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July 07, 2010

The Wednesday Update

July 7, 2010 Volume 4, Number 26  IN THIS ISSUE: Sick Tax No Cure for Spending; Failure to Communicate

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. July 07, 2010   Volume 4, Number 26 In This Issue: 1) Sick Tax No Cure      For Spending 2) Failure to Communicate 3) Rose Colored Job      Figures       Sick Tax No Cure for Spending   Someday we hope politicians will be laughed out of town for telling us we need a new tax to make a service less expensive.  Maybe the experience with Wisconsin’s new hospital tax will bring us closer to that happy day.   Last year, high-profile segments of Wisconsin’s business community supported a new tax on hospitals, buying into the sales pitch that raising taxes by $336 million for fiscal 2009—the state could leverage federal matching funds and give hospitals better Medicaid reimbursement rates. Theoretically, this would hold down Medicaid-driven rate increases charged to patients with private health care coverage.   According to the Milwaukee Business Journal, the hospital tax has been about as successful in holding down hospital costs as the state sales tax has been in making the property tax go away.   While it’s true the state was able to round up more than $700 million to cover Medicaid costs, and recent hospital rate increases are comparatively low, they’re still increases and there’s more to come because the state is tightening reimbursements.   The problem is that the state is continually adding new entitlement classes under Medicaid and BadgerCare, so the money collected to pay down unsustainable expenditure levels is going to fuel even higher expenditures. New federal mandates and entitlements under ObamaCare will only increase the costs passed along to employer-provided programs, encouraging businesses to drop coverage. We could speculate that the goal is to exterminate private-sector health care but that’s another subject. The immediate point is that giving government more money is never, ever a recipe for fiscal discipline, only for bigger spending.         Failure to Communicate   Police departments could gain a crucial edge from a communications system that’s secure against eavesdropping by criminals—provided the police themselves can use it.   But last Thursday, backed by documents obtained through an open records request, Citizens for Responsible Government revealed well over 200 Milwaukee Police Department reports of officers having difficulty using the OpenSky digital radio system. Problems included delays responding to urgent situations, including an officer shot in the line of duty, because dispatchers’ messages can’t be heard in some locations.   Naturally, Citizens for Responsible Government (CRG) has come under attack.   Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn and Alderman Michael Murphy sought to discredit CRG, saying it was politically motivated and trying to embarrass Mayor Tom Barrett’s administration.   If they’re right, people should be lining up to thank CRG: OpenSky is precisely the sort of thing that needs to be made a political issue, so taxpayers and law-abiding citizens can demand accountability.   Brought on line five years behind schedule and three million dollars above cost projections, OpenSky has been beset by technical problems serious enough to have the police union complain openly, even as the administration plans to make the fire department adopt the flawed system.    Last Thursday, CRG pointed the finger at “six years of bureaucratic bungling and political indifference [that]have conspired to squander millions of taxpayer dollars and leave the city less safe.”   If the administration wants to refute the charge of political indifference, it could make a good start by explaining why, in CRG’s words, equipment to fix the technical problems, already paid for by taxpayers, sits “collecting dust in a warehouse.”   Better yet, it could get the stuff uncrated and installed before somebody puts up a billboard picturing Maxwell Smart and the Cone of Silence.   Rose Colored Job Figures     Last week we noted state job statistics pointing toward further reduction of private sector employment in Wisconsin. Based on new numbers, last week would qualify as the good old days.   Part of the problem with the nationwide employment picture for June was that 225,000 census workers were on the streets again—not to find out who lives where but to find different jobs as their short-term government gigs ran out.  Seasonally adjusted figures for June showed a net decline of 125,000 nonfarm jobs.  Realizing that many of us lack the intellectual horsepower to see good news hidden inside those numbers, President Obama told a crowd in Racine last Friday, “Make no mistake: We are headed in the right direction.”   In ObamaWorld the “right direction” is defined as a decline of two-tenths of one percent in the unemployment rate (from 9.7 percent to 9.5,) even though it’s a statistical illusion that doesn’t reflect more people working, but rather 650,000 people simply giving up and leaving the workforce.   As bad as this is, it shows the need for a pro-growth agenda. That means no tinkering with the Obama agenda; no wasting time applying competent management to destructive ideas.  It means ripping up the Obama agenda, throwing it out and replacing it with something recognizably American.      You are a subscriber to Wisconsin Club for Growth from a website subscription. Visit http://wicfg.org for more information. Unsubscribe << Test Email Address >> from this list. Our mailing address is: Wisconsin Club for Growth Inc 1223 West Main Street, #304 Sun Prairie, Wisconsin 53590 Add us to your address book Copyright (C) 2010 Wisconsin Club for Growth Inc All rights reserved. Forward this email to a friend and Update your profile