Wrong-Way Walker's Tax 'Reforms' Were So Radical...

That even Paul Ryan is running in the opposite direction on one key item:

Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, a deduction from tax payments that disproportionally hit the working poor in the pocketbook and act as a disincentive to get into the work force and earn a paycheck.

The reduction in tax payments thus raises take home pay.

Pretty basic Republican, pro-workforce conservative economics, right? And aren't the US and state tax codes replete with advantages for upper-income earners and businesses, so how about one for those at the bottom?

Ryan, with a new anti-poverty proposal, is now in favor of expanding the credit, known as EITC: 

His poverty plan, full of policy detail and scholarly citations, is the culmination of more than a year of hearings and personal visits to poor urban areas around the country.

It features a few pillars that have Democratic support: expanding the subsidy to the working poor known as the Earned Income Tax Credit...,

But cutting the EITC and thus reducing working poor' take home pay was among Wrong-Way Walker's first round of tax increases, as I noted in March, 2011, despite his denials proven false by independent analyses that he had ever raised any tax.

As PolitiFact noted:

But what about his 2011-"13 budget?

It included some tax cuts, but also tax increases.

That"s according to the nonpartisan state Legislative Fiscal Bureau, which both parties have long cited as a neutral scorekeeper on budget matters.

The bureau determined that Walker included three tax increases in the budget totaling $49.4 million over the two-year period.

The largest involved a reduction in a state tax credit for low-income working families, known as theearned income credit. A tax credit reduces the amount of tax you owe.

In this case, the earned income tax credit is in place for both state and federal taxes. It"s refundable, so individuals with little or no income tax liability may still receive the credit.

Walker"s plan would decrease the tax credit for families with more than one child, allowing the state to collect an additional $41.3 million in taxes over two years from those families. (The credit would actually go up for families with just one child.)

Walker Budget Raised Taxes On Lower-Earners: New Pound Of Flesh Eyed

Despite the denials, the same Scott Walker budget that contributed to months of job losses statewide also contained tax increases totaling $49 million on lower-income Wisconsinites - - plus a 'just-cuz-you're poor-$20-monthly dunning - - and also cut taxes on some capital gains and business income.

The Walker machine spun on, claiming in statements and ads that the budget was balanced without raising taxes, even though the information about the tax increases came from the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, as reported by PolitiFact.

Overall, Walker’s budget included a modest $34 million reduction, mainly through business tax breaks. His plan included $83 million in tax cuts, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, but that was offset by $49 million in tax increases.

The bureau determined that Walker included three tax increases in the budget. As we noted in our Walk-O-Meter item on the promise:

"The largest involved a reduction in a state tax credit for low-income working families, known as the earned income credit. A tax credit reduces the amount of tax you owe.

"In this case, the earned income tax credit is in place for both state and federal taxes. It’s refundable, so individuals with little or no income tax liability may still receive the credit.

"A second tax increase, the fiscal bureau said, is stopping the inflationary adjustment of the state’s Homestead Tax Credit -- the property tax break that appears as a credit on income tax forms for low-income homeowners and renters. The bureau calculated that change would increase taxes by an estimated $8.1 million."

Truth is no longer an essential element of governing, as Walker's record according to the fact-checking service PolitiFact tilts heavily to the false side of the ledger.

Now comes former Reince Priebus roommate State Rep. Robin Vos, (R-Rochester), the presumptive new speaker of the state Assembly, who is talking about a revamped tax code in Wisconsin, and asks...

Is it fair. Does it make sure that every single person in society who benefits pays a portion, so that not some people pay the entire load for those who benefit but don't have to put anything into it.

That's nothing more than a spite-driven, divide-and-conquer, class warfare/Tea Party-inspired talking point and national legend: that the wily, tax-code savvy lower-class has buffaloed everyone and is making off with the public treasury.

We've been hearing versions of this since Ronald Reagan campaigned against welfare queens.  I first heard it in junior-high school when a kid told our eight-grade civics class that "Negroes on welfare all drive Cadillacs."

So while many low-income Wisconsinites have been beaten down by corporate out-sourcing, or Bain Capital-style raiding, or swindling mortgage bankers and generations of racial discrimination and women's pay inequality - - and those numbers will expand if 'right-to-work' comes here as Walker promised his Beloit billionaire backer - - Vos wants another pound of flesh from people buried at the bottom.

It's a cynical ploy: Vos will play on middle-class fears by convincing people already under pressure there that it is the poor who threaten them, not people at the top the data say are making off (thanks to policy-makers like Walker) with a bigger piece of the pie:

... the release of a report in October 2011 by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office confirm[s] that income inequality had grown in the United States. According to the report, the top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation’s income over the previous three decades.


In addition, the report said, government policy has become less redistributive since the late 1970s, doing less to reduce the concentration of income.


“The equalizing effect of federal taxes was smaller” in 2007 than in 1979, as “the composition of federal revenues shifted away from progressive income taxes to less-progressive payroll taxes,” the budget office said.


Also, it said, federal benefit payments are doing less to even out the distribution of income, as a growing share of benefits, like Social Security, goes to older Americans, regardless of their income.


In its report, the budget office found that from 1979 to 2007, average inflation-adjusted after-tax income grew by 275 percent for the 1 percent of the population with the highest income. For others in the top 20 percent of the population, average real after-tax household income grew by 65 percent.


By contrast, the budget office said, for the poorest fifth of the population, average real after-tax household income rose 18 percent.


And for the three-fifths of people in the middle of the income scale, the growth in such household income was just under 40 percent.

Vos is fueling the notion that that people living in poverty have to be slapped into productivity and good citizenship because they are living high off our money.

His message: Let's put a stop to their shopping sprees at Goodwill, deals on Dollar Store winter window plastic sheeting and fancy dining on double-coupon white bread and bologna.

Do you think life is an endless buffet of free beer and brats?

Walker Repeating Tax Lie In State Of The State Speech

Walker is a piece of work. As predicted, his State of the State speech mirrors a year of deceit.

Again, according to the Journal Sentinel, he will repeat tonight the falsehood that his budget did not raise taxes - - which it did.

Here is what he is repeating - -

"And we balanced the state budget.  We balanced it -- without raising taxes;"

And here is what PolitiFact wrote:

But what about his 2011-"13 budget?

It included some tax cuts, but also tax increases.

That"s according to the nonpartisan state Legislative Fiscal Bureau, which both parties have long cited as a neutral scorekeeper on budget matters.

The bureau determined that Walker included three tax increases in the budget totaling $49.4 million over the two-year period.

The largest involved a reduction in a state tax credit for low-income working families, known as the earned income credit. A tax credit reduces the amount of tax you owe.

In this case, the earned income tax credit is in place for both state and federal taxes. It"s refundable, so individuals with little or no income tax liability may still receive the credit.

Walker"s plan would decrease the tax credit for families with more than one child, allowing the state to collect an additional $41.3 million in taxes over two years from those families. (The credit would actually go up for families with just one child.)

A second tax increase, the fiscal bureau said, is stopping the inflationary adjustment of the state"s Homestead Tax Credit -- the property tax break that appears as a credit on income tax forms for low-income homeowners and renters. The bureau calculated that change would increase taxes by an estimated $8.1 million.
 

Spare us the rhetoric: Walker raised some taxes, fees

[Updated from 9/12] Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker and GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos are continuing their pre-budget dance which could well end with cuts to social programs to finance too many new roads and please the road-builder lobby.

But please, gentlemen: we are not stupid. We can read. We can Google Scott Walker and tax increases and increased fees and find the facts.

So spare us sanctimonious b.s. like this demonstrably phony and self-serving jaw-dropper Walker made in his no-new-taxes-and-fees- pitch to Vos today:

“I believe we can agree that we did not get elected as conservatives to raise taxes or fees,” Walker wrote.

Well, yes they did. Let's refresh their memories:

*  Taxes:  Politifact, citing the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, said Walker's first budget in 2011-'13 budget broke a promise by raising more $49 million in taxes on low-income and elderly people:

The bureau determined that Walker included three tax increases in the budget totaling $49.4 million over the two-year period.
The largest involved a reduction in a state tax credit for low-income working families, known as the earned income credit. A tax credit reduces the amount of tax you owe. 

In this case, the earned income tax credit is in place for both state and federal taxes. It"s refundable, so individuals with little or no income tax liability may still receive the credit. 

Walker"s plan would decrease the tax credit for families with more than one child, allowing the state to collect an additional $41.3 million in taxes over two years from those families. (The credit would actually go up for families with just one child.) 

A second tax increase, the fiscal bureau said, is stopping the inflationary adjustment of the state"s Homestead Tax Credit -- the property tax break that appears as a credit on income tax forms for low-income homeowners and renters. The bureau calculated that change would increase taxes by an estimated $8.1 million.

*  Fees - - I suppose Walker forgot all the state park, trail and forest fees Walker and Vos raised when they put together the 2015-'17 budget, as explained by the DNR:

MADISON -- Camping fees for Wisconsin state parks, state forests, state trails, and state recreation areas will increase beginning on July 28, 2015. 

The fee increases were enacted as part of the 2015-2017 biennial state budget. The legislation calls for the fee increases to go into effect as soon as changes can be made to the camping reservation system. 

The increase in camping fees is based on a three-level rate structure that will place the parks at a camping rate depending on demand, uniqueness, location and other factors. Camping rates will increase between $3 and $6 per night for residents and between $6 and $9 per night for non-residents. There is an increase in the per night charge for electrical service from $5 to $10.. 

Admission fees and trail passes were also increased in the state budget, but will not begin until annual stickers and passes for 2016 go on sale in December 2015, with an effective date of Jan. 1, 2016. Annual admission sticker fees will increase from $25 to $28 for state residents, from $35 to $38 for non-residents and $10 to $13 for resident seniors. Annual trail passes will increase from $20 to $25 for an annual pass and from $4 to $5 for a daily pass.

*  Triggering new local taxes and fees - - By starving local budgets, Walker and the Legislature have pushed  costs to municipalities - - hence, wheel taxes to fix roads which have deteriorated because state funding has been reduced. The same is true for school districts which have increased borrowings paid back with property taxes to fund school improvements because state aids have fallen, or been frozen.

In fact, Urban Milwaukee says that kind of bonding is skyrocketing:

School districts are asking voters to approve nearly $700 million in borrowing for new construction and building updates, and more than $150 million in increases in school district budgets. Those requested amounts are the largest put before voters at the annual spring election going back at least a decade. School districts can hold referendums at any time during the year, but many referendums are scheduled to correspond with regularly-held elections like the annual April election. 

Wisconsin’s public schools are funded through a combination of state support and local property taxes. State law limits the degree to which districts can raise property taxes, unless residents vote to approve an increase in school district budgets. In the most recent state budget, lawmakers did not increase the revenue limits for school districts.

Walker's southern strategy

Paul Ryan and Scott Walker are perfecting the pitch of their dog whistles to the party's tea party base and competing for the same far-right, white-voter love as the 2016 GOP presidential race takes shape.

Ryan got a head start, (no pun intended), when he said earlier this year that the inner cities were full of lazy black men.

Sure, there was some backlash, and Ryan said he'd been misinterpreted, but Mission Accomplished/Signal Sent, and his cheesehead rival Wrong-Way Walker needed to respond in kind.

But Walker has his own race-baiting record. Remember his 2012 plea to upscale Waukesha County voters for votes so that opponent Tom Barrett, the Mayor of the largest minority-majority city in the state, wouldn't turn Wisconsin into "another Milwaukee."

And Walker has channeled Newt Gingrich's 2012 attack on President Barack Obama as "the food stamp president" by proposing over the weekend that food stamp and public welfare recipients in Wisconsin take mandatory drugs tests before they can eat and feed their kids. 

Walker says it will help the poor find work. 

In fact, Walker is adding a fresh scapegoat - - the unemployed and low-income themselves - - to his excuse-me list of Syrian rebels, Obamacare and recall protesters - - to explain away and distract from his inability to create 250,000 new jobs in Wisconsin.

This time he's suggesting to otherwise law-abiding workers that the poor must be too high or tipsy to get a job.

You just can't keep a good divide-and-governor down.

This isn't the first time Walker has used and abused the poor for political purposes - - remember that he is the one standing in the way of an increase in the minimum wage being raised elsewhere that the WMC says will boost prices - -  like the fast food AM 620 WTMJ talker Jeff Wagner and his pals, through their snickering, demand be kept dirt-cheap.

And In his first budget, Walker kicked at the poor financially when they were already far, far down in the Great Recession - despite Walker foot-stamping spin to the contrary - - as noted several times on this blog, including this summary from two years ago:

Despite the denials, the same Scott Walker budget that contributed to months of job losses statewide also contained tax increases totaling $49 million on lower-income Wisconsinites - - plus a 'just-cuz-you're poor-$20-monthly dunning - - and also cut taxes on some capital gains and business income. 

The Walker machine spun on, claiming in statements and ads that the budget was balanced without raising taxes, even though the information about the tax increases came from the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, as reported by PolitiFact.

Overall, Walker’s budget included a modest $34 million reduction, mainly through business tax breaks. His plan included $83 million in tax cuts, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, but that was offset by $49 million in tax increases. 

The bureau determined that Walker included three tax increases in the budget. As we noted in our Walk-O-Meter item on the promise: 

"The largest involved a reduction in a state tax credit for low-income working families, known as the earned income credit. A tax credit reduces the amount of tax you owe. 

"In this case, the earned income tax credit is in place for both state and federal taxes. It’s refundable, so individuals with little or no income tax liability may still receive the credit. 

"A second tax increase, the fiscal bureau said, is stopping the inflationary adjustment of the state’s Homestead Tax Credit -- the property tax break that appears as a credit on income tax forms for low-income homeowners and renters. The bureau calculated that change would increase taxes by an estimated $8.1 million. 

Ryan and Walker are showing us that while the GOP apologized for it a few years ago, the so-called southern strategy which worked for Dick Nixon is back in right-wing Republican vogue.

Forty percent of the 860,000 Wisconsinites receiving food stamps live in Milwaukee County: who thinks Walker's food stamp drug testing scheme is aimed at people in River Hills or Whitefish Bay?

Though many formerly-employed Wisconsinites statewide who are still reeling from the Great Recession, and Walker's inability to get the state's economy on track despite holding all the budgetary and policy-making cards, might be surprised to learn that the Governor and his valet Robin Vos want them to pee in a cup to prove they haven't unemployed themselves by smoking dope or having a cocktail with lunch at the club.

Take that, laid-off office administrators, middle managers, sales staff, HR supervisors, small business owners, and the like - - all now under suspicion.

And when the poor and unemployed are done degrading themselves at Walker's direction at some government food-stamp-drug-testing station, office, let the poor chase after the voter ID we tricked the Appeals Court into thinking is needed in Wisconsin. 

Better the poor should spend their time driving or busing around to find a DMV office with the voter ID information and assistance that's actually open than on the job or applying for work.

That subset of the poor is also under a different kind of suspicion - - cheating at the ballot box, like the accusatory billboards posted by a Walker donor, with Walker's advice had said when he was fighting the last time for his political life.

What a dark, vicious loop that is.

Walker's fresh assault on the poorest citizens among us during a re-election campaign - - a politician's time of greatest self-interest - - will be added to a post on this blog documenting the many ways he continues to disrespect or disregard Wisconsin and its low-income residents:

There has never been a Wisconsin Governor in our memories prior to Wrong Way Walker who so widely disrespected the time, resources and basic interests of so many Wisconsinites, particularly the state's lower-income residents, just to advance his own political career. 

Conflationists can claim until the cows come home that every Wisconsin Governor has behaved this one-dimensionally, opportunistically, selfishly, coldly.

If proper eligibility and stewardship and of public money is what's behind Walker's pledge to tighten up taxpayer-paid assistance, maybe there ought to be drug testing for Walker, legislators and their appointees who created and are running the dysfunctional Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, where millions of public dollars have been misspent or misplaced.

The agency was supposed to create jobs but now prefers talking about the jobs it has "impacted," - - deceptively camouflaging how little employment has resulted from all the millions it has spent. Actual number: 5,480, one study shows.

Maybe there should also be drug-testing for the private sector officials who have taken public WEDC financing, grants, loans or credits while 'impacting' so few real jobs in Wisconsin and creating jobs overseas. 

Here's an example of one company that took millions of state dollars, and which was lauded by Walker, but has brought on only a few people, hasn't put up the promised assembly line and is busy hiring workers in another state from which Wisconsin allegedly had lured the firm's business and commitment.

Right-wing talk radio Monday will give a big ride to Walker's fresh attack on the poor.

The AM talkers provide open microphones for Walker and his legislative allies to gin up fear and anger among their conservative suburban and smaller-town Wisconsin listening audiences.

In fact, the latest John Doe document dump showed Walker routinely sending the shows their talking points.

Attacking the poor from the cushy digs of elected office, or isolated radio station studios is about the easiest, cheapest self-serving effort imaginable - - but a reminder of the depth of that hole Walker correctly found himself in the other day.

Walker's No Tax-Increase Budget? Calling PolitiFact...Hello?

It's been noted more than once on this blog (sample, here), and by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the Wisconsin State Journal that Scott Walker's budget includes changes in the way low-income working Wisconsinites can use a federal tax credit when filing their state income tax forms.

From the budget text, page 23:

"Reduce the percentages of the federal earned income tax credit that can be claimed for Wisconsin in line with national averages while still maintaining a focus on reducing child poverty to realize savings of $41.3 million over the biennium."

For some, the reduction in the amount of federal tax credit claimed will trigger a larger state income tax obligation.

Citing non-partisan state computations, the Journal Sentinel reported that 23% of Wisconsin residents eligible for the federal tax credit would see their state tax bill go up as a result of the Walker budget proposal.

Good that the paper tackled what is admittedly a complex matter - - so can Walker really claim a no-tax-increase budget?

Same question when it comes to tuition assessed by the UW system through state budgetary permission and policy.

The budget on page 11 calls for a "modest tuition increase."

While the percentage or dollar amount increase is not specified, an increase is an increase.

Can Walker claim with a straight face that state-imposed tuition is not a tax or an assessment of some kind on students? Or at least is a fee, which these days is often synonymous for tax, or a substitute, since all gather in revenue for services provided, regardless of the wording?

Tuition payment can be lowered or delayed through grants, or scholarships or loans, but complying with the bill is not voluntary. Sounds like a tax or fee to me.

We've seen Walker use such parsed revenue rhetoric elsewhere.

Remember when his support for new road tolls was not a violation of his long-standing opposition to tolls - - because the charges he said he'd support were just for motorists who wanted to drive in the fast lane.

So...some tolls aren't tolls.

And some tax increases...well...if they hit the poor, that doesn't count.

And mandated, added tuition, collected from tens of thousands of students and parents - - what is that? An academic, state-mandated-brain-training-revenue-enhancer?

But certainly not a tax increase, or anything that suggests it?

PolitiFact? Are you on it?

RNC Chair Priebus, Walker Toady, Raises PolitiFact "False" Bar To Cynical Height

Remember when Scott Walker got called out by PolitiFact for falsely claiming his budget had no new taxes, when the state Legislative Fiscal Bureau laid out the $49 million in tax increases that fell on lower-income Wisconsinites?

The bureau determined that Walker included three tax increases in the budget. As we noted in our Walk-O-Meter item on the promise:

"The largest involved a reduction in a state tax credit for low-income working families, known as the earned income credit. A tax credit reduces the amount of tax you owe...

"A second tax increase, the fiscal bureau said, is stopping the inflationary adjustment of the state’s Homestead Tax Credit -- the property tax break that appears as a credit on income tax forms for low-income homeowners and renters. The bureau calculated that change would increase taxes by an estimated $8.1 million."

Now comes Walker sycophant Reince Priebus, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee and fellow Wisconsin power-broker to flip the script with a false claim that Obama wants to raise rates on the lowest earners:

Priebus said Obama wants to raise "the lowest (income) tax rate from 10 to 15 percent."

He provided no evidence that that is the president’s position. And experts agree Obama does not support raising the lowest rate.

We rate Priebus’ statement False.

These statements by Priebus and Walker are not accidental.

Why can't these Republican leaders be honest?

Slammed For Raising Taxes, Tommy Can Deny It, As Walker Does

How can "Tommy-the-Taxer" (hat tip, Bruce Murphy, circa 1996) get out from under the proven false claim that he "never raised taxes?"

Follow the Scott Walker example: just keep on making the claim. Repetition is the key. Send everyone out with the same talking points, and soon fiction becomes 'fact,' especially as part of a multi-million-dollar pre-recall election TV ad blitz.

Case in point: I pointed out last March that Walker's budget would raise state income tax payments on some low-income Wisconsin residents:

...I see in the budget...an increase the working poor would have to pay in state taxes because of a limitation Walker would impose on the use in Wisconsin of an existing federal tax break for low-income people - -  the Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC)...

The Journal Sentinel noted it - - and more:

Gov. Scott Walker's proposed budget would reduce a tax credit program for many of the working poor by $41.3 million over two years - a change that critics say violates his pledge not to raise any taxes...

Walker's proposal also would stop the adjustment for inflation of the homestead tax credit, a change that would cost low-and moderate-income workers $8.1 million over two years.

PolitiFact confirmed in May that Walker indeed put these tax increases in his budget despite a promise that he wouldn't do such a thing:

Case closed, right?

Hardly.

Walker and his allies just keep on making the no-tax-increase claim, as PolitiFact reported months later, in December:

Walker, the Wisconsin Republican Party and other supporters repeatedly claim the GOP governor balanced the state budget "without raising taxes"...

As a candidate during the 2010 campaign, Walker promised to "oppose and veto" all tax increases. That put the issue squarely on our promise-tracking Walk-O-Meter, where we’ve already looked at this question.

In May 2011, we rated this as a Promise Broken, based on Walker’s own 2011-2013 budget proposal, which raised two taxes.

So, really - - case closed, right?

Nope.

*  State Sen. Alberta Darling, (R-River Hills), an outspoken Walker defender, repeated the no-tax-increase falsehood to the Wisconsin State Journal just last week even though she is co-chair of the legislature's budget-writing committee:

But Walker's Republican supporters said Thursday that national problems were affecting the state's economy. State Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, said that the country is recovering slowly and that 29 states expected similar budget gaps in 2013.

"When Republicans and Gov. Scott Walker took over, we rolled up our sleeves, made tough decisions and got our state headed in the right direction without raising taxes," she said. 

And on the same day, other GOP leaders eased the big lie into an AP story:

The Legislature's Republican leaders, Sen. Scott Fitzgerald and Rep. Jeff Fitzgerald, issued a joint statement Thursday defending their handling of the budget and reiterating their plans to solve the current problem without raising taxes.

"Wisconsin is not immune to the bad economy, we're simply responding to it better," the Fitzgerald brothers said in a statement.

"Instead of tax hikes that shift the burden away from the government and onto taxpayers, and instead of playing political games that make the business climate worse, Republicans in Madison will continue to keep focusing on growing jobs, not the government."

See how easy that is? Even Tommy can follow that script.

Walker's Tax 'Reforms' Hurt Working Poor, Reward Businesses, Higher-Earners

Section G, page 23 of Scott Walker's proposed budget - - "Revenue and General Fund Taxes" - - offers perhaps the starkest contrast on one page in the entire document.

In this section, capital gains on investments held for five years in Wisconsin are to be 100% tax-exempt; capital gains will allowed to be deferred for Wisconsin-based businesses.

And allowing business to expand the ability to carry forward losses will save estimated $47 million over the biennium.

So how do you make up for that $47 million loss, not to mention the capital gains taxes not collected, especially with all the hand-wringing over budget deficits, red-ink, etc.

Drop down a few paragraphs and get to the section about Wisconsin's working poor.

Walker wants to "reduce the percentages of the federal earned income tax credit" that the working poor can claim on their State of Wisconsin returns.

The Earned Income Tax Credit is a credit for working people, not freeloaders - - so Walker's budget means they get less of the credit allowed by the feds and thus pay more into the State Treasury.

How much is to be squeezed from the working poor?

$41.3 million.

Hey - - Not much off what businesses will save through some of the breaks listed in the same budget section.

So Walker wants to raise poor people's taxes, drive up their bus fares...this budget is a declaration of war against Wisconsin's most vulnerable residents, and certainly against the City of Milwaukee, a low-income and transit-dependent community.

Civil rights lawyers must be seeing this.

When Scott Walker made up his own 'alternative facts'

There's been a media storm over Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway's ridiculous and Orwellian assertion that there are "alternative facts" that disprove the hard evidence of Trump's relatively-small inaugural attendance.

This is reminding me of the way right-wing GOP Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his team chose to word-play and stonewall the truth instead of admitting what was obvious about the taxes in his first budget - - the verifiable and measurable tax increases, not surprisingly on the poor - - that broke Walker's signature no-tax-increase pledge. 

It's a little complicated, but...

PolitiFact looked at the numbers and interviewed experts who agreed that Walker's budget would increase tax collections from low earners by more than $49 million by cutting the availability of some tax credits.

As PolitiFact said at the time about Walker's 2011-'13 budget:

It included some tax cuts, but also tax increases.

That's according to the nonpartisan state Legislative Fiscal Bureau, which both parties have long cited as a neutral scorekeeper on budget matters.

The bureau determined that Walker included three tax increases in the budget totaling $49.4 million over the two-year period.

But because Walker had signed a no-new-taxes pledge and consistently said (and still says) he would never raise any taxes, he and his people had to come up with alternative words to create an alternative reality about the impact of the changes to prove their case.

So as we might say today, they Conwayed by beginning with a switcheroo:

Walker has disputed the characterization of the tax-credit change as a tax increase, with spokesman Cullen Werwie telling us: "Decreasing a tax credit is reducing spending, not increasing taxes.”

So the Walker spokesman changed the subject from taxation to spending, and because the budget Walker was proposing did reduce spending, Walker was claiming that no taxes went up:

Werwie also argues that there is a net tax decrease in the budget, so the change to the earned income credit should not be considered as an increase that violates the pledge.

Except that Walker's no-new-taxes pledge was condition-free and absolute - -  "to oppose and veto any and all efforts to increases taxes" - -and Walker's alternative reality included a salt-in-the-wounds kicker that also relied on the extra tax revenue collected from the poor, as PolitiFact noted:

But in balancing his budget to tackle the deficit, Walker in effect used the income tax-credit reductions as revenue raisers to partially offset the deficit-enlarging cost of his tax cuts.

Scott Walker presaged Kellyanne Conway and Trump's manipulation of numbers to get around the truth.

And that's a fact.  
   

Illinois Gov. Quinn Responds To Walker's Tuesday Springfield Showboating

Dear Friend, You might have heard that the Illinois Chamber of Commerce hosted Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as guest speaker today. One would wonder what a governor with a terrible economic record could have to say about jobs and economic growth. While Governor Walker might be fond of anti-worker and tea party rhetoric, the facts aren't on his side.  Here are some of those facts: Job Growth: Since Governor Walker took office, Wisconsin has been in last place in the nation in job growth. Just last year Wisconsin lost 21,000 jobs. Since 2010, Illinois has added over 130,000 new private sector jobs.   Business Climate: This year, the bi-partisan Tax Foundation ranked Wisconsin 43rd nationally in business-friendly tax environments. Illinois ranks 28th. Exports: Illinois grew its exports by nearly 30% in 2011 - nearly double the national average. Wisconsin's exports only grew 11%, which is well below the national average. Working Families: By cutting the Earned Income Tax Credit, Governor Walker raised taxes on low-wage workers with young children. Governor Quinn doubled this same tax credit this year, proving more tax relief to working families.   Taxes: Governor Walker's budget increases state spending by over $1 billion, which is primarily paid for by tax increases on seniors, families with children, and home owners. His budget calls for raising property taxes by nearly a $500 billion. In today's Chicago Tribune, the Chairman of the Illinois Manufacturing Association highlighted Illinois' business friendly climate: "Wisconsin is a great place to vacation, Illinois is where you want to locate your company." "Our workers are more productive. Wisconsin ranks 46th nationally in worker productivity. We have twice the gross domestic product of Wisconsin and export twice as much. More businesses are started in Illinois and we rank higher in high-tech employment opportunities. As the nation recovers from the recession, Illinois is creating jobs at a rate 10 times greater than Wisconsin. We are spending more on research and development. We have five times the venture capital investment. We are producing more people with science and engineering advanced degrees. While the recession has been brutal, we are working our way out of it. We are investing in our people and our businesses." (Read more: Illinois is open for business, Mike Holewinski, Chicago Tribune, 4/17/12) We hope Governor Walker enjoyed his trip to Illinois, and that he saw for himself what a great place it is to do business.  If you want a governor with a proven record of job creation, rather than just rhetoric, show your support for Governor Pat Quinn. Sincerely, Team Quinn

Top PolitiFact reads reveal talk radio corrosive presence

Interesting that among the five most read Wisconsin Politifact analyses this year is a "false" rating for national blowhard Rush Limbaugh praising Scott Walker with bad jobless data and a "pants on fire" rating - - the only one on this top five list - - earned by US Senator and frequently fact-challenged Ron Johnson for an even worse claim.

Johnson sounded like one of those angry anonymous blog commenters when he falsely claimed that one of every four dollars spent in large federal programs heavily used by low-income citizens was lost to fraud: 

Speaking at a "pints and politics" gathering in January, Johnson said the average rate of fraud in the Earned Income Tax Credit, Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps programs "is 20 to 25 percent."   

Improper payment rates are in the 20 to 25 percent range in the tax credit program -- but are 10 percent or less in the other three programs. So, even the average among the four programs would be far less than what Johnson claimed. More importantly, those are error rates; there are no figures on the rate of fraud, which is believed to be a small component of errors.

That kind of blather is typical Tea Party-tinged, anti-government talk radio propaganda, where hosts, guests and callers can toss out all sorts of wild claims into the ether with any challenge screened out.

Johnson - - who'd said the Senate would benefit from his private sector management and accounting skills - - has massacred the facts about government programs before.

Remember his false and doubled-down claim that then-incumbent Senator Russ Feingold was lying about his support for giving illegal immigrants Social Security benefits?

Also rated "false" by PolitiFact:

Johnson has pounded away at the issue in a radio ad, automated phone calls and on his website. In the Oct. 11, 2010 debate, Feingold answered Johnson’s charge flatly: "Well, of course I don’t support Social Security benefits for undocumented people. That’s just absolutely false."

Now, Johnson is denying Feingold’s denial, charging in a news release the three-term senator is lying about his own record.

Right-wing talk radio masquerading as news programming is heavily responsible for the ubiquitous distortion and disinformation served up for partisan and power-protecting  purposes to activate low-information, resentful voters.

Little wonder that Johnson is a regular on these shows in Wisconsin, as is Walker, where guests and their hosts who worship and imitate Limbaugh give the audience all the wrong stuff: ideology, bile and myth.

Get Ready For GOP Tax 'Reform' In Wisconsin

Oh, boy: Here's a story and headline with an unmistakable signal:

Assembly Republicans aim to reform Wisconsin's tax code

These are the same Walker water carriers who immediately upon his inauguration handed out tax breaks to businesses and high earners, paid for, in part, with a series of tax increases that hit the working poor - - particularly by reducing the value of the Earned Income Tax Credit.

When you see the oxymoronic association of "Republican" and "reform" - - like the mining bill's reform in the name of 'certainty" that overturns environmental protections and allows wetlands filling, or Walker's Act 10 'reforms' - - you know that middle-class citizens are about to get screwed while corporate and upper-income types are looking at private-interest or class-based windfall.

Walker's $74 Million Cut To Milwaukee Schools' Teachers, Head Start, Nurses - - Even The Breakfast Program!

Thanks to Gretchen Schuldt over at Milwaukee Rising for posting a link to a PowerPoint about where Scott Walker's budget cuts to the Milwaukee Public School system could fall.

The PowerPoint, using data from Walker's proposed budget, discloses program and staff cuts - -  and even a 10% reduction in the school breakfast program.

That's the third dagger I see in the budget that Walker aims directly at poor, minority families - - the others being a) an increase the working poor would have to pay in state taxes because of a limitation Walker would impose on the use in Wisconsin of an existing federal tax break for low-income people - -  the Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC) - - and, b) an arbitrary, $20 cut in all monthly W-2 welfare-to-work program checks.

This in a budget that increases the amount of public dollars shifted to private choice schools - - which upper-income residents will now be able to attend without means testing or other restrictions - - and which also subsidizes businesses and upper-income filers through greater capital gains write offs and other breaks.

Bottom line:

A state budget that deeply cuts educational, health, AODA and even meal programs in a public school system that is overwhelmingly minority and African-American, and in a city where the majority of residents are minorities, and in a state where minorities make up a disproportionate share of low-income residents - - is reprehensible.

And racist.

This isn't a rhetorical or even a political assertion.

Or an allegation about motives.

It's simply a factual description of the budget.

National media often fail Scott Walker reporting

[Updated] 

I'm adding to this 1/14/15 posting Walker''s more recent 2018 history of election suppression and plans to add more air pollution, waterway contamination, and wetland losses to the environmental damage that Walker has enabled.]

National media - - with some exceptions - - are not bringing their investigative  "A" game to the Scott Walker story, leaving readers with an incomplete and inaccurate picture.

For example, The Washington Post on Thursday and The New York Times on Monday reported that Walker had left Marquette University during his senior year before graduating.

But this blog and other media, including the PolitiFact service at The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel have reported that while Walker did leave school in his fourth year of enrollment, he was 34 credits, or just over two semesters short of completing what at that time - - 1990 - - was a full degree load.

PolitiFact also says Walker has said he was 15-17 credits short, helping to create the impression that he was closer to graduation than the record indicates.

Small point? No. The history of the issue shows Walker's unwillingness to give a complete and accurate accounting, and the reporting which may flow from one outlet to another gives Walker more credit (inadvertent pun) for personal achievement that he is due.

In fact, this Washington Post column barely scratches the surface, and by calling Walker "scrappy" in the same thought as his incomplete degree, we get a picture perhaps of a blue-collar or low-income kid who was out of his element at Marquette University.

When the facts are that Walker was a middle-class kid from a good high school who'd run and lost a troubled election campaign for student body President two years before leaving school, and had been working on a triple major.

Walker's unwillingness to lay out all the facts underscores a troubling Walker penchant: defaulting away from facts. Note that in his total PolitiFact file, "false" is his leading category.

Here's another example. RealClearPolitics today lets "sleeper" candidate Walker, "a preacher's son," bask in being called "nice."

In a recent interview with conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt, Walker addressed those concerns. “Yeah, I’m nice. I’m midwestern nice. There’s no doubt about it,” he said.

No doubt about it?

Let's take a closer look at the multiple groups and people Walker has disrespected:

*  How many "nice" politicians cut record-breaking sums from school children's educations?

*  While even farther-right figures like Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, and Florida's US Senator Marco Rubio just last night on The Daily Show have lauded the value of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit because it puts money in the pockets of the working poor to keep them earning, Walker:

a) reduced that program in Wisconsin for many of its family beneficiaries, b) also increased other taxes on low-income Wisconsinites to cover revenue losses created by tax cuts aimed at businesses and higher earners, and c) denied he'd done any such thing, PolitiFact reported.

*  How many "nice" politicians campaign against the poor or jobless by stereotyping them as lazy people sitting on their sofas playing xBox?

*  How many "nice" politicians announce, out-of-the-blue, that a law should be passed quickly to force poor and unemployed citizens, based on zero evidence, to pass urine tests to get food stamps or unemployment benefits? After already delaying some jobless benefits to people hammered in the deep recession and making Wisconsin only one of our states that has recently elected to cut food stamps?

*  How many "nice" politicians block any increase in the poverty-enforcing $7.25/hourly minimum wage, refuse to even consider it and add they see no need for any minimum wage whatsoever?

*  How many "nice" politicians turn down Federal health insurance funding to cover as many poor people as possible, thereby also adding to the state deficit and costing the state jobs? Then say they turned aside the federal money because the federal government had previously reneged on health-care payments - - a statement PolitiFact ruled "false."

*  How many "nice" politicians agree that mandatory, medically unnecessary ultrasound procedures forced on women seeking legal abortions are "fine...no problem..." and have manipulated budgets and public opinion to close several women's health clinics across their states - - even at clinics where legal abortions were not provided?

*  How many "nice" governors sign, in private, legislation that makes it easier for public schools to retain their Native American nicknames and logos, while other states and institutions have decided it's less important to be offensive?

*  How many "nice" governors refuse to ever issue a pardon? Even to a veteran who'd made a single mistake, sought a second chance and found an unmovable, "nice" and unbearably narcissistic Governor saying no, never?

*  How many "nice" campaigning politicians withhold their plans to virtually end 50 years of public sector collective bargaining, mandate larger worker contributions to pension and health plans, falsely-claim they did not withhold those plans during the campaign and cannot cite any evidence to support that claim - - and, to boot - - refer to his sudden, "divide-and-conquer"  - - his phrase - - post-swearing-in action aimed at Wisconsin workers as "dropped the bomb."

*  How many "nice" incumbent governors read their staffs a nasty top ten list of ways you can tell someone is a public employee? Samples:

On a snow day when they say “non-essential” people should stay home you know who they mean. 

It takes longer to fire you than the average killer spends on death row. 

You think the French are working themselves to death. 

You know by having a copy of the Holy Koran on your desk your job is 100% safe. 

You have a Democratic congressman’s lips permanently attached to your butt.

*  How many "nice" politicians travel to an upper-income, virtually-all-white suburb (Oconomowoc Lake) near their state's largest, minority-majority and relatively low-income city (Milwaukee) and ask voters at a rally for re-election support so the state would not "become another Milwaukee."

Walker might sound nice compared to a more combative Chris Christie, or more openly misogynistic as Mike Huckabee, but Walker is as hard-edged and compassion-free as any of the GOP/Tea Party conservatives heading into the 2016 presidential campaign.

National media which paper over Walker's authoritarian character and inveterate false-speaking do their readers and the political process a disservice.

Final thought: I've given credit more than once on this blog to Salon.com for its reporting about  a right-wing summit meeting in 2007 where Walker - - three years before his successful 2010 campaign for Governor - - was anointed by powerful interests to carry the conservative banner.

Where is the follow-up by other media on the Salon.com story?

That meeting, fully-reported, should be the starting point for national political reporting about Scott Walker, and not a surface narrative reinforcing Walker as the-nice-Midwestern preacher's-son.