(Admiring and Emulating the Kansas Model of Economic Collapse)
To quote Representative Rob Woodall (R-GA), “A budget is a moral document. It talks about where your values are.”
Boy, Rob, it sure does.
Whether at the federal or state level, the aim of every Republican legislative majority is clear, simple and malevolent:
-Maximize welfare and entitlement for the wealthy NOW
-Shift tax burdens to the middle class and working poor NOW
-Deregulate business and finance empires to ensconce them as the supreme power centers of the nation. Simultaneously, weaken the power of government to protect citizens from corporate overreach and predation.
-Dismantle and eliminate government services to shrink state and federal government budget shortfalls, thereby “fixing” the deficits that Republicans created. They did so by slashing taxes on the very people and businesses who bore, rightly so, the greatest tax liabilities.
-Blame President Obama for any consequences of Republican malevolence.
-Ignore and marginalize the poor. In the land of “Right-Think,” out of sight means out of mind.
-Delay and obstruct any substantive legislation that requires engaging Democrats. To do so risks compromising the boundless avarice of Republican One-Percenters, who, by reason of mental disease and defect, are incapable of reasoned compromise, civic-mindedness, and responsible citizenship.
-Build-in future economic and budget-centered crises, manufactured by the application of short-term thinking, then use these manufactured crises to further subvert the function of government. (Critics have identified this as a component of “Disaster Capitalism.”)
-Instigate crises over social issues to distract public attention from the passage of laws that promote/exacerbate the economic disenfranchisement and marginalization of ordinary citizens.
Walker and the Republicans aid and abet a creeping Fascism, though they are not intelligent enough to understand how they are being used by fringe-element oligarchs. Or worse, these mentally and morally diseased political creatures now in office simply don't care. They hang, after all, from the coattails of their benefactors and, if they prove sufficiently slavish, earn financial insulation from the consequences of their actions. Even if they fail to get re-elected, comfortable careers in lobbying await them.
So here's the latest trick that Koch-puppet Scott Walker and his puppet-cronies in the state legislature want to use to expand welfare for the wealthy: misuse the School Levy Credit. This ploy promises to provide more property tax relief...but...of course...remember the source...that relief will flow en masse to the most undeserving property owners in the Badger State.
The School Levy Credit, as the Governor and Republican legislative majority conceive it, is a bald-faced handout to the rich. But more Wisconsinites are taking notice of the strings from which these Repuli-puppets dangle.
Spin and deflect as the governor does to deny that his “budgets” are creating and enlarging budget shortfalls, via socio-political engineering with a Koch-Centric, Big-Brother-Owns-You flavor, Scott Walker's words never match his actions.
Call the Walker Regime (well, the Koch Experiment in puppet government, really) regressive if you want to be accurate. The absurdities of Walker's School Levy Credit “Repair” proposal are manifold. First of all, it has no upper income limit, and no maximum credit amount. This makes it the ideological converse of Wisconsin's Homestead Credit, which limits eligibility to homeowners and renters earning less than $24,680 annually. The amount of the Homestead Credit a homeowner or renter can receive is capped at $1168.00.
Now the Homestead Credit is an increasingly rare example of the state government tuning into and addressing the needs of those residents who do in fact need help (as opposed to Republicans kissing the ass of a millionaire who illegally dumps toxic waste. This particular arrogant scumbag, who owns a chain of home improvement stores, is entitled by Republican malfeasance to pollute as he pleases.).
The SLC, by contrast, even provides property tax relief to non-residents (WTF?!?!) who own property here. It applies to second homes (because?), and a large portion of this credit is available to owners of commercial and industrial property, i.e., not homeowners.
Having trouble sensing the sense in this double standard?
To restate the obvious, this School Levy Credit scheme is a whopping entitlement for the very property owners who do not need it and do not deserve it. True, the SLC also tosses token-amount benefits to homeowners and renters who do need it. But left completely unexamined is the question, “How does the state of Wisconsin, or its economy, benefit from this ludicrous, lop-sided handout to Wisconsin's One-percent wingnuts? And to nonresident wingnuts?”
It doesn't.
This leads us back to the elemental question: What is the function of government?
The function of government, in Walkerstan, is to reward the haves (no reason needed) and to maximize the number of hoops the have-nots must jump through on their quest to climb out of poverty. (In a related absurdity, Republiclowns are eager to have a private company drug test welfare recipients, another example of Republiclowns “fixing” a nonexistent problem. The Voter I.D. Law also “fixes” a nonexistent problem, as did Act 10 and the Right-to-Work-For-Less law.)
Walkerstan seeks to make it criminal to exist in a state other than one of abject subservience to the haves.
In the Republicanized socio-political climate of late, it can sound radical to state what was once taken for granted. But here goes: One of the prime functions of government is to not only collect revenue, but to redistribute same. Yes, redistribute. Talk radio blowhards and Republican legislators have demonized this basic function, in an effort to make it “the thing that must not be named” (silent scream here)...but then they babble on and blurt out “Socialism!” It is precisely those socialist operations of government that these all-but-in-name Fascists want to cripple, dismember and convert into private-sector profit-centers. Prime among these are the public education system.
The right does not want citizens to remember or to recognize that effective government is a player in the economy, at the state and the federal levels. Republiclowns cast government as an impediment to business, when in fact it serves as a rein on the boundless avarice and intrusiveness of commerce and finance, especially the corporate kind. And “defense” industries certainly recognize Uncle Sam as customer number one. Oh, the irony, how it stings Republiclowns...
This republican-dominated government (pick any one of them) is a soulless, immoral machine, a deviant automaton. Its prime directive is to churn out welfare for the wealthy with machine-like constancy. The mechanism plods along, gobbling up resources, destroying the economy and the environment, robbing the ordinary citizen while tirelessly shoveling money at the elite. Walker, Wisconsin's cog-in-chief, is as brainless and soulless as the monstrosity he enables. And every bit as immoral.
Need more proof that effective, public-service oriented government has been subverted to the whims of wealth-obsessed troglodytes? Paul Ryan steps up to provide that proof!
The Janus-faced jackass from Janesville, now chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, wants to end the federal estate tax. And a very predictable line-up of Republiclowns (McConnell, Rubio, Cruz...) supports this additional welfare for the wealthy. Senator John Thune (R-SD) is sponsoring the legislation in the Senate. He makes the laughable argument that the estate tax punishes the 0.2-percenters “for a lifetime of hard work.” Thune is profoundly confused about who in this nation actually works hard.
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But to be fair, the labors of Sam Brownback and Scott Walker are bearing economic fruit...poisonous economic fruit, that is. According to 2013 Bureau of Economic Analysis Data (the most recent available for this particular measure), Personal Income(1) in Wisconsin has dropped to fifth place out of six when the Badger State is compared to neighbors Michigan, Minnesota, Indiana, Iowa and Illinois. Only Iowa comes in lower. BEA data also showed Wisconsin's 2013 GDP growth, 1.7%, put the Badger State solidly in last place among those same neighbors.
Kansas under Brownback has achieved similar failure. Compared to its neighbors Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri and Oklahoma, BEA 2013 Personal Income data shows that it, too, is in second last place. Only sparsely populated Nebraska came in behind the Sunflower State. Kansas Republiclowns can also brag about legislating the lowest GDP growth, again compared to those same neighbors.
So Walker and the Republican majority, like the Republican tornado now wreaking economic havoc in Kansas, do have some remarkable “achievements” to spin. Tune in again to watch these One-Percent puppets jerk and shimmy to another off-key song and dance number, whistled off stage by their puppet masters.
1- BEA Personal income is defined as the sum of wage and salary disbursements, supplements to wages and salaries, proprietors’ income with inventory and capital consumption adjustments, rental income of persons with capital consumption adjustments, personal dividend income, personal interest income, and personal current transfer receipts, less contributions for government social insurance. (The odd insight in this definition of Personal Income, which includes more than wages and salaries, is the recognition that even many winners are losing in the Badger State.)