October 2010 Archives

Madison - Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker has violated the state of Wisconsin's campaign finance laws 1,115 times since 2009 by failing to disclose information about contributors who donated more than $100. Walker's serial offenses include 456 contributions filed in the last 72 hours totaling nearly $284,000.

The total contributions in violation of Wisconsin statute 11.60(1) total $518,096. One Wisconsin Now previously filed a complaint with the Government Accountability Board in September when Walker's improperly-reported contribution tally was $235,000 half of what it has risen to in the last several days.

This latest round of improperly reported contributions brings the total to well over $500,000 from inside and outside of Wisconsin. Apparently, Walker has absolutely no interest in following the campaign finance rules of the state of Wisconsin, and we are once again calling on the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board to act on these repeated violations.

Fall Pre-Election 2010:	428 contributions in excess of $100 without the required information totaling $245,276.10
Report of Late Contributions	28 contributions in excess of $100 without the required information totaling $37,900
Pre-primary 2010 Report:	214 contributions in excess of $100 without the required information totaling $79,464.68
July 2010 Report:	204 contributions in excess of $100 without the required information totaling $68,575.38
Jan 2010 Report:	35 contributions in excess of $100 without the required information totaling $10,710
July 2009 Report:	206 contributions in excess of $100 without the required information totaling $76,170

[Walker for Governor, Campaign Finance Reports]

The reporting statutes were enacted to give the public a full and timely picture of who is contributing to political candidates and the interests they may be representing. Lawmakers felt this was particularly important in the days preceding a general or primary election. According to the statutes, each violation of the reporting laws can result in a fine of up to $500, which in Walker's case could top nearly $557,500. One Wisconsin Now reviewed Walker's last six campaign finance reports and documented the following violations by Walker.

A copy of our previous complaint is available at: http://www.onewisconsinnow.org/files/OWN%20GAB%20Complaint%20--%20Walker.pdf

A: One has government health care and the other one had guts enough to debate her Democratic opponent.

From WISC-TV Friday, answering the reporter's question about the hypocrisy of her criticizing "government-run" health care when she has health care provided for by taxpayers from her husband's plan as a state legislator:

"I have private insurance that is paid partially by my husband's employer. Very, very different from government run health care."

It's such a sleazy and cheap answer. "My husband's employer."

The reason state legislators can get such a good health care plan is because of the buying power of collective enrollment. This is why single payer would save so much money and why the federal health reform act will save money because people will get the care they need, at the right time at a reasonable cost.

Keep in mind, she and Scott Walker want to cut 400,000 members of working families from BadgerCare to pay for tax cuts for the top one percent of income earners and to reopen the "Las Vegas Loophole" for banks and big business.

When is a reporter going to ask Kleefisch what the working mom who loses her health care because of these cuts going to do when she feels sick with might eventually turn out to be colon cancer?

Health care is a right. Kleefisch could not be more wrong.

Since yesterday, over twenty thousand people have watched our video Turn off the Hate, Get out the Vote. Already it has spread to the Huffington Post and to The Blaze (Glenn Becks personal website). Let's keep up the momentum, spread the energy and change twenty thousand to two million. Check it out here.

Ron Johnson's PACUR LLC made a $5,000 contribution August 18, 2010 to the Republican Governors Association (RGA) political organization, despite the fact PACUR has paid no state income taxes from 1997 to 2008, according to records from the Department of Revenue obtained by One Wisconsin Now and the RGA's most-recent filing with the Internal Revenue Service.

One Wisconsin Now obtained tax records for both Johnson and PACUR LLC, which show Johnson had net personal state income tax of $645,092 between 1997-2008, an estimated $9.5 million in earnings. Over the same period of time PACUR LLC had zero net state income taxes. (Figures for 2009 were not available.) [Wisconsin Department of Revenue]

Of course, Johnson has regularly criticized the tax system as it relates to businesses and individuals, including speaking at the Tea Party anti-tax rally at the state capitol in Madison just prior to entering the race for U.S. Senate.

How is it the business he owns that has no state tax burden is able to make a $5,000 contribution to a partisan political organization charged with turning out Republican voters? If Johnson's PACUR LLC doesn't have taxable assets, how does it have $5,000 to hand over to the Republican political machine? Maybe he can get out his dry erase board and draw up the complicated tax shelters his accountants crafted in order to shield his business's assets.

Johnson's PACUR LLC contribution appeared on the latest filing of the RGA, made public October 15. The RGA, which raised over $31 million on its latest report, has spent an estimated $3 million to support the campaign of Milwaukee County Executive and Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker. [Internal Revenue Service, Reports of Political Organizations]

RGA raised over $716,000 from Wisconsin, including $360,000 from corporate giving, most notably $266,000 from the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. In addition, Walker campaign chair Michael Grebe gave $25,000 and the Robert and Patricia Kern Trust gave $250,000.

Hey, wouldya know: the minute a newspaper publishes a story with insight from someone other than conservative tax policy spokesperson Todd Berry, Scott Walker's plan to cut taxes just for the richest 1 percent and big corporations doesn't seem so appealing.

Walker has promoted his plan as "simple and comprehensive" and said it mirrors what former Gov. Tommy Thompson did in the late 1980s to create 258,000 jobs coming out of an economic downturn.

Evidence linking job creation to tax cuts is not sound, Witte said.

"You can argue 'I'm going to cut taxes and that's a good thing,' but to link it to a specific job number, that's going to be very hard," he said. "I don't see how he can cut taxes unless he's going to give up on fiscal responsibility."

Today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "Politifact," in its analysis of a unfair trade deals cited by U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, makes this note about the sourcing by Feingold's campaign of Public Citizen:

"Public Citizen is a leading critical voice on trade deals, so it comes to the issues from that perspective."

Fair enough.

Unless you consider that the MJS regularly runs stories generated by the conservative Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance and the pro-corporate shills at the Bradley Foundation's Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, but a media-accountability fact-checker would be hard pressed for the motives and intentions of these groups to have been cited in previous news articles by the MJS.

The reporters have gotten good at using "conservative" or "free-market think tank" when including the oft-cited WPRI, although the recent spate of propaganda columns in the MJS from WPRI's latest project didn't include this important modifier.

In addition, rarely, if ever has Todd Berry's conservative, corporate-funded Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance gotten its motives explored by the MJS.

As One Wisconsin Now's WISTAX Watch showed, 93 percent of contributions from the board of WISTAX go to Republican and conservative candidates. Even more than the quasi-U.S. Chamber of Commerce affiliate, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, gives (80%).

Watchdogging is essential for the news media and the more the better. However, all entities, from the liberal Public Citizen to the conservative Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, should be treated with the same standards by the media watchdogs.

With failed Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, you just never know what it's gonna be. Will his latest idea be a gigantic giveaway to corporation at the expense of Wisconsin's working families? Or will it be a totally empty promise, another in a long list of gimmicks trotted out by Brown Bag Boy?

Part of Walker's three-page agenda calls for making "Wisconsin a highly attractive place to start a business by eliminating corproate taxes for the first two years of operation." Operating under the assumption the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's PolitiFact won't get to fact-checking Walker's claim for at least another day or two, let's unpack this just a bit.

If Walker is talking about "corporate" taxes, his proposal would not apply to any businesses structured as a partnership, or a sole proprietorship, or an LLC, or even an S-corporation, all of which pay taxes through the individual income tax and not the corporate tax. If that's the case, Walker's "plan" sounds great, but would help only a handful of start-ups.

If Walker's "plan" is really aimed at startups, very few of them make any money during their first two years of operation, so they wouldn't be paying income tax under the current system anyway. In fact, under the current system they are able to use losses in the first two years to offset profits in subsequent years. If Walker's proposal exempts them from taxes it might very well eliminate their ability to carry these loses forward, meaning Walker's "plan" would actually cost companies money when they do start being profitable. So far, so good, I guess.

Now, if Walker's "plan" is actually broader than just true startups -- let's say it would include new operations in the state set up by existing firms -- then the "plan" would open up a loophole the size of a high-speed passenger train for profitable companies to simply re-incorporate every two years in order to enjoy a perpetual tax exemption (aka giveaway). Given that corporate income taxes bring in well over half-billion dollars every year, Walker's loophole would leave a smoldering crater in the state budget.

Of course, this latest giveaway would be in addition to his $4 billion in tax breaks to the rich and big business he's already proposed. He has yet to explain how he plans to pay for any of these plans, especially troubling given Wisconsin's existing $3 billion budget deficit. Would he just shut the entire state down, like forever? Would Wisconsin declare bankruptcy? Would he kick everyone off BadgerCare and sell the public school buildings, or what? How else could he make up $7 billion in deficits?

So which is it? Is Walker's plan just a meaningless talking point? Or is it the biggest corporate tax loophole in the history of Wisconsin?

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker has promised an impossible $3.8 billion in tax breaks, loopholes and shifts he has no way to pay for, a new analysis by One Wisconsin Now shows. Coupled with the state's conservative predictions of a $2.7 billion projected deficit, Walker would need to slash almost $6.5 billion from education, health care, police and fire protection to give tax breaks and loopholes to the wealthy and big business.

Juxtapose this with new census information showing the income gap between the rich and poor has never been wider. Americans in the middle are treading water, watching as their salaries fall while the richest see theirs rise.

"Millions of people are stuck at home because they can't find a job. Poverty increased in a majority of states, and children have been hit especially hard," said Mark Mather, associate vice president of the Population Reference Bureau.

The top-earning 20 percent of Americans - those making more than $100,000 each year - received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent made by the bottom 20 percent of earners, those who fell below the poverty line, according to the new figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968.

At the top, the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans, who earn more than $180,000, added slightly to their annual incomes last year, the data show. Families at the $50,000 median level slipped lower.

It makes you wonder if Walker is just completely oblivious to the plight of the unemployed and working poor, or if he actually believes it's just and right to enrich the already rich and pull the rug out from underneath everyone else. Trickle down economics has worked so well that we now have the greatest gap between the incomes of the rich and the poor. Let's give the rich even more tax cuts and make the gap even wider.