United Sportsmen scandal- Pt. 1, Where we've been

That's right, it's time for another installment in our ongoing look into WisGOP corruption. Today, we'll discuss the recent developments on the United Sportsmen of Wisconsin scandal, which had plenty of news come down over the last few days, culminating with Gov Walker trading one corrupt and sketchy GOP Assemblyman for another. But I want to use this first post to remind you of how we got to this point, and then I'll use a 2nd post to talk about what's developing now, and where it seems to be going.

To review, we already know that United Sportsmen of Wisconsin was a thinly-disguised Koch front group with a history of election fraud,and plenty of direct connections to now-former Assembly Majority Leader Scott Suder. Suder cooked up a taxpayer-funded $500,000 grant for United Sportsmen to perform "hunter education" and related duties, but that grant later was first changed by Gov. Walker to get around federal oversight (and the possible loss of millions of federal funds), and then yanked entirely once it was revealed that United Sportsmen lied about their tax-exempt status to the DNR, and that United Sportsmen's president had previously been arrested and fined for violating hunting laws.

Well, PR Watch gave us a good insight into just what kind of "outdoors education" United Sportsmen of Wisconsin was planning to give. Luke Hilgemann was a former Chief of Staff to Scott Suder, and later became head of the Wisconsin branch of the Koch mouthpiece Americans for Prosperity. He recently left the state to become the Koch's Number 2 guy for AFP in D.C., and an open records request into the United Sportsmen of Wisconsin fiasco showed that in addition to living in right-wing bubble-world, Hilgemann saw the grant as a way to gain political points.

PR Watch isn't attacking George Meyer, the waterfowl association, or any other outdoor group in Wisconsin because while they may be doing good work, they aren't having an impact on public policy like USW has.

If we weren't onto something that here that threatens the lefts (sic) stranglehold on the environment or conservation, these types of stories wouldn't be printed.

They know that if we're successful in educating and exposing a new generation of soccer moms and their children to the outdoors and the sporting pursuits that will eat away at their base and they won't be able to perpetuate the lies and scare tactics they've used on these groups anymore... (I never knew promoting Wisconsin's outdoors was a partisan thing, did you?)

And that is why we must continue to fight on! Because what we are doing is critical to the future of our sporting heritage and our passion for the outdoors, so again I say BRING IT!

Well, the Journal-Sentinel continued to "bring it" this week, as Jason Stein and Company continue to drip out details on this corrupt group, and I get the idea they already know that it leads to something huge, but they don't want to take a wrong turn on the way to getting there. The most recent revelation involved a United Sportsmen lobbyist taking Suder on a nice, all-expenses paid weekend excursion.

Scott Meyer, United Sportsmen's executive director and lobbyist, sent an email Aug. 16 to Suder and two others detailing plans for three outings over two days.

"Both (Thursday) evening and Friday evening are no charge," Meyer wrote, referring to a charter fishing trip and an outing on a boat owned by a United Sportsmen board member.

The trip came a week before the United Sportsmen Foundation won a $500,000, two-year grant from the state to promote fishing and hunting. In May and June, Suder had worked with other GOP lawmakers to insert a provision into the state budget creating a grant so narrowly tailored that the United Sportsmen Foundation was all but assured of receiving it. The politically active group has scant experience with the kind of training called for in the grant.

Suder claimed that he later paid the money back (after the stories on the fraudulent grant came out), but also is caught in the same story lying when he told the J-S he didn't know Hilgemann was a part of United Sportsmen.

It also turns out that Scott Suder wasn't the only one who wanted United Sportsmen of Wisconsin to get that grant, as Assembly Dem leader Peter Barca released a letter showing that 17 other legislative Republicans signed onto a letter of support for United Sportsmen of Wisconsin for the grant. The letter-writers say they believe that United Sportsmen "not only meets but will exceed the criteria outlined" for this grant, despite the organization having no history of providing any outdoors training or other DNR-type duties, or really much of anything except for being a right-wing electioneering group. Makes you wonder what gave them that confidence - and was it related to a few dollars toward their election bids?

It's worth noting that of the 18 GOP legislators signing onto the letter, many are in their first or second term. This includes Northwoods Reps. Rob Swearingen and Rep. Mary Czaja, and also features vulnerable GOP newcomers like Sen. Frank Lasee, Rep. John Spiros, Rep. Warren Petryk, Rep. Scott Krug, and Rep. John Jagler. It's not hard to imagine that they got some serious NRA and Koch-related support to get their seats, and that this United Sportsmen grant was a "thank you for your support" measure.

And at the top of the list along with Scott Suder? State Senator and Mining Bill co-sponsor Tom Tiffany. Tiffany's 2012 election up North helped to get the Mining Bill the 17-16 approval it received in the Senate early this year, and United Sportsmen of Wisconsin actively lobbied in favor of that mining bill - which seems odd for an "outdoors" organization to do, given that the mine would chew up miles of Northern Wisconsin forest land. Tiffany also is mentioned in the Journal-Sentinel story that brings up Suder's United Sportsmen-sponsored fishing trip.

The day after the last day of the trip, Aug. 24, a Saturday, the United Sportsmen Foundation held a board meeting in the state Capitol. They were able to meet there because Sen. Tom Tiffany (R-Hazelhurst) had reserved a room for Meyer, who lives in his district.

Suder joined them for part of that meeting. Also at the meeting was David Fladeboe, a former Suder aide who replaced Hilgemann at the helm of the state chapter of Americans for Prosperity. United Sportsmen and Americans for Prosperity have teamed up in the past on voter registration drives and a "freedom fest."

Tiffany aide Jennifer Esser was invited to the board meeting as a special guest. Tiffany said Esser allowed the group into the room and locked it up afterward, but did not actually attend the meeting.

Oh, but I'm sure these connections that Tom Tiffany are tied up in are all coincidence, and the have NOTHING to do with a kickback to AFP/Koch. And United Sportsmen and Koch have NOTHING AT ALL to do with the mining companies that GOP Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald told reporters were the ones who wrote the mining bill.



So that gives you a (somewhat) brief history of the United Sportsmen scandal through this Tuesday. It's gotten a whole lot more interesting the last 2 days, which I'll hit in part 2.

Hard to be Open for Business when no one wants to come

I was surprised at the level of retweets I got on this subject, so it clearly hit a nerve, and I'm going to link to the article on this page as well. Governing magazine compiled Census data that showed where people moved to in 2012, and Wisconsin was 48th in the nation when it came to the number of people that came here from another state in 2012. Governing explains how it made its rankings.

In all, states welcomed more than 8.9 million new residents in 2012. Census data released last week paints a portrait of each state’s new crop of residents, showing significant variation across different demographic groups.

For the most part, newcomers mirror a state’s existing population and that of the surrounding region.

But this isn’t always the case. To examine differences in each state’s newest residents, Governing compiled updated data published by the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Mobility data was pulled for two groups: those moving from a different state (about 7.1 million individuals nationwide) and from abroad (approximately 1.8 million).

It should be noted that this analysis considers only individuals relocating to a state in 2012. It does not account for those moving within a state, births, deaths or net migration totals.

Basically, Governing did a measure of where people are moving to, and here's how Wisconsin fared (hint, it wasn't good).

Stats involving movers to Wisconsin
Total out of state movers 116,995
Movers as percent of state's population 2.1% (3rd lowest out of 50)
Median Income of Domestic Movers $16,764 (7th lowest out of 50)
Education attainment: Bachelor's degree: 43.2% (18th in U.S.), Master's degree: 18.6% (15th in U.S.)

Even the high levels of educational attainment aren't all that great in context, because many of those that move to Wisconsin include grad students moving to the Madison area to study at the UW (which has been subject to serious funding limitations and GOP criticism in recent years). With that atmosphere floating around, good luck getting those high-skill people to stay after their studies are done, especially when you have states like Minnesota (15th for Bachelor's movers, 18th for Master's), Illinois (8th for Bachelor's, 11th for Master's), and Michigan (19th for Bachelor's, 13th for Master's) competing for that same talent.

Wisconsin is also failing to compete in wages, as shown by the recently-released Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. A good example of this is how the state matches up with its Midwestern neighbors when it comes to what they pay workers in manufacturing.

Average weekly manufacturing wage, Q1 2013
Ill. $1,313
Mich $1,277
Minn $1,180
Ind. $1,180
Ohio $1,110
Wis. $1,053
Iowa $1,008

Low wages aren't going to make people want to pack up and come here either. And despite the large amount of talk that Gov. Walker and WisGOP make about manufacturing and business development (by the way, the Gov wants you to know that Manufacturing Month starts tomorrow!), they NEVER discuss the low wages that are a primary cause of this state's alleged skills gap in these industries. In fact, Walker puppetmasters like Diane Hendricks would love it if wages were even lower in Wisconsin!

So when you combine the low wages with the cuts in public education, the institution of regressive social policies, and having a whole lot of ideologically-driven fools call the shots at both the Capitol and the Governor's Mansion, it adds up to being 48th in the nation in having out-of-staters move to our state. And those who do move tend to be poorer than other areas, and likely have lower skill levels to go with it, because the better skilled can get paid more elsewhere. That's not exactly raising the level of the talent pool in this state and making it attractive for businesses to want to come here, and sounds a whole lot more like some low-quality of life Confederate state that smart people leave as soon as they can.

If we're going in this direction in Wisconsin, it sort of flies in the face of being "Open for Business", doesn't it?

The numbers don't lie, but the Guv sure does

With the release of this week's Quarterly Census on Employment and Wages yet again showing Wisconsin in the bottom half of the U.S. for job growth (click here for the always-awesome interactive chart), the Walker Administration has now decided to raise its game. They are lying and deceiving at higher levels of mendacity.

Here's the first one, where Walker tried to resurrect a zombie lie on Friday.

"These numbers are March to March, and in March of last year, we were still three months out from the recall election," Walker said at a press conference in Chicago, where he appeared at an economic forum. "And as I point out repeatedly, employers in the state were basically frozen until they knew what would happen in that election and the uncertainty it caused."

In reply to a question about Wisconsin's jobs growth, from a Chicago news organization, Walker added this elaboration:

"There's no doubt in our first two years, because of the protests, the recalls, that they had an impact early on. Much as there is concern nationally about the impact of Obamacare and the impact it has on employers, they just wonder with uncertainty."

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE. And one glance at the QCEW private-sector job numbers for Wisconsin proves this.

Every year more people are working in Wisconsin in June than March because of Summer tourism and related seasonal employment. But a larger number of people dropped off the work rolls in the 9 months AFTER the recall than in the same time period for the 2 years before it.

QCEW change in raw Wis. private-sector jobs
Jun 2010-Mar 2011 -67,954
Jun 2011-Mar 2012 -68,107
Jun 2012-Mar 2013 -81,761

So the we had an increased drop of 13,600 jobs in the time after the recalls vs. the same time period in the previous two years. The same reality shows in the seasonally-adjusted job charts. Let's use both 6 and 12-month intervals after the June 2012 recall, and the intervals before that.

Change in Wisconsin jobs, seasonally adjusted

Dec 2011- Jun 2012 +15,700 all, +18,800 private
Jun 2011- Jun 2012 +34,600 all, +37,600 private

Jun 2012- Dec 2012 +9,800 all, +5,000 private
Jun 2012- Jun 2013 +25,800 all, +25,600 private

You can see that hiring hit a wall after the recall, and didn't pick up compared to the same time period before the election. In fact, there is more proof that Walker winning the recall stopped job growth in Wisconsin, instead of ramping it up.

Also, there's a WisGOP talking point of "look at the last 4 months of job growth." And while those last 4 months look impressive, with more than 35,000 jobs added, isolating those 4 months is a classic case of cherry-picking. It conveniently leaves out the jobs bomb in April, when more than 20,000 jobs were lost in Wisconsin. If you change the last 4 months of job growth into 6 months, the stats look like this.

Job change in Wisconsin, Feb 2013- Aug 2013
All jobs +9,100 (average +1,517)
Private sector +14,700 (average +2,286)
1-year rate: +18,200 all, +29,400 private

Not really much different than we had before, so unlike what Scotty said on Friday in Chicago, I don't see any evidence that there'll be a "significant increase" in the pace of job growth in Wisconsin by the end of the year.

And here's the second big lie by Walker and company that got exposed this week. The GOP oligarchs at Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce have been running hundreds of thousands in ads claiming Wisconsin's economy is doing well and crediting Gov. Walker for this allegedly strong performance. I pointed out some of these out-of-context deceptions earlier this month, but someone a whole lot higher up in the food chain also called out Walker and the WMC for their lies late last week.

Walker and WMC have also been quoting the Philly Fed’s “Leading Indicator," a 6-month forecasting of the Coincident Index for each state, to say Wisconsin’s economy is projected to show the second-largest improvement in the country.

“We do not consider state rankings based on the coincident and leading indexes to be valid,” says Paul Flora, Senior Economic Analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in an email to the Cap Times.

Flora says the differences in the various state economies influence the relative change in the index from month to month. He says an older, mature economy, such as New York, tends to experience smaller percentage changes than a smaller, younger economy, such as North Dakota.

Now, I also have extensively quoted the Philly Fed's state indexes over the last couple of years as proof of Walker's failures, but I've always done it as a point of comparison with other states, and done it from a common starting point in time, with all states starting at 0. As mentioned previously, what makes the Walker folks so dishonest about how they use these numbers is that they cherry-pick the last 3 months, and ignore the longer-range time that puts those numbers in perspective. You know, like how Wisconsin is dead last in the same index in the Midwest since Walker took office over 2 1/2 years ago.



Don't get me wrong, a good short-term uptick is a nice thing to have, but it doesn't change the fact that the overall record is horrible. Basically, falling for WMC's BS is the equivalent of getting excited because the Brewers have had one of the best records in the NL for their last 21 games (14-7). Just because that stat is true, it doesn't mean the Brewers still won't finish well below .500, and it doesn't change the fact that the franchise had a lousy year. The strong finish also shouldn't be a reason you should consider the Brew Crew to be playoff contenders in 2014.

Unfortunately, we're a lot more honest in this country when it comes to discussing sports than we are in discussing politics. But our media needs to remember that there are not "two sides to the story" when you are talking about raw numbers, be they in job creation, or in comparing the figures in an index over time. You can debate why something did or did not happen, but Scott Walker can't be running around saying Wisconsin job creation picked up after the June 2012 recall elections WHEN THE ACTUAL NUMBERS SHOW IT DID NOT.

Walker, WisGOP, and WMC would never float these lies if our state's media would simply DO ITS JOB AND CALL THE WALKER FOLKS OUT when they try to slip these things by them. We need to pound this reality into the public sphere, and ridicule the weak-minded people who fall for these clear lies, to show bystanders how wrong these people are, and to give a higher authority to FACTS AND HISTORY. If that means a full-frontal attack on right-wing radio stations and media that continue to display these deceptions and lies as fact, then that's what it takes.

As someone who makes a living partly due to data and formulas, I resent the Wisconsin GOP trying to spin things that are clearly proven false by the numbers. And our voters and our media should be equally insulted that this dishonest Administration views them as gullible suckers.

Wisconsin continues to struggle with jobs

A few quick thoughts on yesterday's release of the Quarterly Census on Employment and Wages.

Wisconsin is still in the doldrums when compared to the rest of the nation. 31st in the country in total jobs created, and 34th in the nation in the private sector. The only reason they weren't in the 40s (like I thought they'd be) is because large states like California, Texas, Michigan, Florida and Georgia had big increases, which helped explain how the overall U.S. private sector increase of 1.6%, but the median state was more like 1.3%.

That being said, Wisconsin's private sector job increase of 1.08% is still the lowest it's been since Sept. 2012, and you have to go back to September 2010 to find one lower than that. In fact, this recent Quarterly report gives us a good look at the effect of Walker policies, as Act 10 was passed into law in March 2011.

Private sector job change, Wisconsin
March 2010- March 2011 +1.90%
March 2011- March 2012 +1.79% (-0.11%)
March 2012- March 2013 +1.08% (-0.61%)



And we continue not to measure up to our Midwestern neighbors, ranking 5th out of 7 for job growth, with Michigan and Minnesota doubling us up at over 2% growth.

We'll have more on this later, including the absurdity of Scott Walker trying to take credit for adding more jobs than 28 other states, while leaving out that we have more people than 30 other states. But it is obvious that Wisconsin continues to lag the rest of the nation and its Midwestern neighbors, and with the 20,000 job loss in April still to be counted, those bad stats are in line to continue, no matter what WMC's ads try to tell you.

Once again, 3 good months doesn't change Walker's bad record

I noticed that Scott Walker has a new favorite economic metric- the Philadelphia Federal Reserve's monthly state-by-state indexes. And with good reason, because the state coincident indexes released today show that Wisconsin had the 2nd highest-growth in the U.S. for the Summer months of June, July and August. And I know this'll stun you, but Walker's office came out within a few hours with a press release mentioning it.

Wisconsin’s growth rate over the last three months is the best in 25 years and the state’s ranking is the best in history.

“This is more great news, not only for the state, but for job-seekers and employers as well,” Governor Walker said. “A better economy means a better quality of life for all Wisconsinites, and that is why it is my top priority. This latest history-making ranking is one more sign we are heading in the right direction.”

Notice the mention of "heading in the right direction." Because that's what a politician does when their policies have generally failed but they've had a recent upturn. Bush and Cheney gave a whole lot of "heading in the right direction" comments while our troops were in Iraq. Didn't mean things were handled right, or that things wouldn't revert to horrible soon.

And I wasn't the only guy who noticed our fair leader now proclaiming how the Philly Fed survey was the one to look at. Wisconsin Public Radio pointed out how the Guv has conveniently stopped talking about another economic stat.

About a month before his recall election, monthly estimates showed Walker had lost jobs his first year in office. To counter that, Walker sped the release of actual job counts showing job gains. (and he lied about what those numbers were).

“The numbers we're talking about today aren't a poll,” he said at the time. “They're an actual survey of more than 150,000 employers of this state.”

The numbers Walker highlighted that day and for more than a year since are the backbone of the federal government's Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which economists regard as the most thorough and accurate job measure.

But quoting the QCEW as an accurate measure of how you're policies are doing is so 2012.

“Rankings that come out are typically based on quarterly numbers that come out from [the Bureau of Labor Statistics], which are a six-month lag,” [Walker] says. “What we're trying to look at is not six months ago … but where are we going to be in the next six months.”

Walker is talking about the Philadelphia Federal Reserve's Leading Index, a complex prediction of where state economies are headed based on several factors, including housing permits, interest rates, and hours worked in manufacturing.

Marquette University's Charles Franklin says it's telling that Walker is moving away from a hard job count that's easy to understand to a much more complicated estimate that's hard to explain. “Politicians are not economists,” he says. “What politicians care about is the perception of how the economy is doing rather than the best or most reliable measure.”

It's also no coincidence that Walker's change of emphasis has happened when the QCEW is slated to be released this week, and will likely show Wisconsin in the bottom 10 of states for job growth from March 2012- March 2013. In addition, let's see if those job numbers stay strong now that the kids are back to school and frost will be soon be showing on some pumpkins.

And notice that Walker's only mentioning Philly Fed stats from the last few months. The guy's been in office for more than 2 1/2 years now, with a WisGOP majority for almost all that time. Why doesn't he stand behind the whole body of work?

Well, this chart shows you why- even with the good summer months of 2013, Wisconsin is still DEAD LAST in the Midwest in the Philly Fed index during the Age of Fitzwalkerstan.



Sorry Scotty, but the nice recent numbers do not erase more than 2 years of failed policies. And your newest job creation package is a classic "too little, too late" move, in the hope that voters have forgotten what you've been pulling for nearly 3 years.

Well, I sure haven't forgotten how badly you've screwed Wisconsin's economy. Just like the 2013 Brewers, one late-in-the-term good streak doesn't change the fact that this still has been a lousy team over at Walker and Friends. And just like the Brewers, the minor improvements we are be seeing now may mean very little for how well things go in 2014.

Decent August in Wisconsin, but still behind the curve

This week featured another Wisconsin jobs report, and it was a relatively good one, with 7,300 private sector jobs added, and 6,100 overall. Some of the private sector growth was offset by downward revisions for July by 1,800, meaning July actually had a seasonally-adjusted loss of jobs by 100. But even if you knock off the July loss, 6,000 private sector jobs gained in two months is in line with the seasonally-adjusted increase of 35,000 private sector jobs in Wisconsin for the last 12 months.

If we go inside the numbers for August, there are a couple of standout figures. The first is the increase in Construction jobs, 3,300 on a seasonally-adjusted basis, and 2,000 on a non-seasonally adjusted one. This means that seasonal layoffs in construction aren't happening, and instead we're seeing hiring in late Summer. Now, we'd only gained 1,000 jobs in the Construction sector for the 11 months before August 2013, so it remains to be seen if this is a sign of growth, or just a one-month fluke of timing. But certainly good news if you work in those industries.

On the flip side are the job stats in Manufacturing for Wisconsin. July was revised down by 2,500 jobs on a seasonally-adjusted basis, and 500 more Manufacturing jobs were lost in August, for a total of 3,000 fewer Manufacturing jobs than we thought we had this time last month. Some of this was expected, as Page 2 of this month's U.S. jobs report pointed out "auto manufacturers laid off more workers for model changeover in July than in recent years," and there were big downward revisions in Manufacturing for July nationwide.

But this doesn't explain the slippage we saw in Wisconsin for August, and it doesn't explain why we've seen 6,600 manufacturing jobs go away in Wisconsin over the last 6 months.



And yes, Wisconsin is ahead of the nation's in adding manufacturing jobs since Gov. Walker took office in January 2011. But as I brought up while debunking WMC's lies about Walker's job record, Wisconsin has the 2nd-highest percentage of jobs in manufacturing in the country, so we should be ahead of the national rate when manufacturing jobs are being added.

We've had a nice runup in jobs since the disasters in March and April, but the losses in those two months and the stagnation before that leave us well into the hole compared to the rest of the country. Despite some recent narrowing, the Walker jobs gap is still nearly 40,000 jobs overall, and nearly 50,000 in the private sector.





And keep your eyes peeled on the next two months, as kids go back to school and seasonal jobs end. That caused a lot of the "increases" in May and June, as those kinds of jobs had more hiring than normal, and if those jobs aren't maintained in Fall, we'll see those turn into job "losses" in the next couple of reports.

Wisconsin slipping in 3 major economic stats

Just a burst of economic data out today, and I want to center on one report in particular, which is the Census Bureau's annual release on Income, Poverty and Health Insurance coverage in America. I wanted to break out this report to show what happened in 2012, and how both the country and the state of Wisconsin has fared in the wake of the recession. And Wisconsin has certainly slipped in these areas in the age of Fitzwalkerstan.

Incomes
The country is still stagnating in this category, and it's one of the big letdowns in what otherwise has been a steady expansion over the last 4 years. Real (inflation-adjusted) household income is 8.3% its 2007 peak in the U.S., and now sits at just over $51,000. Even in what seemed to be an increasing expansion in 2012, the Census Bureau says real household income dropped by $83.

The same trend of falling income holds in Wisconsin, as we were down $56 to $53,079 in 2012, and still are nowhere near our 2006 peak of over $58,000. While Wisconsin didn't see the disasters that other industrial states like Michigan, Indiana and Ohio had (and Ohio and Indiana are still having), we also are well behind Minnesota, whose household incomes have gone up each of the last 2 years, with a median income more than $8,000 above Wisconsin.

Median household income, 2006-2012


So this one you really can't throw on Walker, since Wisconsin's income stagnation is mostly reflective of the income stagnation in the rest of the nation. But it is worth noting how Iowa and Minnesota are rebounding while we stay flat.

Poverty
The poverty rate in America stayed the same in 2012 as it was in 2011, at 15.0%, and has largely been unchanged from its 2009-2010 average of 14.8%. Wisconsin's rate was lower, at 11.4%, but that good news masks a bigger story. Wisconsin's rate was much lower in the 2 years that the state was under Doyle/Dem control, at 10.5%, but the poverty rate spiked to 13.1% in Wisconsin in Walker's first year in office, in 2011. As you can see, it was 1 of only 2 Midwestern states to see such a rise in poverty over these two years.

Poverty rate, U.S. and Midwest states


In fact, the Census Bureau says Wisconsin's 2-year average increase of 1.7% made it one of only 7 states in the nation to have a statistically significant rise in the poverty rate in the country. And with no other state in the Midwest having such a jump, including other GOP governors taking over in Iowa, Michigan, and Ohio. So it sounds like Scott Walker's brand of TeaBag austerity is a definite standout when it comes to increasing poverty in Wisconsin.

Health insurance
I've mentioned Walker health insurance plenty of times, including an analysis of just how stupid his anti-Obamacare policies are from both a fiscal and policy standpoint. But now the Census Bureau offers hard proof that more Wisconsinites are now doing without health insurance since Walker has taken office.

It doesn't look bad on the surface, as Wisconsin is still 7th-best at having its citizens with health insurance, with an uninsured rate of 9.7%. But Scotty didn't build that strong standing, as a comparison with the same stats from 2010 will show. Wisconsin has fallen from 5th to 7th in the U.S. during the Age of Fitzwalkerstan for having the lowest rate of its people be uninsured, and our neighbors to the west was one of the states that passed us.

Lowest rate of uninsured, 2010
1. Mass 5.5%
2. Haw. 7.7%
3. Ver. 9.3%
4. Maine 9.3%
5. Wis. 9.4%
6. Minn 9.7%

Lowest rate of uninsured, 2012 and 2010 change
1. Mass 4.1% (-1.4%)
2. Ver. 7.0% (-2.3%)
3. Haw. 7.7% (0.0%)
4. Conn 8.1% (-3.1%)
5. Minn 8.3% (-1.4%)
6. Maine 9.5% (+0.2%)
7. Wis. 9.7% (+0.3%)
8. Iowa 10.1% (-1.9%)

Also notice that the only two states in that 2012 list that had higher uninsured rates also elected two of the most obnoxious TeaBag governors in 2010- Walker and Maine's Paul LePage. It doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Wisconsin's slippage in having its citizens be insured really stands out when you compare our 2010-2012 increase in uninsured with the decrease that's been going on both nationwide, and in the Midwest.

Rate of uninsured, 2010 vs. 2012


And with this trend in place, and many states taking Obamacare and expanded Medicaid benefits in the coming months, I'm thinking Wisconsin won't maintain its top 10 ranking in uninsured much longer. Which means Scott Walker has taken away yet another reason that Wisconsinites could take pride in - because we are no longer a unique place that had a government who cared about its most vulnerable citizens.

So in addition to the 51,000 job Walker jobs gap, we now have numbers showing that Wisconsin's incomes have stagnated, with more people falling into poverty, and more of its citizens lacking health insurance during the Age of Fitzwalkerstan. Other than shifting funds and power to campaign contributors and other oligarchs, does anyone think "it's working" with Scott Walker.