Wisconsin's Choices

By Jeff Simpson 

In government, money is usually limited(unless Republicans want to go to war).   In Wisconsin it is no different.   After electing a group of spend happy, economically illiterate Republicans for four years we are left with a multi billion dollar deficit.   

Now that we have limited funds,we have to make choices where we spend them.  Wisconsin by electing Scott Walker has made their choice:

In Wisconsin, in order to keep Scott Walker happy we spend millions making sure our LGBT friends do not have the same rights as everyone else:

 The State of Wisconsin's unsuccessful court battle to prevent gay marriage will cost taxpayers more than $1 million, under an agreement released Friday.

State Attorney General Brad Schimel, a Republican, and attorneys for eight gay and lesbian couples reached the agreement after the couples successfully sued to overturn the state's 2006 constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

The couples were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, which sought $1.25 million to cover its costs because the couples prevailed in their lawsuit. Ultimately, the ACLU will receive nearly $1.1 million, under the stipulation released Friday.

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia who believes bans like Wisconsin's are unconstitutional, said that he wasn't surprised at the cost to state taxpayers and that it could have been worse. Gov. Scott Walker, one of the defendants, and then-Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, both Republicans, opposed the same-sex plaintiffs at every level of the federal court system, he said.

"The state never seemed to appreciate how much taxpayer money is expended on this type of litigation in which it was pretty clear from the outset that Wisconsin was going to lose," Tobias said.

Now that we are paying legal fees from a losing effort, we have to cut somewhere, so here it is:

The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh says it plans to reduce the number of its sports programs by two, in response to proposed state budget cuts.
The school said Monday it plans to drop the men's soccer and men's tennis teams, after the 2015-'16 school year.
In addition, UW-Oshkosh plans to combine the men's and women's track and field and men's and women's cross-country teams under a restructured coaching staff.
The action will reduce UW-Oshkosh's total number of varsity sports from 21 to 19 and result in the loss of two coaching positions.

Good job Wisconsin, choosing more money to lawyers and less to our kids!  

Snake Oil Salesmen Gone Wild!

 The term snake oil has evolved in meaning:

(the term)comes from the 19th-century American practice of selling cure-all elixirs in traveling medicine shows. Snake oil salesmen would falsely claim that the potions would cure any ailments. now-a-days it refers to fake products.

In reality, when snake oil was first introduced in America in the 1800's, it actually worked:

Among the items the Chinese railroad workers brought with them to the States were various medicines —including snake oil. Made from the oil of the Chinese water snake, which is rich in the omega-3 acids that help reduce inflammation, snake oil in its original form really was effective, especially when used to treat arthritis and bursitis. The workers would rub the oil, used for centuries in China, on their joints after a long hard day at work. The story goes that the Chinese workers began sharing the oil with some American counterparts, who marveled at the effects.

In our capitalistic system, when something is popular, others try and replicate it.  The problem often is they can not do it as well or with the same effects.  Snake oil was no different as they did not have any Chinese water snake's handy so they used American rattlers.   The main person who did this was entreprenuer Clark Stanley, aka The Rattlesnake king:

This set the stage for entrepreneur Clark Stanley, aka The Rattlesnake King. In an 1897 pamphlet about Stanley's life and exploits, the former cowboy claimed he had learned about the healing power of rattlesnake oil from Hopi medicine men. He never publicly mentioned Chinese snake oil at all. Stanley created a huge stir at the 1893 World's Exposition in Chicago when he took a live snake and sliced it open before a crowd of onlookers.

Stanley's version of snake oil was so popular he opened up two seperate production facilities(a true "job creator").   As so often happens in our Capitalist society, short term profits trump people, and it turns out that the one ingredient that Stanley's snake oil did not have was - snake oil.   

As the saying goes, "Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it". 

In Wisconsin, we have our very own Clark Stanley's.   I recently chronicled some major changes that happened shortly after the election that were never discussed during the election cycle. 

Now we have a major issue that was actually discussed during the election, but not discussed very well.   

In September, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau told us to expect a $1,800,000,000 deficit when we start the new budget.   Mary Burke and the democrats seized on this of course:

“I agree, contributions are needed, what worries me is we are back to 1.8 billion dollar deficit,” said Burke.

Scott Walker flatly denied it:

“Again this is based on no growth, no change in expenditures. Our record has been every year we’ve been in office, we finished the year with a surplus. Going forward, every year I’m in office we’ll finish with a surplus,” Governor Walker said.

The Walker amen chorus even weighed in on this in this very paper:

From Law Professor Rick Esenberg, in a column ironically complaining about dishonest ads:

We don't have a budget deficit.

Christian Schneider even dedicated a whole column to it entitled "Mary Burke's Bogus Budget Deficit Snapshot". 

Upon release of the numbers, Walker immediately boasted, that over the course of the year, that three-month $55 million number would become $220 million, which would come close to wiping out Burke's "$1.8 billion deficit" claim. This is also tenuous math, as it again assumes the economy will be cryogenically frozen for four years. But as long as Democrats are able to get away with such a bogus figure, why not use their own formula to defend yourself? The $1.8 billion figure was widely reported around the state; stories pointing out that the number almost has been eliminated have been harder to find than Kim Jong Un.

State Senator Alberta Darling and representative John Nygren(and they are co-chairs of the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee) :

"Wisconsin does not have a deficit," Darling said in a news release, which was issued with GOP Rep. John Nygren of Marinette. "Thanks to Republican reforms, the 2014 budget will begin with a $443 million surplus."

It turns out now that everyone was wrong, and they were not really close with the $1.8 BILLION dollar deficit.   The reality is the deficit is $2,200,000,000 dollars.  

It was actually legislation, The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, not the free market,  that ended the masive fraud that Clark Stanley was pulling on the American people.  

Stanley's punishment:

As for what happened to Clark Stanley after it was found that his whole empire was based on a lie? He was fined $20 (that's about $429 in today's dollars) for violating the food and drug act and for "misbranding" his product by "falsely and fraudulently represent[ing] it as a remedy for all pain."

Stanley did not dispute the charges.

It appears there are quite a few people in Wisconsin, starting with the Governor who owes us $20.   I fear though, like Scott Walker's last budget, that it will be you and I paying the price instead.

Cross posted @ Purple Wisconsin. 

We Need A Mulligan

By Jeff Simpson

Seriously, can we just declared republican rule and giving Scott Walker the keys to our state as a miserably failed experiment and start over by kicking them all out of office in November?

Madison — The expected shortfall for the next two-year state budget now stands at nearly $1.8 billion, or about half of what it was when Gov. Scott Walker took office in January 2011.
The Republican governor resolved a more than $3 billion budget shortfall in the months after taking office, but the latest projections show a gap once again opening in the 2015-'17 budget because of tax cuts enacted by Walker and lawmakers and lagging growth in other state taxes.
The latest estimates by the Legislature's non-partisan budget office jumped by more than $1.1 billion over the previous estimate of a $642 million gap released in May. The projections from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau were released Monday for the budget beginning in July 2015 and ending in June 2017.
These projections aren't final — they could still get better or worse depending on the whims of the global economy. But any weakness in the coming budget will make it harder for state leaders to increase spending on priorities such as schools or cut taxes further for state residents.
"With all the bad economic news working families have dealt with, Gov. Walker's structural deficit is yet another reminder that Wisconsin is heading in the wrong direction," said state Sen. Jennifer Shilling (D-La Crosse), a member of the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee. "This budget crisis was completely avoidable and will only get worse if we don't act now to balance our budget and grow our economy from the bottom up."

I know Scott Walker has broken all of his promises, but did anyone believe him anyway?  

Let's put this era in WIsconsin politics behind us the way we put the Sal Bando Brewer GM years and Bart Starr/Forest Gregg Packers head coaching years behind us in this state.   

Hire professionals, move on and never speak of them again!