State lost 11,700 private-sector jobs in November, job loss in state posts 5th consecutive month

The number of private sector jobs in Wisconsin dropped in November for the fifth straight month, even as the state's unemployment rate improved. You can read the full article by going here or or by going here.

So much for Gov. Scott Walker's big campaign promise. He's got an even higher mountain to climb now. Time to start doing his job and keeping his word instead of trying to keep his by destroying existing and creating new legislation that involves moral and ethical issues (which he seems to know little about, in my opinion) and other things that don't create jobs but instead wreck lives and the fine fabric of Wisconsin life as we've known it for years. At this rate, this continuing bad economic news surely won't bode well for him in the recall election.

Wis. gov.'s spokesman among those given immunity in probe

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's spokesman and two others have been granted immunity in an investigation of the Republican governor's current and former aides, according to this story from the Associated Press. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has previously reported that investigators are looking into whether Walker's aides conducted political activity on the taxpayer dime.

As Walker signs Hopper’s radical, job-killing budget local residents protest to say “Enough!”

As Walker signs Hopper’s radical, job-killing budget local residents protest to say “Enough!”

Local 18^th Senate District community members stand united against Hopper’s extreme state budget

OSHKOSH – With the stroke of his pen, Gov. Scott Walker yesterday signed into law an extreme, job-killing budget that was co-authored by Joint Finance Committee member Sen. Randy Hopper. Today, the community of the 18^th Senate District stood together to protest the terrible decisions and attacks on working families that are in their budget.

“Randy Hopper was able to heavily influence the final budget that Walker signed yesterday. In the end, he turned his back on the families of his district,” said Mike McDowell of Fond du Lac. “He helped Scott Walker write a budget that is out of touch with Wisconsin values. It cripples public education, raises taxes on hard-working families while cutting taxes for wealthy investors like Randy Hopper and out-of-state corporate interests.”

Despite thousands of phone calls, emails and letters calling for a more humane and fair budget, Walker and Hopper ultimately decided to ignore their constituents and instead move forward on a budget that makes historic cuts to all levels of public education, limits access to affordable healthcare and raises taxes nearly $70 million on seniors and working families. At the same time, the budget includes hundreds of millions in giveaways to the super-rich and out-of-state corporations.

“Unemployment is rising in Wisconsin and the bad choices Walker and Hopper made in this budget are only going to make it worse, despite Hopper’s empty cheerleading and outright lies about taxes,” said Steve Lord, a resident of Oshkosh. “Instead of job-creating policies that put people back to work, Hopper pushed an agenda that gives tax breaks to wealthy investors like himself and attacks the middle class working families he should be defending.” 

With unemployment rising across Wisconsin last month, rising to 7.1 in Fond du Lac and 6.7 in Oshkosh, the economy will likely continue to get worse now that the job-killing policies in the budget have become law and go into effect. Cuts to public education, especially to technical colleges, tax hikes on working families and the dramatic rollback of healthcare access for low income families will only continue to hurt the economy, hurting therecovery for middle-class families across the state for years.

Basic services such as public safety, recycling and road maintenance that families expect and count on will be facing cuts due to this budget. For example, the City of Oshkosh alone is forced to fill a $803,949 deficit because of Randy Hopper’s budget. With the last two years of cuts the city has already made, these latest rounds of cuts will likely require cuts to direct services.

Lowlights from Randy Hopper’s radical budget for Wisconsin

Raises taxes on the working poor while giving millions away to the super-rich;

• Changes the state’s combined reporting law, which will allow corporations to write off losses before 2009, a tax break of $46.4 million
• Gives a break in capital gains taxes for businesses, giving away $36.3 million
• Changes the Earned Income Tax Credit, resulting in a tax increase on working families of $43.5 million
• Changes the Homestead Tax Credit, costing low-income Wisconsin families $13 million

Slashes funding for public education programs by more than $1 billion;

• Slashes funding for public education by $800 million, while increasing funds for private schools by $35 million
• Strips school districts of $1.6 billion in revenue, forcing layoffs and major reductions in class offerings
• Reduces state aid to the UW system by $250 million, freezing and eliminating scholarship programs; cuts state funding for Wisconsin technical colleges by 30%, harming Wisconsinites seeking job training

Cuts more than $500 million in critical healthcare programs, depriving thousands of care;

• Cuts $500 million from Medicaid programs, depriving up to 70,000 people of needed coverage, while removing policy changes from any democratic oversight
• Caps enrollment in Family Care, harming those most in need, making it harder for seniors and people with disabilities to stay in their homes
• Strips $1 million/year in state funding for women’s healthcare centers statewide, slashing preventative care

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Paid for by We Are Wisconsin PAC, Phil Neuenfeldt, Treasurer.  Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s agent or committee.

Budget Amendment Puts Small School Districts at Great Risk

Budget Amendment Puts Small School Districts at Great Risk

By Kathryne McGowan

In politics, lawmakers are often warned to heed the “law of unintended consequences.” Laws adopted without sufficient deliberation and public input often create unforeseen problems, wreak economic havoc, cause political turmoil, and even hurt people that they are meant to protect.

A little-known amendment inserted into the budget bill now on Governor Scott Walker’s desk does exactly that. This amendment, which its supporters cynically call the “WEA Trust Amendment,” was rushed into the budget bill on the last night of deliberations and targets our private, not-for-profit company, the WEA Trust.

The amendment undermines a successful business model while taking yet another slap at Wisconsin’s smaller school districts. As if they didn’t have enough to deal with already.

The WEA Trust was created by public school employees specifically to provide health insurance for school districts. Alone, many of these districts were too small to negotiate effectively with large, national carriers for quality insurance at affordable rates—precisely the problem small businesses and farmers face today.

To stabilize rates and manage volatile risk for small districts, the WEA Trust “pools” more than 200 school districts together and insures them as a group—thus giving them enough healthy members to cover those who get sick or hurt. Schools can choose to be part of the pool or be individually rated. But this pool won’t work if each school can look at their claims experience and then decide whether to stay or leave. That is because employers with better than average experience will leave the pool and the rates for everyone else will have to rise to the new higher average. This is known as the death spiral. Each successive round of adjusting rates simply encourages the best of the remaining risk to exit. Voluntary pools like this simply don’t work—in Wisconsin or anywhere.

The budget bill on Governor Walker’s desk essentially ends the practice of “pooling.” The WEA Trust will be forced to adapt to survive. There will be winners and losers.

What happens when a school district with 100 employees suddenly sees two of them fall chronically ill? We’ve run some numbers to show their rates could as much as double in one year—regardless of who insures them.

We urge Governor Walker to veto the amendment. But it’s not just an appeal on behalf of our Wisconsin-based company. It’s an appeal to preserve a market-based insurance solution—a solution that has successfully served small school districts and their employees for 40 years.

Participation in our pool is voluntary. This law effectively takes this option off the table. The model might even serve Republicans looking for a market-based model for other small, private sector groups.

The question, of course, is why is this amendment that has no public debate or scrutiny necessary? School districts and their employees have already contributed additionally to their insurance and retirement. And now, at no fault of their own, they may potentially see yet another hit in their already strapped budgets.

There will be more school districts that suffer from this amendment than the politicians expect. The consequences of this amendment are real. This is bad business. And it should be vetoed.

Kathryne McGowan is the Vice President for Marketing and Product Development for the WEA Trust.

Randy Hopper's budget spin lies about tax increases on Wisconsin working families

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: CONTACT:


Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Viet Shelton (920) 204-6746

Hopper issues public statement on budget claiming it has "no tax increases" despite the nearly $70 million in hikes for seniors and working families


OSHKOSH ­ - With only the formality of Gov. Scott Walker's pen signing the extreme, job-killing state budget into law remaining, Sen. Randy Hopper is busy misleading voters about the true cost of his budget¹s attacks on Wisconsin's working families ­ including tax increases for seniors and the working poor.

Since the Senate rammed thru the radical Republican budget, Sen. Hopper continues to openly boast that his budget had "no tax increases."

http://www.wbay.com/story/14926867/2011/06/17/senator-hopper-statement-on-budget-bills-passage

Hopper's claim is blatantly false. The budget Hopper helped author as a member of the Joint Finance Committee raises taxes by nearly $70 million on seniors and working families, while offering massive tax giveaways to corporations and super rich like himself. By slashing the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Homestead Credit, which many Wisconsin seniors rely, Hopper's budget raises taxes on these individuals and families.

These tax hikes are confirmed by both the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau http://www.channel3000.com/politics/27562839/detail.html and independent fact-checking body PolitiFact.
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/promises/walk-o-meter/promise/548/oppose-and-veto-all-tax-increases/

This is despite Hopper's blatantly false claims to the contrary. Randy Hopper's state budget contains multi-million dollar tax increases on seniors and working families. It is fact.

"By every objective measure, Randy Hopper's budget raises taxes on seniors and working families by nearly $70 million, while offering massive tax giveaways to out-of-state corporations and wealthy investors like himself," said Mike McDowell, a teacher from Fond du Lac. "No matter how many times Randy Hopper repeats his blatant falsehoods on the budget, no amount of rhetoric can erase the terrible choices he made to gut public education while raising taxes on seniors and working families in his district."

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Paid for by We Are Wisconsin PAC, Phil Neuenfeldt, Treasurer. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's agent or committee.

The New Corporate World Order

Governor Scott Walker and his foot soldiers claim they have to rein in spending in order to close Wisconsin's deficit. Yet they continue to try closing the deficit on the back of middle and low income people while gving tax breaks to the rich and Wisconsin-based corporations. That kind of activity has more and more people pointing to them and saying "Liar, liar, pants on fire." And while it's certainly no excuse just because others are doing it, I thought you might enjoy  this op-ed piece by Truth Dig's Robert Scheer. In my opinion, it certainly sums up the way of the corporate world, not the least of which seems to be obscene greediness and both moral and ethical depravity. This is exactly why Walker, his Republican counterparts, and handouts for the rich and corportations need to be stopped.

Walker's Record of Massive Spending Hikes Is in the Bag

[We have received the following press release from One Wisconsin Now and are pleased to publish it on their behalf.]

Madison -- Contrary to calls for fiscal restraint in his latest television advertisement, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker voted to increase state spending 84 percent as a member of the state Assembly and has proposed 35 percent in increases to county spending since 2002. Walker voted for $200 billion in total state budget spending, which led to a then-record $3 billion state budget deficit.

"Scott Walker voted to pass the biggest rate of state government expansion in recent history -- 84 percent in five state budgets," said Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now Executive Director. "Scott Walker's encore was to propose a 35 percent hike in spending for Milwaukee County, while at the same time dismantling the services that protect children, seniors and those impacted by the economic collapse."

Walker's five separate budget votes in the state Assembly grew spending from $26.6 billion in biennial spending in 1993-95 to $48.9 billion by 2001-03. Each biennium, Walker helped grow the state budget by between $2.7 billion to $5.8 billion. [1992 WI Act 269; 2001 WI Act 16; WI Legislative Fiscal Bureau]

Likewise, as county executive, Walker proposed 35 percent in increases that would have increased spending from $1.1 billion to $1.5 billion. In addition, it was under Walker's tenure that Milwaukee County experienced its first deficits in over a decade.

Walker has recently come under fire for claiming that as governor, he would magically create enough jobs to essentially reduce the unemployment rate to zero -- an impossible promise. Conversely, Walker's latest television ad says government cannot create jobs.

"Scott Walker's record on fiscal management is clear: huge spending hikes, huge deficits," said Ross. "Walker appears to be packing a ham sandwich in his latest ad, but his claims are nothing but baloney."

Walker has already made news with his "brown bag" gimmick, when it was revealed the tactic had been used 12 years ago in an Ohio U.S. Senate race. Walker shares the same consultant as that candidate, SCM Associates, and has paid the group firm over $335,000.

"Looks like when Walker was spending all that money for this campaign gimmick," Ross said, "he neglected to mention to them all the spending he had already done."

In addition to these promises, Walker has also proposed nearly $2 billion in tax cuts that would overwhelmingly benefit the rich and corporations, including an income tax cut exclusively for those people making more than $225,000 a year and reopening of the Las Vegas loophole to allow big corporations, like banks, to avoid Wisconsin tax obligations by opening a phony post "office" box in a state without corporate income taxes.

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One Wisconsin Now is a statewide communications network specializing in effective earned media and online organizing to advance progressive leadership and values.