National Watchdog calls for criminal probe of Gov Walker over 'Koch' tape

A national campaign finance watchdog, the Public Campaign Action Fund, sent a letter to the Dane County (WI) District Attorney and Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board (GAB) today urging that they open concurrent investigations into Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-Wisc.) possible double violations of state campaign finance and ethics statutes.

Washington, D.C.—National campaign finance watchdog Public Campaign Action Fund sent a letter to the Dane County (WI) District Attorney and Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board (GAB) today urging that they open concurrent investigations into Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-Wisc.) possible double violations of state campaign finance and ethics statutes. The letter is in response to yesterday’s release of a taped phone call between Gov. Walker and a person he thought was out-of-state, billionaire campaign donor David Koch.

The group asked the District Attorney and GAB to look at two questions:

1) Did Gov. Walker illegally solicit political expenditures for independent spending to benefit Republican Senators from swing districts?

2) Did Gov. Walker illegally solicit donations from the state capitol using state resources?

“Governor Walker, while on state grounds supposedly doing his job, thought he was speaking to out-of-state billionaire David Koch, and over the course of that conversation he asked Koch to spend money to help Republican Senators from electorally vulnerable districts,” said David Donnelly, national campaigns director for Public Campaign Action Fund. “The District Attorney of Dane County and the Government Accountability Board have concurrent jurisdiction over this matter, and both should immediately investigate whether Walker broke two state laws.”

The letters were faxed this afternoon to both offices. Download the letter to the District Attorney and the GAB [at Public Campaign Action Fund] .

Tax Hell becomes Tax Median

by folkbum

BizTimes (via): "Wisconsin’s state and local tax ranking has dropped to its lowest level since 1961, according to an annual report released today by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue. [. . .] When considering all revenue sources, Wisconsin ranks 24th per $1,000 personal income and 25th per capita."

Darn those Democrats for ruining a perfectly good Republican talking point!

Wisconsin Takes a Tumble in Tax Rankings

By Keith R. Schmitz

From today's BizTimes newsletter:

Wisconsin continues to fall from the ranks of the highest-taxed states, according to the latest report from the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance.

Over the past 15 years, Wisconsin’s tax ranking among the 50 states fell from third in 1993 to 14th in 2007, according to a new report, "Long-Term Tax and Spending Ranks," that the Alliance released today.

The nonpartisan research organization also said that, with state and local government revenues growing less here than elsewhere, the Badger State’s 50-state spending rank dropped from 13th to 26th.

Reasons given by the Alliance for the drop in both the tax and spending ranks included state income tax cuts in 1999-2001 and limits on school, municipal and county revenues in recent years. The study was based on Census Bureau figures from 1993 to 2007, the most recent year for which data are available.

Wisconsin’s rank dropped in nearly all major revenue categories during the 1993-2007 period. Wisconsin’s individual income tax was among the seven highest from 1993 through 2000. However, income tax changes, including an indexing of tax brackets and the standard deduction and a lowering of tax rates, helped push Wisconsin out of the top 10 after 2004. In 2007, state income taxes were 14th-highest nationally and claimed 3.2 percent of personal income, vs. 3.5 percent in 1993.

Although no major changes were made to the state corporate income tax over the years studied, Wisconsin’s national rank fell from 15th to 25th.

According to WISTAX researchers, the state’s property tax was consistently among the top 10 from 1993 through 1996, claiming between 4.7 percent and 4.9 percent of income. However, a $1 billion buydown of school property taxes in 1996-97 dropped the state’s ranking to 11th (4.2 percent of income). Since then, the state has limited school levy increases through revenue limits, and more recently slowed the growth of municipal and county property taxes with levy limits. As a result, the state property tax ranking has fluctuated between ninth and 11th nationally.

That's a nice level. Any lower and we become Mississippi.

Wisconsin Gay Marriage Ban Challenge Draws Attention

Check out MAL's piece in The Advocate, a hard-hitting national magazine indicative of the growing power of the LGBT civil rights movement.

The anti-banning marriage case, William C. McConkey v. J. B. Van Hollen), makes one contemplate the day that discrimination against gays will be as much an imprecation as open discrimination against ethnic minorities.

Civil rights advocates in Wisconsin are hopeful for a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision late this year that will send the gay marriage ban the way of state statutes banning marriage between difference races that were overturned in Loving v. Virginia (1967), a case referenced in the appellant brief. But it is ambiguity and not concern for equality that will perhaps negate what many here regard as a stain on Wisconsin’s reputation as a pioneer in civil rights.

McIlheran Watch: Good Columnist? No, Just a Mere Propagandist

by capper

Despite having some adoring fans, Patrick McIlheran again fails to prove himself to be more of an insightful columnist as much as a propagandist hack. In his blog, he has this posting, in which he is nothing more that a mouthpiece for Scott Walker.

First, he brings out the old dog and pony show about the county pension scandal. There are two problems with this. One, the sick leave and retirement enhancers were paid out three years ago, and are no longer an effect on the budget. The pension fund itself is of concern not from just the big hit on the fund from the exodus of retirees, but from the market crash following 9/11 and Walker's short-changing it year after year. By refusing to make the appropriate payments, Walker only excasperated the problem. Side note: Walker was warned of the mass exodus, but chose not to listen to the warnings. Who does that remind you of?

Then McIlheran goes on to show that the bustling metropolis of Mequon is looking at another tax freeze and links to the U.S. Census Bureau's website regarding that fine city to show that people want to move there. That made me wonder, how did Milwaukee County size up while under Scott "I should have been governor" Walker. The results weren't as pretty, with a loss of 25,000 people. Then, I thought, "Well, surely, Mr. McIlheran can't be all wrong. The population of the tax hell we call Wisconsin must have gone down under Doyle." Good thing I didn't put any money on old Paddy. Wisconsin gained almost 200,000 people. Not bad for a state whose taxes are so high that people are moving out in droves.

I would think that someone who actually gets paid to do this would at least try to get his facts straight, or at least not make it so easy to call him out on it.