Strong July jobs for U.S. tamp down slowdown fears

After last week’s news of a third straight quarter of below-trend GDP growth, many were looking to Friday’s July jobs number to see if the Obama Recovery may be coming to an end soon. Well, if you were banking on recession, I got some bad news for you, because it looks like things are springing back to life.

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 255,000 in July. Job gains occurred in professional and business services, health care, and financial activities. Mining employment continued to trend down…

In July, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls increased by 8 cents to $25.69. Over the year, average hourly earnings have risen by 2.6 percent. Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees increased by 7 cents to $21.59 in July. (See tables B-3 and B-8.)

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for May was revised from +11,000 to +24,000, and the change for June was revised from +287,000 to +292,000. With these revisions, employment gains in May and June combined were 18,000 more than previously reported. Over the past 3 months, job gains have averaged 190,000 per month.

Sorry Drumpkins, maybe the country isn’t falling off the edge quite yet.

That last part is arguably the most encouraging one. After 2016 had seasonally-adjusted job growth for 2016 of only 151,000 a month, this is now two straight months of total job gains over 250,000, and an average private sector job gain of 238,000 for those months. It indicates that May’s slowdown was a one-time blip, and the increase in average hourly earnings is also a very good sign, as that figure is now up 1.7% since the start of the year, more than twice the rate of inflation in that time.

The unemployment rate also stayed at 4.9%, and for positive reasons, as the household survey 407,000 people entered the work force, and employment was up by 420,000. This bumped up the participation rate and the employment-population ratio, reversing slight declines in recent months for those stats.

The only item of concern in the report is the continued decline in employment for Mining, as that sector lost another 6,100 jobs in July, is down nearly 128,000 jobs in the last 12 months, and down over 220,000 jobs from its peak in September 2014. And with oil prices going below $40 a barrel for part of this week, it seems unlikely that this sector will bounce back any time soon.

But the mining part is the only blot on what is otherwise a strong jobs report all around, and it gives us a chance to breathe a sigh of relief after that lame 1.2% GDP growth that came out last week. Let’s see if other reports follow suit to see if things are truly as pleasant as the weather we’re experiencing for this weekend.

Wisconsin demos show that Drumpf could compete...if he wasn't Drumpf

As I was lounging up North last week, I caught an excellent breakdown of U.S. polling in the New York Times’ “Upshot” segment. Titled “The One Demographic That is Hurting Hillary Clinton”, Nate Cohn showed the main reason Donald Trump was polling close to Hillary Clinton at the time was that he was winning big among white people without college degrees- especially men. It made up for him doing worse among people that aren’t stupid scared trash all other demographics.

Cohn pointed out that the “rile up the white guys” element of Trumpism is likely to change which states may or may not be in play come November.

Regardless of the exact sources of Mr. Trump’s strength, his narrow but deep appeal has the potential to shake up the electoral map. The extent that Democrats are dependent on white working-class voters varies considerably by state. So, too, does the extent to which Republicans depend on college-educated white voters.

A result could be growing strength for Mr. Trump in the Midwestern states with many working-class Democrats, like Iowa or Ohio. Mrs. Clinton, meanwhile, could excel in the states where there are fewer less-educated white voters for her to lose, and plenty of well-educated white voters or Hispanics for her to gain, like Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina and Florida. More traditionally Democratic states, like Pennsylvania and Iowa, might be in jeopardy.

These patterns are only beginning to emerge in the sparse public data. But the Clinton campaign’s view is clearer. Joel Benenson, the campaign’s pollster, said on Monday that Mrs. Clinton was “stronger in the Sun Belt states” than Mr. Obama was in 2012.

On the same day, the campaign pulled its advertisements in Colorado on the belief that it had built a large and durable lead — an astonishing turn for a state where Democrats never reached 50 percent of the vote between 1964 and 2004. Yet last week, the Clinton campaign began airing advertisements in Pennsylvania — a state where Democrats have won an above-average share of the vote in every election since 1952.

And if you look at a key chart in that story, you’ll see Wisconsin down at the bottom with Iowa, Ohio and New Hampshire as the type of state that could be more “Trump-friendly” due to these demographics (I apologize that I can't get the graphic to post). In Wisconsin in 2012, there were a small amount of Mitt Romney voters who were either “college-educated white” or Hispanic (barely 30%), but a whole lot of Democratic voters were white people without college degrees (over 55%). That would indicate that Drumpf could do well in the state, if he was equally strong in Wisconsin among white people without college degrees.

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com had a similar observation on demographics (the link has disappeared on me, but I remember it coming up around the start of the DNC), where he said Wisconsin should be a strong place for Trump to make inroads because of demogrpahics. But Nate also noted that Trump was underperforming here, with Clinton maintaining a solid lead even before she started pulling away this week, and right now FiveThirtyEight projects her to win Wisconsin by double digits, which is why your local TV shows haven’t been too polluted yet with ads.

That being said, the disconnect between gearing your message toward a winning presidential strategy nationally for the Dems (designed to win higher-educated, more diverse states like North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, and Colorado) is something that could actually hurt them in the Midwest. Sure, Hillary is still extremely likely to win Wisconsin and most of those other Midwest states, and possibly by safe margins. But the margin seems likely come in the form of running up totals in urban areas and college towns, and getting enough votes in the WOW Counties and Appleton/Green Bay to keep Trump from running up his totals there. On the flip side, Drumpf could do well with rural Wisconsinites or those who live in blue-collar areas without a UW school in them (think Wausau, Manitowoc, Sheboygan, non-black Racine), and that could mean that there is little change in the State Legislature, given the nature of gerrymandering.

Now, Drumpf's recent meltdowns and in particular his disgusting attacks on Mr. and Mrs. Kahn along with his irrational nature on foreign policy may change this calculation, because it's really exposed him as a weak-minded, arrogant jackass more than a straight shooter, and even many lower-educated people aren't going to stand for that garbage. I'm going to be very intrigued by what next week's Marquette Poll might say, not just for the overall margin, but to see if Drumpf has suffered in certain demographics (i.e.- lower-educated white peopl).

But even with Drumpf melting down and being an anchor for the GOP, I still think it might be useful for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin not to hitch themselves entirely to Hillary, and instead promote independent-minded, anti-TPP candidates that relate more to blue-collar and rural interests (think Russ Feingold, Tom Nelson). It’s also why I’ve predicted Bernie Sanders will make at least one appearance on the stump with Russ this Fall, because it’s no coincidence that Bernie did as well in many bluer-collar mid-size Wisconsin cities during April’s primary as he did in the college towns (check the April results for yourself).

Bottom line- what might make sense for the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign might not be the best for the DPW and Dems running for other offices in Wisconsin this November. Don't get me wrong, Dems will be happy to see the GOTV help that Team DNC/Clinton may give (along with the depressed turnout Drumpf might cause for GOPs), but demographics and local opinions seem to indicate that a separate ideology that appeals more to working-class individuals might be a good plan for those in Wisconsin that aren't running for president.

GB struggles with effects of Fitzwalkerstan's negligence on roads

After the Walker Administration and WisGOP have spent the last 5+ years failing to give enough money to help local governments fix their streets, we see yet another large Wisconsin city thinking about making up the difference by having its citizens pay more to register their vehicles.

An extra fee on vehicle registrations would replace special assessments for street repairs under a proposal being considered by the Green Bay City Council.

Supporters of the fee, commonly referred to as a wheel tax, say it's a more fair way to pay for street reconstruction and repaving work because drivers share the cost. In contrast, the current system requires property owners abutting the road to pay….

The city's most recent streets evaluation shows 131 of 412 roadway miles need to be repaved or fully reconstructed. Those roads rank 3 or less on a 10-point scale used to evaluate a street's condition.

Repaving all of those roads would cost the city and property owners more than $30 million, based on current prices.

Green Bay would join cities such as Janesville, Sheboygan and Fort Atkinson to add this local vehicle registration fee in recent months, and 6 communities in the state have added such a fee in 2016 alone. Oddly, I never hear Scott Walker or other WisGOP legislators bring this up when they claim they have kept "taxes low for the hard-working taxpayer."

And that’s not the only local road funding problem in the GB area, as many communities in Brown County are complaining that they will have to pay much more when it comes to local road projects, thanks to a change in policy at the county board.

Leaders of local municipalities as large as Green Bay and as small as Wrightstown are lining up to oppose a proposed change in the way they and the county share the cost of county road projects. Costs currently are split, but the proposed change could have local government paying more.

"On a lot of roads, we could end up paying close to 75 percent of the costs," said Ashwaubenon Village President Mike Aubinger. "Bike lanes and other things would be nonfunded" by the county.

County officials have proposed eliminating a funding approach outlined in a pre-existing agreement between that county and the two dozen municipalities in it. They say changes would be fairer to taxpayers as a whole because it would better take into account the value of a project to taxpayers across the county.

The county is not proposing a specific change in the cost-sharing formula, Executive Troy Streckenbach said. Rather, formulas might vary depending on whether a project benefited a large or small portion of Brown County.

This is the inevitable fallout from a state government that has steadily reduced shared revenues to local communities in favor of tax breaks and adding funds to campaign contributors through entities such as WEDC and voucher schools. And because the WisGOP Legislature was too gutless to take up a bill that would have allowed a county’s residents to vote for a 0.5% sales tax that would be designated for road repairs, we now see roads continue to deteriorate and requiring new taxes, fees, and cuts to make up the difference.

And while this is going on, the Walker Administration wants to shell out for an $850 million expansion of I-94 in Milwaukee that few people want? Take care of the basics first, and give local governments the ability to better afford taking care of their streets before you start blowing the budget on that stupidity.

Walker DNR shows priorities- helping Big Ag over people

If you hadn’t been tuned in to recent events in the news and saw this story today, you might find it very funny. But the topic and the corruption involved isn’t funny at all. (ignore the ad at the start)

An unhappy crowd greeted the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources on the first day of their tour in Ashland.

Pig masks and signs reading "save my lake" were waiting for the Wisconsin DNR Tuesday.

"We value Lake Superior and we do not want the manure from 26,000 hogs in our watershed," said Mary Dougherty of Farms not Factories.

This protest comes on the heels of a major story over the weekend from the Wisconsin State Journal’s Steve Verburg which illustrated how mega-farms in Fitzwalkerstan and their lobbyists representatives at the Dairy Business Association get more pull over state regulation and enforcement than the everyday citizens who have to deal with runoff and other effects of these operations.

Last month, the DNR completed scope statements designed to update manure-spreading rules in light of widespread drinking water contamination in Kewaunee County, UW-Madison-led research on airborne hazards of spraying manure and other related state and federal rules.

The plans laid out reasons for changing standards for when, where and how manure could be spread by concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). They also called for defining sensitive areas where shallow soil and porous bedrock leave groundwater especially vulnerable and extra precautions would be required.

On June 15, the DNR submitted the plans to Walker’s office, which distributed them to farm industry groups.

The Dairy Business Association then met with the DNR to express its concerns.

On July 13, the DNR submitted a more limited scope statement to Walker and he approved it the same day. That’s the plan the DNR’s policy board will consider Wednesday (today)

I’m sure the people from Farms not Factories could have gotten the same inside information and audience with the DNR that the Dairy Business Association got, right? And then gotten the DNR to see things their way after “expressing their concerns?” Suurrrre.

The day after that report appeared in the State Journal, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign “honored” the Dairy Business Association with its Influence Peddler of the Month award. The WDC said that the DBA has organized numerous backroom connections to go along with the large amount of money it gives directly to candidates.

The DBA’s backers give it considerable political clout that helps it move a lobbying agenda, which includes legislative bills and state rules to loosen land use, high-capacity well, wetland, groundwater protection, and factory farm regulations and enforcement. Factory farms are formally called concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and house several hundred or thousands of cows, hogs, chickens and turkeys.

In a February 2016 opinion piece about controversial legislation to ease state oversight of high-capacity wells, which did not pass, DBA lobbyist John Holevoet wrote: “Our ready access to fresh water gives Wisconsin a competitive advantage in attracting new farms and other businesses that rely on water. We should be promoting this advantage, not regulating it out of existence.”

The DBA, which spent $179,045 on lobbying in 2015, employs five lobbyists, including Bill McCoshen, a prominent State Capitol lobbyist who was chief of staff to former longtime GOP Gov. Tommy Thompson (you can frequently see McCoshen as a Republican talking head on Channel 15 in Madison- his current day job is almost never mentioned). In the last full 2013-14 legislative session, the DBA spent nearly $304,000 on lobbying state policymakers.

In addition to lobbying on proposed state policy and spending, media reports as far back as 2010 show the DBA has met directly with the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) to change the way the agencies site, permit and regulate factory farms. Such ready access by a large corporate interest has raised questions about the DNR’s independence from both inside and outside the agency. “This particular lobbying group has been able to elbow its way into the higher levels of the regulatory agency. That kind of access is unprecedented,” Jamie Saul, a former Midwest Environmental Advocates attorney, said in a March 2010 media report.

This type of overwhelming influence on lawmaking is what made it so alarming to see the Dairy Business Association endorse Bigoted Becky Bradley for the Wisconsin Supreme Court this Spring, Just as bad, Bradley said she was “thrilled” to get that endorsement, tacitlyu admitting that she would do nothing to protect Wisconsin’s citizens from any regulations that might be required to protect groundwater safety (in fact, she’d be likely to strike down the few remaining regulations that do exist), and would give these megafarms free reign to mess things up as much as they want.

Yet even with information being public, look at how two of the counties that have been affected the most by CAFO runoff and pollution voted last April.

Kewaunee Co.- Bradley 62.6-37.4
Adams County- Bradley 54.4-45.5

As long as places keep voting for crooks who would allow their own communities to be poisoned by mega-farms, these problems will continue. Bayfield and Ashland County get it, and vote against the DBA’s handpicked puppets in WisGOP, but why don’t these places learn the same lesson?

There needs to be a strong effort made by advocacy groups and the Wisconsin Dems to make the DBA scarlet letters for anyone that takes their dirty money. Or else we will lose the clean, scenic waterways and usable drinking water that make rural Wisconsin worth visiting and living in.

PS- This disgrace of manure-laden groundwater and megafarms is going national, as Marquette grad Charlie Pierce is focusing on it in his Esquire column today.

Walker UW tuition freeze order? Not big news, but still stupid + unrealistic

The last couple of days have featured headlines mentioning that Governor Scott Walker is asking the State Budget Office to continue to have a freeze on in-state tuition for the UW System schools for the 2017-19 budget. What’s odd about this is not that such a move is part of the biennial budget request, but that Walker would go out of his way to emphasize that he is doubling down after his increasingly unpopular decisions on the UW have contributed to his low approval ratings.

Now, maybe Walker and his political staff think they can make some hay recommending that in-state tuition stay frozen (I think they are very wrong on this, it makes him look as clueless as he does on the road funding issue), but if you dig into the actual instructions that came out last week, you’ll see that the UW tuition “freeze” Walker is no different than asking all agencies to do.

Agencies should prepare their 2017-19 biennial budget requests based on 100 percent of their fiscal year 2016-17 adjusted base.

-- All agencies should assume there will be zero growth in overall GPR appropriations in each fiscal year during the 2017-19 biennium, and specific program needs should be managed within this general constraint.

-- Exceptions will occur only for K-12 school aids; required basic cost-to-continue needs for the state's institutions, i.e., the Department of Corrections and the Department of Health Services institutions; entitlement and related assistance programs in the Department of Health Services (e.g., Medical Assistance), the Department of Children and Families' Division of Safety and Permanence, and the Department of Workforce Development's Division of Vocational Rehabilitation; and housekeeping adjustments like standard budget adjustments, fuel and utilities, and debt service.

Obviously, if there are no new funds coming in, this would include assuming tuition levels will remain the same. It’s interesting to me how much of a firestorm is resulting from this, because it’s a pretty straightforward budget instructions letter. Assuming a 0% increase usually allows the ability to identify which cuts or increases in revenue are needed to keep things at an acceptable level, or to see how much extra funding may be needed to maintain services.

That being said, I suppose Walker has brought a lot of this heat on himself by continuing to try to talk his way out of his failed policies on the UW System, and posing for another tuition freeze shows that he has learned nothing from the effects of those policies, including the continued exodus of top-level staff and faculty (read this recent article on the couple that is taking their talents in game development from Madison to UC-Irvine, along with the millions in research dollars that they have generated. They directly blame Walker and the regressives in the WisGOP-controlled Legislature).

What’s more intriguing to me is a passage on Page 2 of that letter, which says the budget request should account for two scenarios.

1. Meet a zero growth target in each fiscal year of the 2017-19 biennium.

2. Reduce the agency's state operations budget by 5 percent from its fiscal year

2016-17 adjusted base in each fiscal year of the 2017-19 Biennium.

Notice the second set of budget requests that are in there, the “5% cut” budget. This is part of an ALEC bill that was passed in the last Legislative session (I ran it down in this post from 6 months ago), and the cynicism behind it is obvious. If you include a 5% cut scenario, you can then use those reduced figures to claim that the budget is “balanced”, even when doing so would require massive cuts and changes in services that cause legitimate damage to Wisconsinites. It also makes it appear that there is fat that can justify a 5% cut, no matter how badly it will deform the agency and hurt services by doing so (the same type of garbage they try to pull when they claim the cuts to UW funding aren’t that much).

Also, having a set of reduced budget figures included can then make the Walker Administration and/or the WisGOPs in the Legislature seem like the good guys for “adding funding” to an agency. In fact, the level of service may merely be staying at the same (reduced) level, or even worse, being cut from where it is today. It doesn’t take much to see the GOPs are going to try to play the same type of cherry-picking that allowed them and Walker to claim a “surplus” before the 2014 elections- a claim I called out as complete bullshit at the time, but something the media refused to call out the lie and enough rubes fell for it to allow the WisGOPs to slip by in 2014. Then 3 weeks after the elections, a $2.2 billion deficit magically appeared, leading to the cuts to K-12 and higher education, along with added borrowing and other gimmicks that will produce more budget holes in this next budget.

Tose holes are where the real concern comes in. The problems with Walker’s posing policies on the UW System haven’t been because he has chosen to freeze tuition, as much the fact that it is combined with the failure to continue to fund the campuses at an adequate level, by reducing state funding at the same time. These concerns are explained quite well in the closing paragraphs of Nico Savidge’s story in today’s Wisconsin State Journal.

Nick Fleisher, a linguistics professor at UW-Milwaukee, coined the Twitter hashtag #FundTheFreeze to voice his support for affordable tuition while calling for increased UW funding.

“Continuing the freeze is good for students, and I support that,” Fleisher said.

But freezing tuition while holding funding flat — or cutting it further, as Fleisher and others fear could happen in the next budget — threatens the quality of UW institutions, he said.

“We would like to see the governor and the Legislature follow through with the other half of the equation,” Fleisher said.

Given the mess of the upcoming budget, don’t count on Walker asking for the funding required to #FundTheFreeze. Which is why voters need to act this November to get a Legislature in place that will block any further attempts to deform the UW System and further compromise its ability to generate the talent that can keep Wisconsin economically competitive.

GDP report- Is Obama Recovery running out of steam?

A few thoughts from the surprisingly-low GDP figure of 1.2% growth for the 2nd quarter of 2016.

This graph from Econbrowser gives a good breakdown of how we ended up at that figure. As you'll see, consumer spending actually was quite strong between March and June, adding over 2.8% to GDP last quarter. But inventories shrank by a lot (the pink line), and the rest of the economy also stagnated.



What's also concerning with this release is that after 6 straight quarters of 2% growth or more, we now have had 3 consecutive quarters of lower growth, as Q4 2015 was 0.9% and Q1 2016 was 0.8%. This cuts the year-over-year growth rate to just over 1.2%, which is the lowest in 3 years, and is less than half of where we were at the start of 2015.



Also interesting to note is that government spending declined for the first time since the end of 2014. The government sector had actually boosted GDP in the previous 5 quarters after having a significant decline between 2010 and 2014, and if the economy is truly slowing, you wonder how that'll be reflected with the availability and use of government expenses.



But in all, the economy is still growing, albeit at a slower pace (as you will see by the growth rate leveling off at the end). This means the Obama Recovery is still continuing in the Summer of 2016, now at 7 years and counting.



But 7 years is quite a while to go without recessions, and with U.S. unemployment now below 5%, unemployment claims at the lowest levels since the 1970s, and a strong dollar holding down exports, I have to wonder how long these good times are going to last. It almost seems like we either are heading toward a late-game Bubble in housing and/or stocks (the frequent Rocket Mortgage and "pre-approved" ads should give chills to anyone who remembers what happened in the 2000s), or that the slowdown might turn into something that starts to lead to job losses in areas other than oil drilling and manufacturing.

Don't get me wrong, we're a helluva lot better than we were when Obama took office in January 2009, and that should never be forgotten. But I do think it is appropriate to wonder where things go from here.

Walker highway funding fiasco growing more insane

It's bad enough that Scott Walker is living in a Fantasy World where he refuses to raise taxes or fees to pay for the state's huge needs for road repairs, but now we find out his delusion is even worse than we knew. As Jason Stein and Patrick Marley accurately pointed out in a big Sunday article, Walker wants even more building, while claiming to hold the line on spending and taxes. In a classic example of “watch what he does and not what he says,” Walker was telling reporters up North one thing while doing another behind the scenes.

This month, Walker told a Northwoods television station the state is going to focus more on outstate roads and "not going to do, in the foreseeable future, any big projects, particularly in the Milwaukee area." He's made similar comments elsewhere.

But in a May 13 letter, the GOP governor told the Federal Highway Administration that his administration wants to kick off an $850 million project to widen an east-west stretch of I-94 between the Marquette and Zoo interchanges from six lanes to eight.

"I support the advancement of this project and believe there is a reasonable expectation our 2017-2019 budget will be passed with the appropriate level of highway funding needed to advance the state's highest priority needs," Walker wrote to Michael Davies, an administrator at the federal agency.

As with most highway projects, it would be funded jointly by the state and federal governments, which both heavily rely on gas taxes to pay for roads.

The state already has years of work ahead to finish two other megaprojects: the Zoo Interchange connecting I-94 eastbound to I-41 northbound; and the north-south section of I-94 between Milwaukee's south side and the Illinois border.

So explain to me how there won’t be any new funds for new Megaprojects in Southeastern Wisconsin (and remember that the I-94 and Zoo Interchange projects will be continuing through that 2017-19 budget), and yet you're planning on putting a whole new lane on I-94 in the middle of the state's largest city?

More remarkable is that Walker was begging the Feds for money to pay for that I-94 project, and then proceeded to rant at the GOP convention about how “liberal Washington” is overbearing and that the states should be relied on more for decisions and funding for projects. The I-94 road work is also not the only time the Walker Administration has been asking for a DC handout on high interstate projects in Wisconsin roads this year, as we found out last month that WisDOT is taking advantage of $40 million in federal money to help speed along expansion work on I-90 near Janesville.

Even worse is that the I-94 expansion in Milwaukee may not even be needed. Read this report that aired on Channel 12 from 2014, where residents near Miller Park and then-Milwaukee Common Council president Michael Murphy opposed the I-94 expansion, with Murphy saying it would be wiser for the state to use funds to fix local roads than widen the interstate.

A similar theme was sounded last year by a group of “smart-growth” activists known as the “Coalition for More Responsible Transportation” (CMRT), who said that traffic studies show the I-94 expansion is unnecessary,. In addition, they noted that a Transportation Fund already drowning in debt from prior projects could use some relief and flexibility to pay for alternative forms of transportation.

CMRT believes that the overbuilding of highways is not only drastic and expensive, but unnecessary. WisDOT justifies the proposal to add more lanes to I-94 by projecting a 23 percent increase in traffic near the Miller Park by 2040. But an analysis by 1000 Friends of Wisconsin conducted last October shows traffic has actually decreased by 8 percent along that stretch of highway.

Because there is no need to widen I-94, the development will divert taxpayer money from projects that would have more economic impact. A report by WISPIRG, Sierra Club and 1000 Friends of Wisconsin found that by scaling back highway expansion projects, the state could save taxpayers nearly $500 million in the coming biennium. The savings could then reduce the state’s reliance on bonding and spending money on interest payments, and instead be spent on local priorities like road repair, transit and bike/pedestrian infrastructure. “Wisconsin needs a responsible transportation budget,” said Elizabeth Ward, Sierra Club John Muir Chapter. “We should invest our limited transportation funds in the most critical priorities while looking for savings wherever possible. And we have to take a particularly hard look at multibillion-dollar investments in major highway expansion projects, especially since Wisconsinites are driving less.”

CMRT also believes that the development of I-94 will have a negative impact on businesses around the Milwaukee area. More funding for highways means less funding for fixing local roads and less accessibility for public transit, which can impede people from reaching their place of employment, school, and medical care. As veteran Capitol reporter Matt Pommer has written, “fifteen years ago, 40 percent of the state transportation fund was returned to municipal and county governments. Now, less than one-third of that fund returns to local governments.” That has had a negative impact on all local roads, but particularly in metro Milwaukee. He notes a 2013 study which found “more than half of the roads in the Milwaukee area were in poor condition. It suggested that road conditions cost Milwaukee-area drivers an average of about $700 per year in vehicle repairs.”

And as someone that has traveled that stretch of I-94 numerous times in my life, I concur with that analysis. The section Walker is proposing to expand is the one part of east-west I-94 in the Milwaukee metro area that has the least amount of rush-hour issues, because many drivers heading from Waukesha County to the airport or points south use I-894, and I-43/I-94 takes up another part of the traffic that goes north-south. Plus, given that the area of the expansion has been built up with housing and other structures for decades (along with the cemetery just west of Miller Park), the roadway is already tight and there is little room to add on, making an expansion project even more of a problem.

Let’s also note another bit of irony, where Walker is asking for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid to expand an interstate near Milwaukee, and is offering to have state taxpayers put up a sizable amount of the rest of the cost. But that same Governor turned down over $800 million in funds from “liberal Washington” to allow people to use high-speed rail between Madison, Milwaukee, an Chicago, a project that would not have required one dime of state money, and would have reduced the need for the expanded capacity on I-94 that Walker now says we need.

And oh yeah, Scotty also still has no explanation how he’s going to pay for this extra highway project, as the state battles with a $939 million shortfall for roads BEFORE this I-94 expansion is accounted for. The question of “HOW ARE YOU GOING TO DO THIS/PAY FOPR THIS” is quite reminiscent of how I felt watching the non-racist parts of Drumpf’s RNC speech. And you wonder why I say today’s GOP is unfit for office, and shouldn’t be trusted to run a hot dog stand, let alone a state or country?