It’s not working: Walker’s perfect record on job losses

Wisconsin lost 3,900 private sector jobs last month, a number that once again bucks the national trend. The U.S. had a gain of 212,000 in December, which was better than most economists were expecting. Most of the jobs lost in Wisconsin were in service sector industries, as well as hotels, restaurants, leisure and hospitality. A lot of these are businesses that have to do with discretionary income. That’s something that is in shorter supply since the guv’s budget took effect July 1. While he crows in his campaign ads about thousands of jobs being added in the last year, the truth is that all of those jobs were added under his predecessor’s budget and he knows it. Walker’s policies have been carving down on the positive balance accrued under the last six months of Jim Doyle’s budget ever since July in perfectly uninterrupted fashion. The nearly 28,000 jobs lost in the last six months of 2011 under Walker left the state with a net gain of around half that for the entire year. (It was probably a good thing for Walker that the year ended when it did, so it could still show any gain at all.)

When your team is 0-6, is it any wonder that there are a million signatures in the Government Accountability Office demanding that the manager’s tenure be reconsidered in a recall election? And is it any wonder that Scott Walker – after showing up for his right-wing media pals Rush Limbaugh and Fox News – has said he won’t be taking any interviews from Wisconsin television media this week? Is it any wonder that he needs to traipse around the nation to gather out-of-state money so he can bankroll his bogus claims of out-of-state interests forcing his recall election? Did he notify the media about his non-availability this week through that press spokesman with the immunity deal for the corruption probe among his Milwaukee County aides?

There’s something about those million names Gov. Walker needs to understand and it’s pretty simple: they’re all from Wisconsin. No matter how many slick, swift boat ads he funds with his far-flung fundraising forays, he’s eventually going to figure out that there aren’t any votes for him in Texas, Florida, Washington DC, in New York at AIG or out at the Reagan ranch in California. The Koch brothers can’t vote for him, either. He’s going to have to answer for himself, right here, among the people he’s actually supposed to be working for. They’re the ones that he promised those 250,000 jobs to. They’re the ones that he didn’t bother to tell about his anti-middle class, voter suppression, jobs-killing agenda during his last campaign and he probably won’t be talking about much of that stuff during this one, either.

But the monthly job numbers in Wisconsin tell us something that Walker’s campaign ads and his right-wing apologists never will: It’s not working. And by next July or so, there may finally be a job loss occurring in Wisconsin that Walker really cares about.

JR

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, check out this graph from:

http://political-heat.blogspot.com

Rick Perry’s Turkey comment won’t hurt him with his base

Gaffe master and rapidly sinking GOP presidential hopeful, Texas Governor Rick Perry, caused quite a stir this week with his uninformed comments about Turkey, an important and strategically situated U.S. ally that shares borders with Iraq, Syria and Iran:

“Obviously when you have a country that is being ruled by what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists, when you start seeing that type of activity against their own citizens, then … not only is it time for us to have a conversation about whether or not they belong to be in NATO but it’s time for the United States, when we look at their foreign aid, to go to zero with it.”

It kind of makes you wonder if he’s getting his foreign policy briefings from the same people that took care of Sarah Palin’s, somebody that another GOP presidential hopeful, Newt Gingrich, now assures us he would like to see play a major role in his administration. (Speaking of strategically situated, she can see Russia from her house.)

It’s not as though there aren’t any Republicans that know anything about foreign affairs, but they may be trying to get rid of them as fast as they can. If Newt had said that GOP Senator Dick Lugar would be his first pick for Secretary of State, for example, he might have been worth listening to for another 20 seconds. Lugar is the most senior member of the U.S. Senate, a Rhodes scholar, former mayor of Indianapolis and the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has been instrumental in reducing the threat of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons around the world. He gets it. Sarah Palin never has.

Unfortunately, none of that stuff means much with narrow-minded nationalists and they seem to hold great sway in GOP primaries. Now in his sixth term, Lugar faces a primary threat from a TEA Party candidate after a stellar career in public service because when they talk about foreign relations at all, too many in the Republicans base value bravado, saber rattling and jingoism over things like world peace and international cooperation. In fact, you don’t really have to talk about any of that foreign stuff at all, unless it’s to mention that you want to increase the budget for the military. I have nothing against the military since I spent a half dozen years in a uniform myself, but it’s often the most costly and crude way to pursue foreign policy goals. It’s something we resort to when we’ve failed elsewhere along the way, for whatever reason.  (The TEA Party also likes Sarah.)

Working off that same kind of sentiment, Gingrich is running ads picking on Romney for knowing some French. That’s the kind of stuff that plays well to his freedom fry eating supporters and it’s a problem for the Republican Party, in general. Their standard bearers like Rush Limbaugh and other narrow-minded mouthpieces regularly suggest helpful things like saying that the U.S. should quit the United Nations because it is anti-American. That may be why their greatest contribution to true patriotism is that of making Canadians forever grateful that they don’t have to live in the United States of America. (And just to show you how these things can come full circle, remember when Rick Perry talked about having Texas secede from the union he now wants to lead?)

As for Turkey, they’ve got some issues, but probably nothing that Rick Perry would ever be likely understand or be able to help with. We do, too – and he doesn’t get a lot those, either.

JR

UPDATE:  Then again, Rick Perry may not have much of a base. Word that he’s dropping out of the race:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/19/breaking-perry-to-drop-out-thursday/

Some thoughts on the unfinished work of Dr. Martin Luther King

It’s Martin Luther King Day and I’m pleased to have the opportunity to do a reading from King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” tonight at UW-Marathon County. Please come and join us in the new Center for Civic Engagement at 6:30 p.m. But whether you are able to do that or not, here is a piece that I wrote in June 2009 which seems appropriate to the occasion. In the two and a half years since I wrote it, NAOMI, the group that Rev. Ellwanger has been working with here, has become involved with trying to keep public transportation available in the Village of Weston. So far, the village board has resisted and bus service ended in 2012. Not everyone thinks it’s about the money:

http://drrent.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/westons-final-no-to-bus-service-p-s-i-dont-think-its-about-the-money/

* * *

Four little girls
Who went to Sunday School that day
And never came back home at all–
But left instead
Their blood upon the wall
With spattered flesh
And bloodied Sunday dresses…

(From a poem by Langston Hughes)

* * *

Other than a stint in the Air Force for a half dozen years, I’ve lived in Wausau pretty much all my life. I say “pretty much” because I’m actually a native of Milwaukee; my family moved here when I was two years old.

We went to Milwaukee to visit my grandparents and they were members of Cross Lutheran Church on North 16th Street. The neighborhood had been populated by German and other European immigrants in the 1800s and by the 1960s, it had a significant African American population. Since Wausau was literally one of the “whitest” communities in the U.S. in the 1960s, it was the only place that I ever saw and met black people — but most of the kids I knew in Wausau probably never had that opportunity at all. My grandparents were active in the church and for many years, my grandfather and a couple of other guys were in charge of opening the envelopes and counting the money, which was something that they did every Sunday afternoon in a cloud of cigar smoke at the kitchen table.

In 1967, a new pastor came to Cross by the name of Rev. Joe Ellwanger. These were times of great racial tension in our country and Milwaukee was no exception. I can remember the family driving to Cross from my grandparents’ home on 84th Street and passing armed National Guard troops in the late 1960s. This was a tumultuous period.

In 1968, we took a family vacation and we could see the orange glow of burning buildings as we passed some of the large cities on our way to New York. Joe Ellwanger was insistent on working for racial equality and justice; a real urban warrior. That much I knew, even as a kid — but it wasn’t until yesterday when I ran into Pastor Ellwanger again that I learned something about what made him that way.

Before coming to Milwaukee, Rev. Ellwanger had been a pastor in Birmingham, Alabama. On September 15, 1963, four members of the Ku Klux Klan set off a bomb consisting of 122 sticks of dynamite at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. The church had been at the center of the struggle for racial equality in the south. Four girls were killed in the attack, three of them 14 years old and one of them 11. (Interestingly, one of the girls killed was Denise McNair, a friend and schoolmate of future U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.)

Birmingham erupted in violence and by the end of the day, 16 year-old Johnny Robinson had been shot and killed by police after throwing rocks at cars with white people in them and another 13-year-old boy had been shot while on bicycle ride with his brother by some passing white kids. As if it hadn’t been before, Birmingham became Ground Zero in America’s racial turmoil.

How could those Klansmen think that they could do something like that?

“With things the way they were at that time,” says Rev. Ellwanger, “they thought they would never be arrested. Or even if they were arrested, they would never be charged. Or even if they were charged, they would never be tried — and even if they were tried, no jury in Birmingham, Alabama would convict them and they would never go to prison. And for 25 years, they were right.”

It wasn’t until 2001 and 2002 that Bobby Frank Cherry and Thomas Edward Blanton Jr. were convicted of murder in the incident. Robert Edward Chambliss had been convicted in 1978 and a fourth suspect, Herman Frank Cash, died in 1994 without ever being convicted.

“If you’re going to blame anyone for getting those children killed, it’s your Supreme Court,” asserted former Birmingham Police Commissioner Bull Connor at the time. As outrageous as that sounds, you have to remember that George Wallace was governor of Alabama – a man whose most famous quote may be from his 1963 inaugural address earlier that same year: “… segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.” Wallace later changed his views, along with a lot of other people in this country. Sadly — and even after all we’ve been through — some will never change.

The funeral for three of the girls killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing attracted thousands. Dr. Martin Luther King gave the sermon. One of the girls was a member of a nearby Lutheran congregation and her family asked their pastor to read the lessons. It was Rev. Joe Ellwanger.

Although he is retired, Joe Ellwanger is as busy as ever and still working for justice. Wisconsin needs to think about why we have more than 23,000 people in prison while Minnesota has only around 7,000 in their state penitentiaries, he says. The crime rates aren’t really any different, but what we’re doing here is costing a fortune and it isn’t working. We need to change. The group he represents is called WISDOM and they advocate for treatment instead of simply punishment because the former offers some promise of success at lower cost. We already know how well the latter is working and what it’s costing us. (Of course, WISDOM’s effort took a step backwards in 2011 with Gov. Walker signing a bill to end Wisconsin’s modest early release program. Feel safer?)

What I can tell you is that Joe Ellwanger has been around the block a couple of times on issues of justice and he sure was right the last time. It was good to see him again.

JR

Walker will have all the campaign money he needs

As regular readers know, I get a kick out of fundraising letters and I read every single one of them. That’s not to say that everyone can expect a contribution. My resources are more limited than the people who regularly ask me for money are, after all. But what I will tell you is that you don’t have a prayer if you call me on the phone. For one thing, we don’t contribute on the basis of inbound phone calls because we may only have the caller’s word on the legitimacy of the request. Another reason is that for whatever I may lack in being poor, I try to make up for by being cheap.

Yesterday’s mail brought a request from Scott Walker, talking about “out-of-state hired guns” and the need for $600,000 in start-up capital in the next 30 days. I found this curious for a couple of reasons. First, the governor has been running ads for months so there is no ‘starting up’ about it. He and his pals have already spent millions (and as far as I know, his numbers haven’t moved since Halloween.)

And as for starting up, I received one of those glossy, 8-1/2×11 oversized postcards from the Walker campaign in the mail yesterday, too. (Technically, it wasn’t specifically from the Walker campaign – just some real good friends of his who must already have their “start-up” capital lined up. I’ll bet they’d give him some, as long as they’re spending so much campaigning for him anyway.)

The other thing that’s odd is all the attention on things out-of-state. You’d think the guv might want to soft-peddle that aspect, when you consider that his most recent campaign finance report showed him raising $5.1 million since the start of the recall effort mid-November, with $2.4 million coming from outside Wisconsin. (Hey! Isn’t that about four times the “start-up capital” he said he needs to raise, all by itself?) The governor would need 10,000 people like me coughing up $25 apiece just to cover what just one Texan, Bob Perry, gave to his campaign.

Despite that, Walker was sputtering about all of that nasty out-of-state money again the other day, (as he was raising money out-of-state, in Washington DC. Really, you can’t make this stuff up.) Of course, none of this would be necessary at all, if people would just shut up and let him rule with impunity.

“From first-hand experience, I know how our political rivals operate and how far they’ll go to recall me,” the guv tells me.

Well, the truth is that they don’t have very far to go anymore. We’re going to see next week that hundreds of thousands of people — none of them from out-of-state — have signed to recall Governor Walker. No matter how many lame barriers, hollow objections and technical issues the GOP breathlessly raises over the next couple of months, there is eventually going to be an election. It will cost tens of millions of dollars just to try to keep Scott Walker in office through the end of the term that he was already elected to serve. Worse yet, it may not work. But regardless, I have no doubt that he will be able to raise all of the money he needs, even if he never gets another nickel from a Wisconsinite.

JR

UPDATE: Scott Walker, Texas (money) Ranger, cashes in:

http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/john_nichols/john-nichols-scott-walker-texas-money-ranger-cashes-in/article_ba849aa8-7c15-583e-811a-2b81dcc01ad9.html

UPDATE: Four out-of-state donors pony up $1 million for Walker; most of his campaign money is from out-of-state in recent report:

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/four-donors-jointly-gave-walker-1-million-in-recent-weeks-jh3u371-137978248.html

Good riddance to 2011 and prepare for a tumultuous 2012

As we were looking forward on 2011, the Wausau Daily Herald called and asked me about New Year’s resolutions. I offered something pretty simple:

“If I were offering a New Year’s resolution, it would probably be that we should resolve to employ a more civil and reasoned tone to our public dialogue. I think it would go a long way toward resolving some very difficult issues with public policy that we will be facing at all levels in the year ahead.”

They adopted it under the heading of “disagreeing without being disagreeable” and we all embarked upon the adventures of 2011:

“When passions run hot, it’s easy for the issues to become personalized. Let’s resist those temptations. The fact is that in any complex issue, there will be more than one point of view that has merit. … Let’s all resolve to show respect to those who hold viewpoints that are not our own.”

Today, the Herald is looking back on those resolutions to ask how we did and this particular resolution stands out in its stunning failure:

“Results: Absolutely terrible. Last year was the worst year ever for disagreeing without being disagreeable. Whether it was protesters’ signs depicting Gov. Scott Walker with a Hitler mustache or angry denunciations of public school teachers as lazy parasites, it’s fair to say there was a massive failure of empathy in our state’s public debates last year.

We certainly don’t want the passion drained from anyone’s argument. Political activists feel strongly because the stakes in these arguments are very real. But we would all do better if we could from time to time take a step back and try to understand another’s viewpoint.”

I can’t argue with that assessment and I’m not going to bother with calling for more civility in this New Year, either. As low as the bar is now set and as easy as it might therefore seem to accomplish some improvement, that’s not going to be happening in 2012. We’re opening the year with a recall election of Wisconsin’s governor being a virtual certainty. Walker and the GOP used their November 2010 victories to stomp all over their opposition and they already have the loss of several legislative seats in 2011 recall elections to show for it.

What Wisconsin Republicans are assured of for now is the opportunity to spend tens of millions of dollars in a game where the best they can possibly do is break even in the first half of the year and which will set the stage for the fall elections. They will continue to object, obstruct, obfuscate and delay the inevitable until they are eventually forced to face reality and that reality is this: far more Wisconsin voters than required have already signed petitions to demand a new election for governor. Continuing to insist that it’s any different is not going to be a winning strategy and denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

Of course, 2012 was going to be a big election year anyway – from the presidency to federal legislative races, state legislative races and all the way down to local councils and boards. Much may be riding on developments in the economy, over which there will be many factors beyond the control of candidates or for which office holders have failed to have positive impact.

Before 2011 began, I warned people to fasten their seatbelts. We’re not turning off the seatbelt light for 2012 and in fact, we’re turning it up and making it flash. And as much fun as it is for people like me to just watch it all from the sidelines, I’ve decided to throw my hat back in the ring with a run for Marathon County Board. It’s going to be a year of big change, with long-time board chair Keith Langenhahn leaving to take a legislative liaison position with the Wisconsin Counties Association.

While it often flies under the radar, county government is frequently where the rubber hits the road in terms of how state services are delivered locally. Dramatic changes in direction at the state and the possibility of more on the way have made these into especially challenging times for Marathon County. With new districts in play and a number of incumbents deciding to call it quits, it should be a very interesting term for the board and I would like to be there for it, so we’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, can somebody explain why the music bed on Walker’s holiday ad is “The Ballad of Barbara Allen?”

JR

Points, miles, Paris and a travel editor who doesn’t get it

Coming home from a trip to Paris this week that we put together with frequent flyer miles and hotel points, I picked up the issue of National Geographic Traveler that arrived in the mail during our absence. In it, there is an article by contributing editor Christopher Elliott in which he decries loyalty programs like frequent flyer miles and hotel points, concluding with a call to action. Based on the complicated nature of the programs and the way they distort decision making, most of us should cut up our affinity cards and kick the habit, he asserts. You can read the article here:

http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/traveler-magazine/the-insider/loyalty-programs/

And if you bother to do that, I’m here to tell you that he’s absolutely wrong. Instead of coming off like his column title, “The Insider,” Elliott sounds like a rookie who is too pre-occupied with other things or has a big enough travel expense account so that he doesn’t have to worry the cost of travel, which most people find pretty high these days. A lot of us have to be content with simply reading about it most of the time, so it’s a shame to pay for bad advice, too. We need to deal with things as they are — not what we wish they could be in a perfect, rational, fair and efficient world. Of course, points and miles distort the market and impact consumer decision-making. That’s the whole idea.

But for every disgusted consumer that says “it’s not worth it” with the loyalty programs, another first class seat or room with a view is left for open for people like yours truly. As much as I appreciate it, honesty compels me to tell you that if you’re one of them, I think you and Christopher Elliott are making a mistake. Like it or not, you’re paying for those programs and so you might as well benefit from them. With banks now giving you a microscopic return on whatever money you manage to put away in savings, doesn’t it make sense to collect a comparable or sometimes even better return on the money you already have to spend?

Even for those who never travel on business or only travel a couple of times each year, the mantra applies: You can pay a little bit of attention or a lot of money. There are some key pillars upon which we have built our ability to do more with less.

First, understand that the big dollars and best experiences are often in knowing how everything fits together in your overall plan and how to compare for overall value, rather than trying to save the last dollar on every individual transaction. I recall a discussion in a Paris hotel lobby with a disenchanted guest who was staying another couple of unplanned days at full rack rate. He’d saved $100 on his round-trip ticket from New York by flying on a Middle Eastern carrier. When something happened and his flight was cancelled, he learned that the carrier only had three flights per week out of Paris, not much in the way of affiliations with other carriers and seemingly very little customer service capability outside of cabin. Even without the big extra costs he was encountering to recover from his airline’s lack of performance, his cash savings on the ticket added up to less than the value of the miles I was getting.

Second, be flexible. The more conditions that are thrown into the mix in terms of dates, duration, destination, payment mode and other factors, the more likely it is that you will have trouble finding a great deal. Paris over Christmas was a great deal with miles and points. If we had insisted only on going to the Caribbean during Spring Break, it would have been a different story. Flexibility en route can sometimes also help pay for your travels, too. By leaving things a little loose around the edges, we’ve been able to accumulate thousands of dollars in compensation for accepting bumps on overbooked flights.

Third, plan ahead. If you want to go someplace popular in high season, then make your decisions while you still have a shot at affordable arrangements. If you’re going to beach for Spring Break, you should be shopping those fares by September and locking in before the end of November. If you’re booking accommodations that you can cancel without penalty, you can do that even earlier. Using points or miles? Be looking almost a year out and understand that you can’t book every trip for minimum miles. For some trips, it may not be worth the trade. The fact that you can’t do everything you want to at any time you feel like it for the number of points or miles that you want to trade doesn’t mean the programs aren’t worth it. There are a lot of trips that aren’t worth the money they want for them, either. Others may simply be out of reach, regardless of their high value, (like, say, a National Geographic tour.) 

Fourth, learn the programs and follow them relentlessly to leverage your earnings opportunities. We use an airline-affiliated credit card to pay many everyday expenses for which we would ordinarily pay cash. It not only builds miles, but it offers free checked bags, discounted club access and some other spiffs. We also have a hotel card and another that accumulates generic credit that can be used on Travelocity.com or even returned as a cash statement credit, (something that I never intend to do.) So, could we just go to a cash-back card and come out in the same place, in terms of pure economics? Sure – and you can also buy term life insurance and invest the difference. (How’s that been going for you?) From gas to groceries and dental work, I want something besides my receipt whenever I can get it. Loyalty programs are essentially a rebate program and not participating generally doesn’t get you a discount.

In addition to the credit toward travel that can be accumulated, the connections with travel vendors result in regular marketing communications about specials and bonus offers. Pick only a few programs and concentrate on them so you can put yourself in a position to redeem as frequently as possible, instead of accumulating a dozen orphan balances that you’ll seldom or never be able to cash in on. One of the best ways to stay up-to-the-minute is with the help of http://www.flyertalk.com, an online community of obsessive deal hunters who don’t miss a trick.

Lastly, maximize value as you acquire and redeem points. It doesn’t make sense to burn 25,000 miles on a ticket to Orlando or Las Vegas that you could have picked up for $300. It is equally shortsighted to torch 25,000 hotel points for a $75 room. Save those points and miles for times when your avoided cost will be much higher. To evaluate, I place a value of 1.5 cents on a frequent flyer mile and a half-cent on a Hilton Honors or Priority Club point. You need to think about these numbers to make rational decisions, rather than simply throwing up your hands and deciding “it’s not worth it.” When the cost is low or moderate, pay with money and accumulate credit for bigger things later.

There is no question that we took travel loyalty programs to a level well beyond what most normal people would call reasonable or balanced, but it’s been a very worthwhile avocation since getting into the game in 1997. The result has been more than $40,000 in travel trade – including a trip to Paris this week that ran under $400 for two people which would have otherwise cost more than $3,000. (And before you buy into the “it’s not worth it” camp, just think about what it takes in gross income to come up with after-tax, discretionary money for travel.) With our current stash, we can do a couple of more like that and beyond the money, the experiences have been – as Mastercard is fond of saying — priceless.

JR

Steady job losses under Walker’s budget: predicted and predictable

Let’s take a little walk down Memory Lane. Last March 18, I said:

“Sucking money out of local economies all over the state is not an effective way to grow jobs. What it really does is diminish the capacity of those economies to create wealth for most of the players involved in them. It makes the pie smaller. The hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue cuts being absorbed by counties, municipalities, school districts and public employees across Wisconsin through smaller paychecks won’t be redirected to other purposes in those communities. They’re just going to be gone. Taking more out of employee paychecks isn’t going to make your taxes go down. The poor will be poorer, services will be diminished, college tuition will be higher and some of the money that used to recirculate around your community will have disappeared like a corporate bailout.”

Two days later on March 20, we saw the same thing repeated in a Wisconsin State Journal report, with a genuine economist doing the talking:

“Gov. Scott Walker’s plans to balance the state budget by cutting spending and public workers’ take-home pay will slow the state’s economic recovery, according to projections by a UW-Madison economist. An estimated 21,843 jobs will be lost over the next year or two as public agencies and workers are able to spend less in their communities, said Steven Deller, a professor of applied economics who studied the ripple effects of Walker’s budget-repair bill and two-year budget proposal.”

Read more: http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_8c50dc92-52f7-11e0-993d-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1geDdbQVc

Fast forward to now and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported on Thursday that Wisconsin lost 11,700 private sector jobs last month:

The state lost an estimated 11,700 private-sector jobs in November from October, the deepest since April 2009 when the nation was in the throes of the recession, according to the Department of Workforce Development. The figures are based on a monthly government survey of employers and adjusted to smooth out recurring seasonal factors, such as winter-related slowdowns in construction or holiday hiring by retailers.

All told, the state lost an estimated 14,600 non-farm jobs when the losses in the private sector are combined with the losses in the public sector.

* * *

Wisconsin has lost jobs every single month since the Walker budget began in July and we now know that Professor Deller may have been low on his estimate of job losses last March. In fairness, we can’t attribute every job lost to Walker’s policies any more than we could give him credit every time a net job is gained. But if I’m Scott Walker, I’m plenty concerned about nearly 35,000 Wisconsin jobs turning up AWOL in the first five months of the “It’s Working” budget. It’s working, alright — and tens of thousands more people aren’t.

The facts: Wisconsin’s job totals aren’t comparing favorably to what is going on in other states and around the nation. It’s been nothing but net job losses in the Badger State in every month since the Walker budget took effect in July. The supposed property tax bonanza of hundreds of dollars per homeowner isn’t showing up for most people. Keep in mind that Walker also had the advantage of a two percent cut on Social Security payroll taxes this year to counterbalance some of the negative impact of his policies. It’s a tax cut that his GOP friends on the Hill are having trouble supporting for the coming election year because they’re afraid that President Obama will get the credit for it. Here’s hoping that some wise men show up in the east by Christmas.

Facts are stubborn things and millions of dollars of advertising claiming that “it’s working” won’t change the impact of many hundreds of millions of dollars missing from Wisconsin’s local economies, along with tens of thousands of jobs. It won’t change the fact that in the face of an underperforming economy, the Walker administration had to press many more tens of millions of dollars in cuts less than four months into his first state budget. It’s no wonder that more than a half million people have already signed petitions for a chance to stuff a lump of coal into Governor Walker’s stocking barely more than 10 months into his term.

JR

Millionaire’s Island: Why Rich People Don’t Create Jobs:

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-12-15/news/30519344_1_entrepreneurs-and-investors-jobs-property-rights 

Analysis shows how Walker budget is costing Wisconsin jobs:

http://host.madison.com/ct/business/biz_beat/biz-beat-walker-s-budget-cuts-are-costing-state-private/article_d831175c-2b4c-11e1-89e9-001871e3ce6c.html

Tax cuts in hand, the right wing goes after those “job-killing” regulations

So, an exploratory committee has been launched to explore recalling Sen. Bob Jauch over a proposed iron ore mine in northern Wisconsin – and from this effort comes one of the better political laugh lines of the week.

“I know people will think this is partisan,” said Shirl LaBarre, spokesperson for Northern Citizens for Responsible Government. (And maybe that’s because it is. LaBarre is a former Sawyer County Republican Party chairwoman who has run losing races three times for state Assembly. So why doesn’t CRG just be honest and admit that the “R” has always stood for REPUBLICAN? And does anybody want to bet 10 grand on whether LaBarre read the proposed mining legislation before launching the recall effort?)

Wisconsin Assembly Republicans introduced a bill Thursday that would make it easier for the mine to move forward. The proposal limits legal challenges and exempts companies like Gogebic Taconite from some wetlands and other water protections. And since the GOP has the numbers in both houses of the legislature to pass their bill and a governor to sign it, it’s hard to believe that Sen. Jauch is what’s holding up Gogebic Taconite’s proposal for a $1.5 billion, 700-job mine. But the company has already threatened to abandon the project if the state doesn’t pass a bill easing permitting requirements and Jauch is already threatened with recall, even though no votes on the legislation have been held.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin Public Service Corp. issued a 12-month layoff notice to 74 employees in central Wisconsin working in two aging coal-fired power plants, citing the uncertain effect of existing and future environmental regulations on their operating costs.

“Put simply, 74 people will likely lose their jobs because of too many government regulations,” says Congressman Sean Duffy (although he doesn’t mention exactly what the regulations are, how long they have been on the books or what the overall outcome of removing them might be.)

In 2005, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan called Wisconsin Energy’s Oak Creek power plant proposal “an outdated, environmentally destructive plant design that Illinois has banned for more than 30 years.” Of course, it got approved anyway and in October, a bluff collapse at the site sent coal ash and debris into Lake Michigan (something that we haven’t heard a whole lot about since):

http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/authorities-investigate-bluff-collapse-at-we-energies-plant-132929538.html

The same “less regulation and less taxes create jobs” theme was sounded in the GOP presidential debate Saturday night. The thinking is pretty simple: that we can’t afford to protect the environment or expect the people who have benefited the most in this economy to pay a nickel more in taxes and still have jobs. And if it goes as unchallenged, then we’ll be able to look back in a decade or two and see more of the same results we’ve been seeing up to now: more wealth at the top and lower standards for everyone else — (standards for the environment and your standard of living, too.)

There is no mystery as to why politicians try to associate everything they do with jobs. It was the number one issue on people’s minds well before the recession began and it has only increased in magnitude as an issue since then. But just saying something is all about jobs doesn’t make it so.

So I’m thinking that it’s okay for people like Bob Jauch to ask a few pertinent questions on the front end instead of just rushing headlong into another policy initiative that enriches a few at the expense of everyone else. People need to understand the tradeoffs that will be made and the potential consequences. And maybe instead of joining CRG, the people of the Northwoods would be better off joining the Sierra Club or Jauch’s re-election campaign. Because what we really need is a level playing field that ensures public policy choices are being made in the public interest. Just tossing out the “regulations cost jobs” mantra without identifying what we’re really talking about won’t get that done.

Badger Democracy encapsulates the idea that these themes are part of a larger strategy in which the conclusions are established first and then the “evidence”  to support it is manufactured later:

“The Koch brothers have perfected “shadow spending” to influence politicians and the electorate. Their methods (practiced for decades) can be summarized in three steps. Establish and fund third-party, biased media (such as MacIver Institute in Wisconsin); establish and fund conservative “think tanks” to promote favorable research outcomes; and establish and fund legal groups to write scripts for lawmakers and file favorable briefs on behalf of right-wing interests.”

And in a totally unrelated matter, former county Republican Party officer and 55 Radio talk show host Pat Snyder welcomes Koch founded and funded Americans for Prosperity back on his show this morning to talk about how “complying with federal regulations cost American businesses $1.75 trillion in 2008. The best stimulus package for the American economy consists of reining in President Obama’s power to spend and impose regulations to control our lives, families, and businesses.” (Congressman Duffy’s former chief of staff, Matt Seaholm, runs the Wisconsin chapter of AFP.)

Hey Pat? You remember who was President in 2008, don’t you?

JR

Attempt to recall Jauch is a fool’s mission:

http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/john_nichols/john-nichols-attempt-to-recall-sen-jauch-a-fool-s/article_37279635-2e76-5e22-8a5a-c3070ec728fb.html

Tribe has spoken on Cain; Newt returns from Redemption Island

Remember “bimbo eruptions?” Clinton political consultant Betsey Wright coined the term in 1992 to describe rumors of infidelity that had a tendency to crop up around then-candidate Bill Clinton. The campaign successfully dealt with them and Clinton won two terms in White House, (although the phenomenon of bimbo eruptions never totally went away and it eventually led to articles of impeachment.)

I’d always seen the term as sexist, but having been invented by a female, perhaps that is not the way to look at it. Anyway, it came up again Tuesday of this week in the Boston Herald:

“GOP presidential suitor Jon Huntsman lamented the latest “bimbo eruption” surrounding rival Herman Cain’s candidacy today saying the party should be talking about the serious, not the sensational.”

So Herman Cain is “reassessing” his candidacy in light of the latest in a parade of sometimes bizarre, interesting issues with his campaign and it looks like it may be time to stick a fork in his bid for the GOP nomination. Ironically, the main beneficiary of all this right now seems to be former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is picking up points in the polls even more quickly than Cain is losing them (which is VERY quickly.) It seems like perpetual Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney just can’t seem to catch a break.

Gingrich’s past indiscretions are well known, although perhaps he has settled down a bit at 68. And while we might miss Cain’s Wisconsin connection by way of his not-ready-for primetime chief of staff, Mark Block, all is not lost. Newt’s third wife, Callista, 45, hails from Whitehall. She was a former staffer in the office of Wisconsin GOP Congressman Steve Gunderson – also from Whitehall — who represented the 3^rd District from 1981-1997.

Interestingly, Gunderson was outed on the House floor as a gay in 1994 by former California Congressman “B-1 Bob” Dornan – a self-described “defender of faith, family and freedom.” Gunderson won re-election in 1994, but decided not to run again in 1996. Callista Gingrich remained on Capitol Hill as a staffer until 2006. (And if all of this sounds like familiar recent history to you, then it’s only because you go back a ways with this stuff. There will be people eligible to vote for President in 2012 for whom the Gunderson-Dornan drama occurred before they were born.)

Gingrich is pulling a real Lazarus act to lead in the polls now, considering that his candidacy was all but written off when his campaign manager and a half dozen senior advisors quit last June. Democrats would be pleased to see him come through it all to win the nomination. He won’t – but he’s good television.  He’s got a storyline.

We are in a period of time where being a candidate can be a very attractive occupation – and it’s apart from anything has to do with actually winning the office. Why else would there still be so many of them? Sarah Palin is the gold standard in this vocation and she has spent the past couple of years flogging books and making pricey appearances just for being a past and possible candidate. As she has proven in spades, it’s nice work, if you can get it. Palin even quit her regular job to keep doing it full time after the last presidential election. People fly you around in private jets, you eat well, you dress well and you get a lot of media attention. Maybe that hasn’t seemed so good for Cain lately, but it helped him to raise millions leading up to this point. Heck, it was even $100 a throw to catch him in Wausau at the Junior Achievement banquet earlier this year, which was more than a ticket at the Grand to see B.B. King.

Herman Cain “has made Clinton look like a choirboy,” says columnist Juan Gonzalez, in this morning’s New York Daily News. “In just a few short weeks, Cain has turned the Republican nominating contest into an X-rated circus of alleged horndog behavior.” (Doesn’t “horndog” sound like it could be a college team mascot or something you’d eat at the fair?)

My take is that this just an extension of the “Reality Television” genre that emerged in the 1990s. While the scripted, never-ending soap operas that began in radio are nearly a thing of the past, we’ve replaced them with Big Brother, Survivor and (appropriately) The Amazing Race. Even our own Congressman Sean Duffy and his wife are veterans of MTV’s Real World.

Meanwhile, the New York Times’ Robert Draper calls Mitt Romney – who appears to be the inevitable, eventual GOP nominee – “the world’s most boring superhero.”

Face it, America, we have very different ideas about what a good candidate is a year out from an election in comparison to what a good leader would be the day after the vote. We don’t want leaders; we want celebrities. Remember when some were lamenting that Arnold Schwarzenegger was foreign-born and therefore couldn’t run for president? And then there was the bimbo eruption.  

Put it all together and it seems like we don’t really want to face the serious issues of war and peace, the economy, health care and the federal budget – at least not in the current context of the presidential campaign. All of that needs to be woven into the storyline at some point, but what we really want right now is to be entertained.  We want someone who can keep up with the Kardashians. Herman Cain was able to do that for awhile and now Newt will give it a go.

The Brits figured this stuff out long ago. They have a royal family and they can all follow their antics in the tabloids while others do the actual governing. It’s the best of two worlds — and if you think that’s an expensive luxury, just try adding up what we spend to try to roll these things together in never-ending presidential campaigns here. They even throw in the position of titular head of the Church of England — “Defender of the Faith” – (because Henry VIII had a lot of bimbo eruptions.) 

As for me, I’m not sure if I can come up with a compelling enough story to get into the game. (Of course, for the nostalgic, there’s always “Who shot J.R.?”)

JR

Cain wreck: It’s official –

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57336240/herman-cain-suspends-presidential-campaign/

The Trump Debate:  Today’s GOP presidential race coverage in the Hollywood Reporter –

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/stephen-colbert-donald-trump-gop-debate-271002

Proof that tax cuts work? It’s only for the little people.

“We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.” — Leona Helmsley

This from the November 27 New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The No. 2 Senate Republican, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Arizona), expressed concern on Sunday about President Obama’s proposal to continue a reduction in the Social Security payroll tax and questioned whether the tax cut had fostered the creation of jobs, as Democrats say.

* * *

It’s a good question, but the problem is that it’s one that Sen. Kyle never seems to want to ask when it comes to the Bush Tax Cuts. Those are the tax cuts that we already know haven’t worked and their most significant positive impact is on a relatively small number of very wealthy recipients of the largesse.

“The best way to hurt economic growth is to impose more taxes on the people who do the hiring,” Mr. Kyl said. “As a result, the Republicans have said, ‘Don’t raise the existing tax rates on those who do the hiring.’

Just what hiring are you talking about, Senator? Is anybody else sick of hearing this fairy tale — that further fattening fatcats somehow creates a better condition for everyone else? (And let’s not forget that hiring people is, well, tax deductible.)  But perhaps it was just something else that Sen. Kyle said which was “not intended to be a factual statement.”*

Since 2001, the Bush tax cuts have cost more than a trillion dollars. You can look at the running total right here:

http://costoftaxcuts.com/

Note that of that total, more than $700 billion went to the top one percent. The bullpucky that the Republicans continue to promote and defend is that this is doing some kind of great good for the economy. The problem is that we know it doesn’t and moreover, it has a tremendous negative impact on the deficit and the debt — (two things that the GOP keeps tell us are really important to them.)

Check out this New York Times  graphic (just click for a clean look):

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24sun4.html?_r=2&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

A recent Congressional Budget Office study found that incomes of the top 1 percent of the U.S. population (adjusted for inflation) rose 275 percent from 1979 to 2007, while income for the middle class grew only 40 percent. “Even this dismal figure overstates the fortunes of typical Americans,” says Lawrence Summers, who served as Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Administration. “In 1965, only one in 20 men ages 25 to 54 was not working; by the end of this decade, it is likely to be one in six, even if a full cyclical recovery is achieved.”

I have to tell you that I’m not necessarily in favor of extending the Social Security payroll tax cut, either, if it is not producing.  But it is interesting to note that at about $110 billion a year, the cost matches up pretty well with the Bush tax cuts. Given the choice, the Social Security payroll tax cut provides a whole lot more economic justice because it touches every wage earner in the country. If pouring $110 billion directly into the economy through tens of millions of people instead of stuffing it into hedge funds by a tiny fraction of the number doesn’t create jobs, then perhaps Sen. Kyl would like to provide a head-to-head comparison. Let’s see which is the more efficient way to cut taxes when it comes to economic stimulus. And if it’s a wash, then I would think that we should go with the approach that most positively impacts the greatest number of people.

It’s time to stop playing 3-Card Monte with the GOP on tax cuts and job creation. We don’t have to keep pretending that we don’t know what doesn’t work and what contributes to our deficit and the debt.  Dump the Bush tax cuts.  And if I have to give back a grand to get the banksters billions into the game, then I’ll be happy to do that.

JR

*Caught telling a blatant lie on the Senate floor about Planned Parenthood, Sen. Kyl coined one of the more memorable quotes in the annals of political spin:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2011_04/028869.php

Nov. 30 — House GOP Leadership warns members on tax votes:

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/196437-gop-brass-warn-troops-on-tax-votes