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October 21, 2009

The Wednesday Update

October 21, 2009  Volume 3, Number 40   IN THIS ISSUE:  Feeling Stimulated?,  Magical Mystery Tour,  D.A. Diversions

Oct. 21, 2009 Vol 3, Number 40	Wednesday Update
In This Issue: 1. Feeling Stimulated 2. Magical Mystery     Tour 3. D.A. Diversions	Feeling stimulated? Last week the Doyle administration filed a report with the federal government, showing how the state has spent funds from the $787 billion economic stimulus plan. The administration was pleased to note that the $680 million spent in the first reporting period saved or created 8,248 full-time jobs. That’s $82,444 a job! Where do we apply? Of course that number doesn’t represent wages or salaries, but rather the amount of taxpayer dollars averaged across all the jobs allegedly saved or created. Whether the result represents efficient use of tax dollars is a question for another day, with more information at hand. What can be readily answered is what kind of jobs these are. According the Doyle administration report, more than 6,100 of the 8,248 jobs—at least 74 percent—involve providing “essential government services” and the jobs “include police officers, firefighters and teachers.” We like police officers and firefighters and teachers and want them to stay employed, but it seems that what we’re seeing here is the latest variation of “the school-board game,” best illustrated as follows: Taxpayer: “I don’t want to see my property taxes going up.” School Board Member: “No problem. We’ll cut out band and football.” Taxpayer: “Since you put it that way I can afford a little more.” Jurisdictions whose taxpayers are unwilling to part with band and football programs can usually look forward to city budget deliberations featuring the mayor ostentatiously fretting about how many firehouses and police stations to close. Somehow the Department of Misplaced Documents is never in jeopardy.   So here’s what the first stimulus report seems to confirm: Huge sums of your federal tax dollars are being used to supplement your local property tax dollars, so that government is not inconvenienced by the recession. No wonder the economy’s so strong. Magical Mystery Tour U.S. military veterans were scheduled to visit La Crosse, Madison and Milwaukee last Friday, on a nationwide tour promoting energy independence and, more pointedly, cap-and-trade legislation pending in the U.S. Senate. It would be a stunning ingratitude to doubt the sincerity of people who have willingly put their lives on the line in places the rest of us would rather not even think about, much less visit for a year or more, sometimes under enemy fire. The sincerity of their handlers—and we don’t know if they realize they’re being “handled”—is another matter. The latest version of cap-and-trade was rolled out September 30 at a Washington news conference where the term “cap-and-trade” went studiously unmentioned. “National security,” however, got a workout in touting “The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act.” Okay, fine. Then last week brought word of the “Operation Free Veterans for American Power Bus Tour.” Operation Free, we found, has a web site full of bold military images and no-nonsense rhetoric about national security and the recklessness of U.S. oil imports enriching dictators who mean us harm. It’s long on energy independence and “energy that is CLEAN, DOMESTIC, CHEAP and SAFE,” but if the DOMESTIC energy available through drilling in Alaska and the outer continental shelf gets mentioned, we missed it. We googled the apparent name of the company where the e-mail originated, which led straight to a Washington, D.C. consulting firm. Its website lists eight people identified as the firm’s “leadership.” Ready? Heading the list is the man who directed the Obama campaign in the Iowa Caucuses. Next, is a former executive director of the Democratic National Committee. Number three travels the country assisting Democratic senate, congressional and ballot initiative campaigns and lists among her accomplishments leadership in thwarting Social Security reform. Number Four has been an operative for the Michigan Democratic Party and the Democratic Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees. We couldn’t find all eight, but did find two more highly-placed Obama campaign operatives among them. Most, if not all, the veterans on the bus tour may think they’re assisting a nonpartisan effort to make Americans safer, soldiers and civilians alike. A sad but reasonable alternative view is that they’re being manipulated to serve the ends of the man who, a couple of weeks ago, seemed perfectly comfortable saying he might take until Thanksgiving to decide whether to send their embattled comrades in Afghanistan the help they say they need. D.A. Diversions Wisconsin’s state budget process gets uglier with each biennial repetition and it’s not hard to see why. Unsustainable spending commitments propped up by snake-oil schemes to make the property tax seem painless, turn each successive budget into a madder scramble than the last one.   Increasingly, the problem of a “structural deficit” shows itself in the form of what some have called bait-and-switch taxation. Fees are levied for a specific purpose clearly spelled out in the statues. Then the Governor and Legislature swipe the money and use it for purposes other than those for which it was collected. In recent years, Governor Doyle and the legislature have repeatedly raided the transportation fund to pay for other programs, at the same time they increased debt to pay for transportation projects. The latest example of bait and switch taxation is an increase in the “public benefits” fee collected for the state by regulated utilities as part of consumers’ monthly electric and natural gas bills. At a couple of bucks per month per meter, the fee has always generated more revenue than the state spends on energy efficiency and low-income weatherization programs. That makes it an attractive target for regular budget raids.   But this year’s budget brought what may be the most bizarre diversion of public benefits fees yet.   Lawmakers actually increased the levy and designated the new proceeds to pay district attorney salaries. What this has to do with energy efficiency and conservation eludes us, unless there’s a secret plan for D.A.s to come down hard on people who don’t keep up with their heating bills this winter. A few years ago the Legislature was finally shamed into setting up statutory protections to keep public benefits money from being shunted off to other uses. It would be nice to say utilities tried to fight off this year’s recidivism. It would be nice, but it wouldn’t be true.