Even Walker's campaign admits more K-12 funding is a pre-election stunt

File this story in the “you knew it was coming” category.

A tiny Oneida County school district has banned political activity by officials during school hours after a board member, two teachers and a student appeared in a television ad paid for by Gov. Scott Walker's re-election campaign — surprising parents and school officials.

Walker is airing a campaign ad on television stations statewide featuring the Three Lakes School District and its work implementing the state's first school-based fabrication laboratory, known as Fab Labs, which teaches engineering and materials processing and allows students to apply textbook physics and math to real-world projects.

Gee, who could not have guessed that Scott Walker would use students and teachers as props to promote his own campaign? Well, apparently the pro-GOP superintendent of Three Lakes.

"I know for a fact they (the school board) weren’t thinking about an ad and I know I wasn’t thinking about an ad, a campaign ad,” (Superintendent George) Karling told the newspaper. “My idea was it was good for him (Walker) to see our Fab Lab because we were teaching other districts on that day. And that’s what it was.”

Karling, who has donated to Republicans in the past, told the News-Review the matter was a "lapse" on his part. He said the district got involved in the filming after Sen. Tom Tiffany (R-Hazelhurst) asked him if he could find some within the district who "might thank the governor for sparsity aid and direct per-pupil aid."

You mean he might not be doing this all for the kids?

Hey George! Why do you think a sleaze like Toxic Tommy Tiffany might have asked you that leading question? Do you really think Tiffany or Walker have any kind of natural curiosity about how things work, when the last several years has shown they don’t? Sounds like another episode of one of my favorite Republican shows : “LYING OR STUPID?”

The Walker campaign responded in its typical classy style, choosing “STUPID” for Mr. Karling, and claiming that the Three Lakes district should have known better.

Brian Reisinger, spokesman for Walker's campaign, supplied the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel with a July 15 email from the campaign to Karling with an attached form on campaign letterhead for film participants to allow the footage to be used for commercial broadcasting purposes, among other things.

The form features Walker's name on the letterhead and says the footage can be used for any broadcast purpose, but does not explicitly mention campaign ads.

Which means the Walker campaign is admitting that when Walker went to these schools, he was doing it as a campaign photo op, and not as part of his job as Governor. That shouldn’t surprise anyone, as most of us could figure out that this pre-election funding of schools was solely to try to cover up Walker’s attacks on public education over the previous 6 years.

But as a Wisconsinite, Reisinger’s admission does make me ask a question – “Has Scott Walker’s campaign paid for the travel and security related to these school photo ops, or have you dumped that onto taxpayers like me?” Sure seems like it’s time to file an Open Records request and find out if this lifetime grifter has found another way to leech off of the “hard-working taxpayers of Wisconsin.”

This cynical garbage is exactly why this is the Scott Walker 2018 theme song.

The vote totals to look for in Tuesday's primary

Ahead of Tuesday's Wisconsin primary elections, I wanted to look back at the last time this state had contested statewide primaries on both the GOP and Dem sides, to have a few benchmarks on what to look for in 2 days, and to give an indication of possible voter engagement for November.

Here's a look at the Dem vs. GOP totals in the 2016 presidential primary in the counties that cast the most votes in the state, and what it looked like in the smaller counties in the rest of the state. Over 2.1 million votes were cast in the April 2016 primaries, a number similar to what we see in midterm elections in Wisconsin.



As you can see, a little over 58% of the total votes were in 11 counties, and over 1/3 were in 3 counties - Milwaukee, Dane and Waukesha. But that doesn't mean the outstate vote is insignificant - about 900,000 votes in all.

Then you dig down within the 2 parties' primaries, and the distribution looks very different. As shown here, the WOW Counties and Racine County took up a disproportionate amount of the GOP primary electorate in April 2016, but so did the Appleton-Green Bay area, and outstate Wisconsin.



Given that Leah Vukmir is the "Eastern Wisconsin AM radio Bubble" candidate and Nicholson is running as the "independent Republican outsider" (HAH!) candidate, this is an interesting cross-current.

On the Dem side, not surprisingly, the counties that have Milwaukee and Madison in them are an even bigger part of the vote (more than 36%), but the 262 is a much less significant part of the electorate, and 2 of them are replaced by the Western Wisconsin counties of Eau Claire and La Crosse as counties with the most votes. (note that Milwaukee is in green on this chart)



A big thing to look at from the Dems side is if Milwaukee County turns out as strong as Dane County will (note that Dane County had more votes than Milwaukee County in April's Supreme Court race), and how that distribution of votes affects the outcome. It's also worth noting to see if Kathleen Vinehout and/or Mike McCabe will be helped or hurt by being the two candidates left from Western Wisconsin.

Lastly, given that Wisconsin has an open primary, voters decide on Election Day which party's primary they will take part in. In 2016, this breakdown seemed to portend what we'd see in November of that year, especially in the Fox Cities area, and in Racine and Kenosha. Those areas shifted toward Donald Trump and Ron Johnson to help put those two over the top, along with the GOP shift outstate.

That's why I think it's important to look at the turnout figures in Tuesday's primary in Wisconsin. That might have an even bigger indication which party wins and loses than the candidates themselves, because if Dem voters are coming out more than Republican ones in those swingier areas, it would be another indication of stronger engagement that would make it more likely that Scott Walker will lose in November, and that Tammy Baldwin might have an easier race.

Likewise, if we more Republican voters than Democratic voters, like we saw in April 2016 (by a 52-48 margin), then it shows Republicans are still engaged and/or Dems in some areas still are not (I'm looking at you, Milwaukee), and it may mean the recent momentum that Dems have seemed to have in Wisconsin may be fading.

Bottom line, VOTE ON TUESDAY, and make it count. Not only does it matter in selecting your candidates for these races, but it also will give plenty of tea leaves for those in the national news and donor class to read.

Budget deficit keeps growing, GOP's gutlessness keeps showing

"Budget Guy" Stan Collender is back with another column illustrating the weak act that Republicans in DC are pulling as the US's budget deficit continues to grow after their Tax Scam was passed in late December.

Collender notes that the Republicans that run Congress have been ducking any action on dealing with the deficit, even though the Federal Fiscal Year runs out in 50 days. But Collender adds that this tactic will backfire on Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell before the midterm elections.

House and Senate Republicans so far have been able to avoid talking about the deficit by making a complete mockery of the Congressional Budget Act. Even though Congress is required by federal law to adopt an annual budget resolution (the only legislation all year that compares total revenues with total spending and forces representatives and senators to vote on the deficit), the GOP leadership decided early in 2018 to prevent that from happening.

No budget resolution meant no budget debate. No debate meant no media coverage. No coverage meant Republicans wouldn’t be asked to explain their votes in favor of trillion-dollar deficits when they had previously and emphatically demanded that the federal budget be balanced.

This cleverness will end when Treasury and CBO issue their reports this October in the final days of a fierce election. That will put the GOP’s breach of faith with its fiscal past on full display for all to see, report on, criticize and make snarky 280 character comments about.

And with Friday's Treasury statement for August, it's obvious that the GOP's Tax Scam is blowing up the deficit - just like anyone outside of GOP Bubble World would have predicted.

U.S. budget deficit through July
FY 2017 $566.03 billion
FY 2018 $683.97 billion (+20.8%)

And the reason why is lower revenues, due to the lower tax rates that have been in effect for several months now. On the individual income tax side, the lower withholdings began in Feburary, which means that we have 6 months under these new rates. And we see that, contrary to the claims of Larry Kudlow and other Trump Admin dimwits, the tax cuts are not paying for themselves.

Individual income tax withholdings
Jan-July 2017 $660.78 billion
Jan-July 2018 $642.48 billion (-2.8%)

An even bigger gap is showing up on the corporate side, where tax revenues have tanked since the start of the year due to the huge cut in rates. And as we also found out yesterday, those extra funds being kept by corporations haven't helped wage growth ONE BIT, and they aren't even keeping up with inflation any more.

Corporate tax receipts
CY 2017 through July $146.563 billion
CY 2018 through July $103.953 billion (-29.1%)

Those declines aren't going to change in the last 2 months of this fiscal year. With that in mind, the Trump Administration is supposed to release the year-end budget figures for 2018 in October, as has been done for decades, but they likely won't want to. And while Collender acknowledges that it would be SOP for the Trumpists to hide the report or lie about it, he also thinks Wall Street would bite back and tank the markets. And besides, the CBO will put out their own figures in October that will confirm the large increase in the deficit.

But while it’s possible that the White House could concoct a reason to order the report be held until after the election, Treasury’s Monthly Treasury Statement is expected, used and relied on by Wall Street. Delaying it for obvious political reasons may be a theoretical option but just isn’t likely.

In addition, the Congressional Budget Office has shown no willingness whatsoever to knuckle under to political pressure and so will almost certainly release its own Monthly Budget Review this October no matter what the Republican leadership demands it to do.

Not that there aren't plenty of reasons to boot the Republicans out of power at all levels this November, but their fiscal fraudulence should be near the top of the list.

There is a striking contrast between the scoldy, condescending tone of coverage of @Ocasio2018’s budget hand-waving and the decade of credulous-verging-on-worshipful coverage of the same from Paul Ryan.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) August 11, 2018

It's truly amazing how our media refuses to ask the simple question of Wisconsin's alleged budget wonk "Hey Pau-lie, what's going to get cut to pay for your Tax Scam?" They could ask it of every other GOP as well, while they're at it.

Yet again - inflation outpacing wages. But even worse, it's uneven.

With trade wars looming over the cost of production, (this week’s) Producer Price Index and Consumer Price Index reports was a bit more intriguing than normal, to see if inflation was creeping up, or if deflation from surpluses were hitting certain goods.

While the headlines indicated producer inflation softened in July, CBS Marketwatch’s Greg Robb said it was really more of a mixed bag.

The producer price index was flat in July, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That was below the MarketWatch forecast of a 0.2% gain.

Another measure preferred by economists, known as core PPI, rose 0.3% for the second straight month. The core rate strips out food, energy and trade margins.

The flat PPI reading pulled the 12-month rate of wholesale inflation down to 3.3%. The 12-month rate of core PPI advanced 2.8% in July, just below the record high of 2.9% reached in March.

Why the disparity? Because energy prices stopped going up this Summer, and declined by 0.5% on the producer side last month.

What also grabs you about the Producer inflation report is how some areas are having major price pressures, while others are having prices decline, likely in part due to the trade restrictions leading to surpluses back here in America.

The index for unprocessed goods for intermediate demand moved up 2.7 percent in July, the largest rise since a 3.6-percent advance in January 2017. The July increase can be traced to prices for unprocessed energy materials, which jumped 8.6 percent. In contrast, the indexes for unprocessed foodstuffs and feedstuffs and for unprocessed nonfood materials less energy fell 2.0 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively. For the 12 months ended in July, prices for unprocessed goods for intermediate demand rose 8.2 percent, the largest advance since an 11.0-percent increase in November 2017.

…Leading the July increase in the index for unprocessed goods for intermediate demand, crude petroleum prices advanced 14.1 percent. The indexes for natural gas, fresh fruits and melons, slaughter steers and heifers, corrugated wastepaper, and coal also moved up. Conversely, prices for hay, hayseeds, and oilseeds dropped 14.0 percent. The indexes for corn and nonferrous scrap also moved lower.

Oilseeds are better known as soybeans and related seeds, and of course, soybeans have been a target of countermeasures to Trump’s tariffs, and unprocessed wheat, corn and hogs all have had drops in intermediate prices between 11.9% and 13.0% in the last year. And farm futures don’t make it seem like things will get better for farmers in the coming months.





On the flip side, final demand products like plywood (+22.5%) softwood (+19.5%) and “building paper and boards” (+14.0%) all have had sizable price increases in the last 12 months, which has to be bringing up the price of construction sooner than later. Also, note that tariff-affected products like aluminum mill shapes (+17.8%) and steel mill products (+12.4%) have had big price increases in the year before any tariffs from overseas hit.

For these products, the questions now become “who eats it”? The assembling factories, the stores (who will have their profit margins cut), or the consumer (who ends up paying more)?

The answer seems to be "both stores and consumers" so far, as today's CPI report showed another increase in July, but a relatively small one outside of the cost of shelter, which keeps straining home affordability in 2018.

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.2 percent in July on a seasonally adjusted basis after rising 0.1 percent in June, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index rose 2.9 percent before seasonal adjustment.

The index for shelter rose 0.3 percent in July and accounted for nearly 60 percent of the seasonally adjusted monthly increase in the all items index. The food index rose slightly in July, with major grocery store food group indexes mixed. The energy index fell 0.5 percent, as all the major component indexes declined.

The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.2 percent in July, the same increase as in May and June. Along with the shelter index, the indexes for used cars and trucks, airline fares, new vehicles, household furnishings and operations, and recreation all increased. The indexes for medical care and for apparel both declined in July.

By itself, the increase doesn't seem like much, but it continues a trend where prices over the last 12 months keep increasing at a faster rate. And that's true for both total CPI, and the "core index", which hit its highest point in nearly 10 years at 2.4%.



And some of those price pressures we saw in the PPI hit in the CPI as well. Dairy prices dropped by 0.6% overall in July, with milk down 0.8% and cheese down 1.0%. Pork prices have dropped in each of the last 3 months, including 0.3% last month, and are down 1.3% for the last year. These drops in certain food prices have kept inflation from going even higher, as the CPI outside of food is up 3.2% since July 2017.

On the flip side, tariffs seemed to start to hit major household appliances (up 3.5% in July, 8.5% for the last 12 months), but haven't hit new cars and trucks much (+0.3% in July, +0.2% for the year). It's hard to tell if the increase in building materials are having much effect yet, since housing costs were steadily rising before the tariffs, but it's worth keeping an eye on as things move through the supply chain.

Something that's not keeping up with the rate of inflation is wages, and that was shown again today in the Real Earnings report.

Real average hourly earnings for all employees were unchanged from June to July, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This result stems from a 0.3-percent increase in average hourly earnings combined with a 0.2-percent increase in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U).

Real average weekly earnings decreased 0.2 percent over the month due to no change in real average hourly earnings combined with a 0.3-percent decrease in the average workweek....

From July 2017 to July 2018, real average hourly earnings decreased 0.4 percent, seasonally adjusted. Combining the change in real average hourly earnings with a 0.3-percent increase in the average workweek resulted in a 0.1-percent decrease in real average weekly earnings over this period.

Same story we've seen for pretty much all of 2018, inflation rising, and nominal wages are not, which means workers fall behind.



Which continues the paradox that we're in of "low unemployment, low wage growth, and rising inflation." At least one of these has to change soon, and the story of the 2nd half of 2018 and 2019 will be which one does change.

Vinehout shows how local governments are being starved in Fitzwalkerstan

I wanted to forward a good recent column from State Senator and Dem gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Vinehout discussing how Wisconsin local governments have been increasingly handcuffed in the Age of Fitzwalkerstan.

In Wisconsin, local governments rely largely on aid from the state and federal governments for operations, as only counties can generally levy a sales tax, and the property tax and other fees are the main ways to raise the rest of the money. A problem with that system is that shared revenues were cut soon after Walker and WisGOP took power in 2011, and has been basically kept at that lower level in the 7 years since then.

In addition, Walker and WisGOP have decided to make limiting property taxes as a priority. Vinehout notes that the problem with this is that it makes it hard for local governments to keep the same level of services.

State law limits local governments’ ability to raise revenue from property taxes by imposing levy caps. The combination of levy caps and decreased shared revenue from the state leaves local officials asking ‘What do we cut?’

On this one-way street where the state makes the rules, limits what local government can spend, and doesn’t share increasing revenue, local folks are stuck paying more of the cost and have few options to get extra money.

As usual, she's right.

This manufactured budget crunch helps to explain why we have seen so many new local "wheel taxes" get imposed onto state drivers in the last few years, because that is one of the few options that Vinehout alludes to. The wheel taxes help communities fix their streets and take care of other transportation needs, which frees up a bit of money that can be used for other needs and services.

The City of Green Bay and Eau Claire County are among the newest places that have turned to a wheel tax to deal with their funding issues, and it puts the lie to Scott Walker's pose of "I haven't raised your taxes." If I'm looking at my figures correctly, over half of Wisconsin's population will be paying an additional vehicle registration fee by the start of next year, and mostly as a direct result of underfunding of aids for roads and local governments by Walker and his WisGOP buddies in the Legislature.

But wheel taxes only deal with one area of a local government's budget. Vinehout notes that the Act 10-exempt areas of public safety requires an ongoing investment, and that reality takes away from the already-strapped other services under the current local government funding system.

As discretionary programs are eliminated, more of local government budgets are taken up by public safety. Police and fire protection costs are increasing. But neither the levy cap nor the state shared revenue payments cover the increase.

Local officials are forced to choose whether to cut: public safety, repairing the roads, and/or community mental health and drug addiction programs.

Vinehout recently mentioned at a Dem gubernatorial candidate forum that she would like to raise shared revenues by $450 million if she was elected governor, and she expounds on that situation in this column by noting that these increases would simply restore much of the value that has been lost in the last decade and a half.

In a memo I requested from the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, shared revenue would need to increase by about 30% just to keep up with inflation since 2004. That would require an investment of $415 million in the next state budget.

It’s not like the money isn’t there, as Vinehout notes that the LFB estimates that $464 million is scheduled to be sent to Foxconn in the 2019-21 budget. Sure, some of the Fox-con's costs are supposed to be paid back in the form of added economic activity, but that doesn’t mention the economic activity that will go away due to the additional service cuts that are likely to be forced onto local governments over the next 2 years if nothing is changed.

I also want to go back to a version of the chart I showed yesterday, where I used information from the state's Annual Fiscal Report and the 2017-19 budget to show the change in tax funding of certain parts of state government. What you'll see here is that when Walker and WisGOP came to power, there were slightly more tax dollars going to shared revenues than there were to property tax credits. It's not that way today.



What this illustrates is that the starving of local government in Wisconsin has been a conscious choice by Scott Walker and the Wisconsin GOP over the last 7 years. And as Kathleen Vinehout writes, it's a situation that can be reversed, if we choose to put new people in charge.

Walker "own goals" again- exposing failed and expensive Corrections policies

Trailing in the polls, our Fair Governor went to what will likely be the default tactic of many Republicans over these next 3 months - race-baiting and authoritarianism.

Awaiting @ScottWalker at Milwaukee police union headquarters. His campaign has brought out some props blasting Democratic candidates for their plans to reduce the prison population. pic.twitter.com/CX8wQX61Lt

— Theo Keith (@TheoKeith) August 7, 2018

Milwaukee police union head Mike Crivello, referencing two @MilwaukeePolice deaths this summer: “We certainly should not make it easier for criminals.” pic.twitter.com/KhFncTPAEU

— Theo Keith (@TheoKeith) August 7, 2018

Niiice, bring out the union chief of a Police Department that's being sued for jumping Milwaukee Bucks player Sterling Brown in a parking lot, and last month made taxpayers shell out $3.4 million for unlawfully profiling people of color at traffic stops over several years.

Disgusting enough, but then Scotty openened up his mouth even more.

Walker, who has not visited a Wisconsin prison during his time as governor, says he will not do so: “To me, there’s no value to me visiting.”

— Theo Keith (@TheoKeith) August 7, 2018

In addition to the obvious dog-whistle from Walker that implies people in prison are subhuman and not worthy of attention, it's also a major dereliction of duty. Because an allegedly "frugal, fiscal conservative" like Walker should care deeply about what's happening at the prisons, and not just because the state had to settle a lawsuit of their own for nearly $19 million earlier this year due to negligence at the Copper Hills juvenile facility.

Even reporters in the state's usually pro-Walker media gave Walker's "no value" response a "WTF?"

Wisconsin has the highest black incarceration rate in the country, and prisons cost state taxpayers $1 billion per year. Recent lawsuits over the state's youth prison cost taxpayers another $20 million. https://t.co/YyZQn7kJYy

— Molly Beck (@MollyBeck) August 7, 2018

To be precise, Wisconsin's Corrections system will cost state taxpayers more than $1.2 billion in this fiscal year. It's truly amazing that Walker doesn't seem to care about what's going on in a department that big. And if you look at information in the state's Annual Fiscal Report and the amounts allocated for similar programs in the 2017-19 state budget, you'll see that the amount spent on corrections keeps going up. To the point that what Wisconsin taxpayers pay for our prisons is now significantly more than what we pay for the UW System.



Also notice that what we pay for a handful of property credits also has surpassed the taxpayer investment in the UW System. Nice priorities, ain't it?

And instead of dragging down Democratic candidates with his stunt today, Walker seemed to unite them and give them a chance to call out Walker's expensive and failed policies in Corrections.

.@ScottWalker once again showed that he will place his own political career before what’s best for our state. How can the governor - who oversees a billion dollars a year in Corrections funding - refuse to visit a corrections facility?

— Tony Evers (@Tony4WI) August 7, 2018

Walker never once visited Lincoln Hills, despite the horrendous allegations of child abuse there, and he also allowed our prisons to become massively overcrowded, putting both incarcerated people and corrections staff in jeopardy.

— Kelda Roys (@keldahelenroys) August 7, 2018

.@ForwardWFlynn blasts Walker for not visiting a prison, says he "wants to turn a blind eye to problems"

Flynn calls it "criminal negligence on the part of the governor" and a "cold-hearted approach to human beings" more akin to leaders in China or Russia

— Scott Bauer (@sbauerAP) August 7, 2018

And perhaps this statement sums it up best.

.@MahlonMitchell on @ScottWalker refusing to visit a Wisconsin prison:

"Refusing to step foot in any prison that is costing the Wisconsin taxpayers over $1 billion each year is proof Scott Walker is unfit to lead and will be replaced in November."

— Scott Bauer (@sbauerAP) August 7, 2018

Yep, and today's epically failed attempt at a fear-mongering dog whistle is the mark of a losing GOP candidate like Scott Walker in 2018.

Tariffs for revenue? More Trump illiteracy

I wanted to mention this silliness that came out this weekend.

..Because of Tariffs we will be able to start paying down large amounts of the $21 Trillion in debt that has been accumulated, much by the Obama Administration, while at the same time reducing taxes for our people. At minimum, we will make much better Trade Deals for our country!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2018

One look at the most recent US Treasury statement shows how ridiculous Trump’s statement is. Here’s what the statement says US took in for “Customs Duties” (where tariffs fall under) for June 2018.

Customs Duties $3.51 billion month, $28.32 billion for first 9 months of Fiscal Year.

Now granted, that’s up 12% vs 2017 at the end of June, so we’ve added nearly $3.1 billion in duties for the Fiscal Year to this point.

The problem is that with the Trump Administration estimating $40.44 billion in Customs Duties for Fiscal Year 2018, that only accounts for 1.2% of the receipts for the US Government. And even if you doubled those amounts of tariffs to over $80 billion for Fiscal Year 2019, that’s going to do next to nothing to cut into a deficit projected to be near if not above $1 trillion.

In addition, the economic disruptions that are likely to occur because of the recklessness of the Trump tariffs can slow the economy (lowering tax revenues), and/or increase the costs for government services. In addition, those economic disruptions may cause a need for further spending to lessen the political problems that will result, such as Trump's proposed $12 billion bailout of farmers who are caught up in the crossfire of this trade war.

The again, maybe Donnie is thinking of a time when tariffs actually were a main source of revenue, and that it could happen again. The problem is that Drumpf is thinking of a time more than 100 years ago, before the federal income tax existed.

That was back in the Gilded Age, when corporate robber barons and crooked politicians worked together to control most things in politics at the expense of the other 99% of underpaid workers and farmers. Hey, wait a minute…