Friday, January 3, 2014

Of Private Practices And Public Servants

There is very little doubt left that Scott Walker, Rebecca Kleefisch and the Teapublicans and Republicrats in the state legislature serve the will of the corporate special interests despite their empty rhetoric about being concerned about the taxpayers and working families.

To confirm this fact, Becky Kleefisch has been going around the state meeting with business leaders in order to get their marching orders:
In a closed meeting with Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, business operators argued — sometimes forcefully — for lower taxes and more financial incentives for commercial interests.

A recently released video of the Dec. 9 session at Beloit College shows Kleefisch and state Revenue Department Secretary Rick Chandler extolling state efforts to reduce taxes since Republicans took over state government in 2011, and saying they wanted private-sector ideas for another round of cuts.

“We want to know how we can love you more,” Kleefisch told the group of about 30 executives, managers, accountants and others during the 1-hour, 40-minute session.

The Beloit meeting was planned as an invitation-only affair so participants could speak freely without worries about divulging private financial information, Kleefisch said in an interview Thursday.

Gov. Scott Walker directed Kleefisch and Chandler to stage a series of “Tax Reform Roundtables” with state residents to find out how taxes affected “their businesses and their families,” and he said the Beloit session was a great start.
I find it ironic that the woman who compared same sex marriage to bestiality is willing to get some good loving going on with non-human corporations. I guess big campaign donations are an aphrodisiac.

The article goes on to report that Kleefisch was not only amorous to the corporate special interests, but a little bit voyeuristic, taking a video of the meeting.  The video was undoubtedly to make sure they got their orders correct, since accuracy is not a strong suit for this administration.

However, once Kleefisch learned that the video was subject to open records requests, she stopped videotaping her escapades.  Apparently, allowing the public to know what their public servants are doing is worse than the risk of getting the corporate demands wrong.

Side note: It's rather hypocritical that whenever a Democrat or a liberal (no, they are not always the same thing) says or does something the Teapublicans don't like, the first thing they do is run to see if the person signed a recall petition, but they don't want anyone to know what they are doing themselves.

Finally, as if there was any doubt about who the takers really are, the article includes this excerpt of some of the demands from the oligarchs:
They said the state should do more to attract new businesses and help existing companies, loosen restrictions on tax credits, simplify the tax code, cut commercial property taxes, consider lowering income and property taxes while increasing the sales tax, and issue more business loans that don’t need to be paid back in some circumstances.

Four of the 29 at the meeting are employed by Hendricks Holding Co. and its subsidiaries, including ABC Supply Inc. HHC’s owner is billionaire Diane Hendricks, who has been among Walker’s top campaign donors.

ABC’s tax director, Scott Bianchini, said the state should stop disclosing how much residents pay in taxes, saying the information is used for “sabotage.” Contacted Thursday, he wouldn’t say if he was referring to 2012 newspaper reports indicating Hendricks paid no taxes in 2010 because of a change in her company’s structure.
But my personal favorite was this one, also by Bianchini:
At the Beloit meeting, Bianchini told Kleefisch that tax credits for businesses are too stingy because some can only be applied to taxes owed to the state.

The state should pay the credits in cash to companies that didn’t earn enough to have tax bills, Bianchini said.

“That company needs that money that year,” Bianchini said. “This is going to require Wisconsin to take a chance on the people they are asking to come into the state.”
The gentle reader should keep in mind that Walker and the Teapublicans have already cut taxes for businesses so much that most of them, like Hendrick's companies, don't pay taxes at all. Now they are arguing that if they can't cut taxes anymore because they're already paying nothing, then these businesses should just be given taxpayers' money for no reason other than to make them even richer.

Because making sure that veterans have health coverage, kids receiving a good education or other needed public services are being provided are out of the question when there are CEOs that can't buy their third yacht or seventh limo out there.

4 comments:

  1. So earned income tax credit is bad for individuals who need it, but is good for business that needs it. The hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance of these selfish people on the right is truly astonishing.

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  2. The thing I don't get about the Hendrickses and the Kochs of the world is what the hell they are complaining about? Obviously there was nothing in our current tax and regulatory regime that kept them from becoming filthy f'ing rich. But no, they want more more more.

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  3. "...get some good loving going on..."

    I've never been able to imagine how they'd be able to jail a corporation, and I don't WANT to imagine the subject of the quote.

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  4. Corporations are not only people, they are now a higher class of people who deserve special rights and subsidies.
    These scumbags are really pushing their luck.

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