Stand with Wisconsin Women, Middle-Class, Elderly, Teachers, LGBT, Children, Poor, Minorities, and More

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has been recalled, and now it's time to replace him. In the year since taking office, Walker has fought hard against just about everyone in Wisconsin besides rich white males. The alleged criminal Walker repealed Equal Pay for Equal Work for women and minorities, discriminated against minorities in unconstitutional redistricting, reduced education funding more than any time in Wisconsin history, reduced teacher and public worker pay and benefits, killed any hope of jobs, banned hospital visitation for same-sex couples, raised BadgerCare premiums and reduced other healthcare help, repealed rights of middle-class workers, and a whole lot more. So, for us in the middle-class and the poor, we're getting far less for our tax dollars, while corporations and the rich are paying far less in state taxes.

Everyone agrees that to fix education, we need to pay teachers well. We all know the main reason that many good, intelligent people choose not to become teachers is because they can get significantly more money in other jobs. Why then do people think it's OK to reduce the already low pay for teachers? If you think this won't hurt our children, you need some education yourself.

And Walker's done it all under the banner of job creation, even though Wisconsin has lost more jobs than any other state since Walker took office and continues to bleed jobs with 6,200 more in April. Walker and the Republicans have refused to make any real effort towards job creation.

Instead of real job creation, Walker gave huge tax breaks to his campaign donors, the rich who are funding his 25 million dollar campaign, the billboards you see all over Wisconsin and TV ads. Walker did this even though there's every reason to believe tax breaks for the rich are bad for the economy. Even a Republican policy wonk recently wrote in the New York Times that taxes don't affect the employment rate one way or the other, particularly now with our taxes already as low as they are. The rich can't create jobs if the middle-class doesn't have the money to spend on the products and services the rich provide. We're the real job creators.

The rich clearly don't need more money, with the millions they can donate to Walker and use for billboards and TV ads all over Wisconsin. If they paid even half that much in taxes, we'd probably solve most of our budget problems. But instead they're using it to help Walker, because they know they'll save much more in taxes. And we suffer.

It's time Wisconsin starts sifting and winnowing again to find the best solutions to our problems, not partisan and ideological goals pushed by millionaires. We need a governor who will stand up to the demands of the rich few like Diane Hendricks (who inherited her great wealth from her husband).

If you stand with Walker, you stand with rich white supremacy and nothing more. Not jobs, morals or anything else. Show me otherwise, I'd be pleasantly surprised.

Vote for your economic interests and your neighbors'. Vote Tom Barrett. Early voting has already begun.

Wisconsin Assembly Republicans Increase State Spending With New Budget Passed To Senate

Another vote in the deep dark night. The Wisconsin Assembly Republicans voted for their budget just after 3:00am Thursday morning. All of the Democrats voted against it, and all of the nearly 40 amendments offered by the Democrats were rejected. The massive, oddly-named "simple amendment" by the Republicans was adopted without debate and without any Democrats voting in favor.

The Republicans' mantra this past year has been that spending is out of control. Rep. Dean Kaufert said just before voting for the budget, "We have been living on the credit card for a long time." Unfortunately, Kaufert and the rest of the Assembly Republicans just voted to increase our spending, as this budget spends more money than the previous Democrat budget. So, if not decreased spending, what are Republicans for?

It's very clear that the Republicans don't care about spending, at least not when it's for corporations. The Republican budget takes tax breaks for the middle-class and the poor and gives them to corporations. If the Republicans give any reason for this, it is that it will help create jobs, but their logic is flawed. One look at the stock market's performance since 2009, and you'll see that corporations aren't having any cash flow problems. The Federal government already gave them huge bailouts and tax breaks, and Governor Walker gave them a $117 million tax break within the first few weeks he was in office. A little extra cash won't motivate them to hire any more than they already aren't. Yet, real Wisconsin citizens depend upon the money that's being taken away from them. The Republicans are playing the part of Robin Hood's evil twin.

Rather than decreasing spending, the Republicans are more concerned with things such as making sure the poor have more abortions by reducing their access to contraceptives. The Republicans fought for nearly 30 minutes to cut state funding for Planned Parenthood. Contrary to what the Republicans think, the majority of Planned Parenthood's services are in preventative care and contraceptives, not abortion. In fact, abortions account for less than 3 percent of Planned Parenthood's services. The net effect of reducing contraceptives, more abortions!

The radical budget is a Republican act of class warfare, but not just via their redistribution of wealth through tax breaks. It significantly reduces funding to our public schools, while providing more funding to charter and voucher schools which are held to a lower standard. The reduction in funding to our public schools reduces access to high quality education for poor and middle-class children by condensing the reach of our high-quality schools to a few. The budget also reduces funds for healthcare to seniors and the poor, significant cuts to local government services such as police and fire, among a number of other far-right and corporate wishlist items.

I'm not the only Wisconsinite up this late with concern for my state and its people, and Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca knows it, 

"The middle class is awake. They're angry. They don't like being treated in this fashion."

Don't forget The People vs. Scott Walker Capitol rally today at noon!

Thanks go out to the WisPolitics Budget Blog for staying up late and blogging nearly every detail of the last 12 hours!

Proof Wisconsin Is Not Broke

Other people have posted this report already, but just in case you missed it, you should definitely take a look. A local non-partisan research organization, the Institute for One Wisconsin, disproved Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's claim that Wisconsin is broke. In fact, Wisconsin's GDP has risen over the past two decades, its revenues that haven't kept pace!

Some other tidbits from the report:

• Wisconsin's debt "has approximately kept pace with our GDP over the last 20 years."
• Wisconsin's revenues haven't kept pace with its GDP, and if it had, we would now have a budget surplus in the billions.
• In 1970, 50.6% of property tax revenue was from residential property. In 2008, it was 71%.
• In 1912, Wisconsin's corporate tax rate was 70%. Today it's less than one-tenth of that, 6.9%! We've drastically shifted the burden of taxes "from corporations and the wealthy to the middle and lower classes."
• We only have five income tax brackets. Someone who earns $300,001 a year pays the same percentage in taxes as someone who earns $300 million a year, 7.75%, while most of the rest of us pay about 6.5%.
• Over the past 40 years in Wisconsin, the wealthy have made the vast majority of income, but haven't paid close to that ratio in taxes.
• Wisconsin has one of the nation's lowest corporate taxes, and two-thirds of Wisconsin corporations do not pay any taxes.

It's a great easy-to-read report with lots of fun maps, graphs and charts. Read the report here.

Here are a few telling graphs from the report:

I also previously posted a nice graph showing middle class income shrinking with union membership

On another note, you can see where your federal tax dollars are spent at the government's 2010 Federal Tax Payer Receipt Site. We need something like this for Wisconsin.