Conservatives, it's time to tear off those ill-fitting suits, the sheer Sarah Palin knock-offs, and get this party started.

Two of Wisconsin’s leading right wing organizations, the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute and the MacIver Institute, are members the State Policy Network, a national group that helps organizations push out anti-public education information and the lunatic corporate pap of Hell’s resident economist, Milton Friedman.

This weekend, SPN began its its annual meeting for its partners like WPRI and MacIver. In addition to an online presentation by Americans (read: Republicans) for Prosperity, the four-day factless-fest will be highlighted by an old fashioned Toga Party, according to an email invitation to the event obtained by Wonkette, one of One Wisconsin Now’s favorite blogs.

photo credit: bredgur.com

The “Young Gun” filed his latest campaign finance statement and it’s chock full-o-corporatey goodness. Ryan amassed $104,000 in PAC gifts, including 94% from out-of-state PACs.

It’s not surprising, Ryan’s corporate sycophancy extends beyond the Badger State borders, so why wouldn’t his grab-bagging.

In the Thursday morning report, WisPolitics ran a piece on a study from the California-based Reason Foundation that called the benefits of the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail line as “not credible.”

One might ask, what is this Reason Foundation? Who’s behind the curtain, pulling the strings? And why exactly do WE care? We live here after all. They’re in California. What do they have to say that could add anything to a debate here in Wisconsin?

Well, a quick visit to the Reason Foundation website sure reveals a lot. First, like many conservo-mouthpieces, they breathlessly espouse the value of Friedman’s unrestrained free market. And according to the website, they support the “rule of law,” whatever that means. Pretty clear where these guys are coming from. Government? Bad. Unfettered capitalism gone wild, no matter what the human cost? A-OK.

But that’s just scratching the surface. Digging a little deeper, we find the true impetus behind the Reason Foundation’s attack on commuter rail: they’ve got oil on their brains and in their veins.

Last week I wrote about Republican State Senate candidate (18th SD) Randy Hopper and how he was complaining about taxes and suggesting that the current tax structure has been unfair to him. In that blog, I wrote that he has a credibility problem on the issue since he only paid Wisconsin personal and business income taxes once since 1997. Now we have another conservative candidate, Tom Tiffany (12 SD), complaining about the burden of taxes while having not paid state income taxes since 2005.

Not only did Tiffany manage to avoid paying individual taxes for two years but at least one of his businesses also didn’t pay income tax last year. Given that record on taxes, it is really no surprise that he was a former spokesperson for the Big Oil financed Americans for Prosperity. That extremist right wing group would just as soon have corporations contribute absolutely nothing in the form of income taxes.

If Tom Tiffany is going to run around his district complaining about a tax burden, he should probably say, “I don’t mean me, though, because I haven’t had to pay state income taxes for a number of years.”

Despite his long fealty to an annoying no new taxes pledge, Sheldon Wasserman discovered the hard truth that Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform is nothing but a shill group for Republicans.

Y’know, Republicans like convicted crook Jack Abramoff and moral sleazebags like Ralph Reed, and well, Norquist himself – all long associated with ATR.

As the stock market continues to crash at historic rates, John McCain refuses to talk substantively about the issues that are most affecting American families. His lack of a coherent response to the economic crisis shows once again just how out of touch he is with the economic issues that concern the average American.

John McCain supports tax cuts for millionaires, but provides no relief for 100 million middle-class Americans. He has repeatedly said that the Bush tax cuts for the rich must be made permanent and even expanded. As CNNMoney.com has reported, “President Bush’s tax cuts for investment income have significantly lowered the tax burden on the richest Americans.” Unfortunately it has done next to nothing for everyone else.

McCain’s economic plans, like Bush’s, put CEOs, multibillion dollar corporations, and lobbyists before the interests of American families. His stated plans do more for the Fortune 200, who would get $45 billion in tax cuts, than they for families struggling just to get by. As a result of McCain’s policies, Big Oil would receive nearly $4 billion in tax breaks. He makes this proposal at a time when average Americans have been getting gouged at the pumps and are worrying about heating their homes this winter.

How comical is that the Wisconsin representative to the so-called “Palin Truth Squad” is Margaret Farrow?

The “Squad” presumably will criticize anyone who brings up Sarah Palin’s ethics scandal, truth bending, right-wing extremism and revisionist history. Or those who point out that Palin refuses to talk to reporters and won’t answer questions.

Today One Wisconsin Now is debuting the new comic series “McCain and Unable.” (McCainAndUnable.com)It will highlight the Bush-McCain follies, showing what would happen if the wealthy ideological soulmates were forced to go out into the real world and deal with the consequences of their failed policies.

The first episode, “McCain and Unable Go to the Gas Station,” brings the duo face to face with the record gas prices Americans have endured. In July, gas prices topped $4.11 a gallon in Wisconsin and diesel was nearly $4.80 a gallon. Average folks were suffering while John McCain and George W. Bush stood arm and arm to pass $5 billion in tax breaks for Big Oil. Apparently that wasn’t enough for John McCain and now he wants to give Big Oil another $4 billion in tax giveaways. Also consider the impact of these additional McCain-Bush policies when it comes to energy:

McCain has 29 Big Oil lobbyists working for him. At least 29 top advisers or fundraisers for McCain have lobbied for Big Oil. They have represented 4 of the 9 oil companies in the 2008 Fortune 200, including: McCain’s senior campaign adviser, Charlie Black, who is a registered lobbyist for two Russian oil companies whose firm was hired by the China National Off-Shore Oil Corporation. [Roll Call 7/18/05, Senate Lobbying Disclosure Records]

Last week Rep. Frank Lasee announced his latest harebrained scheme, to drill for oil in the Great Lakes. There is nothing like handing over your most precious resource to an industry that can’t be trusted. And for what? For the remote chance that they will find (or spill) oil in 15 years and possibly save a few cents off gas prices? As if that is not enough for one month, now Lasee is cheering his Republican friends on the Natural Resources Committee who voted to block a reasonable rule to protect us from mercury contamination.

Almost every Wisconsin lake is under warning for mercury pollution but Lasee and his friends on the committee would rather obey the corporate interests that pull their strings. The rule was proposed by the Department of Natural Resources as crafted by an independent group of experts. It would have required large coal-fired plants to reduce mercury by 90 percent by the beginning of 2015. Over 437,000 Wisconsinites are exposed to higher-than-safe levels of mercury and six percent of Wisconsin women of childbearing age have elevated levels of mercury.

Health problems caused by mercury include neurological damage for babies and children, as well as hearing and vision loss and impaired coordination and speech for adults. Seniors are at risk from mercury for heart attacks and cardiovascular disease. Mercury is most commonly ingested by humans through fish consumption. The state has issued advisories about fish consumption due to mercury contamination for nearly every Wisconsin water body. Still Lasee cheers the status quo and its defenders in the Assembly. Apparently in the wacky world of Frank Lasee, poisoning your neighbors is not only praiseworthy but is the highest act of civic engagement.

We have seen the Bush energy policy at work now for nearly eight years, it seems to be a plan based on not leaving any big oil and gas company behind. The policy appears to be the following simple formula: give a free pass to these massive special interests in any way possible, give them record amounts of handouts from the public and then allow them to “thank” the public by gouging them at every possible turn. This energy free-for-all has most definitely had an impact, unfortunately it has been a hugely negative one for individual citizens and the entire economy.

Consumers are paying record amounts at the pump, while Big Oil pulls in record profits. This has a major impact on the price of things like food and other essentials. In many ways it is responsible for a 17 year record high in inflation. As if working people weren’t hurting enough in this Bush economy, now we are getting early warnings about just how much more it will take to heat our homes this winter. Estimates from the Department of Energy project that heating costs will climb 21 percent in the Midwest this year. There is an expected 26 percent increase for homes that stay warm with heating oil.

Even with all of the bad news, John McCain has decided to follow the Bush economic and energy “plans”. As it has been previously documented, McCain has already learned how to roll over for Big Oil interests by reversing his own positions. Actually, McCain plans to go even further than Bush in many ways when it comes to appeasing Big Oil. He has not only decided to back Bush’s irresponsible tax cuts for the wealthy but he also gives away the treasury on even more tax cuts for big corporations. Big Oil would receive some $4 billion in additional handouts. It would be difficult to imagine, but such a McCain economy could make a terribly bad situation much worse.

The Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF) has done an analysis of Senator John McCain’s oil industry subsidies plan and it doesn’t look pretty. At a time when Big Oil has all of us over a barrel and is making such obscene profits, John McCain is proposing massive tax giveaways and other hand outs to them. McCain’s proposals would give $39 billion in federal help for oil and gas companies over the next five years. These subsidies and tax breaks could be used in many different ways to help support a serious long-term solution to our energy crisis. The CAPAF analysis outlines how McCain’s $39 billion for Big Oil could be invested in renewable energy and it estimates how many tax dollars from each state will be spent subsidizing Big Oil.

CAPAF estimates that Wisconsin’s share of McCain’s $39 Billion giveaway to Big Oil is $640 million! That is enough to weatherize 230,000 homes, power 98,000 homes with wind, and create 155,000 homes powered by geothermal technology. Doing all of those things would also create an estimated 2,750 new jobs in Wisconsin. Instead of taking such a long-term and forward thinking approach, John McCain is suggesting that Wisconsin keep using the same old model that keeps enriching the same folks that repeatedly gouge us. Apparently Wisconsin is just supposed to thank Big Oil and hand over it’s share of the $39 billion in extra giveaways. Exactly what kind of energy policy is that? The simple answer: it’s McSame as Bush and it won’t yield any different result.  More pain at the pump and more record profits for Big Oil.

John McCain has made energy his primary issue in recent weeks. It seems to be a strange choice for a U.S. Senator that has skipped every major energy vote in the last two years. That means that McCain was AWOL on 15 important votes on things like renewable energies, energy efficiency, biofuels, and even offshore drilling. Over the last two years McCain has shown no interest in our energy crisis or in the many solutions offered by his colleagues in Congress. Now suddenly, when he is in the midst of a presidential campaign, McCain has made energy issue number one. Someone should tell him that his actions speak much louder than his words.

Perhaps it is McCain’s extended lack of interest in energy that has caused him to ridicule his opponent for talking about energy efficiency moves like inflating tires properly and getting regular tune-ups. McCain used only a portion of that commentary to mock his opponent without looking at the actual data about how much the simple acts would save. The Bush Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling (McCain’s newfound passion) would meet 1 percent of our demand some two decades from now. Compare that to the instant 3 percent improvement in gas mileage by keeping tires inflated and the 4 percent improvement by doing regular maintenance. Even Republican Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger (CA) and Charlie Crist (FL) have made the same common sense point that McCain and the right wing are now mocking. It looks like the only joke here is McCain’s plan to continue selling out to Big Oil in a losing effort to drill our way out of an energy crisis. Perhaps McCain would do less damage if he just went back to ignoring these important energy issues. 

Update:  Now McCain has decided to sumbit to common knowledge and has said that now he doesn't disagree with Obama on the importance of tire pressure.  McCain reportedly said, "I don’t disagree with that. The American Automobile Association strongly recommends it."  Naturally his campaign continues to mock the idea.