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A Fair Share of Class Warfare
 The predominant message in this election seems to be life isn’t fair, but if you elect the right people to office, all that will change. Politicians and special interest groups are pitting non-taxpayers against taxpayers and low/middle income taxpayers against more affluent taxpayers and against corporations. The battle cry is that you, whatever your circumstances, are getting the short shrift because somebody else isn’t paying their fair share. This has been the central theme of Barack Obama’s economic plan, which he articulated very clearly on the campaign trail this past weekend.
Plumber to Obama: “Your new tax plan is going to tax
me more. Isn’t it?”
Obama: “It’s not that I want to punish your success, I
just want to make sure that everybody that is behind
you, that they have a chance for success too. I think
that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for
everybody.”
Obama believes spreading the wealth around is good for everybody, but isn’t that how we got into this mess in the first place? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac took the concept of spreading the wealth around to an art form, but in the end, the only enduring wealth from the Fannie/Freddie Era is among the handful of very wealthy special interest types Obama bemoans.
As for the rest of us low, middle and upper income working stiffs, we got the short shrift twice: first when our personal investments took a beating, and second as our tax dollars were used to bail out insurance companies and investment firms.
Closer to home, the Building a Stronger Wisconsin Committee is using television, radio and direct mail advertising to rail against big oil companies for not paying their fair share. What the ads don’t tell us is that the group represents road building unions who want more tax dollars to build roads. They want us to pay 7 cents a gallon more for gasoline to cover the tab. That’ll show those oil companies!
Equally disturbing is the latest ad from the Wisconsin Hospital Association railing against the government for not paying its fair share of our medical costs. Their solution is to stick taxpayers with a new $418 million sick tax on hospital stays. Perhaps they don’t realize we prefer to be billed directly, sans the middle man.
Senator Obama says he will bring "change" to Washington, yet every proposal Obama offers is premised on an expansion of the same kind of government we have now, only "more fair." But how will Senator Obama determine what’s fair?
Voters say they want change. Let's hope change means remembering who is actually paying the bills.
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Campaigning on the Public Dime
Deja Vu All Over Again
 For the first half of this decade, Wisconsin was in the grips of a “scandal” that involved state government officials using their taxpayer-funded offices for campaign purposes. The Legislature even came in and enacted new laws intended to make it abundantly clear that this type of activity was illegal.
Apparently Chris Buckel, Democratic candidate for the 29th Assembly District, didn’t get the memo. An open records request of Buckel’s online activity as a history teacher at Central St. Croix High School in Hammond shows Buckel spent a substantial amount of time on the job planning and executing his campaign strategy. Copies of the e-mails clearly show Buckel used his taxpayer-funded email account to manage multiple aspects of his campaign on the taxpayers’ dime, even after acknowledging that using the account would likely get him in trouble.
Another MPS Study!
 Amid mountains of evidence that the Milwaukee Public School District is going bankrupt, Governor Jim Doyle and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett announced this week they were taking swift and meaningful action to save the kids stuck in the failing Milwaukee Public Schools.
They ordered a study.
Longtime political observers know what it means to commission a “study.” Spend more money on a system that isn't working.
A clear indication of Doyle’s ultimate goal can be found in his insistence that the study group examine how the state funding formula can be improved. Any time someone says they want to “improve” a funding formula, it simply means they want to rig it to produce more revenue. Recent reports have suggested the problem isn’t inherent in how MPS is funded – in fact, the district gets 80% of its entire budget from the state. The problem is how MPS spends the money when it gets its hands on it – including money they don’t have yet.
A recent report exposed the fact that MPS owes future retirees $2.2 billion in health care benefits when they retire. At current levels, that’s almost $200 million out the door (or,17% of the total MPS budget) before a single child is educated. By 2010, that number will increase to $2.9 billion, and $4.9 billion by 2016 – all to pay people who don’t even work for the district.
Of course this has nothing to do with the state funding formula. Don't look for any solutions to draining of district resources to fund these outrageous benefits. Instead you can expect a very thick study that blames a lack of funding and does little to fundamentally change the dysfunctional system that has failed to educate yet another generation.
More Acorns Falling
 Recent Wednesday Updates have discussed varying aspects of the ongoing voter registration scandal involving the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. Naturally, the local editorial boards continue to bury their heads in the sand, refusing to acknowledge the large-scale voter registration fraud that is currently taking place all over the country.
Dozens of ACORN workers, including several in Milwaukee, are under criminal investigation. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently tallied up the damage:
In one Indiana County, officials say 2,000 forms were bogus. In Nevada, workers are accused of registering the Dallas Cowboys roster on forms. Nevada officials raided the ACORN office in Las Vegas last week.
In Milwaukee, where ACORN turned in at least 33,000 registrations, the group improperly used felons as registration workers. Additionally, its workers are among 49 cases of bad registrations sent to authorities for possible charges, as first reported by the Journal Sentinel.
So while the national media obsess about whether Sarah Palin had just cause to fire an official who served at her pleasure, thousands of fraudulent names are being added to the voter rolls right under our noses.
Keep in mind – President Bush lost Wisconsin in 2000 by a mere 6,000 votes after over 3 million were cast. In 2004, Bush lost by 11,000 votes. At the rate ACORN is stealing votes, this election could see fraudulent vote margins well below those numbers. Given that Wisconsin elections are usually decided by razor-thin margins, we could see our democracy handed over to criminals.
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