Sports betting is legal outside of Vegas!! Well, not immediately, but maybe soon

I got a pleasant surprise from the news wires this morning. Sports betting can become legal throughout all of America! Thanks to a 7-2 decision from SCOTUS today.

Alito and six colleagues agreed, including all the court's conservatives as well as Justice Elena Kagan.

"It is as if federal officers were installed in state legislative chambers and were armed with the authority to stop legislators from voting on any offending proposals," Alito said. "A more direct affront to state sovereignty is not easy to imagine."

Justice Stephen Breyer agreed that the provision directing states to maintain sports betting bans should be stricken, but he said the whole federal law should not have been declared unconstitutional.

Ginsburg and Sotomayor went further, saying the the law should stand. "The court wields an ax to cut down (the law) instead of using a scalpel to trim the statute," Ginsburg said. "It does so apparently in the mistaken assumption that private sports-gambling schemes would become lawful in the wake of its decision."

What’s funny is that while I think the 1992 law should have been repealed by Congress and I’m very happy with the outcome, I also think Congress has the right to outlaw certain forms of gambling nationwide if they so choose, just like other activities.

The problem I have with that 1992 law is that is specifically carved out Nevada from enforcement- it should be all or nothing at the federal level (and I favor “nothing”). Not that I’m a lawyer, but if I were ruling on it, the Nevada loophole is what I would have pointed to in order to invalidate the law, and I probably would have taken the Breyer route of “betting’s legal, but mostly because the bill was written wrong.”


Coming soon to the Dells?

Here's a map of who might be looking to open a sports book in the near future.

How close is your state to legalizing #sportsbetting? A visual look: pic.twitter.com/g5apB598qS

— Ben Fawkes (@BFawkesESPN) May 14, 2018

I don’t see any Wisconsin proposal that was made in this session that even discussed legalizing sports betting here, although Wisconsin AG Brad Schimel apparently signed onto an amicus brief supporting New Jersey’s stance that the law be shot down (wait, I agree with Brad Schimel on something? Strange bedfellows, I guess).

But other Midwestern states have been preparing to make plans to get into the sports betting game. I do see that the Illinois Senate had a committee hearing on it in early April, and that MLB and NBA officials testified that they were OK with legal sports betting (as long as they get a cut, of course).

Indiana also had a sports gambling bill introduced back in January, and used input from MLB and the NBA to “ensure the integrity of its contests.” The Indiana bill had notable details about how the pro sports leagues would get their cut of legal sports betting, as ESPN’s David Purdum wrote at the time.

The leagues also would receive a 1 percent "integrity fee," paid quarterly by operators and based on the amount of money bet on a governing body's events.

For example, if a $100 bet was placed on an NBA game with a licensed Indiana bookmaker, the league would receive $1 from that wager, win or lose. The leagues would not have a cut on the outcome of the wager, only the amount of the bet. That could produce a multimillion dollar windfall for the leagues.

In Nevada, for example, $1.04 billion was bet on baseball in 2016. If Indiana generated the same amount of handle on baseball, Major League Baseball would be in line for approximately $10 million from a 1 percent integrity fee.

Interestingly, Indiana was coming back into a special session this week. But it looks to be limited to five bills mostly dealing with education issues (basically Indiana GOPs are doing ALEC bills “school security” BS that mirrors the sham we passed in Wisconsin).

Also interesting was this comment in January (also noted in the Purdum story) from the head of the American Gaming Association, who said that he thought the pro sports leagues were missing the real benefit from sports betting - driving up interest in the sports themselves.

American Gaming Association president and CEO Geoff Freeman says the leagues' opportunity to profit for legalized sports betting is by increased fan engagement, advertising and data rights -- not a straightforward cut of the action.

In addition, Freeman said the Indiana bill might cause some betting places to struggle to survive due to the extra expenses involved.

"They have an opportunity to make money in a host of different ways," Freeman said. "It's going to take a little bit of work. It's going to take some sophistication, but it's an extraordinary opportunity. Trying to con legislators into giving [the leagues] a direct cut of the amount that bettors wager is a lowest-common-denominator approach and actually undercuts the entire business of sports betting and will insure that we have more people going right back to the illegal market."

Which makes some sense, when you think about it. If 1% of the TOTAL AMOUNT BET is going to the MLB and another 1% to the NBA, then how much is the casino going to be able to keep in profit? The “vig” would likely go up, and might be too high for the typical bettor to want to do it (would you bet $120 to make $100 on a typical point spread vs the regular “$110 to make $100” vig?).

That, or perhaps the vig would be normalized at $110-100 in the hope gamblers would also take advantage of additional entertainment options in and around a sports betting place to make up the difference (like hotels, clubs and bars in Vegas).

According to today’s Indianapolis Star, Indiana won’t be likely to have legal sports betting until at least Fall 2019, if it all. Partly because the next group of lawmakers to figure out if and how to legalize sports betting may not be ones at the state level, but in Congress.

The big question moving forward is how the sports gambling industry will be regulated," said Nathaniel Grow, associate professor of business law and ethics at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.

"Rather than rely on a hodgepodge of individual state laws, the four major U.S. sports leagues — Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League — will likely seek new legislation in Congress regulating sports betting in a uniform manner across the country. Whether such a nationwide law will be passed or not, remains to be seen.”

So it sounds like I need to contact Mark Pocan and Tammy Baldwin and (yes even) Ron Johnson, and tell them that here is another case where they need to LEGALIZE IT!

Today's GOP will go as low as they can. In DC and in Wisconsin

As I've stated before Bill Maher is very hit or miss with me. But he may have had one of his best 'New Rules" yet this weekend, where he compared President Donald Trump to another type of Don. And not a cool one that could run a casino competently.

“What part of this isn’t mob-like? They’re using a legitimate front business – in this case the White House – to enrich the Family…

I always thought of [Trump] as an egomaniac and a blowhard. But I didn’t realize until this very year that he was a cheap hood all along. A common thug.”

Maher also says some words about a circumstance that has made me shake my head a lot in the 2010s. Why do people in the “honest, decent” Midwest, people who claim to live by morals and a strong work ethic, continue to support amoral grifters like Trump (and local versions like Scott Walker)?

“How did the “Salt of the Earth” people get messed up with the “Salt in the Wound” people? What happened to your values? What happened to good manners and monogamy. You’re the “My word is my bond” people. These guys lie just to stay in practice.

You’re all about an honest day’s work. Trump watches TV until Noon. You’re frugal. They spend like identity thieves who got your PIN number. You’re stoic. Trump’s a whiny bitch.”

It’s noteworthy that the “whiny bitch” and “common thug” lines got the largest applause from the audience. Most of us that oppose Trump and other GOP thugs do don't so out of fear or because we're waving blue Poms-Poms – it's because WE SEE THROUGH THEM, and are tired of waiting for justice and the average dope to catch up, and deal with the reality that's right in front of our faces.
The thuggery from Trump has clearly trickled down to today’s Wisconsin GOP. You may remember that US Senate candidate Leah Vukmir released this piece of trash last week as she defended torture-enabler Gina Haspell to head up the CIA.

Wisconsin GOP candidate: Dem senator is on "Team Terrorists" https://t.co/BmhRTxjs1P pic.twitter.com/7443FyJJt5

— The Hill (@thehill) May 9, 2018

Apparently in Leah Vukmir's world, being pro-torture is "American values", and opposing stupid wars and asking that all those accused of crimes still be given the presumption of innocence and to be treated humanely is "pro-Terrorist." Duly noted.

Bad enough, but you'd figure this type of inflammatory crap would get Vukmir cast out of any political party that had an ounce of decency. Instead, the Wisconsin GOP ENDORSED HER at their convention this weekend. So the clear majority of the Wisconsin GOP's biggest backers are cool with this type of divisive slime representing them. Again, duly noted.

Oh, and there was this tidbit from the convention late Saturday afternoon.

Delegates just approved resolution to end same-day registration and require voters to be registered at least 10 days before an election. Also, temporary residents (college students) would be required to vote in place of permanent residence. https://t.co/aJRyjmK71Z

— JR Ross (@jrrosswrites) May 12, 2018

What Trump and Vukmir and the vote-suppressors in the Wisconsin GOP shows is that there is no central belief in today's GOP that's based on policy. Everything centers from grabbing and (ab)using power and money by any means possible. And they do not care who they hurt or what kind of damage is done to our economy or our democracy along the way.

The GOP “base’s” support of candidates like Trump, Walker, Vukmir and the associated crookedness and hatred that comes with it means there are no "good ones." They must not just lose this next election in November. They must be ERADICATED from our Capitols in Madison and DC for several years. All are guilty, because none have stood up to stop this authoritarian madness from happening. So ALL MUST GO.

And as Maher reminded us at the end of his segment on Friday, those who stick with Trump and Trumpists aren't tough in any way, shape or form. And they need to look in the mirror.

“This is what you get when you get in bed with the mob. And maybe that’s OK with you. Maybe you said to yourself, ‘This is the business we have chosen.’”

But I gotta say, if you sold your soul to get protection from these 2 grandmas (Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton), the Big Pussy is YOU.”

Dems would end WIsconsin voucher scam that keeps stealing from local public schools

Here's a good piece of Sunday reading from Molly Beck in the Wisconsin State Journal, which discusses the state's school voucher program, and what Dems might do to it if one of them would be elected governor in November.

Before Walker took office in 2011 and Republicans took control of the Legislature that year, there was just one private school voucher program, in Milwaukee. Today, there are three more: For students in Racine, students statewide, and students with disabilities.

After years of state budgets that cut or held funding for public schools flat, Walker last year proposed and signed an education funding plan that adds a record amount of money, not adjusted for inflation, for public schools through 2019...

And even that figure is misleading, since the funding is a pre-election move based on the amount of attendance a school has, and not through the state's equalization formula, which directs more resources to districts with fewer land values to level the playing field.

Given the $1 billion budget deficit that is looming in the next budget, there are going to be limited amounts of funds to pay for both the regular K-12 public school system in Wisconsin and the voucher program. And most of the Democrats running for governor say that the voucher program is going to be phased out in order to keep the public schools funded.

Seven of the top nine Democrats told the Wisconsin State Journal last week they would propose to end all four private school voucher programs — though not all agree on how to eliminate them.

Another candidate said Walker’s education policies created a need for options outside of the traditional public school system, and did not say he would end the programs (this would be State Rep. Dana Wachs, FYI). A ninth candidate said she would seek to end the statewide voucher program and the program for students with disabilities only (the candidate is State Sen. Kathleen Vinehout).

More than 35,000 students across the state attend a private school using a taxpayer subsidy — including nearly 28,000 in the Milwaukee program.

Even in districts as small as Baraboo, parents are using loopholes in the rules to get vouchers for their children, which takes money out of the local public schools in the process.

The Wisconsin Parental Choice Program requires students applying at certain grade levels to meet one of several enrollment stipulations from the previous year to qualify for a voucher that covers tuition costs a participating private school of their choosing. They must have gone to school in a different state, been home schooled or not enrolled, participated in a different school choice program or been on a waiting list, or attended a public school.

Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction spokesman Thomas McCarthy said some families have tried to skirt the requirement by enrolling their children in public school districts for short periods....

Baraboo School District Administrator Lori Mueller said so far this year at least one local family appears to have taken a similar route. She said a student registered with the district, attended class Jan. 12 and dropped out. Mueller said she doesn’t know what school the student is attending or if they will qualify for a voucher next year.

McCarthy said it depends if the student was present for one of the agency’s official enrollment counts. The DPI gets public school enrollment data from two tallies throughout the school year on the third Friday in September and the second Friday in January — which this year fell on Jan. 12.

Baraboo School Board member Doug Mering said the loophole is allowing some families that can afford private school tuition to skirt the system at the expense of local tax payers and public school districts. Mering testified on the issue and other budgeting concerns in March before the state Legislature’s Blue Ribbon Commission on School Funding.

Remember, under the current DeVos-backed voucher plan that the GOP has in place today, if a student takes a voucher, it is funded by taking the same amount of funding away from the public school district where the child lives. So in the cases described above, the student never really attended Baraboo schools, but Baraboo property taxpayers will have to make up the difference in the thousands of dollars of state aid that gets funneled to the voucher school that student now attends.



What I didn't see mentioned in either Beck's State Journal article or the one from Baraboo is whether any candidates for office will remove the tax deduction from private school tuition for parents that don't get vouchers. This tax break was sponsored by now-Congressman Glenn Grothman in 2013, gives a deduction of up to $10,000 for high school tuition and $4,000 for elementary schools, and has had most of the benefit go to the richest Wisconsinites.

Given that these individuals already get a tax deduction for property taxes for money that goes to their local public school, why are these people allowed to double-dip at the expense of the rest of us? (Actually we know this answer, because dirty money through DeVos and ALEC helped get GOPs elected in Wisconsin) I'd really like to see some Dems step up and call out this preferential treatment for private schools as well, because I bet a whole lot of Wisconsinites really hate seeing these religious schools get funding assistance and tax breaks that their community schools don't. Especially when people pay the difference in property taxes due to vouchers and reductions in general school aids (which will be no different in the next school year than they were in 2011...BEFORE inflation).

Scott Walker can go around talking about the increases in per-pupil aid that were thrown in for the school year that starts before the November 2018 elections. But the damage from 8 years of aid cuts and throwing hundreds of millions of dollars into religious voucher schools hasn't disappeared, as evidenced by Walker's own home district of Delavan-Darien cutting 39 teachers and closing an elementary school after a referendum failed last month. We've had nearly 30 years to see what vouchers have done as a factor in K-12 education. They don't really do anything to help outcomes for students, especially when you account for whether or not the parents care about their kids' educational outcomes, and the money would be much better spent on helping to alleviate the crippling poverty and economic apartheid that afflicts so many low-income students in this state.

At this point, it's pretty obvious that vouchers are nothing more than a political ploy to funnel taxpayer dollars to the operators of these schools who reward those politicians by kicking back some of those funds as campaign donations. It's a so a cheap play for votes from fundies and other anti-education types that despise the social changes of the 21st Century. This scam must be ended if Wisconsin is to restore its place as a state with high-quality education that makes young parents want to locate/stay in and raise their kids in. Dumping vouchers would be a real way to look forward, and leave the failed ideas of the past (and the politicians that prop them up) in the dustbin where they belong.

"Record April surplus" doesn't change the reality of massive year-long US deficits

Given all of the talk about rising US deficits, this story from late this week seems somewhat surprising.

The federal government swung to a surplus of $214.3 billion in April, primarily reflecting the revenue from that month's annual tax filing deadline.

The Treasury Department reported Thursday that last month's surplus increased 17.4 percent from a year ago. The April surplus reflected both an increase in tax revenue and a decrease in the costs of certain health care and benefit programs that were pulled forward to March.

Federal income tax returns were due on April 17. The month usually generates a surplus even if the government is on pace to run a deficit for the entire year. The government collected $314 billion in individual income taxes in April, about $100 billion more than what it received from all its revenue sources in March.

Whoa, are the predictions of Steve Mnuchin and Paul Ryan coming true? Are we getting great growth that’s allowing these tax cuts to pay for themselves?

No, not really. If you look at the actual statement from the US Treasury, the “increased” surplus is simply a trick of the calendar.

Approximately $45 billion in outlays for Military active duty and retirement, Veterans’ benefits, Supplemental Security Income, and Medicare payments to Health Maintenance Organizations and prescription drug plans accelerated into March, because April 1, 2018, the normal payment date, fell on a non-business day.

Receipts were increased by approximately $19 billion over last April because of an additional day of collections in April 2018.

Take out that $64 million, and the surplus for April drops to $150 million, which is 17.6% less than the surplus we had the year before. That’s even more underperformance than we’ve seen for the 3 months that we have seen since the tax cuts started taking out less money from people’s paychecks in February.

Net deficit
Feb-April 2017 $185.8 million
Feb-April 2018 $209.7 million (+12.8%)

If that 12.8% year-over-year increase in the deficit holds over the last 5 months of Federal Fiscal Year 2018, you’d see a year-end deficit around $750 million, which would actually be better than the $804 million deficit that the CBO projected in March. And of course, the deficit gets even higher after that.



But if you look at the Treasury’s statistics on tax refunds for individual taxpayers, there’s reason to believe that the deficit will reach that $800 million CBO prediction for 2018. Particularly given that the tax cuts are not paying for themselves yet.

Withholding income taxes, Feb-April 2017 vs 2018
Feb-April 2017 $349.9 billion
Feb-April 2018 $342.4 billion (-2.1%)

In fact, the only reason that April revenues were relatively good is that there was barely any difference in the level of individual income tax refunds handed out this year vs last year.

Individual income tax refunds, Jan-April 2018 vs 2017
Jan-April 2017 $199.8 billion
Jan-April 2018 $202.7 billion (+1.5%)

But you know who has gotten bigger tax refunds? Corporations, which could well be a result of that PR blitz of year-end bonuses and other one-time stunts that were pulled after the GOP’s Tax Scam was put into law in December.

Corporate tax refunds, Jan-April 2018 vs 2017
Jan-April 2017 $21.1 billion
Jan-April 2018 $11.6 billion (+82.4%)

Because adding those year-end expenses at the higher tax rate means that there is less profit than otherwise would have been forecast earlier in 2017. So now corporations are getting some of their earlier payments back, while getting the write-offs and refunds at a higher tax rate, giving them an extra boost of profit on top of what the tax scam is giving them in 2018.

With all of the extra money coming from Congress and the Treasury, why would any corporations take the risk of adding onto their businesses or hiring more workers? Just take advantage of the giveaways and let the money roll in (and pay your fellow execs more money and buy up your stock along the way)! You wonder why I’m skeptical that we hit the 3.3% growth the CBO assumed for this year?

So while some ignorant financial writers and cynical Republicans might want to talk up the “record surplus” in April, a simple look inside the numbers (or at a calendar) will tell you there is nothing special to talk about. In fact, an honest examination of the numbers show that the Piece of Shit tax bill continues to cost well above the benefits it’s giving to the typical American, and that the deficit picture continues to worsen going forward.

"Foxconn will lose jobs?" Possible, while our taxes go into the pockets of Walker donors

I wanted to forward you to a great column by UW professors Charles Kroncke and William Holahan that appeared in Urban Milwaukee yesterday. The column is provocatively titled "Foxconn Deal Will Actually Lose Jobs," and starts with the assertions made by a consultant hired by the Walker Administration last year, who claimed that up to 13,000 jobs would be created as a result of the Foxconn project.

The consultant’s estimate for job creation assumes that the preponderance of Foxconn employees, their suppliers, and their suppliers’ employees will be from Wisconsin. But there is no guarantee that even a large fraction of their employees and suppliers will be Wisconsin tax-paying residents. Given the excellent freeway access to northern Illinois, surely many workers from out of state can be expected to commute to Racine for Wisconsin-subsidized jobs. Similarly, suppliers need not be in Wisconsin, as many of Foxconn’s needed electronic components can be shipped from anywhere in the world by air freight.

But, It Gets Worse
But assume for the sake of argument that all the suppliers and all the workers do reside in Wisconsin. Even then the estimate of 13,000 new jobs is still terribly misleading. That estimate is a gross job figure, not a net job figure. The correct way to determine the job impact of the subsidy requires the calculation of a net figure; the difference between the jobs expected at Foxconn minus the jobs foregone where the money came from. The subsidy is money diverted from Wisconsin locales where it could have been used on job-creating economic activity, such as in education, health, transportation, sewers, water, etc. That is, the jobs estimate must consider the most fundamental concept in economics: “the opportunity cost” of the money.

This is a point that voters seem to understand, but our media often doesn't mention. Funneling money and other resources down to Foxconn to upgrade their roads and infrastructure takes away money and job opportunities from the rest of the state.



Kroncke and Holahan continue by noting that sending out bags of cash to a corporation means that Foxconn will get the benefits of taxes all to themselves, while the Wisconsinites that actually pay for the taxes lose their opportunity to benefit from goods that everyone can utilize.

Free market principles offer an even sterner warning: it is the role of the market, not the state, to pick winning and losing firms through the profit and loss system. It is the role of the state to support the market by supplying those public goods — roads, infrastructure, educated citizenry, air quality, water quality, etc. — that the market cannot provide efficiently. Moreover, the state should finance these functions by collecting the needed taxes, employing user charges whenever feasible since these user taxes and fees embody another market principle: require people to pay for what they use. When the state reverses those roles and diverts tax dollars, as they do in the Foxconn subsidy, it is denying the state the benefit of the efficiency of the market system and of the efficient provision of public goods.

If the subsidy were spent on job creation elsewhere in the state, it is likely to produce several times 13,000 jobs; business writer John Torinus calculates the average subsidy per new job created in Wisconsin at about $23,000 per job. This is far less than the roughly $200,000 per job estimated in the Foxconn deal. At that rate, subsidizing other entrepreneurs with the $4.1 billion would yield approximately 90,000 new jobs. The diversion of tax money to the Foxconn subsidy results in a lost opportunity to add many more jobs to the Wisconsin economy and to add them over the entire state, not merely in its southeast corner.

Which brings me to the PR events Walker, Foxconn and WEDC pulled this week to commemorate the first $100 million of Foxconn contracts. It was a transparent campaign event to try to convince Wisconsinites that firms in other parts of the state will benefit from Foxconn. In addition to the fact that 23 of these 28 contractors were in SE Wisconsin and Illinois, what's not mentioned is that this inevitably pulls these firms off of jobs in their own home areas. And that will drive up prices for those projects, if they even come off at all.

Let's also talk a bit about those contracts. They were handed out by the contractor Foxconn chose - M+W Gilbane, a Walker/WisGOP mega-donor who One Wisconsin Now reported that Gilbane has given over $359,000 to Walker's campaigns over the years. And if you go to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign's database of donations and plug in the names of some of those contractors, you'll see quite a few donations headed to Scott Walker and other Republicans. This includes Michels Corporation in Waukesha and Hoffman Construction in Black River Falls, both of whom Walker visited last week as part of this PR campaign.

All of those contracts seem to have been handed out without any documented public bid process, under the guise of the Foxconn facility being a private project. But because Foxconn is heavily subsidized by taxpayers, shouldn't the fair, public bid process be followed, and shouldn't the public have a chance to find out who their tax dollars are going to before they're handed out? We'd never accept a multi-billion dollar government project being done on a no-bid basis, but the Fox-con sure seems to be doing that. And what kind of criteria is being used to select which companies get these lucrative projects?


We'll send your money to whoever we like

As Holahan and Kroncke note at the end of their column, the Foxconn boondoggle is a lot of things, but don't call it free-market capitalism.

It may be too late to stop the Foxconn subsidy from going forward. It is not too late, however, for voters to reconsider voting for the politicians who put it in place and to oppose any future effort to use taxpayer dollars to bypass the competitive marketplace. The state would be much better served by truly following free-market principles.

As Wisconsin's uninsured rate rises, Walker flails to fix the problems he caused

The Gallup organization consistently has consistently polled Americans nationwide asking whether they have health insurance for several years, a statistic that has taken on extra interest after the passage and implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Gallup does quarterly surveys and one large year-end operation to figure out this rate, and we started seeing warnings last year that the progress that had been made in reducing the uninsured rate since 2013 under the ACA was coming to an end. But this week Gallup put out their full-year report for 2017, which breaks the figures out by state, and things looked noticeably worse.

The uninsured rate rose by statistically significant margins in 17 states in 2017, the first time since the full implementation of the major mechanisms of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2014 that any state had a rate increase. Also, for the first time since 2013, no states had a [statistically significant] lower uninsured rate than the previous year….

Nationwide, the uninsured rate climbed to 12.2% by the final quarter of 2017, up 1.3 points since the low point of 10.9% measured in the last quarter of 2016. Since Gallup-Sharecare's measurement began in 2008, the national uninsured rate reached its highest point in the third quarter of 2013 at 18.0%, and thus the current rate, although up, remains well below this level.

These data, collected as part of the Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index, are based on Americans' answers to the question, "Do you have health insurance coverage?" The state-level data are based on daily surveys conducted from January through December 2017 and include state-level sample sizes that range from 465 randomly selected adult residents in Delaware to more than 17,000 in California.

And yes, Wisconsin was one of those 17 states who saw a significant increase in their uninsured population for 2017.



In the "timing is everything" category, the Gallup report came out two days after Walker Administration officials were traveling the state claiming that their method of turning down the fully-funded Medicaid expansion and instead relying on the insurance exchanges to cover many of those people was a success.

(1/2) "We have the ninth best rate in the country for percentage of population with health care. We managed to pull that off without expanding Medicaid." -Wisconsin's top economist John Koskinen #WIWorking to help you live your best life https://t.co/FxU3w9VrBY

— WIDeptHealthServices (@DHSWI) May 7, 2018

We're not in the Top 10 anymore, John. Not only did Wisconsin have one of the largest increases in its uninsured rate (11th out of the 50 states), it slipped badly in a statistic it had previously done well in – keeping its citizens from being uninsured.

Wisconsin rate, ranking for least uninsured
2013 11.7% (8th)
2016 6.2% (Tied for 7th)
2017 8.3% (Tied for 15th)

I’ll give Kos the benefit of the doubt and assume he didn’t know this Gallup survey would make him sound stupid and make his claims wrong and outdated. It sounds better than the other theory- that Koskinen was flat-out lying to an outstate audience and media who wouldn’t check up on his claims.

Given that there were few other changes in health insurance conditions for 2017, the increase indicates that more people chose to go uninsured than pay the costs for an insurance program on the ACA exchanges last year. Which means the pre-election GOP sabotage of Obamacare (especially Marco Rubio’s bill to stop subsidizing risk corridors, which had previous encouraged companies to offer services and keep premiums down) was a key reason behind more Wisconsinites not being insured last year.

Exchange premiums rose more in 2018 due to other GOP sliminess, and that was especially true in Wisconsin, whose GOP-led insurance commission assumed (correctly) that the Trump Administration would do further damage by stopping $7 billion in cost-sharing payments to insurers. Much of those 2018 price spikes were offset by the tax credits, but the GOP's moves in DC made it likely that Wisconsin’s uninsured rate would rise again this year.



There’s one other complication going on that especially hits working poor Wisconsinites. Given that 5 out of 6 of Wisconsin enrollees on the 2016 ACA exchanges got tax credits (available to lower-income individuals) to offset some of their premiums, it seems likely that a lot of those individuals that lost their health insurance in 2017 would also be some of the 75,000 Wisconsinites that are susceptible to losing food stamps in the proposed GOP Farm Bill in Congress.

Passage of that Farm Bill would likely spiral this already alarming increase in Wisconsinites without health insurance higher, as losing SNAP assistance would understandably drive some people into dropping their health insurance in order for the families to keep eating.

Ironically, part of Scott Walker’s cynical goal behind refusing to take expanded Medicaid in the ACA was to see Wisconsinites suffer by having the exchanges be overloaded with high-cost, low-income individuals, and cause people to be angry with Obama and Democrats. Except that Wisconsinites signed up for the exchanges in big numbers (especially in Northern Wisconsin, where Sean Duffy’s district had the most exchange sign-ups in the state), and the state’s uninsured rate was nearly cut in half through 2016.

Now in 2018, Walker’s cynical plan is coming to fruition due to his own party’s chicanery, under a president that’s not Obama. And now Scotty has to face an increasingly uninsured electorate in November. OOPS!

This helps explain why Scotty and his Insurance Commission put together a scheme to pay insurers $200 million ahead of the October 2018 open enrollment period. The hope is that the insurance companies will offer lower premiums for people looking to buy coverage, and then the Feds will pay back most of the difference because they won’t have to pay back as much in tax credits.

But many of these problems and stresses wouldn’t have existed if Walker and the rest of the GOP hadn’t have messed with Obamacare in the first place (AND FOR WHAT, by the way?). Look, I don’t think the ACA was a magic pill that solved all of the problems the US has with health insurance costs and coverage (single-payer or at least a public option is necessary to do it right), but you can’t argue that it was better than what we had before 2010.

Now that the GOP’s own sabotage is threatening to cause major political problems for Republicans this November because of the higher premiums and increased number of people without insurance in the Age of Trump, it is both hilarious and disgusting to see people like Scott Walker try to come up with “solutions” to the problems that they caused.

We are sliding badly in Wisconsin because of Walker’s and WisGOP’s spiteful decisions, and dropping toward mediocrity on having our people covered by health insurance is something all of us should be sickened by. And it won’t get better unless we toss out these saboteurs in 6 months.

Wall Street says inflation tamer. But it's not, and wages aren't rising either

With the recently rise gas and other prices going along with a rise in interest rates in recent months, yesterday's report on the Consumer Price Index carried extra interest for today, And Wall Street looked at the toplines of the CPI report and said, “that’s not so bad.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was on track for sixth day of gains and the S&P 500 edged past a key technical level after tepid inflation data cooled worries of faster interest rate hikes.

A Labor Department report showed its consumer price index rose 0.2 percent, below the economists' expectation of 0.3 percent, as rising costs for gasoline and rental accommodation were tempered by a moderation in healthcare prices.

"This data lends to the argument that the Fed can normalize patiently, but the flip side is that prolonged policy accommodation has yet failed to accelerate inflation," Peter Cecchini, chief market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald in New York, wrote in a note….

Investors have been worried about a build up in price pressures and the pace of interest rate hikes, especially after a recent reading on inflation crossed the Federal Reserve's 2-percent target.

Then I looked inside the actual report, and said “What are the Wall Streeters looking at?” Because inflation continued to be on the rise in April, especially in some key areas, and is likely to get higher in the near future.

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.2 percent in April on a seasonally adjusted basis after falling 0.1 percent in March, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index rose 2.5 percent before seasonal adjustment.

The indexes for gasoline and shelter were the largest factors in the seasonally adjusted increase in the all items index, although the food index increased as well. The gasoline index increased 3.0 percent, more than offsetting declines in other energy component indexes and led to a 1.4-percent rise in the energy index. The food index rose 0.3 percent, with the food at home index rising 0.3 percent and the index for food away from home increasing 0.2 percent…

The all items index rose 2.5 percent for the 12 months ending April; this figure has been mostly trending upward since it was 1.6 percent for the period ending June 2017. The index for all items less food and energy rose 2.1 percent for the 12 months ending April. The food index increased 1.4 percent, and the energy index rose 7.9 percent.

That 2.5% year-over-year increase (OK, 2.45%) in overall inflation is the largest in 14 months. A 3.4% increase in shelter for the last 12 is months is the largest since it was 3.5% 12 months ago (which equals 7% total over the last 2 years), and the 12-month jump of 13.5% in gasoline is the largest since last November. Add in the 0.3% rise in food prices for April (the largest one-month increase in over a year), and it seems that the expenses that poorer people pay more of are the ones that are going up the most.

I also note that while gasoline was listed as going up 3.0% on a “seasonally adjusted” basis, the unadjusted price at the pump went up twice that amount, at 6.2%. Anyone that’s seen a gas station sign in the last 10 days can tell you May’s figures will higher, and while some will be deflated away again, not all of it will. And gas won’t be coming down soon, as gasoline and oil futures have taken significant leaps in the last month due to Commander Cuckoo Bananas in the White House and his clueless idiocy on Iran and the rest of the Middle East.

I also caught this tweet from our Wisconsin-based Speaker of the House.

✅ Lowest unemployment level since 2000
✅ Jobless claims near a 48-year low
✅ #SmallBiz optimism at record highs
✅ Business investment up 24% over the last year
✅ Increased wages

Following #TaxReform, the good economic news is everywhere you look. pic.twitter.com/Dy8gBRmJjz

— Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) May 10, 2018

We know unemployment only dropped due to people leaving the work force in each of the last two months, as the rate of hiring hasn’t really changed in the last 3 years. And “wages going up”? Not after you account for inflation, which the real earnings report did today.

Real average hourly earnings for all employees were unchanged from March to April, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This result stems from a 0.1-percent increase in average hourly earnings being offset by a 0.2-percent increase in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U).

Real average weekly earnings decreased 0.1 percent over the month due to no change in both real average hourly earnings and the average workweek. (translation: real hourly wages actually went down, but by a fraction of a cent)

Real average hourly earnings increased 0.2 percent, seasonally adjusted, from April 2017 to April 2018. The increase in real average hourly earnings combined with a 0.3-percent increase in the average workweek resulted in a 0.4-percent increase in real average weekly earnings over this period.

That inflation-adjusted weekly earnings gain adds up to $1.55 a week in 1982 dollars, or about $5 nowadays. Don’t spend all of that windfall in one place, folks!

What’s notable is that on a current-dollar level, the 12-month gain in average hourly wages have been in the same 2.3-2.7% range since November 2015. But the biggest difference is that 12-month inflation has steadily risen in that same time period, from 0.4% in November 2015 to 2.45% today.



So people are barely treading water in the Age of Trump compared to the gains they were making at the end of the Obama presidency. And do you think this “wage vs inflation” picture is going to get any better in the next 6 months?

So I’m perplexed by the rally in the stock market over the last week. Allegedly it’s based on a thought that inflation is being tamed, which’ll help corporate profits and keep interest rates down. But the actual data doesn’t say that at all, and it seems likely that the year-over-year CPI will reach 3% year-over-year in the next couple of months.

3% inflation is something we haven’t seen in more than 6 years, and unless wage growth breaks out of the mediocre range of mid-2% that it’s been in, there are a lot of Americans that will fall behind. And sorry Pau-lie, but that $1.50 in tax cuts won’t be nearly enough to help them.

Wonder what those voters will be thinking as they head to the polls in November, as they realize that despite an allegedly “thriving economy”, rising costs and stagnant wages mean they are not better off than they were in November 2016, and likely to get worse in the near future due to Paul Ryan’s and Donald Trump’s tax scam in DC.