Berceau's beer tax bill better left on bar room floor

I don't suspect that Rep. Terese Berceau's proposal to raise the beer tax in Wisconsin will ever make it to the floor of the Legislature, let alone be signed into law by Gov. Doyle (who has stated his opposition to it already).

Still, her proposal to increase the tax on a barrel from $2 to $10 - but only for beers made in Wisconsin - raises some interesting questions and has prompted an overdue debate.

At first blush, it would be easy to think, "Oh the beer industry makes tons of cash, and their taxes haven't been raised in decades, so this shouldn't be a problem." Plus, part of Berceau's proposal is that the increased revenue that would presumably result from such a change would go toward funding enforcement of drunk driving laws. So what's not to like?

I'm 100% behind efforts to curb the number of people who get behind the wheel wasted or even tipsy. I just don't think this particular bill is the way to do it - nor do I think it's entirely honest to say that this is what it's really all about.

As I already mentioned, the tax would only apply to in-state breweries: ie, micro and craft brewers. Big conglomerates like Anheuser Busch and MillerCoors would get off scot-free, even though they're the companies most able to absorb an additional cost such as this. Meanwhile, smaller, local breweries would pay the price.

Chris Staples, one of the owners of Madison-area brewery Furthermore Beer, recently wrote a thoughtful piece about his opposition to the proposed tax bill. It was the first thing I'd read that made me really sit up and take notice of the issue, and to rethink my initial position on it. Staples makes it clear that he's not against paying their fair share, just that Berceau's particular bill is the wrong way to go about things. You can read the whole thing here.

Wisconsin definitely suffers from a schizophrenic relationship with alcohol. We have a long and storied history of producing some of the best beer, but we have an equally lengthy record of abusing the fruits of our labors. Better enforcement of drinking related laws is important. Greater focus on treatment and prevention is even more crucial. But we also need to make sure our politicians, for all their apparently noble gestures toward the aforementioned goals, are really working toward what's best for Wisconsinites...and not the big corporations with the least investment in our communities.


(photo by Chris_J on Flickr)

Major reform needed in funding for public education

It came as a breath of fresh air when the Legislature managed to pass a state budget before the July 1 start of a new fiscal year. After the painfully drawn out process of '08, it was a welcome change.

Unfortunately, that timeliness came at a cost. Namely, a 15% cut in funding to nearly 100 school districts, including Madison. That's $9.8 million dollars lost, and combined with the $2.8 million in other state cuts, we're talking a $12 million reduction for the Madison School District.

According to Rep. Sondy Pope-Roberts (D-Middleton), this worst case scenario is the result of lawmakers using outdated data to make their funding predictions. They'd originally thought that cuts would be limited to no more than 10%, but just a few days after passing the budget, the Department of Public Instruction "worked up preliminary general school aids figures for the 2009-2010 school year a few days later, about 100 districts wound up with a 15 percent cut."

Not good. Not in the least.

And the news only got more glum after Pope-Roberts added, "I don't think it can be fixed...I think we're going to have to live with it."

As Forward Our Motto pointed out, Pope-Roberts is one of the good ones, working hard for meaningful education funding reform, so hearing the dire news from her may be especially poignant.

Madison School Board President Arlene Silveira has also chimed in to voice her displeasure with the way things were/are decided:

This grim situation is a result of a poor economy, outdated information used by the Legislature, and a Department of Public Instruction policy that penalizes the district for receiving one-time income (TIF closing). Federal stimulus funds will, at best, delay cuts for one year. We are left with a gaping budget deficit when many fiscal decisions for the upcoming school year cannot be reversed.

There are several different theories about what needs to happen for the situation to be improved. Pope-Roberts backs the School Finance Network (SFN), which advocates, among other things:

...increasing categorical aid for children with disabilities and special needs, for small, rural school districts, and for low income students — making the system more equitable while ensuring that all children have the opportunity to learn. The proposal also reconfigures how annual per pupil increases are calculated, moving them from $264 to $350 in year one, and then tying future increases to overall statewide economic growth...The plan increases state aid and expands homestead property tax relief, generating lower property taxes and providing tax relief for homeowners.

The state Legislature has the responsibility to fully fund public education, as mandated by the state’s Constitution. There are many funding options for state leaders to improve our school funding system, including closing corporate tax loopholes, eliminating tax breaks and subsidies for companies that do not keep jobs in Wisconsin, changing the sales tax system, eliminating sales tax exemptions, and adopting strategies to increase federal support for the state.

Holding the Legislature accountable for fixing the system appears to be the most common theme, and indeed, their past insistence on placing caps on revenue for school funding and general disregard for the public system has certainly contributed to the current crisis.

Frankly, I've never understood arguments for less education funding. Most districts do a good job of cutting out waste and programs that don't work--they've had to, as law makers continue to strip resources from them--so we can't readily place all blame on their shoulders.

Unfortunately, then, it is too often our elected representatives who set out to slash costs, seemingly ignoring the short and long term benefits of an educated populace.

And now we may just have a perfect storm on our hands. Years and years of imposed revenue caps now combine with those "accidental" 15% cuts, and all smack dab in the middle of a recession, and it's the children who'll suffer the worst. They're about to lose essential programs (art and music are usually the first to go - but we're talking assistance for those with learning disabilities and after school programs that are often life savers for kids from lower income neighborhoods or troubled home lives).

How do we, as a state, find the money to keep all of these things, to keep up with meal programs and up-to-date textbooks, fixing leaky school buildings, paying good teachers what they're actually worth, etc.?

That's the question, isn't it. Traditionally, school funding is tied to a particular district's property taxes - but what about those areas that are less affluent? Why shouldn't kids from lower income families/neighborhoods get the same quality of education experience as those lucky enough to be born into greater wealth? They should, no question.

And that's where state money is (supposed) to come in. The problems arise when your lawmakers aren't willing to throw down the cold hard cash to keep things equitable. That should be unacceptable, but we in Wisconsin have allowed them to withhold and place limits on what can be raised for going on 15 years now. It's caused a steady and pernicious backslide in our state's national standings in things like per-pupil spending, decreasing our ability to properly meet the needs of all children.

So what do we do?

We hold the Legislature accountable by only electing those representatives who actually see through campaign promises to increase support for public education, work hard on funding reform, and place greater emphasis on the importance of public education.

We then make sure that they have as accurate and up-to-date numbers as possible with which to work when they're crafting the state budget.

We remove and/or ease overly restrictive school funding revenue caps, allowing individual districts to make decisions about how to raise money based on the needs of their areas.

We may even look into refining how property taxes are determined and used (Christian Schneider recently penned a column for WPRI that I thought offered up an intriguing plan regarding taxes, though I don't know enough of the details to say whether or not it might actually work).

Most importantly, we get back to placing a premium on the importance of quality public education in this state (and country, for that matter). Private institutions have their place, but it is crucial that we maintain access to truly great instruction for every child, no matter their financial background, location, or any other factor. Period.

Ain't no party like a teabaggin' party

This whole teabagging movement, aside from being hilarious for their completely unaware use of the term "teabagging," is more than a little baffling to me.

Government has been prone to wasteful spending for years, and people's interpretations of what equals wasteful and what equals necessary has varied for just as long. Still, you'd think that the massive deficit left to us by the last administration's eight years in office would have been more than enough to tick off these fiscally fired up folks.

Apparently not. Apparently it took a New Deal style stimulus plan to do it for the teabaggers. This would be the stimulus plan aimed at pulling the country out of the abominable mess left by the last administration's hard-on for deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthiest among us.

Now, at this very moment, a group of people are gathered at the state capitol here in Madison (and in many other cities across the US) to throw themselves a tea party. They've had enough of this Obama and his crazy ideas about spending on infrastructure and social services, job creation and environmental protections! Tax cuts for those making under $250k a year? Outrageous!

My source on the ground tells me that local talk radio host and great admirer of her own reflection Vikki McKenna has just asked the assembled crowd, "For how many of you is this your first protest? That's right, we've never had reason to before."

If that's true for even one of the people there, consider me deeply depressed by it. They've never had a reason to protest before? Not over the falsified intelligence and needless invasion of Iraq? Not for the massive, warrantless wiretapping program perpetrated on American citizens by their own government? Not for the brazen disregard for the vital importance of our natural resources? Not for the rampant politicization of our nation's Justice Department? Not for the lying, outing of CIA agents, and law-breaking that happened at the highest levels of government?

Nope. It took a stimulus plan and a right-wing, corporately funded campaign claiming that said plan is akin to dirty, dirty socialism to mobilize these individuals.

Regardless of the fact that several of the services many of them rely upon to get through their days in relative safety and to make ends meet (Medicare, Social Security, police, firefighters, etc.) would qualify as dirty, dirty socialism by their own definition.

Regardless of the fact that this "grassroots" movement is having its strings pulled and paid for by major conservative political organizations (like Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks), somewhat negating the whole "grassroots" part of the claim.

Frankly, I'd take far less issue with this teabagging business if they just up and admitted to where they're getting their financial and logistical support from. But the fact that the movement's biggest cheerleaders--like Fox News' histrionic Glenn Beck--seem so intent on painting this as something put together entirely by "regular folk" is extremely disingenuous.

There are real issues of tax fairness and need for tax code revision facing Americans today. The corruption and incompetence that lead us into the current Recession call out loudly for serious fixes. But, instead of addressing these issues with reason and thoughtfulness, the teabaggers have simply opened their mouths and swallowed what's being fed to them by the very interest groups and organizations that would be most targeted by real efforts at reform.
P.S. As a side note, the photos included in this post were taken by my source on the ground at the Madison tea party. Like his own caption said, "It isn't a REAL protest until the Hitler signs show up." That and references to white slavery, I guess.

Also, can I just say, kudos to Julaine Appling of Wisconsin Family Action, who has been the voice behind many of the state's most anti-gay movements of past years? It must have taken a great deal of personal strength on her part to attend and speak at a pro-teabagging rally.

EDIT TO ADD: OK, enough of the silly double entendres. Take a look at this informative break-down of what's included in the Obama stimulus plan the teabaggers seem to dislike so much.

Don't leave tax incentives on the cutting room floor

No, no, and a thousand times no. Gov. Doyle has proposed eliminating the tax incentives for film productions in the state and offering a $500,000 grant in their stead.

And just when I was actually feeling mildly impressed by his new budget proposal, too. But hey, no one's perfect: that's why us uppity citizens are here to call Doyle and other elected officials out when they start spoutin' nonsense.

At first blush, it may seem like a good idea to limit tax breaks in the midst of a recession, but the film industry has already proved itself as something that creates jobs and brings millions of dollars in revenue to the state. It would be downright foolhardy to get rid of that now, just 13 months after first making the incentives available and after years of fighting to get them in place at all.

The upfront investment in film productions by the state leads to longer term benefits. It offers local industry professionals an opportunity to work near home instead of having to go to California. It creates jobs. And it brings cash to everything from hotels and restaurants to locations picked for filming and businesses that rent cars, do catering, etc.

So no, Gov. Doyle, now is not the time to cut out those tax incentives. It's tempting to start slashing and burning in the face of economic crisis, but that sort of tactic can often lead to the accidental chopping down of perfectly fruitful trees. Put down your axe.


(photo by gnecoffee on Flickr)

Raise the minimum wage AND bring on universal health care

The Wisconsin Senate may very well be on the cusp of passing a comprehensive and much-needed minimum wage hike today, but it's looking like the bill will face a very tough, up-hill battle to pass through the Republican wasteland of the Assembly. Whether it ever makes it to Gov. Doyle's desk is very much in doubt.

The bill would "raise Wisconsin's minimum wage each year based on inflation" and would also "immediately increase the minimum wage from $6.50 to $7.25 an hour."

Powerful interests, including the state's largest business group, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, are against it.

Twenty-three other states have minimum wages higher than Wisconsin, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Of those, 10 allow for increases based on inflation.

I think I understand where the opposition comes from, especially on the part of small business owners. It is a great added expense, and they're already strapped for cash by skyrocketing health care costs for employees. In fact, according to a 2006 survey by the WMC, the top business concern facing companies in Wisconsin was listed as "health care costs." Not regulation, not taxes, not litigation, but the astronomically high price of providing some kind of health coverage to your employees. If the Republicans in this state really were as pro-business (and pro-small business, especially) as they claim to be, they would have actually supported and passed the Healthy Wisconsin bill that had been attached to the (extremely tardy) state budget.

Instead, there was a great wailing and gnashing of neo-con teeth, claims that it would put an undue tax burden on the citizens of this great state, and near apoplexy over a provision to subsidize care of illegal immigrants.

And so the great burden of providing health insurance continued to be heaped onto the shoulders of Wisconsin businesses. In a rational world, they'd be the banner carriers of universal health care, but for some reason many of the leaders of various business related associations seem hell-bent on opposing anything the Democrats introduce, even if it is good for them.

Thing is, I suspect that business leaders would be far less opposed to minimum wage hikes if they weren't already hemorrhaging money for health care.

Let's be honest, it makes absolutely perfect sense to raise the minimum wage in tandem with inflation. Think of how much gas prices have gone up in recent months (we're averaging $3.07/gallon), which has in turn caused the price of food to rise as well. How do we expect workers to be able to afford to contribute to the economy if they can't buy even basic things like food and gas? It's all connected - provide a universal health coverage program because it's the right thing to do and to take the burden off businesses, and those businesses in turn can afford to better pay their employees, who can then afford to contribute monetarily to our consumerist economy.

Setting a minimum wage is absolutely the right thing to do. Claiming that it won't actually help those people working entry-level and low-paying jobs is a load of bull, especially when related issues (i.e. health care) are taken into account and dealt with in some reasonable fashion. Left to their own devices, companies are notoriously bad about providing fair compensation for labor. You've only to research what the labor climate was like prior to federal minimum wage laws to see what I mean.

(h/t to Waxing America for covering these issues extensively in recent posts)

Dave Blaska: pot, meet kettle.

Lately I've been reading, and cringing at, a lot of Dave Blaska's "blogs" over at the Isthmus Daily Page. It's fine and dandy that the left-leaning publication, for whom I sometimes write on a freelance basis, has a few more right-leaning contributors (I'm making this assumption based upon Blaska's pro-gun, anti-tax, throw-em-all-in-jail stances espoused in previous columns). In fact, I wholeheartedly encourage the practice. But it does both sides and the moderates a disservice when the most visible opinions are so filled with empty rhetoric and name calling.

Today's Blaska Blog takes aim at the counter protesters, most notably state employees, who showed up to "shout down" the anti-tax activists who came to the capitol a little while ago to show support for the Republicans in the legislature who were stalling the budget process.

Let me be clear: I don't think drowning out the voices of people with whom you disagree is a constructive way to solve problems or get your point across. But I also don't think that opposing any and all taxation is a good way to run a society. I've rambled on about this before, so I don't think I need to entirely restate my opinion that some degree of reasonable taxation is necessary for the maintenance of a just and equitable society. The trick isn't in raising or lowering taxes to absurd levels, but in making sure that the taxes are collected and distributed fairly, instead of falling into already well-lined pockets through pork barrel spending and mismanagement.

Putting aside the real issues for a moment, though, my beef with Blaska and others of his ilk are their incessant stereotyping of the fictional notion of a unified "Left."

Let's take a look at a few examples:

The [sic] afternoon Progressive Dane newspaper tried to spin the anti-tax protest as a bunch of Hollywood extras bused in for the event.

Americans for Prosperity, the group that organized the rally opposing the enactment of the compromise state budget proposed by Gov. Jim Doyle, is not from Wisconsin. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C.

Typical Progressive Dane disinformation: impugn motives, dispute the provenance rather than debate the issues.

I'm not a member of PD, and while I agree with many of their positions, I don't always agree with their methods. But this isn't to say that I believe all PD members are the same, nor do I believe that "Progressive Dane" is a dirty turn of phrase. Blaska, however, along with a whole slew of more right-leaning folks around these parts sure do seem to think of it as a slur. I'm sure they don't appreciate it when similar people on the left make blanket statements about Republicans or the "Right."

Then we have this:

But the bottom line is that the state employees union could not have hurt themselves more if Karl Rove was in charge of mixing the Kool Aid. Arrogant, thuggish and thickheaded. They could not counter the anti-tax citizens with facts, so they substitute brute noise in an attempt to intimidate. That is totalitarian in nature, the polar opposite of sifting and winnowing.

It's the Soviet Union jamming Radio Free America. It's Boss Jim Taylor shoving the Boy Rangers' newspaper wagons off the sidewalks in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

It's one of my favorite underhanded tactics of debate: conjure up the specter of Communism and the Big Boss' of yore (or similar bogeymen) so that any argument made by the other side comes off sounding like a defense of those things. Plus, it should be noted, Blaska has not, as far as I'm aware, made any sound arguments, supported by facts and statistics, to support his anti-tax position. What was that he was just saying about substituting "brute noise in an attempt to intimidate"?

Blaska says he's a state employee himself, so there's some ground to stand on when he attempts to make his points. Of course, the invocation of Vicki McKenna as some kind of voice of reason hurts him more than anything, but still he, and others like him, have a great platform to put forth real ideas and try to improve the public discourse. Instead, he seems content to call names, make broad generalizations and skirt around the real issues (like, y'know, that whole "no man is an island" and "we need a friggen state budget" and "health care should be a right not a privilege" stuff).

So here's an idea, My Fellow Bloggers: try to inject some real content into your online musings. Better yet, try to then transfer that real content, those original ideas, into actual, real-life action. I'm fully applying this to myself--I need to do more than write and I know it. The first step that many of us are missing, though, is in learning how to have civil discourse with people who don't agree with us and not to lump them all into one identical group.

With role models like the empty talking heads we currently have on most cable news networks and syndicated talk shows, it's easy to see why the more local voices might be tempted to fall into fiery, no-substance rhetoric. But we owe it to ourselves and our fellow citizens to rise above that type of easy pandering. And we need to start holding public voices to higher standards: if all you can do with your payed platform is snipe, then you don't deserve the space. It should be back to the proving grounds with you!

What are you drowning in your bathtub today?

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and a huge GWB fanboy, hopes it's your government: "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

Are Wisconsin legislators, most notably the 30 who signed onto the "No Tax Increase Pledge," taking their cues from Norquist?

Look, just like most law-abiding taxpayers, I don't want taxes to skyrocket and make it nigh unto impossible for me to make ends meet. But let's be honest with ourselves, that's not what we're talking about when we discuss our state's woefully and inexcusably late budget.

The attitude that Mr. Norquist and his ilk seem to have is the "I am an island and need no outside help" point of view more often associated with extreme Libertarians and those people who barricade themselves inside their homes/compounds with guns and made-up country flags.

Government needs restraints so that it doesn't become the type of all-seeing behemoth depicted in books like "1984," but it also needs to be used appropriately to provide for the kinds of services that one person or one community can't provide for alone.

You want to abolish a whole bunch of government associations, drastically cut taxes and basically fend for yourself? Fine. Can you put out your own fires, pave your own roads, school your children from kindergarten through college, protect your ecosystem, insure that you're treated and paid fairly at your job, police your streets, clean up and properly dispose of your garbage, make sure your means of getting electricity are safe and relatively clean, provide disaster relief for yourself and your neighbors in times of trouble, and find food in times of financial famine all on your own?

Really? Because I consider myself to be a fairly capable individual with certain basic survival skills, and I'm still fairly damn certain that I couldn't do all of that.

Look, if you want safer streets, clean water, air and food, and something resembling a decent standard of living, then you need to contribute to your society and not hoard everything to yourself, expecting to survive as an island. Public schools educate the children who then grow up to work in the jobs that provide many of the necessities and pleasantries we all rely on to get by. It also helps keep many of those children from turning to more illegal activities to make ends meet. And that's just one of the essential provisions of a good state budget.

There is no excuse for the kind of foot dragging, petulant tantrum the legislators are throwing. At this point, it has become dereliction of duty, and in any other state or private sector job, such a performance would be met with quick and appropriate punishment--probably with getting fired. Why aren't we holding our elected officials to the same standards? And why are our elected officials completely disregarding the will of the majority of their constituents in deference to the wild-eyed, disconnected-from-reality minority? As always, we should probably be following the money.