The Janesville Gazettes Going Away Present To Paul Ryan

By Jeff Simpson 

We have pointed out before that the Janesville Gazette is having trouble letting Paul Ryan go.  After Paul Ryan announced he would no longer be running, the editorial department at the Gazette wore black for days.   I would guess that anytime The Donald makes major news, that you can find the editorial staff at the Looking Glass, drowning their sorrows in what might have been!   

After much thought, different ideas, and cake the Gazette had to figure out what parting gift could they give their dearly beloved.   With the dwindling state of the newspaper industry, coupled with Paul Ryan's extravagant tastes, made a nice dinner out of the question. 

The Gazette did the next best thing. and decided to give Paul Ryan one last parting gift, endorsing his clone.   They felt that if they can not have Paul in office, his driver would be the next best thing.    

What really freed up their time though to do this, was they let Paul Ryan's SuperPac - Congressional Leadership Fund write the endorsement for them.    

The 1st Congressional District race is a story about Randy Bryce’s shortcomings as much as Bryan Steil’s qualifications.
With a lengthy arrest record and a history of falling behind on child-support payments, Bryce is in no way congressional material. How Bryce managed to defeat Cathy Myers, a school teacher and Janesville resident, in the Democratic primary would be a mystery except that Bryce benefited from a much larger campaign war chest.

The paper that loves Paul Ryan complaining about a candidate having too big of a war chest.  Thats rich(pun intended).  

  A candidate’s character matters less today than it once did, but Bryce’s personal failings are extraordinary, even by today’s crumbling standards for our nation’s leaders. The problem is not so much Bryce’s past mistakes but that he showed an inability to learn from them. He didn’t rack up merely one OWI in 1998 (plenty of voters can identify with this). He was then picked up three times for driving with a suspended license and was arrested on a warrant for failure to appear. 

Really?   The Gazette, who refused to endorse in the last Presidential Race, has decided that Randy Bryce's history is outrageous but The Donald's is not. 

 And lest there be any doubt as to whether Bryce is a “changed man,” the state of Wisconsin placed a lien on Bryce’s property in 2015 for delinquent child-support payments to his ex-wife. Bryce paid off the debt only after announcing his candidacy last year.

The "money shot" from the paper that perennially posts about the great family man that Paul Ryan is, now judges how Randy Bryce raises his child.   Apparently they know more than Randy's ex-wife who says:

Boudreaux says she is very grateful to Bryce for the "supportive and respectful co-parenting relationship we have" for their 12-year-old son

Now I do not know who to believe, the Janesville Gazette editorial board or the mother of Bryce's child.   Diane Hendricks would be so proud! 

His background more closely resembles the kind routinely encountered by probation officers, not 1st Congressional District voters. To attempt to twist his arrest record into a symbol of the everyday working man, as Bryce’s campaign has done, is perhaps one of the most cynical and offensive ploys we’ve ever witnessed.

Because no normal person has ever committed the crime of driving to work without a license. 

 While we’re not fans of negative campaigning and believe every candidate must make a case for himself, Bryce’s personal failings are too egregious to ignore. The stakes are too high for someone of Bryce’s caliber to slip into office.

There is no place for negative campaigning only negative editorials and endorsements. 

 As for Steil, he is sometimes derisively described as a clone of House Speaker Paul Ryan, though Steil is no Paul Ryan (and we mean that as a compliment to Ryan). Indeed, it’s an impossible comparison for Steil to live up to, as it took Ryan years to develop into the powerful statesman he’s become.

Some people compare Steil to Ryan as a criticism, but we think he is dreamy.   

Steil has a lot to learn, including fleshing out his policy positions. One of our criticisms of his campaign has been its underwhelming message and lack of policy specifics. For all the criticism we’ve leveled against Bryce, his platform (as radical as much of it is) leaves no question on where he stands. We can’t say the same for Steil’s.

While Steil, has no substance at least he isn't the radical socialist leftist that Randy Bryce is.   Did you know he actually thinks all people should have health care and a living wage? 

But we’re not too concerned about Steil’s future, and we suspect he’ll take a path similar to Sen. Ron Johnson’s. As a businessman without any previous political experience when elected in 2010, Johnson had a large learning curve to overcome. He’s matured as a politician and today exhibits a strong handle on many issues affecting Wisconsin.

We like Steil’s eagerness to tackle the nation’s spending problem and hope he can make progress on one of Ryan’s major goals, entitlement reform. Securing the financial future of both Social Security and Medicare should be a top priority for the next Congress, and Steil has an opportunity to shine on this front.

“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group of course that believes you can do these things. Among them are a few other Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”― Dwight D. Eisenhower

As Steil learns the job, he’ll likely close the knowledge gap with Ryan. He’ll have to put up with comparisons to Ryan for a while, but we’re confident he’ll leave his own mark on Congress.

Now I feel bad, I would not want anyone compared to the real Paul Ryan!  

The Gazette, in fawning over Paul Ryan and anyone in his entourage(life Steil) has really done a disservice to the great city of Janesville and our state of Wisconsin.   
They still need to change their name to the Paul Ryan Messenger!

Please vote for Randy Bryce in the 1st CD, instead of Paul Ryan's chauffeur!   

We need someone who actually cares enough to stop things like this from happening in the future(Janesville GM plant)! 

Outsource Schneider

By Jeff Simpson



The all time paid political hack, and sometimes "writer" at Jsonline, Christian Schneider is at it again.   The author of the Kyle Wood Fiasco(of which he was nominated for the rotten tomato in writing awards) is more of a paid advertiser for all things republican, than a serious writer. 

When the republicans get in trouble with some particularly bad piece of PR(which is regularly), say a prominent figure choked a woman, then Schneider comes to the rescue with a piece of fiction for everyone on the right to quote.

It is so nice for Journal Communications to give him this forum.  

This time his masters sent him out to defend.......Mary Burke!  Mary Burke has been taking some major hots for the fact that her company, Trek Bicycles, has outsourced 99.5% of their manufacturing.    This has cost Wisconsinites, JOBS.

Why do they need Schnieder?  That's simple.  If the evils of outsourcing, and how it has helped drive our economy into the ground, ever becomes a real issue in an election, the republicans would take an unprecedented beating.   They long touted the wonders of outsourcing(cheap labor, no rules, no unions), and have done their best to legislate that outsourcing becomes practically mandatory. 

Here is Schneider drivel:

"Offshoring," on the other hand, means moving jobs overseas, where products can be produced cheaper due to lower labor costs. For the workers whose jobs are moved to India, China or Mexico, offshoring — to use a technical economic term — "sucks."

But as is the case with almost everything in politics, outsourcing and offshoring pit concentrated vs. diffuse benefits. While moving jobs overseas costs identifiable jobs in the short term, it allows companies to make products cheaper, helping them grow and create more jobs right back here in the United States.

 And I thought Paul Ryan was ignorant on economics!   

First off, the wonders of outsourcing has brought us to a $38.6 BILLION trade DEFICIT.  To help Schneider out, let's spell it out:

We have brought in $38,600,000,000 worth of goods than we ship out. 

That is $38,600,000,000 more worth of goods that foreign workers made that we have bought, compared to what foreign countries have bought from American workers.  

What does that mean to you?  Record job losses! 

What does that mean to Schneider's bosses?   Pretty much all of the income growth and record profits!

The Polaroid is starting to come into focus.   Let's shake it a little bit more:

Remember this from Schneider:

While moving jobs overseas costs identifiable jobs in the short term, it allows companies to make products cheaper

in 2009 as a result of outsourcing, the Janesville, WI GM plant closed. 

In 2009, the average price of a car was $27,958.
In 2013, the average price of a car was $31, 258(record high).
(Ps: Chris - $31,258 is higher than $27,958)

2300 people unemployed in Janesville.   2300 people whose families had worked at GM for generations, all unemployed.   Now they only have to pay an extra $4000 for car if they want to buy!

These 2300 people who no longer will be building our cars, have spouses, children, bill,s pay taxes for the local school districts, shop at the malls, eat at local restaurants, AND worked hard and built a high quality, affordable product....well at least they used to.

I have no doubt that Schneider can find some CATO based "economist", when they are not busy sticking up for Paul Ryan's austerity budget, about the wonders of outsourcing.  Unfortunately for the rest of us, the real world disagrees. 


I probably expected too much out of someone who gets their business acumen from a reality TV show, but the facts on the ground(as they always do with Chris's column) differ greatly:

 But economists are unanimous that trade, including outsourcing, is hugely beneficial to economic growth at home and abroad."

This is highly misleading for two reasons. First, economists are unanimous in agreeing that trade could have major distributional consequences. And some prominent economists, such as Paul Krugman, have argued that the recent pattern of trade for the United States has had negative distributional consequences for large segment of the U.S. workforce.

The second reason that it is misleading is that economists are unanimous in believing that in the context of below full employment economy, like the one we have seen the last five years, a larger trade deficit implies lower growth and fewer jobs. In this context outsourcing hurts the economy.

Let's hope that Schneider does not get his parenting skills from Keeping up with the Kardashians.

As economist Dean Baker points out, that this is a  bipartisan problem(hence the defending of Mary Burke), not only does outsourcing not work, we have other problems:

At the same time, his trade policy has done little or nothing to expose highly educated professionals like doctors and lawyers to the same competition. This policy has the predicted and actual effect of depressing the wages of less educated workers relative to the most highly paid workers. This policy is exacerbated by maintaining an over-valued dollar, which further depresses the wages of those workers exposed to international competition to the benefit of those who are largely protected.
President Obama has also done nothing to combat the corruption in the corporate governance structure whereby corporate board members are paid hundreds of thousands of thousands a dollars a year to look the other way as top management pillages the company. A policy that subjects less educated workers to the most vigorous possible competition, while maintaining protection for those at the top will redistribute income upward, as we have seen over the last three decades. Both candidates seem to largely support such policies.

 The reality of the situation is, until we start manufacturing in America again we will never have a full recovery, nor will we be the Superpower we once were. 

Americans, not employed by the Bradley Foundation, are starting to get this and its scares the hell out of Chris's bosses!

PS: I do have to give Chris his due though.  He did hit the nail on the head with this line:

(Next up: What "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" teaches us about the Laffer Curve.)

Since the Laffer Curve might be one of the few things (besides Congress) that has less credibility left than Honey Boo Boo

 

Now we know why Scott Walker placed this billboard in the shuttered GM plant grounds.  He felt that he was creating jobs by laying off 2300 fellow Wisconsinites. 

When Corporations Win, Why Do We Have To Lose?

The incredible incompetence of Scott Walker has been well documented, he and his administration have proven they can not even give our tax dollars away without there being problems!  This incompetence has led to turning WI into a mess of state that is lagging behind all of our neighbors in every category we used to lead! 

However I want to be fair here, so as not to be accused of only bringing in one side of the story.  Which leads us to ask, would we be doing better economically if the WEDC that Scott Walker created was actually competent and not just a way to reward donors with our tax dollars?  

Studies say, no we wouldnt!   That however you slice it the taxpayer gets screwed! 

In the end, the money that towns across America gave General Motors did not matter.

When the automaker released a list of factories it was closing during bankruptcy three years ago, communities that had considered themselves G.M.’s business partners were among the targets. 

For years, mayors and governors anxious about local jobs had agreed to G.M.’s demands for cash rewards, free buildings, worker training and lucrative tax breaks. As late as 2007, the company was telling local officials that these sorts of incentives would “further G.M.’s strong relationship” with them and be a “win/win situation,” according to town council notes from one Michigan community. 

Yet at least 50 properties on the 2009 liquidation list were in towns and states that had awarded incentives, adding up to billions in taxpayer dollars, according to data compiled by The New York Times. 

Some officials, desperate to keep G.M., offered more. Ohio was proposing a $56 million deal to save its Moraine plant, and Wisconsin, fighting for its Janesville factory, offered $153 million. 

But their overtures were to no avail. G.M. walked away and, thanks to a federal bailout, is once again profitable. The towns have not been so fortunate, having spent scarce funds in exchange for thousands of jobs that no longer exist.

 It's not just the auto plants its every company that can get their hands on our money and its any town/city/state/village in the country willing to hand them our money:

 In 2010, Rhode Island, which has the nation’s second-highest unemployment rate, recruited Curt Schilling, a former Red Sox pitcher, to move his video game company from Massachusetts. The company, 38 Studios, had never released a game and was not making money, but the governor at the time had the state guarantee $75 million in loans.

The company failed and dismissed all of its roughly 400 workers this May. Rhode Island taxpayers are now on the hook for the loans. 

Officials said part of the difficulty was that communities do not get much say in a company’s business strategy. 

“We, as communities, stake our futures with these people who are supposed to know what they’re doing, and sometimes they don’t,” said Arthur Walker, a businessman in Shreveport and former chairman of the city’s chamber of commerce. 

Mr. Walker and other officials in Shreveport know firsthand. In 2000, they were worried that G.M. would close a plant in their area and responded with a generous proposal: the city would cut the company’s gas bill and provide work force training grants. In addition, G.M. would benefit by a recent increase in one of the state’s income tax credits. 

Eager to encourage innovation, Shreveport officials suggested ways the city could assist G.M. in building electric cars. “We wanted to be part of the future,” said Mr. Walker, whose brother worked at the plant.

G.M. took the city’s incentives but not its business advice and began building the giant Hummer there. 

“We knew they needed to build green cars — I mean, who builds a Hummer for the 21st century?” Mr. Walker said. “It was a losing proposition that we found ourselves in. We couldn’t win because those people weren’t making the correct business decisions, in my view. When it didn’t work, we’re the ones left holding the bag.” 

The Hummer was discontinued in 2010, and the Shreveport factory closed this August, the final victim of G.M.’s bankruptcy.

I recommend reading the whole article here and  digging into their data here!

Finally if you just want to look at the data from Wisconsin, here it is!

Wisconsin spends at least $1.53 billion per year on incentive programs, according to the most recent data available. That is roughly:

• $268 per capita
• 10¢ per dollar of state budget

The Backbone of Our Country

Is the Auto Industry and it has been getting much attention during this race(as it should) and it really shows the stark contrast between the two parties. 

We know that President Obama saved the American Auto Industry with a much needed loan.

We also know that while Paul Ryan did nothing to save the auto industry(he lost every single auto industry job in his district during his time in office. Not only did he do nothing to help, he is also trying to score political points on the back of his friends and neighbors!

Lyin' Ryan's new boss Mitt Romney would have been perfectly happy letting Detroit and the American Auto Industry go bankrupt!  

In the midst of our Bush recession, saving GM was a huge priority of helping us keep away from a depression.   Anyone who tells you we did not need to bail out the American car companies is not a serious player in the realm of ideas.    Without it our current system might have collapsed.  Besides, it is only fair since their competition get more government help than anyone! 

Thanks to President Obama for keeping our current auto industry open and for keeping this great country out of a depression!!!

Paul Ryan Sells Out Janesville

Again!!

We know recently that Paul Ryan(with help from Scott Walker) tried to blame President Obama for the Janesville GM Plant closing.  We also know that Paul Ryan is an habitual liar. 

Despite being proven incredibly wrong on this issue, it did not stop the RMoney/rAyn campaign from putting out this disgusting video! 

Well we know that this attack not only is not true, it really shows that ryan is willing to use his friends and neighbors as political pawns.  Shame on him.  

One last thing about the video, Then candidate Obama had this to say.  

"If our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to retool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another 100 years.".  

Well it turns out then candidate Obama was correct,   had they gotten support from their government (like the way Toyota and Honda do), they might still be open today.

 However, that was the Bush era and no help was coming to anyone(who was not a defense contractor anyway) from the Government. 

Let's also not forget, that while the 1st congressional district of Wisconsin was once a thriving manufacturing district, it has lost every single auto job while it has been (poorly) represented by Janesville's own Paul Ryan.  

Merry Christmas 2008

FU Paul Ryan and your band of blind followers!

As Goes Janesville - Part 2

By now, we have all seen the clip of the love fest between the widow Hendricks and Scott Walker, discussing his plans to divide and conquer the state of WI. Capper even pointed out that you can check out a ten minute clip of this film online. Well I did that yesterday and it has stuck with me all day and all night. Two things stuck with me as I watched this clip. 1. The devastation to cities like Janesville is sickening and the policies of the free trade republicans like Paul Ryan have done serious damage. I am not sure how Paul Ryan can even go back to his mansion in Janesville and look at himself in the mirror. I guess enough $350 bottles of wine dulls the pain. 2. Mary Willmer-Sheedy can KISS MY ASS!!! She is the supporting actress in the lets divide and conquer clip and this movie. As the widow Hendricks puts it:

Hendricks: - so what we're going to do and talk about right now is just concerns that Mary (Willmer-Sheedy) and I have that we probably, are a little controversial to bring up upstairs. OK? I don't want to - because there's press up there.

Why would a bank president who has a minute to talk about ONE topic with the newly elected Governor, use this time to bring up Right to Work(for less) legislation and ending unions? Is that the biggest issue affecting the bottom line of the bank? Really? Let's take a look. M&I bank executives were Scott Walker's second-largest source of campaign funds Which of course came AFTER they took $1.7 BILLION in federal government bailout funds and were at the time the biggest bank in WI. While M & I bank executives have every right to give to whoever they want, do they have the right to take a $1.7 BILLION dollar government bailout then use those funds to give to politicians?

But wait there's more.

If Mary Willmer-Sheedy were a competent president, she would know her customers. Instead of working against the unions, she might have wanted to think about embracing them. As A senior union researcher estimates that unions have at least $1 billion invested in M&I Bank, mostly through pension funds. What president would be so openly hostile to such a good customer, and NOT expect blowback?

When is the last time YOU frequented a business that treated you poorly? The firefighters of Wisconsin are no different, so they led a "move your money" project where many members simply pulled their money from M & I and went to community banks. This of course seriously hurt the bottom line of M & I and made it practically impossible to pay back their TARP funds. So instead of changing their business model and before they changed executives, the executives decided to cash out and sold to Canadian bank BMO. The key to the deal, the M & I executives getting paid of course:

There’s dismay in Canada over the big Canadian banking firm’s takeover of Wisconsin’s biggest bank, henceforth to be known as BMO Harris Bank. The Toronto Globe and Mail notes that while the buyout may considerably extend BMO’s (US:BMO) U.S. footprint, it’s also “going to less illustriously, make M&I’s executive squad rich.” Seventeen of the bank’s officers are entitled to cash and stock of nearly $90-million (U.S.) after the deal closes, depending on whether they stay with BMO.

One can only imagine how all this is going to play out in the politically charged environment of Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker’s curtailing of union negotiating rights caused a firestorm of protest and a number of upcoming recall elections for his allies in the state Senate.

“That golden handshake gets heavier south of the border,” read the Globe and Mail’s headline about this week’s takeover of 164-year-old M&I, the largest Wisconsin-based bank. And the man with the heaviest handshake and firmest grip of all? M&I Chairman and Chief Executive Mark Furlong, who’ll get $18 million in this takeover, then will be paid a base annual salary of $600,000 under a three-year contract as an executive with BMO Harris Bank in Chicago, where Harris has its headquarters. But it gets better (for Furlong, anyway): He’ll also be eligible for an annual incentive payment of $800,000 and midterm and annual equity awards of $1.1 million each. On the first anniversary of the merger, Furlong will receive a $6 million “transition completion” payment, according to regulatory documents.

Happy anniversary, Mark, from your Canadian and TARP supporters. Obscene amounts to get during a severe recession when your state’s in economic turmoil? Maybe just a tad

So there is some background on Willmer-Sheedy's M & I Bank and now to what really set me off about Ms. WS. At about 8:50 into this clip Mary Willmer-Sheedy drives through a group of protestors to a Forward 5.0 meeting where Governor Walker is attending. Her exact quote is:

This is horrible, I am really enjoying getting yelled at today.

Ms. Willmer-Sheedy F - YOU!!!!

Let's take a look at what is horrible:
 * What is horrible is the GM plant closing and thousands of your neighbors losing their livelihood.
 * Horrible is Angie, being a single parent has to live 6 hours away from her son so she can have a FING JOB.
 * Horrible is when Angie is 6 hours away and finds out her son almost dies in a car crash.
* Horrible is Cindi being diagnosed with Breast Cancer, and a family history of Breast Cancer, mere months before she loses her healthcare.
* Horrible is Gayle living 6 hours away from her teenage daughter. In case you are not aware MARY, the same sex parent is THE most important role model in a child's life. Unfortunately Gayle has to parent over the phone.
* Horrible is Angie losing her job, that she moved 6 hours for, when she went home to take care of her son DJ who almost died.

 Yes Mary Willmer-Sheedy(and Diane Hendricks for that matter) keep thinking that making Wisconsin a right to work(for less) state is the most important issue in America while good people like these women who have worked hard their whole life truly suffer.

 I truly mean F You!!!