Representative Brett Davis put forth legislation recently to simply require that before the state spends millions on ‘car-speed’ rail from Milwaukee to Madison that the State Legislature sign off on the expense.  Also, in a novel twist sure to drive Madison progressives up the wall, the legislation further asks for the approval before the money is spent.    

Why is this important?  For me personally the biggest issue is that we simply don’t have the money to spend on this boondoggle.  Folks that want trains at any cost will claim “hey, this is federal money!” – never mind the fact that federal money is still our money and the feds aren’t in any shape to be giving money to anyone either.  Remember your parents telling you that money doesn’t grow on trees?  I guess some people never learned that lesson.

The other argument you’ll hear is that if we don’t take the money then some other state will.  The problem with that is two-fold.  First of all, the money we get covers only a portion of the construction and doesn’t cover the ongoing operating expenses to keep this train moving (and by moving we mean just barely moving faster that your car, hardly ‘high-speed’ moving).  Second, remember your mom also asking you ‘if Jimmy jumped off a bridge would you too?’  Just because someone else might take the money doesn’t make it right for Wisconsin to take the money and all the strings attached.  That’s called standing on principle.   

If you want to learn more about this legislation, sign the petition, or e-mail your own representative about this bill then check out the web site www.stopthetrainwisconsin.org. 

It seems the Representative Paul Ryan has been in the news a lot lately.  I had the opportunity to catch one of his interviews recently and in those few, stolen minutes heard a lot of things I liked - enough to download a copy of his roadmap.  Over the last couple evenings I took some time to read it in more detail and I am impressed.

What impresses me the most is that it truly is a roadmap.  In other words, he just doesn’t say we need to fix healthcare or lower our debt, he actually has a well thought out plan for how to get from where we are today to where he is proposing.  This is in stark contrast to the ‘feel good’ sound bites we get from so many of our current, elected leaders today.

Two great examples where he provides a solid, concrete path forward is with Medicare and Social Security reform.  Both entitlements are in trouble financially and clearly are on an unsustainable path.   What makes them particularly difficult to fix is that so many Americans are in position where they are counting on the benefits already promised to them in those programs.  What Rep. Ryan proposes is that we guarantee the benefits in both cases for those individuals who are already 55 years or older but for those under 55 changes are necessary – and he outlines what those changes would be.  He doesn’t blow up either system but gradually puts them back on track and in a way that future generations can adjust to what those changes will be before they also have to rely on them.  As someone well shy of 55, I never have believed those programs would be solvent by time I was old enough to qualify them and think many people in my generation have been planning for their retirement with that in mind anyway  The changes proposes by Rep. Ryan would only be a pleasant surprise to those of us who never planned on receiving anything.

The “Roadmap for America’s Future 2.0” is about a 100 page document and I’m not going to do it justice to try and summarize it here.  I would recommend though that you check out the website and at least read the opening summary.  Representative Ryan’s plan is well thought out, available for public review, and bold reminder that the President just isn’t being honest when he says the Republicans aren’t bringing alternatives to the table.

The Isthmus has an interesting article on Scott Walker this week.  While it’s obvious the overall tone is intended to paint the candidate for governor in a negative light, it seems to me that it actually highlights a lot of the good work he has done in Milwaukee County and that he has a strong vision for the state.  I think most of the perceived negatives come from the author’s lack of understanding rather than being true negatives.

For example, the opening salvo is to paint Walker as ‘anti-government’.  As this is explained, this perception comes from the fact that Walker stated he wants to ‘put our faith in the people and employers who make this country great’.  This is the crux of the problem (as the author sees it) and I can only assume the author would rather a candidate who asks us to put all our faith in the government.  What makes that position odd though is that the author then goes on to cite the extremely poor position Doyle and the current, Democrat-led, government has put our state in.  Given that fact, anyone who believes the people and, yes, employers (the people who create jobs for the aforementioned people) of the state of the Wisconsin should come first looks pretty darn good to me!  Score one for Walker.

It’s not that Walker hates government; it’s just that he states his belief that the government should be serving a different role than it has been.  That’s not ‘anti-government’, that’s just plain smart.  Clearly where the current leadership has been leading isn’t working and Walker simply is providing a strong vision for an alternative approach.

Another example given is how Walker apparently has done such a poor job with Milwaukee County parks that they’re ranked among the best in the nation (that's not a typo, yes the parks are ranked among the best). And this happened while he was reducing spending!  Smaller budget with as good or better results?  Sounds like a good deal to me.  Even if this is a testament to the park director’s leadership, clearly she found a way to be the best in the nation without a bottomless budget.  That sounds like a leader raising the bar to me. 

And so it goes.  There seems to be sort of a reluctant appreciation for Walker but an intense desire to find something that will ‘stick’ to him.  While I won’t comment on everything, I couldn’t let this next comment pass without commenting myself.  Shifting to more general policy later in the article the author writes:

“The obvious problem with Walker's logic is that no amount of tax cuts will encourage employers to hire workers to make products when already-produced inventory is sitting on shelves in stores and warehouses. The problem is lack of spending power among ordinary Americans. And the solution, some economists say, requires government intervention to put people back to work, restore spending power and get the economy rolling again.”

What the author conveniently ‘forgets’ is that tax cuts help everyone, not just employers, and that makes a huge difference.  Tax cuts would increase the spending power of ordinary Wisconsinites.  Tax cuts leave more money with the people that earned the money in the first place.  Those same people would now have money to spend on that inventory sitting on the shelves.  Government spending is just someone sitting in Madison (or Washington) taking our money, adding a little government-processing overhead (when does the middle-man not a take a little something for the 'effort'?), and then sending it back to where they want to spend it – like their politically connected projects and not necessarily where it’s most needed. 

You have to look no further than the failure of the current ‘stimulus’ to see how well government intervention works.  Walker is on the right track to suggest a different solution is in order.   

The CapTimes has an interesting and reasonably-balanced article (the lead article no less) called ‘The cost of clean air’ today.  Once you get past the opening premise that customers of MG &E are ‘voting with their pocketbooks’ for cleaner energy (10% opting in is not what I consider a vote for something), the article accurately portrays what is coming down the road for Wisconsin if the Cap ‘n Tax bill is passed in Washington.

Getting right to the point, the chair of Gov. Doyle’s own ‘Global Warming Task Force’, Roy Thilly, clearly and accurately points out that such a bill would be a ‘huge wealth transfer’ from states like Wisconsin to the states on the coasts.  Similarly, the National Association of Manufacturers is also saying that the bill could cost the state of Wisconsin another 50,000 jobs.  These are some of the most accurate and telling statement I can remember reading from the local media on what this really means for our state.   The only thing I can think to add is to remind everyone that Tammy Baldwin, our Representative, helped pass this bill. 

So what are we going to do?  Rep. Spencer Black (D-Madison) is going to sponsor a ‘Clean Energy Jobs Act’ bill!  That’s right, in other words, the federal government, with Tammy’s help, is passing legislation to kill jobs in Wisconsin so the state government would like to pass legislation to try and replace those jobs – but only if they’re the ‘right’ kind of jobs. 

The bright spot in all of this is that there is a small nod to nuclear energy.  Lifting our state’s moratorium on nuclear power plants would provide cheap, abundant energy to our state.  One nuclear plant alone would provide as much or more energy than if we committed the entire state to wind energy.  That’s a lot of windmills to make up for a single nuclear power plant (side note: what’s the environmental impact of all those windmills compared to a single nuclear power plant? Just asking).  In addition, wind power only works when the wind is blowing.  Last time I checked nuclear power plants can work round the clock, with or without wind, with or without sun (since solar is on the list too).  Lastly, after fully committing to wind, there is no room to grow.  With nuclear power, we could add a second plant or third plant as needed. 

The drawback to nuclear power?  Some democrats have said they won’t support lifting a ban until the long-term storage problem is figured out, environmentalists will fight nuclear power, and the process takes too long.  First of all, while they’re not named in the article but I’m guessing they’re likely the same democrats suggesting we are in the midst of a climate change crisis and we need to act yesterday.  The fact is we can deal with the storage; it’s not ideal but compared to alternatives nuclear power is the most attractive, realistic solution on the table.  The second and third points go together.  Environmentalists are a huge part of why the process to create a new plant is so cumbersome and time consuming.  Again, like those democrats, environmentalists that warn of global catastrophe with no time to spare want us to gamble on ‘green power’ that is not proven or reliable at this stage.  Wouldn’t it make sense to allow nuclear power to fill that gap until such a time when green power is ready for prime time?  Or does ideology trump reality?

Governor Doyle is out there today trumpeting the 8,284 jobs created or saved in State of Wisconsin due to the Federal Stimulus. I’m not exactly sure about how you measure ‘saved’ jobs but I’m sure there is some solid fuzzy math behind that number. Of course nearly all of those are in the public sector and paid for by dumping a larger deficit on future generations yet to be born – talk about passing the buck!

On the hand, consider the 31,000 manufacturing jobs and 413 manufacturers the State of Wisconsin lost in the last year. This was reported just two months ago. By my math that would mean we’ve lost at least a net of 22,716 jobs and 412 employers (kept big, massive state government here, at least we dodged that bullet!). Of course this the way it always is – report the jobs we think we saved or hope we might created and ignore the other side of the balance sheet. This is no different than every time they talk about creating all those ‘green jobs’ to save our economy. Just never mind those ‘other jobs’ we lose in the process.

So is there a way to figure out the real cost of those 8,284 jobs created or saved? The easy math would say we just spent $680 million on those jobs which comes out to be about $82,000 per job. I’m guessing not every job we saved has an $82,000/year salary attached though. I wonder where the rest of it went then? Just a bit of overhead for the privilege of saving all those jobs I guess. What happens next year though? Are we hoping for another $680 million to fall from the Federal government? We haven’t even balanced our own state budget this year so it’s not like we’ve got money lying around to pick up the slack either. The only way we’re going to really rescue our jobs and save our state economy is if we get serious about cutting taxes and taking other steps to encourage sustainable, private industry. Till then we’re just buying time and time isn’t cheap.

In the Mt Horeb Mail this week they're reporting that the school budget has increased for this coming school year.  I don't have an opinion on whether this increase was completely necessary or not - I don't have that much information on what was included at this time.  However, we do know that this, combined with the state budget, will mean an increase of $12.00 per $100,000 per year in property taxes.  In other words, due to cuts in the stat budget our local taxes will be rising again. 

Remember a short while back when our state representatives were patting themselves on the back for making all those "hard decisions" on the state budget?  One of those hard decisions was to cut state aid to our schools and instead fund a bunch of pork to reward the members who voted for that travesty.  This doesn't qualify as a hard decision in my book.  A truly hard decision would be to place our children and our schools as a top priority and instead cut the pork.  In other words, make a real stand on the priorities for our state instead of politics as usual.  On the other hand, it looks like the towns, schools, and ultimately us as the taxpayers are going to have to continue to mark true hard choices as a consequence.

In contrast to the state budget which increased spending, increased taxes, increased fees, and ‘enhanced’ collection of those fees and taxes, the Village of Mt Horeb is facing true hard decisions in their budget.  As a consequence of all the spending, or more accurately where the spending went, in the state budget, townships and villages have to deal now with a 15 percent reduction in state aid.  Unfortunately, they truly will need to make tough choices. 

Representative Sondy Pope-Roberts appeared before the Mt. Horeb Village Board to try and explain this.  At one point she plainly admitted “It is not a budget any of us can come forward and brag about”.  Funny, I seem to remember many quotes from the Democrat majority bragging about how they made all the difficult decisions and did right by the people of Wisconsin in this budget.   Remember, they spent all those late nights, working hard through the night for us? 

The bottom line is that this nightmare of a budget was created in wee hours of the night, behind closed doors, largely in secrecy.  Our representatives, at least those in the Democrat majority, didn’t make the hard decisions we elected them to do and at the end of the day spent more money than they have – again.  This is clear as the budget passed on partisan, party lines.  When our representative sides with her party over the people she represents then you have to ask who is she representing?

At least the state budget, for better or worse, is done, right?  Too bad we can’t just wake up and find out it was all a terrible dream. 

There is an interesting article by Brett Healy in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel sharing his thoughts and analysis on the recently passed budget.  Bottom line?  Our “representatives” in the Democrat-led state government spends $3.63 billion more than the last budget.  I shudder to think what it would be if they hadn’t made all those “hard decisions”.    

Remember the property tax limiting QEO that was eliminated in the state budget?  In reading the Mt. Horeb Mail, it looks like we’re going to be feeling the effects of that one in the years to come.  Maybe not this year but we’re setting ourselves up for pain in the coming years.  At the end of the day, this is going to have a negative impact on our teachers, the school districts, and ultimately our children.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a dream and we have to live with the consequences.  We also need to remember who was supposed to be representing us when this bill was passed.  Our district’s representative, Assembly Member Sondy Pope-Roberts, supported this horrendous state budget (party before the people I guess) and should be held accountable when she next comes up for election.    

In case you missed one of the leading stories in the Wisconsin State Journal today, in the midst of a budget crisis where we needed to make 'tough' decisions, we just spent a half million dollars on a new climate change lab in Madison.  Whether you believe in climate change or not (what happened to global warming?) to spend this much money on a project that is clearly less than critical is outrageous.

Ironically, this is just the type of the proverbial iceberg for pork projects slipped in.  For a complete listing of earmarks, affectionately called "Location-Specific Provisions", you can check here for the Senate version and here for the Assembly version.  Hopefully these links will remain active...   

I’ve heard of this new math but confess I’ve never had the opportunity to use it firsthand. Keep in mind my background is in engineering and I’ve had more math than I care to remember in my career.  In one class were we actually had to prove that “1 + 1 = 2”.  It’s harder than it sounds when you can’t use the “it just is” argument.

I bring this up since I heard various representatives this morning from the Democratic Party State Convention.  They are so proud that they “cut” the budget.  That’s where the math gets fuzzy since I’ve read about all the increases (more than three billion dollars) they passed as a part of this budget.  Since when does increasing taxes, increasing fees, and enhancing fee collection equal cutting the budget?  In the math I know, if you truly cut the budget then there shouldn’t be any need to increase taxes.  What happens more often than not in this new math is that cutting the budget means “we spent more but not as much as we really wanted to”. 

I read another great article by Mark Steyn this last weekend regarding the healthcare plans in front of the United States Congress right now.  This relates to our budget situation.  Like there, the devil is in the details and apathy is what they count on.  It’s great to have a sound bite that says you cut spending but when you’re truly informed the numbers just don’t add up.  Also, just like with healthcare, the real budget and spending is buried so deep that it’s difficult to truly be informed. 

Perhaps the Democrat-led leadership in our State Assembly could use some remedial math?  Perhaps not senior level university courses but maybe just something the local elementary school?