WPRI Blog – Page 3 – Christian Schneider

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You Paid for This: In Dire Economic Times, Legislators Spend Millions to Improve Their Public Images

November 9, 2009 / Christian / 0 Comments

Recently, WPRI issued a report on term limits (authored by yours truly) that made the point that incumbent legislators are extremely difficult to oust from office, given the advantages they grant themselves in office.

One of the most challenging aspects of running a legislative campaign as a non-incumbent is trying to get your message to the voters. Doing so takes raising money, and paying out tens of thousands of dollars in printing and mailing costs to get your literature to citizens of the district.

Fortunately for incumbents, they have no problem delivering campaign materials to the voters. Because the voters pay for it.

Every legislative session, incumbent lawmakers get to send “legislative updates” and “questionnaires” to their constituents in the form of mass mailings. Of course, nobody would argue that lawmakers shouldn’t be able to keep in touch with their constituents. Virtually any voter would agree that constituent service is a large part of the job citizens expect their lawmakers to perform.

However, a review of newsletters mailed out by legislators during the 2007-08 session shows that these taxpayer-funded fliers appear to have very little informational value to voters. They are essentially general fund-supported campaign literature, bragging incessantly about all the projects legislators were able to bring back to their home districts. They are sprinkled with photos of legislators reading to children, giving speeches on the floor, attending bill signings, and meeting with veterans in their district. They list many of the bills authored by the legislator, with flowery, hagiographic text written by that legislator’s staff.

Some newsletters are mailed out as questionnaires, allowing constituents to answer questions written by the legislator in order to get “feedback.” Of course, these questions are often heavily slanted in favor of the legislator’s personal views. Then, the incumbent can use these manufactured poll results as talking points during the campaign, perhaps even using the database with the poll results as a guide for targeting voters during the campaign. A voter that answers a questionnaire from a legislator saying they believe in the right to carry a concealed weapon is infinitely more likely to get a pro-gun literature piece from that legislator come election time.

These “questionnaires” (which are statistically invalid, since they are voluntary) contain questions such as this one, from Representative Mary Hubler’s survey:

“The governor has proposed that big oil companies be taxed 2.5% per barrel on profits from sales in Wisconsin. This tax could not be passed on to consumers at the pump. Do you agree with this?”

In 2008, WPRI released a study that invalidates nearly every portion of this question – “big oil” will not eventually pay the tax, and the tax could very well cost consumers more at the pump. Clearly, this question is meant to generate a specific answer in support of Representative Hubler’s position, not to actually gauge the opinion of her district. Furthermore, this question is representative of the hundreds of other biased questions found on these phony “surveys.”

During the 2007-08 legislative session, the Wisconsin Senate spent $568,000 printing and mailing these newsletters and questionnaires. The Assembly spent $692,000 on various forms of newsletters, questionnaires, mailing services, contact cards, newspaper inserts, and other taxpayer funded forms of constituent contacts.

In this time period, legislators sent out 152 different newsletters. Some choose to do one large newsletter, while some mail one newsletter and one questionnaire. Others, like State Senator Sheila Harsdorf and State Representative Scott Suder, choose to do multiple newsletters, but target them to smaller specific constituencies.

All total, the Legislature spent $1.26 million in 2007-08 trying to convince their constituents how well they did their jobs – enough to send 191 inner city children to private schools through the Milwaukee school choice program. This constitutes a $1.26 million taxpayer-funded head start over potential challengers vying for the public’s attention. Put simply, the Legislature takes a million dollars from voters in order to feed those same voters a line about how fiscally responsible they are.

A sampling of the 2007-08 legislative newsletters shows some of the following information that was deemed vital to constituents:

State Representative Samantha Kerkman’s newsletter includes a plug for the state’s new 24 hour hotline that allows constituents to call and report fraud, waste, and mismanagement in state government. Any constituent that didn’t immediately call the number and report her newsletter as an example simply wasn’t reading it.

State Representative Andy Jorgensen’s newsletter includes a section detailing the results of first-ever “Best of the Area” poll, conducted by local newspapers. The ballot included a question for readers about the “Best Area Politician,” which was won by… Representative Andy Jorgensen.

Numerous newsletters get directly to the point, boasting of all the money and projects that legislator has brought to the district. They include headlines such as “Hebl Brings Important Resources Back to District,”and “Hraychuck Delivers for Her District.” Disgraced State Representative Jeff Wood brags about creating $22 million in incentives for renewable energy development in his district.

State Representative Joe Parisi includes a picture of himself with the Dalai Lama. The relevance of this meeting to the citizens of the 48th Assembly District is unknown.

State Representative Steve Wieckert’s newsletter includes a picture of him hugging a puppy dog.

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Despite having announced that she wasn’t running for office again, State Representative Barbara Gronemus mailed out a newsletter consisting of nothing but pictures of herself over the span of her 26 year legislative career. This ode to herself cost state taxpayers cost $5,683 to print and mail.

State Representative Jeff Mursau’s newsletter features a full page dedicated to images of press clippings he received in his local media. Constituents are treated to headlines like “Mursau Introduces Drunk Flying Bill.”

State Senator Jon Erpenbach’s newsletter features a picture of the Senator with a woman dressed as a giant foam rubber soybean, to commemorate a $4 million grant to build a new Evansville Soybean Crushing Plant.

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From State Representative Steve Nass’ newsletter: “This legislative session will be remembered for years to come as the resurgence of Big Government in Wisconsin. The taxpayers were under assault from day one with numerous proposals to raise taxes and expand government power. Many of these bad ideas were bipartisan in nature, but bipartisanship didn’t change the fact that Wisconsin families would be forced to pay for Bigger Government.” Cost of Nass’ newsletter to the state’s taxpayers: $5,285.41.

State Representative Cory Mason issued a questionnaire in August of 2007, in which he asks constituents 14 questions, such as, “Racine has the highest rate of infants who die before they are a year old. Should the state invest in programming to reduce infant mortality?”

In April of 2008, Mason issued another newsletter, printing the “results” of his questionnaire. Yet he only printed the answers to five of the 14 questions he had asked six months before. Naturally, all of the answers he revealed strongly backed his viewpoint on those issues. The results of the other questions are unknown.

State Senator Mary Lazich’s newsletter attempts to fortify her law-and-order credentials by featuring a photo of Lazich in an FBI helmet and bulletproof vest. Lazich had the largest mailing budget in the Legislature, at $38,311.99.

State Senator Mark Miller’s newsletter features a picture of Miller serving his constituents from a canoe.

In many ways, these newsletters are completely indistinguishable from campaign literature mailed to constituents’ homes during election season. Many of the pictures and much of the glowing language will end up in campaign mail pieces verbatim. Yet taxpayers pay for these mailings, while challengers are left on their own to raise and spend the necessary funds to print, design, and mail their literature.

It is telling that in a time when the state is in a fiscal freefall, legislators continue to spend millions to boost their own public personas. Taxpayers get to pay for the right to be convinced of the greatness of their own legislators.

-November 9, 2009

Wisconsin’s Own “Public Option”

September 28, 2009 / Christian / 0 Comments

cross It’s a given that both sides of the health care debate feel that they have the high road when it comes to compassion. But the goal shouldn’t be to confuse mere action with progress. Lawmakers would be best to heed Robert Frost’s admonition that it is more important to “do good well.”

At the center of the debate is the idea of a “public option:” a government-run health program that liberals say would merely compete with private plans for customers.

Conservatives counter that historically, when a generous government plan is instituted, private businesses tend to scale back or even drop their health plans, so their employees can save them money by going on the public plan. As a result, taxpayer funded health programs grow much faster than originally anticipated, quickly driving governments into the red.

History is replete with examples of how government health care programs have escalated quickly, devouring public funds as fast as taxpayers can write their checks. As pointed out by Michael Tanner of the CATO Institute:

In 1967, the House Ways and Means Committee predicted that Medicare would cost $12 billion in 1990. In reality, the program cost over $110 billion that year. In 1987, Congress estimated that the Medicaid Special Hospitals Subsidy would reach $100 million in 1992. The actual cost exceeded $11 billion.

Wisconsin, where 45% of individuals who have health care receive it through some sort of government source, has its own example of a health care program run wild. Wisconsin’s BadgerCare program, enacted in 1997, should serve as a warning to those who believe costs can easily be contained within a tidy public program.

Since its inception, BadgerCare has proven to be a difficult program for which to accurately estimate costs and has now grown into a much more costly program than originally envisioned. Enacted in 1997, BadgerCare was intended to provide health insurance for individuals below 185% of the federal poverty level (FPL), but above the 133% cutoff for MA eligibility. The thinking was that people in the gap between 133% and 185% would pay a premium for health care, while those under the 133% level would continue to receive cost-free benefits. Once in the program, people could stay in the program until their income reached above 200% of the FPL.

At the time the Legislature began considering the new program, their Fiscal Bureau was warning them of the possibility that employers may respond to such a generous new program by dropping coverage for their employees. A September, 1997 Fiscal Bureau memo seems prescient in retrospect:

“It should be noted that without sufficient regulation, over time, the cost of expanding MA coverage under Badgercare could increase if under BadgerCare, employers with significant numbers of low-wage employes choose to no longer offer employer-subsidized health benefits or to lower employer subsidization to a level below 80%.”

The first drafts of BadgerCare legislation had enrollees paying 7% of their income in premiums to participate in the program. Charging premiums for this group was thought to “encourage personal responsibility and move individuals from government support toward self sufficiency.”

In the final bill, the Legislature reduced the premium to 3% of an eligible family’s income. Additionally, families with incomes up to 143% of the FPL were eligible for free care; up from the initial 133%. The program was funded through a mixture of general purpose revenue, expected premiums paid by enrollees, and federal matching funds. The LFB estimated that at the 3% premium level, the program would serve 19,600 children and 22,800 adults, for a total of 42,400 enrollees.

When the program went into effect in 2000, the results were somewhat of a surprise, given the expectation that cost sharing made people “self sufficient” and low premiums saved money in the long-term. In the first quarter of enrollment, the program welcomed 23,151 new enrollees (6,298 children and 16,853 adults). By the end of 2003, that number had grown to 114,237 enrollees (37,839 children and 76,383 adults).

The cost of BadgerCare increased commensurately. In Fiscal Year 2001, the first full year of the program’s operation, the Legislature spent $129 million in all-funds revenue on BadgerCare. By Fiscal Year 2004, merely three years later, that number had nearly doubled to $205.6 million.

The introduction of a new, high cost program like BadgerCare couldn’t have come at a more stressful time for the Governor and the Legislature. In 2003 they were dealing with the aftereffects of the 2001 recession and, as was the case in nearly every state, tax revenue plummeted leaving the state budget with a $3.2 billion budget shortfall. Every program, including BadgerCare was put under the microscope in search of savings.

In response to both the fiscal challenges and policy concerns, the Legislature began to make changes that trimmed the BadgerCare program. In the 2003-05 budget, new requirements were added that:

Increased premiums for enrollees over 150% FPL from 3% to 5% of family income;
Required each member of a family who is employed to verify his or her earnings;
Required enrollees to provide documentation as to whether their employer provides family health coverage; and
Required participants to provide documentation as to how much their employer pays towards their health care premiums.

It was clear to the Legislature that BadgerCare costs were unsustainable given the fiscal condition of the state. The action taken by the Legislature worked. Enrollment in BadgerCare began to fall in 2004. The program had reached a high water mark of 114,237 enrollees in March 2004; by September 2006, that number had dropped to 94,034. Accordingly, the cost of the program also fell. As noted, in Fiscal Year 2004, $205.6 million was appropriated for BadgerCare. The next year, appropriations for the program fell to $188.6 million, before climbing to $194.4 million in fiscal year 2006 – likely due to the rapidly rising cost of health care.

Proponents of an extensive new federal program argue that government health care doesn’t necessarily mean “rationing” care. Yet within six years of enacting the BadgerCare program, Wisconsin had to do exactly that. The arguments that somehow health care would cost less if people got more care clearly didn’t ring true in Wisconsin, which has one of the highest rate of insured citizens in the nation. Instead, health cost ballooned quickly until they were reined in. In fact, BadgerCare was so unsuccessful at making health care more affordable, legislative Democrats have been pushing a statewide single-payer program for several years.

It is often said that states are the “laboratories of democracy.” Here in Wisconsin, we’ve gotten out our lab coats and Bunsen burners and tried massive government health care programs, to no avail. The federal government would do well to heed the lessons we’ve learned here.

Jim Doyle’s Democratic Successors: Who Got the Gravy?

August 17, 2009 / Christian / 0 Comments

So by now, you’ve heard the big news of the weekend. I hit my first career home run in my softball league, and the new season of Mad Men started.

Oh, and there’s the other minor news – apparently, Wisconsin will have a new governor in 2010. (Yawn.)

For months, political observers had been wondering whether Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle was going to run for a third term. It now appears that he is not. As much as Republicans hate to hear it, Doyle will go down as one of the most successful politicians in state history, at least from an electoral perspective. He went 5 for 5 in statewide races, and never lost an election for anything at any time.

His actual achievements are a different story, however. Doyle routinely broke promises to veto tax increases, drove the state into larger and larger structural deficits, and handed out enough special interest favors to his donors to make anyone paying attention want to take a shower. When elementary school students read about Wisconsin history 50 years from now, they won’t be reading about a single achievment of the Doyle Administration. (Assuming kids in 50 years know what “reading” actually is.)

On Saturday, my e-mail inbox began filling up with conservatives celebrating Doyle’s exit from Wisconsin politics. I got e-mails boasting that it’s a “great day to be a Republican” and wishing Doyle “good riddance,” and offering me “natural male enhancement.” (Wait – on second thought, I requested that last one. Strike that one.)

I would offer this advice to people who think Doyle’s exit means a conservative renewal in Wisconsin:

Pump your brakes.

On Saturday, the Republican task of taking back the East Wing in Wisconsin actually just got a lot harder. Presumably, Doyle looked at his approval ratings, which placed him firmly between “amputation” and “cellulite,” and decided to spare himself an electoral defeat next year. It got to the point where Doyle actually probably needed to get his picture taken with South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford to improve his public image. (Doyle currently only enjoys high approval numbers from the much sought after “Spanish train builders looking for sweetheart no bid contracts” demographic.)

Now, instead of facing a badly damaged Doyle, Republican hopefuls Scott Walker or Mark Neumann will have to face a fresh Democratic face – take, Congressman Ron Kind, for example (see below.) Plus, Doyle could move on to a new position where he could do more damage to the conservative cause than he can as Governor – for instance, if President Obama chooses him to replace retiring Judge Terry Evans on the Federal 7th Circuit Court.

While 2010 could certainly trend more to the GOP, winning the governorship is not a lock, by any means. Remember – Wisconsin hasn’t elected a Republican Governor since 1998, 12 years before the 2010 election. Wisconsin hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984. So while some see an opportunity to run against a non-incumbent as a boon to Republican candidates, it also so happens that the incumbent was a millstone around the neck of statewide Democrats.

That’s not to say that the presumptive Democratic candidates don’t have shortcomings, either. And since speculation is really the most fun part of politics, here’s a list of the frontrunners for the nomination, with a brief summation of their pros and cons. In accordance with accepted practice among political scientists, their chances of electoral success are graded relative to a scale devised by rap group Digital Underground, from their classic 1998 CD “Who Got the Gravy?”

Congressman Ron Kind:

With Doyle’s resignation, Ron Kind immediately becomes the Democratic frontrunner for the nomination. (He’s been fundraising for a while in the event Doyle bowed out.) First elected to Congress in 1996, he’s a handsome, articulate Harvard graduate that positions himself as a moderate, working with conservatives like Paul Ryan on things like farm subsidy reform. Despite representing a swing seat in Congress, no Republican has even gotten a whiff of beating him in his six elections.

rod_kindler On the other hand, Kind currently has the word “Congressman” in front of his name, which isn’t exactly a selling point these days, given how the U.S. House has immolated itself on the national stage. Even Rick Pitino must be saying “man, those guys really screwed up.”

So don’t be surprised if Kind attempts to erase any public record that he ever served in Congress. His staff is probably going door to door, ripping his page out of Wisconsin residents’ Blue Books as we speak. Visitors to his official congressional website will be surprised to know that they’re now represented by a guy named “Rod Kindler.”

I imagine Kind’s announcement ceremony going as follows:

Reporter: “Congressman Kind, can you explain to us the thinking behind the House voting initially for rewarding banking executives with stimulus money?”

Kind: “Look, I’m no hayseed, but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of this ‘Congress’ you guys keep talking about. Have I mentioned that I like donuts?”

Regardless, Kind remains the odds on favorite for the Democratic nomination. In fact, had he run in 2002, he would have beaten Doyle in the Dem primary.

Verdict:

RON KIND GOT THE GRAVY.

Lieutenant Governor Barb Lawton:

Lawton’s candidacy is only appealing to those confused by the fact that she currently has a position with the word “Governor” in the title. In related news, I have a t-shirt that declares me “FBI: Female Body Inspector,” which I think qualifies me to run the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Lawton’s candidacy is a punch line to any political observer that has seen her in action over the past seven years. She believes government runs on rainbows, hugs, and patchouli.

Doyle probably has to be reminded once a year who his Lieutenant Governor actually is, as he has relegated her to talking about the arts and pushing for some goofball legislation that purports to pay women equal money for equal work (as if nobody’s thought of that in the past 30 years.) Fairly ironic, since Lawton earns $70,000 a year to do essentially nothing.

The good news is that Lawton’s brand of liberalism doesn’t have any appeal beyond the borders of Dane County. Democratic voters, smart enough to recognize that they actually need to win this election, will politely decline her invitation to hug it out.

Verdict:

BARB LAWTON MOST CERTAINLY DOES NOT GOT THE GRAVY

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett:

For as long as America has been a democracy, candidates have told voters they’re “fighting for them.” In Tom Barrett’s case, it is literally true. We all hope he gets better as soon as possible, as he is currently sitting in a hospital room recovering from a heroic lead pipe beating he suffered while trying to save a Milwaukee woman from an assault.

Assuming Barrett recovers fully – and we all certainly are praying that he does – this assault might be something that would appeal to voters. Everyone likes a hero. Many candidates have ridden lesser feats of heroism into office. Plus, people might be afraid that if they don’t vote for him, he’ll punch them.

On the other hand, Barrett already tried his hand at running for Governor in 2002, and was met with indifference by statewide voters.

Verdict:

TOM BARRETT GOT HEROIC, BUT REHEATED, GRAVY

Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker:

Through the miracle of modern technology, I was able to actually record Russ Decker’s brain waves regarding his decision on whether to run for Governor:

“So I’ve been busting my tail for the people in the state senate for 20 years, and some kook like Barb Lawton is actually mentioned as a more viable candidate for governor than I am? I’m the freaking Senate Majority Leader for Christ’s sake! I’m the second most important Democrat in state government – and as much as I’d love to run for Dave Obey’s congressional seat when he retires, everyone knows that bearded skeleton is only leaving Congress feet first. He’ll probably serve until he’s 132.
But what if people start figuring out that my fingerprints are all over this most recent disastrous budget? Aren’t I culpable for the huge tax increases and future deficits this budget creates? Are voters really going to elect someone that’s saddled with all the same baggage that Jim Doyle carries around?

And how is it that Pizza Hut keeps coming up with new pizzas to sell us as ‘specials,’ when they’re all essentially the same ingredients?”

(Sorry, I didn’t turn off the thought transcriber machine in time.)

Verdict:

RUSS DECKER GOT MORE GRAVY THAN PEOPLE THINK

State Senator Jon Erpenbach:

I just wanted to see “Governor Erpenbach” typed out to see if it made me laugh. Mission accomplished.

At this writing, in an attempt to boost his name identification, Erpenbach is wandering around downtown Madison, looking for someone to beat him with a pipe. Plus, he’d have to take too much time out of his job stocking shelves at Woodman’s grocery store in Madison to run for Governor.

Verdict:

JON ERPENBACH GOT NO GRAVY, BUT KNOWS WHERE THE GROCERY STORE STOCKS IT

Of course, with an incumbent leaving, there’s always the chance that someone from the crazy wing of the Democratic Party determines all the Dem candidates are too moderate (read: electable) and decides to run.

Verdict:

CRAZY DEMOCRATS DON’T EVEN GOT VEGAN GRAVY

On a somewhat serious note, it is sad to see Doyle exit in a state of such ignominy. Here’s a guy from a political family, whose mother served in the Assembly and whose father once ran for governor himself. And yet he so befouled the state’s finances, he really has no choice but to quit. While seeing the state in such financial disrepair may turn out to be electoral gold for the GOP in the upcoming elections, rooting against a governor of either party is rooting against Wisconsin – hopefully, a position our state doesn’t have to face in the near future.

-August 17, 2009

The Power of the Pen (and Why Property Taxes Might Not Be So Bad)

July 30, 2009 / Christian / 0 Comments

See that pen on your desk? Right over there, by the stapler. As it turns out, that pen is one of the most powerful instruments you can own. The U.S Constitution was written with a pen. Lincoln freed the slaves with a pen. Most importantly, some girl in middle school probably broke your heart when she used a pen to check the “NO” box in response to your sweaty “Do you like me?” query.

In fact, while Wisconsin state government-related interest groups spend millions of dollars on lobbyists to influence lawmakers, that pen on your desk is the most influential implement in state government. It is the entire reason we structure our Wisconsin state and local governments in the manner we do.

Wisconsin residents pay all kinds of taxes. They pay income taxes (which are usually automatically deducted from their paycheck) or sales taxes (which are automatically added to their purchase), or corporate taxes (which are passed through in the form of higher prices.) Yet with all the billions of dollars in taxes Wisconsin citizens pay, one particular levy stands alone in its repugnance. It is the property tax.

Poll after poll demonstrates that Wisconsin residents object to paying the property tax more than any other tax – even if, say, their income tax liability is greater than the amount they pay in property taxes. But it’s all money, after all, so why is paying property taxes so much more painful?

The answer has to do with the physical way in which each tax is paid. When we pay property taxes, that pen must come off the desk and sign a check over to the government. Rather than automatically handing money over to the government, paying property taxes is a proactive endeavor, usually involving the clenching of teeth, irritability, and alcohol consumption.

The painful act of writing a check to the government has far-reaching consequences. For decades, Wisconsin politicians have been myopic in their quest to relieve the property tax burden on individuals. In 1995, Governor Tommy Thompson sent an extra $1 billion to local school districts to buy down the property tax levies around the state. Governor Jim Doyle’s special commission on school funding suggested raising the sales tax in order to replace a portion of the unpopular property tax. Legislative Republicans fought a bloody internecine war in an attempt to pass the Taxpayers Bill of Rights in an attempt to hold down property taxes. Their Democrat colleagues have spent years pushing a plan to exempt a portion of residential property from having to pay taxes. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Clearly, state government is dedicated to keeping you from having to pick that pen up off your desk. But this raises a provocative – and in Wisconsin, almost unspeakable – question:

What if property taxes are the best way to tax?

I recognize that even asking such a question will go over about as well as a complete sentence at the Country Music Awards. But what if there is a case to be made for more reliance on the property tax, and less on income, sales, and corporate taxes?

Obviously, lower taxes and lower spending would be the ideal goal. But if we have to choose one tax over the other, which one does the most good for the economy?

In 2006, conservative Mount Rushmore occupant Milton Friedman re-stated his long-term opposition to taxes, but said “The property tax is one of the least bad taxes, because it’s levied on something that cannot be produced — that part that is levied on the land.”

In other words, taxes on income, sales, and corporations depress activities that are beneficial to a robust economy. They punish work, job creation, and production – all things necessary for the creation of wealth in society. Naturally, the more you tax these activities, the less of them you get – which causes big trouble when the economy starts to recede.

In this month’s Atlantic Monthly, New America Foundation fellow Reihan Salam picks up on this idea, and proposes ending all taxes except for the property tax:

“Chronic revenue shortfalls have crippled local governments ever since, leading to heavier reliance on punishing state income and sales taxes. What if the problem isn’t the property tax at all but rather, well, all other taxes? In 1879, Henry George, a brilliant if slightly crankish autodidact, published Progress and Poverty, a scathing polemic that blamed all economic ills on the private ownership of land. A staunch believer in laissez-faire economics, George found it perverse that we tax productive activities like work and innovative investment while letting landowners grow rich simply because they scooped up property at the right time. In that spirit, George called for a “Single Tax” on the unimproved value of land. There’s a certain compelling logic to the Single Tax that stands the test of time. When you tax income, aren’t you punishing people for working hard? But when you tax an asset like land, you’re simply encouraging the most valuable use of that land.”

In Wisconsin, local governments have levied property taxes since before the state even became a territory in 1836. (It was probably around that time that profanity was invented.) In 1842, Governor James Doty called property taxes “unequal, illegal and highly oppressive.” Wisconsin wouldn’t become a state for another six years.

Since then, one of the primary focuses of the state government has been trying to keep property taxes down. In 1911, when the state began levying an income tax, state government immediately began sending funds to local governments to offset reliance on the property tax.

In the most recent state budget, 55.3% of the state’s general fund appropriations go to local governments for the purpose of holding down property taxes. But this creates an enormous accountability gap, which would be eliminated if the state got out of the business of funding local governments.

Imagine the plight of the typical property taxpayer. If they want to complain about their taxes being too high, they go to the local governments, who blame the state government for not giving them enough money. When they complain to their state legislators, they point out that local governments set property tax rates. Both levels of government blame each other, spending continues to go up, and taxpayers receive no answers.

Shifting taxation to the local level also would benefit civic participation. Studies have show that as more government decisions are moved up to the state and federal levels, the more citizens tend to disengage from civic involvement. When the state takes over more and more of the decision making for schools, fewer and fewer local residents bother to go to school board meetings. When the state micromanages local city, village, and town budgets, fewer people engage in municipal politics at the grassroots level, where decisions are made that most closely affect those constituents.

If state sales and income taxes were cut, and programs like shared revenue reduced (which sends nearly $1 billion per year to local governments) there would be more accountability in how tax dollars are spent. Yes, property taxes would go up to make up for the lost state aid – but then, citizens would be able to more directly affect their tax level and how those funds are spent at the local level.

Furthermore, property taxes are assessed on those that have wealth. They are not necessarily progressive, as everyone in a taxing jurisdiction pays the same rate – but they certainly aren’t as regressive as sales taxes, which force low income people to pay a larger percent of their income to buy things. People that own property tend to have money – and those people may actually do well under a scenario where income taxes are cut and the property tax increases.

Property tax opponents (read: everyone) would argue that property values don’t relate to income – that some senior citizens may be low income, but have a very high value home that they, say, bought for cheap on a lake 50 years ago. Thus, increasing property taxes would hurt those people, as they have little income and high property values.

These individual examples may exist, but in the aggregate, income and property wealth are tied fairly closely.

The following chart compares property values to income in Wisconsin’s 426 school districts. As can be seen, there is a tight correlation between how much people make in income (as reported to the State Department of Revenue) and their property values (as reported to the Department of Public Instruction.) There appear to be about eight outliers – school districts with high property values and low incomes – but several of these are special districts. For the other 418 districts, the more they make, the more in property value they have.

Clearly, relying more heavily on the property tax and less on the sales and income tax would be taxing people with more means. Furthermore, reducing sales, income, and corporate taxes at the state level would be rewarding activities that would get the economy moving once again – more incentive for job creation, for advancing in one’s career, and for purchasing goods to aid in business development.

A plan to shift taxes away from economy-boosting activities and on to property taxes has some perils, however.

First, such a plan would need the state’s finances to be somewhat in balance to work. As it is, the state’s structural deficit stands at $2.2 billion going into the next budget. In other words, the state could shift $2.2 billion in spending onto the property tax in the next two years, without having cut a single cent from the sales, income, or property tax. Consequently, there wouldn’t be any stimulation to the private sector – merely an enormous property tax increase without any economic benefit.

Furthermore, shifting taxation from state to local taxes would make it more expensive to own a home. But the plan would have to come with commensurate reductions in other taxes, which could more than make up for that extra expense. If lowering business and income taxes has the stimulative effects that can be expected, more people will have better jobs, make more money, and pay less in income taxes – to the point that it may supersede the increased cost of a home. And for those with low incomes, programs such as the Homestead Tax Credit can be reconfigured to give the largest relief to those who need it the most.

Maybe shifting taxation away from the productive activities that drive our economy would get the state roaring once again. Maybe it would force us all to live in caves. But it is certainly a discussion that will never occur at the Capitol, where “we’ve always done it this way,” seems to be the most influential argument made by lawmakers. And certainly, in a climate where upwards of 80% of citizens are in favor of freezing property taxes, a shift to local control seems about as likely as state legislators turning the Capitol into a bed and breakfast. (Even if a plan included a commensurate sales and income tax cut.)

But we shouldn’t let an arbitrary thing like how we physically pay our taxes get in the way of how we should more equally distribute taxation for the purposes of bettering our state. In fact, perhaps the state could set up a program to pay property taxes automatically out of paychecks, which people don’t seem to mind – as long as it’s out of their sight.

Just don’t stab me with your pen.

-July 30, 2009

Bring on the Stats Nerds

July 12, 2009 / Christian / 0 Comments

“The Milwaukee Brewers’ Ryan Braun is the best young hitter in the major leagues.”

Utter such a sentiment among casual baseball fans, and you’re likely to get some nods of agreement. Braun, after all, had the second most home runs in baseball history after two seasons, ahead of legends like Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, and Babe Ruth.

Make a claim to Braun’s greatness over at the Baseball Prospectus website, however, and you may need to put on a helmet to absorb the punishment you’ll likely take.

You see, they’ve developed a statistic they call VORP (Value Over Replacement Player) that statistically measures a player’s value relative to an average player at their position. According to this formula, Braun currently ranks 12th in the National League, even behind his own teammate, Prince Fielder.

For the better part of a decade, the Internet has been swamped with rabid armies of statistics nerds who live to debunk common perceptions about the value of baseball players. These basement number-crunchers find poetry in statistical analyses, creating formulas with names like VORP, Win Shares, PECOTA, WHIP, and OPS to give the public a true representation of whether players are actually doing their jobs.

The irony, of course, is that these unpaid baseball stat wonks conduct these complex statistical analyses for an industry that merely serves as entertainment. Despite the very real pain Brewers fans felt over the team’s 26-year absence from the playoffs, baseball statistics don’t really mean anything in terms of how we live our lives.

And yet there are armies of statisticians, spending days on end working for free, analyzing the sport inside and out to give us an accurate look at what works and what doesn’t.Now, compare this to the world of things that actually do matter in our lives—say, government programs. Federal, state, and local governments vacuum money out of our wallets on a daily basis to pay for expensive pet programs—most of which never receive any meaningful performance review.

Where is the army of stat dorks telling us, for instance, whether the billions of dollars taxpayers pump into agricultural subsidies actually do any good? Where is the hot new statistical formula that gives us a more accurate look at whether the state paying billions of dollars for government employees’ retirement benefits actually aids the taxpayers who fund them? Does paying the teachers more money lead to a better educational experience for our kids?

All of these examples seem to be taken as gospel by Wisconsin politicians. But how do they know?

The answer is simple—they don’t want to know. They avoid hard statistical analysis like vampires avoid garlic.Politicians earn re-election by telling stories. Stories of how supposedly underfunded our education system is. Stories of how if one more butterfly gets the flu, our delicate ecosystem will collapse due to lack of environmental programs.

Numbers, statistics, and serious research have no place in our Legislature, where re-election is priority number one. Unbiased facts just spoil the fairy tales our politicians tell us. For instance, explaining to legislators that raising the minimum wage actually increases unemployment would be like telling your kids the story of how Sleeping Beauty contracted cold sores from Prince Charming.

Of course, the Legislature employs the Audit Bureau, an impeccable service agency dedicated to rooting out fraud and waste in state government. But oftentimes, the LAB is directed to do studies ordered by the Legislature merely to make it look like elected officials are doing something about a problem.

When the Audit Bureau does release studies that make recommendations to better a state government program, they are almost always ignored, as if they were a pretty girl at a Star Trek convention.

The underlying dynamic of state government isn’t helping people—it is simply maintaining its own inertia. Our governments exist to keep themselves alive and growing, and the less scrutiny they receive, the better their chances of doing so.

It’s as if government is an 18-wheeler, barreling down the road uncontrollably, with deep-rooted special interests at the wheel. Studies conducted by the likes of WPRI and the Legislative Audit Bureau can serve as a GPS navigation system for this out-of-control semi, steering it where it needs to go to truly benefit the people it purports to aid.

Until then, as if it were a baseball player with a low OPS, state government will continue to flail wildly at the plate, extending Wisconsin’s losing streak. Let’s just hope the stat nerds catch on before our fans all give up, relocate, and find a new team to cheer.

America’s Newest Pastime – Blissful Ignorance

June 29, 2009 / Christian / 0 Comments

Bonds. Sosa. McGwire. A-Rod. Manny. Clemens. All names that just years ago were exalted as American heroes, each having re-written baseball’s record books. Now every one wallows in shame, having been exposed as a cheater.

In doing so, each one of these players has stolen something. They’ve stolen records from our most revered heroes like Hank Aaron. They’ve stolen millions of dollars, having been paid enormous contracts based on numbers they didn’t earn. And they’ve stolen championship rings from other, more deserving players.

For years, the American media and baseball fans simply refused to see what was in front of their eyes. Roger Maris’ single season home run record of 61 stood for 37 years, then was broken by two players in the same year in 1998. Three years later, the new record of 70 was bested by Barry Bonds, who hit 73. Sammy Sosa hit more than 60 home runs three times. Roger Clemens won three Cy Young awards before age 34, and four afterwards – including one at age 41, when he went 18-4 with the Houston Astros.

We came up with plenty of excuses. The ballparks were smaller. The balls were juiced. Players were eating better and working out more. We were so enamored with the fairy tale that we refused to believe the most obvious of explanations. Even after it became clear that steroids were wiping the record books clean, the players’ supporters made excuses – steroids couldn’t make you hit the ball farther, they said. Pitchers couldn’t use it because they’d get too bulky and muscular.

The example of steroids in baseball has uncovered what truly has become America’s newest pastime – choosing to ignore facts that are staring us in the face. We put on a blindfold and jam our fingers in our ears to block out any information that might be uncomfortable in the short term, but could be disastrous over time.

Sadly, baseball is perhaps the least important instance where we’re willfully deceiving ourselves based on the evidence before us. For years, we thought it would be a great idea to give zero percent down home mortgages to high risk homeowners, merely so we could say we were helping people afford houses. Naturally, when these lenders began to fail, the economy came crashing down faster than Rafael Palmiero’s Hall of Fame chances.

Today, we’re being told that we can have government spend its way out of a recession, despite all the historical evidence to the contrary. We are being told that when health care is free, that people will actually use less of it. (Remember the lines outside George Webb restaurants when the Brewers started the season 13-0 in 1987 and the restaurant was giving out free burgers?)

We are told that we need to make it more expensive for employers to keep their employees, then we’re shocked when businesses move jobs overseas. We are told that the same government that has reigned over years of massive deficits is going to teach General Motors how to turn a profit. (Which is somewhat like baseball putting Jose Canseco in charge of its steroid policy.)

In Wisconsin, we continue to choose to ignore facts that should instruct our behavior for the better. We seem to believe that the growing structural deficits our state government is running have nothing to do with higher taxes, as the state raises taxes by over $3 billion to try to fix it. Our politicians tell us that they can prevent businesses (oil companies, hospitals) from passing along tax increases to the consumer, despite no recorded case in human history where consumers didn’t end up paying more for goods and services to offset the tax. We vilify banks who loan exorbitant sums of money to individuals, then our state government turns around and increases its own borrowing by $3.3 billion during a recession.

And yet we roll on, completely unwilling to draw any connection between our current plight and the actions of our government. To Americans, two plus two now equals “don’t bother me right now.”

Baseball still has the ability to do what’s right. It can grant Hank Aaron and Roger Maris their rightful records back, and permanently recognize the Steroid Era for what is was (and continues to be).

But where do we go to get our economy back? Where do people who have lost their jobs because of excessive taxes and business regulation go to recoup those lost paychecks? How do we un-do all the damaging programs set into motion for the aggrandizement of political careers and not for the betterment of our citizens?

Ironically, many Americans this summer will seek respite from such questions out at the ballpark. In a bad economy, they will enjoy paying six dollars for a hot dog to pay Alex Rodriguez’ steroid-inflated salary.

-June 29, 2009

McCallum’s Last Laugh

June 15, 2009 / Christian / 0 Comments

They called him a nitwit. A moron. A boob. A lightweight. And that was just his supporters.

Seven years ago, Scott McCallum walked out of the Capitol a defeated man. After serving 14 years as Tommy Thompson’s Lieutenant Governor, McCallum finally got his chance to run the state as Governor for two years, beginning in 2000. During his brief tenure, he presided over a mild recession that forced him to make choices which euthanized his chances at re-election. What McCallum did to fix the deficit, however, provides a stark contrast to the current administration’s budgeting practices, and serves as a warning to future politicians that back up their words with action.

We know what ended up happening – Jim Doyle won the Governorship in 2002, eventually facing a $6.6 billion deficit in 2009. This followed years of the Governor and Legislature raiding funds to plug budget holes, increasing taxes and spending, starting new programs, and using questionable gimmicks to balance the budget. Even Doyle’s solution, which relies heavily on new taxes and one-time federal stimulus funds, creates a $2.3 billion structural deficit in the next biennium.

What’s interesting to imagine is what could have ended up happening had 32,000 people (the size of the City of Beloit) decided to vote for McCallum instead of Doyle in 2002, sending the incumbent back to Madison. Or had Tommy Thompson’s brother, Ed, decided not to run, which siphoned off 185,000 votes – nearly three times Doyle’s margin over McCallum.

During his brief tenure, McCallum proposed a number of items that, had they passed, would have made the current recession infinitely easier to deal with. In his initial budget, in which he faced a $600 million deficit, McCallum proposed capping general fund spending to the same rate that tax revenues increase during a biennium. Even though it didn’t help him in that particular budget, McCallum looked ahead and saw the potential for large deficits in the future. In order to restore some fiscal discipline, he merely suggested that spending match up with revenues – a concept that would be ignored over the next eight years, forcing the state into deeper and deeper deficits.

In the final version of the budget, the Legislature kept McCallum’s suggestion for an expenditure cap, but riddled it with massive loopholes, rendering it worthless. For instance, school aids (around 45% of the state budget) were exempted from the cap, as were payments to the University of Wisconsin System.

In the same budget, McCallum proposed depositing 50% of any unintended revenues into a budget stabilization fund, in the event tax receipts fell short in the future. Generally, states set aside between 5% and 10% of their budgets for an emergency, yet Wisconsin had never put aside any money to plan ahead for bad times. This provision passed, creating a funding mechanism for a state “rainy day fund” for the first time. In 2007, Governor Doyle transferred $55.7 million to the stabilization fund (of course, taking credit for the fiscal responsibility mandated by McCallum’s law six years earlier – the money has since been spent, leaving the state once again with virtually no rainy day fund.)

Perhaps most importantly, McCallum made real cuts to real ongoing state programs – a decision which may have cost him his governorship. In the 2002 budget repair bill, McCallum proposed phasing out the state’s Shared Revenue program, in which the state sends $1 billion per year to local governments. Had McCallum’s plan passed, the state would today be in an infinitely more tenable position than it cuurently finds itself.

Laughably, Governor Doyle is still trying to sell a line that his budget “cuts” government, when in fact it actually increases total spending 6.3% on the strength of federal stimulus money – leaving the state with a massive 2.3 billion deficit in the next biennium. Yet it was Doyle who savaged McCallum for his proposed cuts during the 2002 campaign.

In announcing his plan to phase out aid to local governments in 2002, McCallum indelicately referred to local elected officials as “big spenders.” This turned a lot of local officials, many of them Republicans, against him. It was clear he had none of the political skill of his predecessor, Thompson, and served as a stern warning to future elected officials that dared to cut an entrenched government program.

Of course, not every move McCallum made was gold-plated. He is open to criticism for using the state’s ongoing tobacco settlement to help balance the budget – a one-time funding source that began the ball rolling in future bienna. However, in his budget adjustment bill, McCallum essentially used the tobacco settlement to fund the remaining years of the Shared Revenue program – meaning, he wasn’t using it for an ongoing program, he was using it for a program that was disappearing. Instead, the Legislature kept the cash and kept the Shared Revenue program, blowing the hole wide open in future budgets.

Since his years in the East Wing, McCallum has gone on to start a successful non-profit business that matches corporate contributions to people in need of aid. In doing so, he is demonstrating the business acumen that would have served the state wonderfully over the past eight years, and made the economic downturn much more manageable. He’s also showing that you can do a great deal of good outside the realm of government – a lesson our Legislature should take to heart (but ultimately won’t.)

Instead, we are stuck with a disastrous budget that raises taxes, increases spending during a downturn, and drives the state further into deficit. It could have been so much better.

And now Scott McCallum, you may have your last laugh.

-June 15, 2009

Government’s Billion Dollar Word

June 1, 2009 / Christian / 0 Comments

In the world of linguistics, words actually mean things. In many cases, tacking one qualifying word on to another can completely change the meaning of the original word being used. For instance, everyone enjoys a juicy apple. But one would be hard pressed to find someone that enjoys a “horse apple” in the same way. We often associate “wind” with a cool, gentle breeze. But if someone “breaks wind,” it’s liable to clear out your dinner party. If someone offers you “water,” they might think you’re thirsty. If someone offers you “waterboarding,” then you should immediately begin digging a getaway tunnel.

Even state government has its own language that often employs such qualifiers to its own benefit. Under the Wisconsin Constitution, the state may not run a “deficit,” meaning the books have to be balanced on a cash-in, cash-out basis. Yet the state continually runs a “structural deficit,” meaning its government merely pushes off much of its spending into future fiscal years, leaving taxpayers to pick up the tab down the road. In the case of the 2009-2011 budget, Governor Doyle’s acceptance of the word “structural” is worth about a billion and a half dollars to the taxpayer.

Conversely, in the cases where it helps to grow government, meaningful adjectives are cast aside to allow for profligate spending. Take, for instance, the way we fund state government employee retirement benefits.

Under the current Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS), each state government employee earns a taxpayer-funded employer contribution of roughly 5% of their salary every year. These same employees are expected to kick in an annual “employee contribution” of a similar amount – but in actuality, state government pays each employee’s individual contribution for them. In 2007, 99.6% of all contributions made to the WRS – both the “employee” and “employer” portions – were paid by state taxpayers.

In short, the “employee contribution” is nothing of the sort – there’s a better chance of seeing a “clay pigeon” eating birdseed than of seeing a government employee contributing a cent to their own retirement benefits. In 2007, these contributions combined cost taxpayers $393 million, and that’s just for employees at the state level.

Several weeks ago, Governor Jim Doyle announced that the state’s fiscal situation is going to much worse than he had anticipated. Lagging tax receipts and previous fiscal mismanagement could very well drive the state deficit up by $1.6 billion. As a remedy, Doyle suggested state employee cuts and furloughs, as well as funding reductions for school districts and local services. Many local governments are also looking at cutting staff and services.

Yet to date, no one has proposed an obvious budget remedy – merely making the term “employee contribution” mean exactly what it says. Requiring the WRS’ 263,000 participants to invest just a small amount of their money in their own retirement system could save state and local governments in the neighborhood of $1.3 billion over the upcoming biennium. Consequently, these governments could eliminate many of the program cuts that they are warning would be so damaging. Children would continue to learn, fires would continue to be put out, and garbage pickup would proceed on schedule if governments took the term “employee contribution” literally.

According to the state Department of Workforce Development, Wisconsin’s private sector lost 128,000 jobs in the last year, while government jobs actually increased by 5,700. To this point, the only sacrifice made by state employees has been to avoid running over all the private sector unemployed people wandering the streets on their drive to work.

Putting the “employee” back in “employee contribution” can go a long way to leveling the playing field between the state’s public and private employers, and eventually save the jobs of many of those government employees that will inevitably resist such a plan.

In 2003, Governor Doyle said he would be “open to every solution” that would allow him to fix the state’s shortfall without taxes. He could start by making the term “employee contribution” mean something again.

-June 1, 2009

Cross Your Fingers and Hope for the Worst?

May 4, 2009 / Christian / 0 Comments

It was exactly at 1:11 PM on the afternoon of April 5, 2002 that State Senator Rod Moen wrote his own political obituary. On the floor of the Senate, Moen had offered an amendment to the 2002 budget adjustment bill that would have allowed a company in his district, Ashley Furniture, to fill in 13 acres of adjacent wetlands in order to expand their plant. Despite Moen’s own party controlling the Senate, his amendment failed, capping off what some considered a half-hearted effort on his part to keep jobs in his district. (A bill granting the wetlands exemption had passed the full Assembly nearly six months earlier, and Moen was never able to get it to the floor of the Senate.)

Fed up with state environmental regulation, Ashley announced on June 29th that it would be expanding in Ecru, Mississippi – costing Western Wisconsin 500 jobs. On July 3rd, the budget adjustment bill passed, with Moen’s provision included. But it was too little, too late. Moen’s provision was irrelevant, as the decision to move had already been made.

Behind the scenes, Republican staffers were joyous. This was, after all, a seat that was winnable for the GOP in November of 2002. Moen hadn’t had a serious challenge in a long time, and with the Ashley Furniture issue in their holster, Republicans dropped the issue on his head like a Steinway piano. Moen, a 20-year incumbent, lost the November election, helping Republicans gain control of the Wisconsin Senate.

Moen fouling up the Ashley furniture issue turned out to be gift for the GOP. But lost in the ebullience of the Republicans at the time was a sobering fact – 500 people had to lose their jobs for the GOP to pick up that seat. Basically, one party had to root for things to get really bad for Wisconsin in order to improve their chances of winning the next election. Such is the state of modern politics today.

***

It is now 2009, and Republicans have lost control of everything in state government, save for the Attorney General’s office. A recession is upon us, and Democratic Governor Jim Doyle has befouled the state’s fiscal standing. Doyle has done for the state’s finances what Vanilla Ice did for race relations in the United States.

Doyle’s Titanic-like captainship of the state budget, coupled with the current bad economy, has Republicans optimistic about winning the governorship in 2010. Unfortunately, for the GOP to have a good chance of winning, one thing has to happen.

Things have to stay bad. And if they get worse, even better.

Last week, I was talking to some Republican staffers about Governor Doyle’s proposed budget, which raises taxes by $3 billion, leaves enormous structural deficits, and is riddled with special interest giveaways. They all agreed they hoped it passed exactly as is – thinking there are enough politically damaging provisions with which to hang Democrats in the next election. Unable to actually change the budget in any meaningful way, the GOP political minds are actually rooting for liberals to overextend themselves. It’s like hoping your favorite football team loses the rest of its games so it gets a better draft pick.

Of course, this morose phenomenon isn’t exclusively a Republican one. It was in Democrats’ best interest for the War in Iraq to go as badly as possible (and it did, until it didn’t anymore.) The more the casualties piled up in 2006, the better chance Democrats had of taking over both houses of Congress – which they did.

In September of 2008, the John McCain presidential campaign was buoyed by a strong convention, briefly taking the lead in the polls over Barack Obama. Soon, however, the housing bubble burst, and McCain’s election chances went down the tubes along with the national economy. Claiming that the economy collapsing wasn’t politically advantageous for Democrats is like claiming horse tranquilizers aren’t advantageous to Paula Abdul.

As a result, the terrible economy that swept Democrats into power in 2006 and 2008 may also hinder their chances of keeping it in 2010. Basically, the GOP has to secretly root for unemployment to stay high for another year, in hopes of regaining control and making fundamental systematic changes that help unemployed workers in the long run. It appears that endless fruitless bailouts have fatigued voters, which may form a good platform on which the GOP to rebound.

The GOP is hoping short term pain brings long term gain. Let’s hope it doesn’t bloody Wisconsin’s nose irreprably in the next twelve months.

-May 4, 2009

The Power of “Hello”

April 20, 2009 / Christian / 0 Comments

Working in a drug store in high school wasn’t ideal, but it was a job. All my friends worked at cooler places at the mall – Orange Julius, the Gap, etc. I was stuck dealing with old ladies who needed my advice on what kind of enema to use (I told them that I preferred Fleet) and stocking the birth control aisle, wondering what apocalyptic chain of events would have to occur for me to actually need one of these mysterious products.

Despite my overall distaste for the job, my boss at the pharmacy taught me something important that I have carried throughout my life:

If you say hello to the customers, they’re much less likely to rob you.

It sounded dopey, but seemed to work. If potential thieves feel like they’ve made a connection to someone working in the store, maybe they somehow feel guiltier lifting product. Maybe it just makes them feel more like they’re being watched, so they’re less likely to take the risk. Either way, a little personal contact seemed to go a long way in keeping order in the drugstore. (Except for the people who flooded the store on December 26th, attempting to return their Christmas lights by falsely claiming the lights didn’t work. These people should have been imprisoned – instead, they usually got their money back, as long as they had their receipt.)

That was 20 years ago, before people began communicating with each other via e-mail, before customers began doing all their business online, and when you could still cook up a believable fake driver’s license in the basement of your friend’s older brother’s house. (Damn you, DMV, with your holograms!) These days, hardly anyone in the business world actually talks to each other anymore – and we’re all being robbed as a result.

You don’t have to go back too far to imagine what getting a mortgage used to be like. You walked into an actual bank and talked to an actual banker, who probably learned your name. When the bank decided you were worthy of receiving credit, they sat down and figured what kind of loan you could afford, based on your income. It was in the mutual best interest of both parties to make sure you got a mortgage you could repay – since the bank held your debt on their books, they had a vested interest in your financial well-being.

Fast forward to today’s home lending practices, in which customers are simply numbers on a page. The American economy collapsed in large part because financial institutions pushed unrealistic mortgages on individuals, packaged all these questionable loans together, insured them, and pushed the risk off onto others. Instead of being “Ed Smith, mortgage holder,” you simply became numbers on a roulette wheel – a wheel that came up double zero last year, wiping everyone out.

Of course, it is beyond Pollyannish to suggest we go back to the old days where your banker knew your name and held your mortgage locally. The profits allowed by technology are simply too great for financial institutions to pass up. But the theory still has credibility – people are much less willing to rip off people that they know personally. And as we become a more impersonal world, the opportunity to crudely take advantage of others grows exponentially.

Making the world less impersonal would mean somehow turning around the direction in which all of our social interaction is headed. In increasing numbers, people are segregating themselves politically. The internet allows individuals to read only the news that they agree with politically. Over the past several decades, people have grown less likely to join associations, attend church, form strong bonds with others at work, and become involved in civic events.* As a result, we don’t talk to each other anymore – interpersonal relationships have become antiquated relics of the past, especially with those who have different political ideologies.

This self-segregation has dire consequences. Last week, “comedienne” Janeane Garofalo appeared on MSNBC, accusing anti-tax protesters of being “racist rednecks.” She went on to accuse conservatives of having defective brains, which allows them to be brainwashed by Fox News. (The fact that Garofalo’s only meaningful paycheck (for her role on the Fox show “24”) is signed by Rupert Murdoch adds to the irony, and may be the reason she needed to disassociate herself from the network.)

There’s absolutely no doubt that Janeane Garofalo doesn’t know a single conservative. She lives in a bubble, in which ridiculing right-wingers is a sport, enjoyed by all her like-minded pals. When she derides half the country as “racist rednecks,” she’s not insulting a single person she knows personally – so she can continue with her crude, bizarre rant with impunity, cheered on by the equally insulated Keith Olbermann. It is completely foreign to her that regular, lunch pail-toting Americans might actually object to government taking more of their money and distributing it to wealthy investment banks and auto executives.

As technology and demographics continue to shrink our social circles, we face immense challenges. An impersonal society is one in which predators take more advantage of others, in which political discourse grows more crude and insulting, and in which the lack of civic involvement leads elected officials to rule with impunity. Maybe we should all just stop for a minute and say “hello.”

Then, our government might be less likely to rob us.

-April 20, 2009

*- Robert Putnam, “Bowling Alone,” Simon and Schuster, 2000.

It All Comes Back to Campaign Finance

April 3, 2009 / Christian / 0 Comments

I really, sincerely, hadn’t planned on writing a lot about the current Supreme Court race in Wisconsin. But the stench has just gotten too thick – I can’t help but comment. I’m like one of those idiot criminals who shows up at the police station because they offer a free honey ham, then gets arrested. I just can’t help but get suckered in.

The other day, I wrote that because liberal Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson was in the lead, you weren’t hearing all the calls for campaign finance reform that you normally would if a conservative were running strong. It appears I may have spoken a bit too soon, as I underestimated the ability of the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram to twist the story to their liking. This appeared on the same day as my post:

At a forum addressing judicial campaign financing in Eau Claire last week, Wisconsin Democracy Campaign Director Mike McCabe pointed out the similarities in education (the same law school), professional experience (circuit court judges) and legal temperament (self-described “judicial conservatives”) between Koschnick and Gableman. Yet Gableman was able to defeat an incumbent Supreme Court justice last year while Koschnick is considered a long shot this year.

McCabe says the likely difference in electoral outcome has to do with dollar signs, and it’s hard to disagree with him.

Yes – who could disagree with such air-tight logic?

Or, it could be the fact that Shirley Abrahamson has spent 30 years on the court, as opposed to Louis Butler\’s 10 minutes. Perhaps they forgot that Butler had lost an election (to Diane Sykes), but was then installed on the court by Governor Doyle when a vacancy opened up – essentially overturning the results of the election. Sometimes voters bristle at being told they\’re not smart enough to pick their judges. Regardless, I think the fact that Shirley Abrahamson has become an institution in Wisconsin government might have just a little to do with her electoral strength.

Furthermore, it was because of the Butler/Gableman race that Abrahamson switched tactics, portraying herself as “tough on crime,” and “protecting our families.” This was a lesson Butler was slow to learn – and it may have cost him his seat. Abrahamson immediately recognized that her left flank was exposed on the crime issue, and tried to fortify it up front. (A year ago, I suggested she release a video of her chasing down and clubbing a burglar in her campaign commercials – oddly, my advice went unheeded.)

In fact, the goo-goos have it exactly backward. They believe Koschnick is a longshot because he had trouble raising money. In reality, it’s the other way around – Koschnick had trouble raising money because he’s perceived by conservatives as a longshot. And this isn’t because he’s a bad guy or a terrible judge – the groups that normally help conservative judges didn’t think he had a legitimate shot at beating a Supreme Court justice that joined the bench before man had invented utensils.

But this displays the desperation of the campaign finance reform crowd – when there’s a race where the candidates spend too much, money is the problem. When there’s a campaign where candidates spend too little, money is the problem. They seem to think they’ve got it surrounded – when in fact, there are a hundred things that explain what’s happening more clearly than merely campaign finance.

Observing the Law of Rule

March 23, 2009 / Christian / 0 Comments

The summer of my twelfth year, my father dictated to me my summer job: I was going to have to paint the picket fence around our backyard. I had never painted anything before, so I punished him by peppering him with inane questions. “Where do I start?” “What size brush should I use?” And so on. “I don’t care how you do it – just get it done!” he snapped. At least that’s what I think he said, as my ears were ringing from the accompanying smack upside my head.

As it turns out, state law very much follows “dad law.” When the legislature passes a law and the governor signs it, it constitutes a directive – “paint the fence.” But in many cases, it leaves the minute details up to the state department that will be carrying out the broad new law – “just get it done.” Departments accomplish the “I don’t care how you do it” part by passing “rules,” which reside comfortably in legal purgatory, somewhere between real laws and complete anarchy.

In many cases, the Legislature leaves their newly passed statutes overly broad, to avoid codifying every little detail in state law. For instance, state law dictates what crimes will land you in jail. Rules determine what kind of nudie magazines you will be allowed to view when you’re in the joint. Rules govern everything from how big a pier you can have on your house to what classes your barber has to take to obtain a license, including – and this is not a joke – 35 “theory hours” of “Shaving, beard and mustache shaping and trimming.” Who can forget Aristotle’s treatise on mustache waxing?

Yet rules, while having the force of law, are passed in a peculiar way that circumvents the traditional legislative process – and opens the door for hijinks. Rules changes are drafted by a department, then sent to standing legislative committees, who may then object to the rule if they believe it to be a bad idea. If it draws an objection, the rule goes to the Joint Rules Committee, where it can be suspended. However, if it is suspended, the committee must introduce bills changing the law to remedy their percieved problem with the rule. If those bills do not pass, the rule goes into effect – without ever having been altered by the legislature.

Thus, in effect, rules are like laws in reverse. Whereas passing a new law requires a bill proactively passing through both houses and being signed by the governor, rules essentially start as law and require bipartisanship to invalidate them. Thus, in the case of a split Legislature, one party can always block an objection to a rule made by their party’s governor.

This has become increasingly problematic in recent years, when departments are taking more liberties with their rulemaking authority. Instead of merely carrying out the directives given them by state law, some departments are granting themselves entirely new lawmaking ability, knowing that a split legislature will likely pave the way.

For instance, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board has voted to promulgate a rule that grants their members the sole legal authority to regulate campaign advertising during election season. While the law creating the GAB merely charges them with enforcing current election law, they have decided to settle this contentious issue that has confounded the U.S. Supreme Court for decades by merely making up their own law. This isn’t painting the fence – this is building a whole new picket fence that runs right through our living room.

Other rulemaking attempts have been equally as brazen. In 2005, Governor Jim Doyle actually attempted to raise the state’s minimum wage via administrative rule, knowing that he could simply veto any bill passed by Republicans if they attempted to object to the change. The State Supreme Court is attempting to use the rules process to wrestle legislative redistricting away from the Legislature, which clearly usurps legislative authority to set its own Senate and Assembly districts. Recently, the Supreme Court enacted a rule that changes the instances when tribal courts have jurisdiction over non-tribal members, which will have the effect of denying many litigants their right to a trial by a Wisconsin court. In a blistering dissent, Justice Patience Roggensack observed the new rule “undermines federal and state constitutional and statutory rights of litigants.”

New laws are the bright, shiny new baubles on which we all like to gaze. Enacting them takes all the elements of a good political novel – intrigue, secret deals, undue influence, and bloated, self-important speeches on the legislative floor. On the other hand, administrative rules have all the sexiness of Jim Doyle in spandex bike pants. In fact, in contrast to laws, rules only actually pass when nobody thinks to publicize them. But like Doyle’s bike pants, the rulemaking process is beginning to expand beyond the limit set by law (and good taste.) Maybe these bureaucrats need my dad to smack them in the head with a paintbrush.

-March 23, 2009

Why Conservatives Like Me are So… Negative

March 11, 2009 / Christian / 0 Comments

Wisconsin is in the midst of a health-care crisis. A health-care crisis so serious, in fact, that state government needs to swoop in and seize control of the health insurance system in a way no state has done in the history of our nation.

Luckily for us, this health-care crisis apparently exists nowhere else in the country, which means nobody in any other state would even be tempted to move to Wisconsin to take advantage of the “free” health care offered by Wisconsin’s taxpayers.

Such is the logic of Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, who has vowed to re-introduce the $15.2 billion government-run “Healthy Wisconsin” plan this session. In responding to a recent Wisconsin Policy Research Institute report that an estimated 142,000 sick people would indeed move to our state to take advantage of free health care, Decker took a shot at WPRI, saying the institute likes to criticize ideas, but they “never come up with any suggestions.”

Clearly, WPRI has replaced late-night roadside breathalyzer tests as Decker’s primary nemesis.

It seems unlikely that Decker stays up late reading WPRI’s reports, each of which is bursting at the seams with proactive suggestions. But this is forgivable, since it probably takes him a lot of time to answer all of Chuck Chvala’s Facebook messages.

Decker’s point, however, is worth addressing, since it’s a refrain heard often in politics: “Why so negative?”

To some, merely criticizing a damaging government program without offering a commensurate remedy makes you a “nattering nabob of negativity.”

Yet for conservatives, stopping terrible new government actions is the whole point. We don’t look at government in terms of what it can do for us – we see government in terms of what it does to us.

Thus, any proactive suggestion we have to reduce governmental interference in the market and our lives would be as welcome to Decker as a lap dance from Gov Jim Doyle. So Decker can complain all he wants about WPRI not making “suggestions,” but it’s clear he’d ignore them if he got around to reading them anyway.

One can look at improving government in two ways: urging it to do things that help us and convincing it to stop screwing up.

As it currently stands, our state government is doing neither. In fact, if the Legislature and governor went halfway and merely stopped screwing up, we wouldn’t be staring at a $5.7 billion deficit.

Case in point: In February, the Democrat-controlled state Senate voted on the same day to raise the state minimum wage in perpetuity, and to change the order in which banks are paid back when businesses go bankrupt, which will make it riskier for creditors to lend money.

One is left with two explanations after those votes, and neither is appealing. Either the Senate is too dumb to understand that discouraging banks from lending and forcing higher costs on businesses is a syringe full of rat poison for an already struggling economy. Or the Democrats know damn well it is, but they have to pay back the unions that make up their base. Neither scenario exactly inspires one to get out the pompoms in support of our elected officials.

Yet Russ Decker clearly thought these were good, proactive “suggestions.” Unfortunately, they are government actions that will force higher unemployment and, consequently, more budget problems, as more unemployed workers will need government services. As it turns out, doing nothing was our best bet.

Which brings us back to Healthy Wisconsin.

The state has budgeted about $28 billion in general fund spending for the next two years, but faces a $5.7 billion deficit.

For the sake of argument, concede the Democrats’ talking point that the economic recession is to blame for the entire shortfall. Imagine what would have happened had the state had its hands on $30 billion of Healthy Wisconsin money in the next two years.

There would have been a disastrous $6 billion deficit in the Healthy Wisconsin fund, on top of the $5.7 billion general fund deficit. It would have been a complete catastrophe – even the Donner Party would have been saying, “Well, at least we’re not from Wisconsin.”

So we here at WPRI will sit patiently by our mailbox, waiting for a signed card from Russ Decker thanking us for arguing against Healthy Wisconsin and saving him from such a budget disaster.

Now he can get back to doing good things for the people of Wisconsin, like passing tougher penalties for drunk driving.

Oh, wait – he’s against that, too.

An Apology from the Distant Past

February 23, 2009 / Christian / 0 Comments

Dear Person in the Future:

Greetings from the year 2009. As a gesture of goodwill, there are some things we need to discuss.

First, congratulations on the Brewers winning their 3rd World Series in a row, beating the Prince Fielder-led Yankees in seven games. A big atta-boy to Keanu Reeves for winning his first Oscar, playing a gay washed up ex-wrestler who ages backwards. It certainly was the role of a lifetime. I understand that, due to a federal mandate, General Motors is close to developing a car that runs on sunshine and dreams – here’s hoping the technology works out for you. And it’s nice to see that the prophecy is true – everyone actually does eat Dippin’ Dots.

The main purpose of this letter, however, is to issue an apology. Certainly, people in the future are still talking about the economic downturn of 2009, and the effect it had on the state’s finances. Believe it or not, when the economy went bad in 2009, we actually cared more about how government was hurting than how regular people were coping with losing their jobs. (Then again, the most famous woman in America in 2009 was a crazy Angelina Jolie look-a-like who had octuplets, so that might explain some things.)

You see, in 2009, we found out the state had a $5.9 billion budget deficit. In other words, the state was committed to spending $5.9 billion more than it was taking from working people of Wisconsin. Naturally, government sprung into action and did what government knows how to do best – it figured out new ways to spend more money and further micromanage our lives.

In fact, Future Person, at a time when Wisconsin state government could have restructured itself in a way to prevent future crises, it instead kicked the can down the road, preserving itself over the interests of the citizens. In his 2009-11 proposed budget, Governor Jim Doyle raised taxes by $2.2 billion, claiming that he was making the tax system more progressive by raising taxes on the top 1% of wage earners. Fortunately for him, nobody in the media pointed out that he was raising the cigarette tax, the most regressive tax that exists (and paid for by the poorest citizens in Wisconsin), by $257 million.

Actually, while Doyle promised “major” cuts to make up the deficit, his proposed budget spends 8% more in 2010 than it did in 2009. His increases are funded largely by swapping out general fund spending for federal “stimulus” aid, which constitutes a one-time budget plug. In the most egregious example, Doyle cut school equalization aid by $498 million, then replaced it with $498 million in temporary federal funds. Additionally, there are hundreds of millions of dollars Doyle plans to sprinkle over the budget like fiscal oregano, seasoning his budget to the government workers’ tastes.

Of course, since the teachers’ unions have undoubtedly improved financial education in the future, you already know what this means: funding ongoing programs with temporary funds leads to large budget deficits. And that is why, according to Doyle’s own budget document, his plan leaves structural deficits of $2.5 billion in 2010 and $2.3 billion in 2011 – barely less than the $5.9 billion he claims to have “balanced” this time around. By now, you have figured out what that meant – billions of dollars in tax increases to feed the state’s insatiable spending appetite.

So, dear Person of the Future, I apologize for waking you out of your hyperbaric slumber to deliver this apology. I know it’s enough to knock you right out of your Snuggie. We had our chance back here in 2009, we knew exactly what was going to happen, and we blew it. Not even President Miley Cyrus can bail you out of this predicament now. So when you send a killer cyborg in a time machine back to correct all our wrongs, make sure he has a good calculator.

Sincerely,

Christian Schneider

-February 23, 2009

Spend Less Tax Money, Get Healthier

January 12, 2009 / Christian / 0 Comments

Every year in the United States, various levels of government spend trillions of dollars to help treat illnesses. Our government is adept at spending money on the back end to ameliorate the effects of disease. But what if government spending itself was to blame for much of the sickness?

Take, for example, the federal government’s farm subsidy policies, which pump billions of dollars into the production of certain crops – most notably, corn. Between 1995 and 2006, taxpayers have shelled out $56.1 billion in corn subsidies. That’s nearly three times as much as the next two closest subsidies, wheat and cotton. Between 1995 and 2006, Wisconsin farmers have collected $2.4 billion in corn subsidies.

These subsidies have profound effects in many areas, from the environment to our health. Corn subsidies make it profitable for farmers to plant crops in areas that may previously not have been profitable, which encourages the clearing of forest land and natural habitat for farming. The total planted area of corn, at 93.6 million acres, is up 19 percent from last year, to the highest level since 1944.

But perhaps more importantly, federal subsidies encourage the overproduction of corn, which may be contributing to the deterioration of our health in America. Prior to 1973, the federal subsidy program kept family farms afloat by limiting the amount of corn in production. Essentially, the federal government paid farmers not to farm. In 1973, with lawmakers recognizing the absurdity of paying farmers not to plant certain crops to control the supply, the program was reorganized to promote more production.

Since 1973, production of corn has skyrocketed, due to the combination of subsidies and improved farming technology. These improvements in technology, including fertilization with anhydrous ammonia, gives rise to yields of up to four times what the same land could produce 50 years ago. With these improvements, corn can grow closer to each other, yielding more per acre.

All that corn, however, has to go somewhere. And a great deal of it is working its way into our food and drink, with damaging results. Take, for example, the use of high fructose corn syrup – a sweetener that didn’t exist 30 years ago now inhabits virtually everything you find on a supermarket shelf. Corn subsidies have drastically reduced the cost of high fructose corn syrup, which has made it the primary sweetener in soda, juice, jellies, ketchup, and other processed foods. While studies show the consumption of sugar in America is down, the consumption of high fructose corn syrup has skyrocketed.

While there are numerous studies linking high fructose corn syrup to increased obesity, corn supporters continue to argue that it contains similar ingredients as regular sugar, all things being equal. However, government subsidies, which keep the cost of high fructose corn syrup extremely low, make products that incorporate it extremely inexpensive. As a result, consumers have an incentive to purchase high fructose corn syrup-based products, as they are much cheaper than products sweetened with sugar (which has been subject to a substantial importation tax since 1977.) Thus, high fructose corn syrup products are being consumed at rates well beyond what we saw with sugar, and far in excess of what can be considered healthy.

Meat hasn’t escaped the effects of government corn subsidies, either. During the last 30 years, the avalanche of corn production has also caused it to replace grass as the primary cattle feed. Subsidies make corn cheap, which means more feed for more cattle. As a result, livestock are being fed until they nearly burst, resulting in fattier cuts of meat in our grocery stores and hamburgers. Loren Cordain of the University of Colorado has estimated that a typical grain fed t-bone steak might have 9 grams of saturated fat, while a grass fed steak might have 1.3 grams of saturated fat.

Naturally, much of this cheap, low-quality meat finds its way into our fast food restaurants, which, as a result of corn subsidies, can sell its food for virtually nothing and still make a profit. While, ultimately, everyone is responsible for what they put in their own mouths, markets also determine what people purchase. This exposes one of the ironies of America – it tends to be the poorest people who have the highest incidences of obesity and Type II diabetes – both of which have risen sharply since the corn explosion. This is because the cheapest food tends to be the most toxic to our health. Subsidies make unhealthy food cheaper, and when something’s cheap, people will buy more of it. So when you do go to McDonald’s and enjoy a Big Mac, keep in mind – your tax dollars helped pay for it.

So how unhealthy is America since corn subsidies made their way into the farm program? According to a 2008 study, more than 25 percent of adults are obese in 28 states, up from 19 states in 2007. More than 20 percent of adults are obese in every state except Colorado. In 1991, no state had an obesity rate greater than 20 percent. According to the same study, an estimated two-thirds of Americans are now overweight or obese. That compares to 1980, when the national average of obese adults was 15 percent. According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, obesity is also linked to type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke, cancer, osteoarthritis, gall bladder disease, liver disease and pregnancy complications.

So the next time you see a report on how much more spending we need on health care in Wisconsin, think to yourself – how much healthier can we make ourselves by scaling back spending on things like farm subsidies? If we cease making unhealthy food artificially cheap, we can end the cycle of encouraging dangerous eating, and save our health in the long run.

-January 12, 2009

Christian Schneider

Author, Columnist

Category: WPRI Blog (page 3 of 6)

You Paid for This: In Dire Economic Times, Legislators Spend Millions to Improve Their Public Images

Wisconsin’s Own “Public Option”

Jim Doyle’s Democratic Successors: Who Got the Gravy?

The Power of the Pen (and Why Property Taxes Might Not Be So Bad)

Bring on the Stats Nerds

America’s Newest Pastime – Blissful Ignorance

McCallum’s Last Laugh

Government’s Billion Dollar Word

Cross Your Fingers and Hope for the Worst?

The Power of “Hello”

It All Comes Back to Campaign Finance

Observing the Law of Rule

Why Conservatives Like Me are So… Negative

An Apology from the Distant Past

Spend Less Tax Money, Get Healthier

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