jobs figures may say as they come out in the next handful of weeks. Those months typically lose a few thousand jobs on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, but the spike in unemployment claims over the last few weeks may indicate that it could be more than that, unless we had a large increase in Holiday hiring to go with the extra layoffs.

Keep tuned, as there are plenty of jobs, revenue and other data reports to come in the next week. And they will go a long way toward defining what already looks to be a very difficult state budget in early 2015.

Bipartisan agreement in Congress- to help corporations

In case you’ve missed it this week, Congress is trying to extend certain corporate tax breaks as opposed to passing good, fiscally sound policy. Madison’s John Nichols has a great example of some of the “bipartisan” items that are being put into this tax deal, which includes giveaways for companies who keep their operations overseas, and a retroactive continuation of something known as bonus depreciation.

Georgetown University law professor David A. Super refers to that particular corporate tax break as a “license to steal”—because it “allows a business to pretend that its buildings and equipment wear out far faster than they actually do.”

“As economic stimulus, bonus depreciation does not work. Studies of a similar measure enacted to combat the 2001 recession found that only a tiny minority of businesses even considered the new tax benefit as an important factor in making investment decisions,” explains Super. Yet, he adds, “The cost [of bonus depreciation is] staggering: nearly $300 billion over the next decade, more than three times what we spend on nutrition supplements for pregnant women, infants and young children. That would wipe out roughly one-third of the deficit reduction from higher tax collections from the wealthy as a result of last year’s ’fiscal cliff’ deal.”

Only the most sold-out, corporate-hack Republican could back such a fundamentally flawed scheme, right?

Think again.

Of the 378 “yes” votes for the House measure, 202 did come from John Boehner’s Republicans. But the remaining 176 “yes” votes came from Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats.

Of the forty-six “no” votes, twenty-six were cast by Republicans—some libertarian-leaning foes of crony capitalism, others trickle-down zealots who would do even more for corporations and mega-rich CEOs. The twenty Democrats who opposed the measure pretty much make up the caucus of House members who actually get that something is very wrong with an economic calculus that says the richest individuals and corporations in America should be first in line for government assistance.

Compromise-prone Democrats tried to argue that they had to back the measure because it extended some programs that benefit working Americans. However, [Wisconsin Congresssman Mark] Pocan explains, “almost all of the significant tax extenders were going to corporations, not to working people. And they were retroactive. You couldn’t even argue that they would create jobs—except in the last two weeks of the year.”

Those type of “common-sense but against the DC grain” votes are among many reasons I am damn glad to have Pocan as my Congressman. We need a whole lot more like him that’ll lay it out, vote based on reality, and tell the truth about what is actually in these bad “bipartisan” DC deals - especially on the Dem side.

All making this bonus depreciation retroactive does is allows corporations to get a bigger tax refund this spring. This move has not and likely will not change their behavior by encouraging them to speed up investment in 2014 (the alleged reason for such a tax credit), but instead allows them to put more money in their pockets to…look good to investors, I guess. It sure won’t help the average citizen much.

What a total fraud. And it’ll add to our deficit for this fiscal year while adding next to no jobs. But I bet there’ll be a nice kickback to some of the Congresspeople that got this through, won’t there? Nice priorities, DC. Now we know why your approval rating is around 10%.

WMC boss flat-out lying about agenda, reality

I see that the head of Wisconsin Oligarchs and Medicore Businessmen Manufacturers and Commerce is trying to tilt the field even more in his boys’ (and I do mean boys’) favor. Check out this story from WisPolitics yesterday relating to a column written by WMC President and CEO Kurt Bauer. Naturally Bauer wants the WisGOP Legislature to pass wage-lowering right-to-work bills, and uses the types of dishonest assertions and flat-out lies that we’ve come to associate from WMC.

"Beyond the personal freedom component to this debate is the economic development argument," Bauer wrote. "It is well-known that site selectors who decide where businesses expand or relocate shun closed shop states like Wisconsin in favor of Right to Work states like Iowa, Indiana and Michigan."

First of all, there is no “closed shop” where prior union membership is required to be considered for employment in Wisconsin, nor anywhere else in America. The Taft-Hartley Act banned this arrangement in 1947. Taft-Hartley is also the reason right-to-work-for-less laws even exist, because it allowed states to pass laws which allow people to opt out of joining unions on the job, while still benefitting from the benefits that union power offers (and you thought righties were against freeloaders? HAH!). But of course, Bauer thinks the average person is too lazy and/or stupid to know these facts.

Second of all, Michigan, Indiana and Iowa have done no different in adding jobs compared to the rest of the Midwest since all three states have been right-to-work-for-less states. Take a look at the state-by-state jobs numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and compare it to the job gains in the Midwestern states for the first 3 years of the Obama Jobs Recovery, which began at the start of this decade, and goes until the end of 2012, when Michigan passed its right-to-work-for-less legislation.

Private sector job growth 2010-2012
Mich +8.37%
Ind. +6.51%
U.S. +5.57%
Ohio +5.55%
Minn +5.43%
Ill. +4.58%
Wis. +4.32%
Iowa +4.28%

The Michigan and Indiana numbers might seem to bear Bauer’s hypothesis out…except that those two states didn’t have right-to-work-for-less on the books in much of this time period (Indiana passed theirs in early 2012 and Michigan at the end of 2012). It’s much more plausible to assume the growth had more to do with the Obama Administration’s bailout of the auto industry, which especially helped the manufacturing-heavy states of Michigan, Indiana and Ohio (they were the three Midwestern states that suffered the heaviest job losses in 2008 and 2009). And look who’s dead last in this time period! The one state in the Midwest that had right-to-work-for-less for the entire time- Iowa. Strike One, Kurt.

Now, let’s look at the last 22 months, since all three of those states have had right-to-work-for-less on their books.

Private sector job growth Dec 2012- Oct 2014
U.S. +4.36%
Minn +3.85%
Ind. +3.32%
Mich +2.67%
Wis. +2.65%
Iowa +2.58%
Ohio +2.05%
Ill. +1.62%

Huh, our neighbors across the St. Croix (who don’t have right-to-work-for-less and taxed the rich) beat everyone else in the Midwest. And Michigan and Iowa (who Bauer claims are grabbing jobs from us) aren’t adding jobs at any different of a rate as we’ve been adding in Wisconsin, and Michigan has noticeably slowing down from the strong rate of growth they had before they passed RTWFL at the end of 2012. Strike Two.

Indiana has seemed reasonably successful at continuing to add jobs (albeit at a slightly lower rate than they did in the previous three years) and maybe there’s a place the WMC honks can hang their hats on, especially when compared to the lack of growth bordering states Ohio and Illinois. But at the same time, Indiana had the lowest private sector wage growth of any Midwestern state in the last Quarterly Census on Wages and Employment, which covered March 2013-March 2014, and had the 7th-lowest wage growth in the nation. So is that a worthwhile trade and sustainable direction to take? I don’t think so.

And Indiana’s “smallest midget” type of success still doesn’t support Kurt Bauer’s hypothesis that RTWFL is this magic pill for job growth. If that was true, you’d see Michigan, Indiana and Iowa be the top three in job growth for the Midwest after 2012, and growing above the national rate of job growth. They are doing neither. Strike Three, Bauer.

But wait, there’s more economic fail from the top guy at Wisconsin's corporate union professional organization!

Bauer listed a half dozen other legislative priorities in the upcoming session for Wisconsin "to achieve its full economic potential." They include a "modest" gas tax hike and increasing the state's vehicle registration fee. WMC and a series of business groups last month raised concerns over whether the Department of Transportation's request for $751 million in new taxes and fees was "appropriate." Bauer wrote bonding "isn't a long-term solution" to the state's transportation needs.

The others listed included aligning the state and federal versions of the Family Medical Leave Act, reducing costs associated with the state's worker's compensation program, eliminating the state's highest income tax bracket of 7.65 percent, uniform statewide standards on frac sand mining, and investing in workforce training.

Oh, so Kurt has no problem with tax increases if his fellow manufacturing oligarchs can get some of those taxpayer dollars funneled back to them in the form of road-building contracts. It’s just taxes that end up going to “other people” that they’re not so keen on paying. Funny how that works.

And I love the euphemisms Bauer throws out there. Let me give you the WMC-to-reality translations.

“Reducing costs associated with the state’s worker compensation program.” = Not having to be on the hook for working people to injury and death, and offloading the cost of social responsibility onto individuals and taxpayers. And if it allows for more corners to be cut since the consequences of unsafe work environments are reduced (or outright eliminated)- all the better!

“Uniform state standards for frac sand mining.” = Eliminating local control that might disallow fracking in certain communities, or disallow local communities from suing for the cleanup costs and related environmental damage. Instead, let the “Chamber of Commerce mentality” types that Scott Walker has appointed to the Department of Natural Resources allow these companies to run wild without consequence for the damage they may cause.

“Investing in workforce training” = Allowing taxpayers to pick up the costs of hiring and training beginning workers, instead of having the business pay for it themselves (like they did in the “good ol’ days”). Bonus: With right-to-work-for-less, these workers won’t get paid as much either, which allows the WMC oligarchs to pocket even more profits.

We’ve already done versions of this tax cutting and deregulation since the start of 2011 in Fitzwalkerstan, and all it’s gotten us is subpar job growth, exploding budget deficits and massive division throughout the state. And now the WMC crowd wants to do MORE of this? It proves yet again that these people and the WisGOP politicians they front for don’t really care about adding jobs, improving the Wisconsin economy, or creating an environment that attracts talkent for the next generation of entrepreneurs. They just want to grab more profit and power for themselves and their political allies, and they don’t give a damn what kind of fallout occurs from it, because they figure they will buy their way out of any trouble. Which is why these people should be fought against at every turn.

Minnesota vs. Wisconsin- two fiscal paths, two very different results

Over the last 4 years, there have been numerous comparisons done between the economic and social fates of Wisconsin and our neighbors to the west in Minnesota (one of the best came from Lawrence Jacobs in the New York Times this time last year). While Wisconsin elected a Republican governor in Scott Walker and a GOP-controlled legislature in 2010, Minnesota elected a Democratic governor in Mark Dayton, and followed by giving the Dems control of their legislature in 2012. And while Wisconsin has been giving numerous rounds of tax cuts targeted towards the rich and corporate and cutting state funding for K-12 education, Minnesota chose to tax the rich, and using some of those funds to expand pre-K education. Minnesota also raised the state’s minimum wage to $8 an hour by this August, and up to $9.50 in 2016. By comparison, Governor Walker and the WisGOP Legislature refused to take up any bills to raise Wisconsin’s minimum wage, with Walker going so far as to say "I don’t think [minimum wage] serves a purpose."

And after nearly four years of these contrasts, there’s a pretty clear winner when it comes to whose policies have led to a better fiscal situation- and it is Minnesota. The Gopher State has two things Wisconsin does not have these days- a huge budget surplus and a large amount of reserves to handle an economic downturn.

Evidence of Minnesota’s fiscal strength was reiterated last Thursday, when the Minnesota Office of Management and Budget released their outlook for their upcoming biennial budget. Higher revenues and lower spending are slated to add more than half a billion dollars to the state’s balance sheet for this budget, which puts the next budget in great shape.

Higher Revenues, Lower Spending Generate FY 2014-15 Forecast Balance. Actual revenue and expenditures for FY 2014, combined with revised forecasts for FY 2015, increased the projected balance for the current biennium from $32 to $556 million. Forecast revenues increased $279 million (0.7 percent), while projected spending is $250 million (0.6 percent) lower. A $5 million increase in estimated stadium reserves offsets part of the gain.

New Law Directs $183 Million to Budget Reserve, Leaving $373 Million Budgetary Balance. Significant changes were made to the statute governing general fund budget reserves in 2014. Thirty-three percent of any forecast balance for the current biennium, determined each November, is to be deposited to the budget reserve until recommended levels are reached. The $183 million deposit increases general fund reserves to $1.344 billion.

FY 2016-17 Forecast Shows a Total of $1.037 Billion Available for Upcoming Budget. FY 2016-17 revenues are now forecast to be $41.880 billion, a 6.4 percent increase over the current biennium. Forecast current law spending is $41.243 billion, 4.8 percent above FY 2014-15. Both are lower than previous projections. The $373 million ending balance for FY 2015 now adds to the beginning resources for the next biennium –resulting in a $1.037 billion balance now expected for FY 2016-17, up from $603 million projected at the end of the 2014 session…..

Income Tax Receipts Improve FY 2014-15 Forecast, Contribute to Growth in FY 2016-17. Income tax receipts ended FY 2014 ahead of the February forecast, contributing $194 million of the $279 million increase in FY 2014-15 forecast revenues. Higher than previously expected increases in nonwage income more than offset lower wage growth for the remainder of the biennium. Income and sales tax receipts supply almost all of the tax revenue growth in FY 2016-17 over FY 2014-2015. Corporate and other tax revenues are expected to remain fairly flat.

Now compare that situation to Wisconsin, which had a $281 million revenue shortfall for FY 2014 after cutting taxes in 2013, and even Scott Walker’s own Department of Revenue estimates that we’ll have another shortfall in FY2015, and a $2.2 billion budget deficit baked into the next budget. And as I’ve mentioned in the past, the DOR has a rosy assumption of good revenues in FY2015 that is on pace to fall short, increasing the amount of the current budget deficit that has to be made up, and increasing the deficit in the 2015-17 due to the lower revenue base.

Also in contrast is the meager amount of reserves each state has. While the Wisconsin GOP is trying to brag about the meager $279 million that’s in our rainy day fund, Minnesota’s is nearly FIVE TIMES LARGER, and is adding another $183 million in this fiscal year. Wisconsin could have chosen to add more to the Budget Stabilization Fund earlier this year, but instead , decided to blow it all on tax cuts and related budget gimmicks, and suspended the rules requiring any extra funds to be aside.

So the Wisconsin vs. Minnesota story seems an instructive version of “what to do vs. what not to do.” Perhaps it would be prudent to follow the road of Democratically-run Minnesota, who invested in services and made the rich and corporate pay more of their fair share, and not follow the “cut taxes and wages and hope for trickle-down” methods in GOP-run Fitzwalkerstan, which have led to an exploding budget deficit due to budget shortfalls. And funny, not only has Minnesota been more fiscally sound than Wisconsin, they have also beaten us in job growth since Walker and Dayton both took office in January 2011 (private sector job growth is more than 40% higher in Minnesota than in Wisconsin), and in lowering unemployment (down 2.9% in Minnesota vs. 2.3% in Wisconsin).

As Scott Walker tries to take his act nationwide, maybe a few enterprising journalists could ask why Minnesota is doing so much better…and unlike the Wisconsin media, maybe they could interrupt Walker’s lame talking points with real data. The answers could prove quite illuminating (and likely eliminating) when we’re talking about the prospects of national office for Scotty.

Big November jobs number, revisions leave Wisconsin further in the dust

The November U.S. jobs report was a monster one- total jobs up 321,000, and the previous two months revised up by another 44,000, for 365,000 total jobs above the level that we thought we were at last month. The gains were pretty broad across numerous segments of the economy, including a big jump in the retail sector (50,000), which could portend hopes for a good Holiday shopping season, 28,000 new jobs in manufacturing, and 20,000 in construction. Even the unemployment rate staying at 5.8% masks a recent step in the right direction, since the “employed” part of the survey has gone up 687,000 over the last two months, surpassing the labor force increase of 535,000.

Another positive sign in the jobs report is wage growth showed up in the November report, as average hourly wages rose by 9 cents to $24.66 an hour (0.4%), and the work week also rose, which bumped up average weekly earnings by more than $5.50. Wage growth has been the missing link in this economy, and if this increase continues, it’s a good sign, because an economy with 70% of its base in consumption needs to have people continue to consume, and it’s pretty darn hard to do so without them having money in their pocket. These wage gains need to be sustained over a longer amount of time - average hourly earnings are still only up 2.1% in the last 12 months before inflation, which is below the gains in productivity and GDP – but maybe the pickup in wage growth is a harbinger of workers finally starting to get some of their harder and more efficient work given back to them. God knows it’s long overdue.

The November report brings the total job growth in 2014 to 2.65 million jobs, the most in 15 years, which gives me a great excuse to bust out this classic from the Purple One (not that you should ever have to explain why you might put on some Prince), even if it's a song about nuclear apocalypse.

Prince and The Revolution - 1999 from Willy Lunaspot on Vimeo.

But it sure doesn’t feel like the dot-com days of 1999 here in Wisconsin, as this report is yet another piece of data that shows how much we have lagged the Obama Recovery. If Wisconsin had merely kept up with the national rate of job growth since Scott Walker and the Wisconsin GOP came to power in January 2011, we would have over 198,000 jobs by the end of October 2014 (the last month Wisconsin has been measured at), 205,000 private sector jobs for November 2014, and jobs have grown twice as fast nationwide in 2014 as they have in Wisconsin. The state needs to add approximately 6,700 jobs in the November jobs report just to keep up with the torrid national rate, and the positive revisions for September and October makes Scott Walker’s jobs gap grow even higher, now at almost 72.500 private sector jobs, and nearly 67,000 jobs overall.





The possibility of the Obama Recovery picking up even more steam is striking in light of slowdowns in other areas of world such as Japan and Russia, and Germany, who all seem to be heading into recessions. Efforts to slow that U.S. growth down, be it with idiotic shutdowns and handcuffs from a GOP-led Congress or through regressive wage repression such as right-to-work-for-less in Wisconsin, should be strongly fought against. We should be loudly warning against the spectre of selfish politics and greed that could kill this recovery before we reach the full employment and healthy wage growth that the vast majority of people in this country need. And deserve.

Buckeyes humiliate Badgers

Dear God, 59-0? Bucky may as well have not even gone to the Big Ten title game if that was going to be the result. Not that they would have beaten an OSU team playing like that on any day, but that's a total humiliation.

I hadn't seen people from Ohio kick Wisconsinites' asses and laugh them off the stage since....last month.

During the 1995-96 budget dispute between Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress, Walker said, “Clinton did not say the Republicans in Congress aren’t going to work with me so I’m going to do an executive order.”

“He sat down with them,” Walker said.

Kasich, who like Walker just won re-election to a second term in a Rust Belt, labor-dominated state, snapped almost matter-of-factly.

“No, he shut the government — the government got shut down first,” Kasich said.

The audience laughed. And then the two men, both of them likely to run for president in 2016, began to talk over each other as NBC’s "Meet the Press" moderator Chuck Todd stroked his red goatee in delight.

“There was tremendous animosity,” Kasich said, almost yelling, to remind the younger Walker that he, Kasich, had been there himself as a member of Congress.

“It wasn’t —” Walker tried to get out before Kasich cut him off.

“Scott, it was!” Kasich said. “I’ll tell you, when you’re sitting around and we’ve got Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole at each other over a shutdown, it wasn’t easy either.”

Walker went on to finish his point, which was basically that Obama is unwilling to work with Republicans and is wrongly going forward on his own with the immigration executive order.

Kasich waited for him to finish, and then continued to contrast himself with Walker and the other Republican governors onstage — Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, Indiana’s Mike Pence and Texas’ Rick Perry — who are all looking hard at running for president. The message Kasich wanted to make clear, and the one he appears likely to carry into a crowded presidential primary, was that he is not a typical Republican who simply opposes Obama, criticizes Democrats and talks about the need to cut taxes. Instead, he conveyed, he is a problem solver who wants economic growth but also wants government to help people and fix things.

“My only point is, I don’t like what [Obama’s] doing,” Kasich said, “but what I will say: This is emblematic of where we’re going forward as a country. I mean, are we going to deal with the real problems of health care, the real problem of immigration, the real problem of a divided country?”

“If we had not got the Clinton people to the table to negotiate … we would never have balanced the budget,” Kasich said. “Nothing gets fixed without some bipartisan support. You can’t do it without bipartisan support.”

The only difference is that no one in sports media would even try to claim that Ohio State didn't show they were on a different level than the Badgers yesterday- they'd be fired if they even tried. But you can bet the ChuckTodds of the world will try to make it sound like Kasich and Walker are equal levels of statesmen with equal fitness for president. And you wonder why I think sports journalists are more legit than political ones, and why it's no coincidence that people such as Charles Pierce and Keith Olbermann have done a better job at "telling it like it is" in recent years than our more "serious" journalists with a lifetime of Capitol Hill experience?