A new study from the Citizens for Tax Justice shows just how far Ryan is willing to go to sell out the middle class for the sake of America’s richest one percent.

Your State Pension Under Attack

Executive Director Beil Blast's Opponents of State Pension Plan
Defends Public Sector Workers

Marty Beil - State Pensions Under Attack
Posted by SLY IN THE MORNING at 7:45 AM

Scott Walker and right-wing radio want to blame State pensions for the budget mess despite Wisconsin having one of the best run pension programs in the country. State employees make lower wages in exchange for a secure but modest retirement and its saves taxpayer money in the long run. Listen to AFSCME Council 24 Executive Director Marty Beil (http://slysoffice.blogspot.com/search?q=State+Pensions).

Listen to the radio show - Approximately 38 minutes
http://slysoffice.blogspot.com/search?q=State+Pensions

If there’s one thing new Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce board chair Tom Howatt and his corporate cronies at WMC enjoy more than anything, it’s a big ole handout from the government.

Once again, Scott Walker has delighted us all with more exaggerated nonsense.  According to a blog entry on Cognitive Dissidence, Scott Walker’s campaign claimed responsibility for crashing the Government Accountability Office’s system due to an exorbitant amount of money in the campaign. The GAB’s office refuted Walker’s outlandish reasoning by saying “The Campaign Finance Information System did not crash. It was up and running throughout the weekend. No filers were prevented from downloading information, and the system has remained available throughout the filing period” (Cognitive Dissidence, 2/2/2010). 

To Walker’s dismay, the truth did not take long to surface.

During some downtime between creating super awesome and totally relevant Ayn Rand fanboy videos and posting them on Facebook, Paul Ryan managed to find time to offer up the latest GOP lead-balloon plan for propping up the rich and corporations while selling out the middle class. Ryan’s ‘Roadmap for America’ was brought to the forefront of the debate during the question and answer session between the President and House Republicans. The President even praised Ryan for offering a substantive idea, and though President Obama didn’t say so, I’m sure he was thankful to hear something from the Republicans that didn’t question his citizenship, attempt to incite racially-charged violence or contain a reference to teabagging. A breath of fresh air, if you will.

"This is not a case where there was a fatality or serious injury," Marks said. Her department is taking seriously the concerns raised by the investigation, she said.

No apology to the victims at the mental health facility who were sexually abused, just, well gee, there's been no murders so what's the big deal? Sexual abuse doesn't register as "serious injury" to the director of Human Services? 

And not a single comment from Walker in the whole article -- per usual, must be the state's fault, or the Board's responsibility, certainly not his or his administration.

Hi - A group of us are currently starting planning for a Netroots Wisconsin event, in cooperation with Netroots Nation. This will be a regional conference along the lines of Netroots Nation, and we are currently aiming at September 2010 in Madison. We are looking for people to help with:

If you're interested in this, please contact me at shanson@uppitywis.org, or come visit the Netroots Wisconsin web site to keep up - http://netrootswisconsin.org

Um, T. Wall pays individual taxes? Not most years…

“[O]ur businesses are pass-through businesses, that is to say our taxes are paid through the individuals. I and my investors pay taxes individually on behalf of our businesses. The only business that has double taxation, which is a C-corp, is something that’s traded publicly and we’re not public businesses. We don’t pay taxes like a C-corp. We pay them individually.” [WisPolitics interview, November 2009]

The failed conservative economic policies of giving endless tax breaks to corporations and the rich finally got a full-throated repudiation last night as voters in Oregon passed a tax increase on the wealthy and corporations to fill that state’s gaping budget hole.

Voters sick and tired of watching corporations get rich while state services and funding for public education are cut endlessly finally stood up and said ‘ENOUGH!’ Despite the typical crying and scare-tactics from corporate interests that somehow paying their fair share will “kill jobs,” Oregonians knew better. Many corporations in Oregon have skirted taxes for years, often paying the minimum tax allowed by Oregon law, ten bucks. Ten dollars – yeah cause that’s paying a fair share for the state services that corporations so willingly use.

Before criticizing Doyle for statewide job losses during a recession, Walker should pay attention to what's going on in his own backyard.

In 2009 Milwaukee County lost over 30,000 jobs -- with the unemployment rate jumping from 5.5% to 9.2% in just one year. (bls.gov)

And just what sort of "economic development" has Walker been up to as county executive? It's a legacy of mismanagement and shuffled responsibilities. And even budget deficits: "Milwaukee County economic develpment division has $3M deficit," Daily Reporter, 3/30/2007.

When Walker was elected exec he had two divisions under his supervision that managed economic development programs in the county -- the Department of Administrative Services (DAS) Economic & Community Development division (a merger of Economic Development and Housing & Community Development), and directly in the Executive Office was the Office of Community Business Development Partners (initially called Disadvantaged Business Development).

In his 2006 budget Walker moved the Office of Community Business Development Partners out of his office to the County Board after several years of reducing funding (in 2002 the program was funded at $680,454 and by 2005 Walker recommended funding of just $494,688).

After four years of recommending flat funding, Walker reduced funding for the DAS Economic & Community Dvlp department by $3 million (2007 budget), and then followed that up in his 2008 budget by stripping the program down to just real estate management and federal block grant distribution.

In his 2009 budget, introduced right in the midst of the 2008 financial collapse, the division was completely eliminated.

Walker reduced what had been $18-19 million each year in county spending on economic development (2002-2006), to just over $1 million in his proposed 2010 budget.

And so his grand 2010 effort to save face in light of the county's weak record on economic development: Milwaukee Works! A weak marketing ploy that probably had more to do with his gubernatorial campaign than with actually creating jobs in Milwaukee County.

After helping to bloat the state corrections system (in the 1990’s prison spending rose 246%), and taking political contributions from the for-profit private prison industry, Walker has now created a $5 million hole in Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke’s 2010 budget in his zeal to lie about raising the property tax levy. To cover this hole Clarke is proposing fewer highway patrols, more early releases, and cuts to programs to help rehabilitate inmates and reduce the numbers of re-offenses.

While Walker’s spokesperson claims he “takes a really strong stance on public safety” (and thanks to Capper, let's not forget his faux "Safety, Affordability and Pride" theme from his 2007 budget), a review of all of Walker's proposed budgets shows he actually proposed cutting the numbers of sheriff’s deputies and House of Correction officers in all but one of his proposed budgets from 2003 to 2010. And all those budget and staff cuts resulted in record-setting overtime spending. Walker also mismanaged the House of Correction so poorly that Sheriff Clarke had to take the department over.

Sure sounds like someone who takes a "really strong stance on public safety."

Wisconsin Environment slammed the right-wing Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (WPRI) yesterday about their inaccurate and misleading report about the Governor’s initiatives to grow the renewable energy industry and create green jobs.

Here’s an excerpt from Wisconsin Environment’s report:

“…the WPRI report fails to acknowledge the many obvious economic and other benefits that would result from a broad effort to repower Wisconsin with clean energy.

Among the long list of benefits (apparently) not considered in the analysis are the following:

1.) Avoided costs of electricity generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure resulting from reduced energy demand or the incorporation of on-site renewable generation.

2.) Increased income for Wisconsin farmers resulting from increased use of biofuels and the potential to lease lands for wind turbines and other forms of renewable energy development.

3.) Health benefits (including reductions in absenteeism, early mortality and possibly health care costs) from avoided fossil fuel-related pollution, including reductions in pollutants that form smog and soot, and mercury deposition in waterways.

4.) Avoided economic impacts of global warming in Wisconsin, including predicted changes that threaten to reduce the productivity of agriculture, increase the possibility of dangerous floods, shift the composition of Wisconsin forests, affect the winter recreation industry, and more.

5.) Reductions in the risk to individuals, businesses and government posed by sudden shifts in fossil fuel prices.

6.) Energy efficiency improvements and renewable energy both have hedging value as insurance against sudden spikes in fossil fuel costs.”

 Doyle also critiqued the report, saying “Anybody who doesn’t think this creates jobs is simply not looking around.” Doyle’s Office of Energy Independence released a study saying the legislation would create 15,000 jobs by 2025.

This is far from the first time OWN has noted WPRI’s propensity for twisting the truth to suit the interests of their monied special interest and corporate friends.

And yet the University of Wisconsin-Madison poli sci department doesn’t believe their joint polling effort with WPRI doesn’t help advance a conservative legislative agenda?

You can visit Wisconsin Environment’s report in the report section at www.WisconsinEnvironment.org.

Walker’s legacy of managing the Milwaukee County parks: mid-year budget deficits, pool closures, underfunding, complete and utter mismanagement by his appointed staff, and taking credit for a national award that was granted because of the efforts of a creative director and private citizens who took park maintenance into their own hands.

Walker’s often used strategy of making public infrastructure and services so terrible that the only option appears to be privatization is clearly on display once again.

Dan Cody writes here about the problems with the MJS story about the parks audit, and the underlying issue of needing a dedicated funding source.

These issues, however, could have been addressed by Walker long ago. He’s had eight years and eight budgets now with opportunity to clean up the problems. Instead there have been repeated mid-year budget crises, repeated layoffs and downsizing, increased fees, and reduced access through closures and repeated attempts to shut down various beloved community pools. All in an effort to further strip the parks budget. Walker’s leadership has been inconsistent at best, and downright destructive in his zeal to eliminate county jobs.

As is the tradition, a tour through the best and worst of the year.

The Best

The year started off on the high note that was watching the Worst President Ever leaving the White House for the last time, which brought with it another yearly best: the endless video compiliations of the worst Bush moments. YouTube never had it so good. 

Here in Wisconsin, decisive and effective action from Madison earlier this year is leading Wisconsin out of the worst of the Bush recession. Unemployment here has been dropping since June and is lower than the national rate, and despite the worst rhetoric from Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce bashing Wisconsin’s economy, business are opening and relocating here and bringing jobs to the state. 

For sheer entertainment value, President of Teabag-istan Sarah Palin’s descent into madness during 2009 is second to none. Remember when she quit being governor on July 4th weekend? What a patriot! Remember how she doesn’t even ride in that stupid bus on her stupid book tour? Or how she still demands to be called governor and requests English-only reporters? 

Combining two of her most juvenile and irritating hobbies, namely lying and facebooking, she launched the Lie of the Year: Death Panels. And at her no cameras, no cell phones, no media, no nothing event in Milwaukee for Wisconsin Right to Life on November 6, she floated another whopper, suggesting that President Obama and “teh libruls” conspired to move “In God We Trust” from the new dollar coin when in reality it was the previously mentioned Worst President Ever.