Yeah, but Act 10.....

By Jeff Simpson 

We hear often that Scott Walkers signature bill, ACT10, has "saved Wisconsin taxpayers $5 billion dollars".  according to a study done by Bradley funded, right wing no think tank, MacIver Institute.

We at CogDis pointed out, that ACT10 did not save taxpayers $5 billion dollars but instead took $5 billion dollars of demand, out of our supply and demand economy, leading to tragic consequences.  

Under Scott Walker, and one party WisGop rule, we have more businesses closing than starting.

John Lettieri, EIG cofounder and senior director for policy and strategy, said the number of new companies formed in the state lagged behind those that closed, even as figures like employment and GDP began to rebound.
"Wisconsin has a really low startup rate – in fact it has the 48th lowest startup rate in the country over the course of the recovery," Lettieri said. "That’s a concerning starting point. It gets worse when you look at the closure rate, the death rate of firms."

Ouch....we are also seeing that in retail as malls, and stand alone stores are closing all over WI.  

Why is that?

Is it because people have so much money they cant figure out where to spend it all, or is it because with wage decline, austerity and bills like ACT10 taking money out of the pockets of consumers that people are broke and have no money to buy things?

If you chose option B as in Broke, you would be correct:

Retail stocks have slumped this year.
While many chalk up the declines to competition from online retail behemoth Amazon (AMZN) , famed market expert Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, doesn't agree.
"Amazon has been here for a long time - this is the worst year for retail - it's worse than 2008 and 2009," he said. "This is because consumers are broke - they have lousy jobs, they're loaded up with debt and they can't afford to buy stuff."

For some reason the ACT10 "savings" never actually made it back into the pockets of consumers.

Which is why everytime you drive around our once great state, and see a for sale sign on a super club, or a going out of business sign on a big box retailer, or can no longer get that cool item from the local unique store you like to shop at ....you can thank ACT10 and Scott Walker.  

 Unfortunately, no help is on the horizon either.   The GOP top "policy wonk" and Speaker of the House, Janesville's own Paul Ryan (R- Wall St.)  has made it his mission to "reform the tax code" ( even overlooking treason and out and out racism by the President(but that's another blog)).    

The problem, when this numbers guru(who is scared to show his face in WI), wanted to push his far right agenda, he went to Seattle, WA to speak about his "ideas" at the Boeing plant.  

“For Boeing, we are taxing this business, these planes, your jobs in this country at a much higher tax rate than our foreign competitors tax theirs,” the Republican said. “You know what the tax rate here is? Thirty-five percent! “
 Gesturing at the activity in the plant, he added: “I’m just in awe that in spite of all that, you’re still doing so well.”

Umm Paul....what I am in awe of, is the fact that you do no research and are continually thought of as a legit candidate and not the fraud you continually prove yourself to be.

The actual facts:

Facts are for suckers these days, but c’mon. Not only is Boeing gushing cash, but its own financial documents show it has actually paid an average federal income tax of just 3.2 percent of profits over the past 15 years. That’s less than one-tenth the figure Ryan cited.

It doesn’t even count the largest tax break in U.S. history granted by the state of Washington, which reduced the company’s state business tax burden in 2015 nearly to zero.
 “The question with Boeing isn’t whether high taxes are hurting them, because that’s ludicrous on the face of it,” says Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington, D.C., outfit that tracks the taxes companies pay. “The question with Boeing is: How much lower could their taxes possibly go?” 

“Corporate profits are gangbusters right now. Corporate taxes as a share of the economy are, in the past 10 years, as low as they’ve ever been.”
 While the listed rate is 35 percent, hardly any company pays that due to extensive loopholes, subsidies and deductions that lower the burden. As we know around here, Boeing is especially skilled at feeding at this corporate-subsidy trough.
In a recent study, Gardner found that of 258 profitable Fortune 500 companies, 100 paid no taxes in at least one year out of the past eight (for Boeing, it was four of those years.) Eighteen companies paid nothing over the whole period, despite booking $177 billion in profits.

Simple mistake I guess, Speaker Ryan was only off by a few hundred million dollars.  

The moral of the story is, while James McNerney makes $29 million a year as CEO of Boeing, you and I are getting our take home pay slashed to "help the taxpayers", while our taxes go up to pay for essential services, corporation taxes are freefalling and we end up with less money, crumbling roads and larger class sizes.

We can continue listening to the spin of the Scott Walker and MacIver's of the world, or we can just pay attention when we drive around our local areas to the state of the roads, the crumbling of the buildings and the business that the "For Sale" and "Closing" sign makers are getting!  

We can change our course in 2018.  We MUST change our course in 2018!

The Reality of Act 10!

By Jeff Simpson

Today was a day that will live in infamy in WI history.  Well today 5 years ago.  February 11,2011.  It was the day that Scott Walker Dropped his bomb on the good people of WI, especially public workers, with what he called ACT10.

Scott Walker had planned all along to use his victory and power to punish his political enemies.The problem with Scott Walker though, besides a fundamental lack of economic sense, is that he does not care who he brings down with him.

When he enacted ACT10, we know that after the first year, he bled $1,000,000,000 of demand out of the Wisconsin economy.

Now that we have lived under ACT10 for five years, exactly what we thought would happen, has happened.

Happy 5th Birthday #Act10. It's saved #Wisconsin taxpayers $5.24 billion #ItsWorkingWI #ThanksGovWalker #wiright pic.twitter.com/Qpi3ClVkLT

— MacIver Institute (@MacIverWisc) February 11, 2016

Yes, you read that right, Governor Walker, while punishing the public employees for not supporting him, has bled $5,024,000,000 from our economy.   That explains why we have taken the biggest hit in the middle class in the country.

ACT10 is still a very divisive piece of legislation,but that is not surprising when it was enacted by this guy:

The biggest problem with ACT10 though, is that no one really understands what it is.  Even Todd Barry, from Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance gets it wrong.

Todd Berry of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance said districts took advantage of the law, and the “‘tools’ more or less worked.”

While every district in WI has, by law, used the "tools" provided in ACT10, we have a record number of referendums on the ballot from local school districts(because its NOT working).

Let's take a quick look at what ACT10 actually does and does not do.   It is no surprise to anyone that Maciver got it wrong, but they did the math:

$5.24 billion in savings works out to $910 in savings for every man, woman and child in Wisconsin, or $2,291 for every household in Wisconsin. The DOT could build 2,912 more roundabouts. The savings could fund over 68,000 four-year degrees at UW-Madison, or install 42 separate Milwaukee-style streetcar systems throughout the entire state. Thankfully, however, Walker and the legislature have used the Act 10 savings to provide more than $2 billion in direct tax relief for Wisconsinites.

The reality is Scott Walker and ACT10 has taken $5.24 billion(or as Mr. Healy points out $2291 per family) of Demand out of our economy.  

That is the end though,  of Mr. Healy's expertise as he points out -

. The DOT could build 2,912 more roundabouts. ----  We could have built, but we didn't because the WIsGOP want to limit the amount of roundabouts in WI and our infrastructure is badly failing under the Walker Administration.  

 The savings could fund over 68,000 four-year degrees at UW-Madison -----  We could have sent 68000 Wisconsinites to UW-Madison, instead, we cut $250 million from the UW budget and because you are more likely to go to college if your parents did, and the WI middle class has taken a beating, the enrollment of Wisconsin students at UW-Madison has declined tremendously.  

42 separate Milwaukee-style streetcar systems throughout the entire state. -  We could have, but the MacIver Institute has adamantly opposed the Milwaukee Streetcar since it was first proposed.  

Since we did not invest in any of the items, what did we invest in?  What do we have to show for the massive cut in pay to public employees? 

Well we paid for some extensive legal bills for the unethical way they redistricted, we had to pay massive overtime costs for Scott Walker's security because he refused to pay for them, we also have to now pay for 100% of Scott Walker's campaign bills.   Add to that the fact that Scott Walker's pet project of WEDC, has lost millions of taxpayer dollars and that the latest budget submitted by Scott Walker was the largest spending budget in Wisconsin's history.

While Scott Walker and his Republican shills have touted a decrease in taxes, the reality is our taxes decreased an average of $3 total over two years.  We have not seen the massive tax cuts nor have we seen the advantages of having more money in our pocket to spend.

For the $3 savings, we were given, record debt, less services, lower wages, numerous business closings and layoffs and a divided state.

Not the best record for the Republicans to run on in 2016.  

Don't forget, go to our facebook page and tell us how Act10 has affected you!