Village of Pewaukee - Although not without opposition, Waukesha County Technical College trustees have given administrators the go-ahead to boost property taxes more than $2 million next year.

WTF is this all about? As the article points out, this amounts to a 3.8% tax increase, which is in violation of the state-imposed caps. But guess what? Technical colleges are EXEMPT from the caps.

(Thomas) Neill, who is the City of Waukesha clerk and treasurer, noted that state-imposed tax caps currently limit the city to 2% property tax increases annually. Although other local governments live under tax caps, too, the state’s technical colleges are exempt.

So let me see if I have this straight. There’s an APPOINTED Board of asshats Trustees who are, in essence, accountable to no one and they have the power to raise taxes without state limitations? Oh yeah, not that this state isn’t a tax hellhole.

If the courses at WCTC are in such demand, why not pass along the costs to the students in the form of a tuition increase? Too hard for you clowns (with the exception of Mr.Neill and Ms. Soto-Ryan, who voted against the increase) to understand?

Well, let’s see who’s on the board. A simple search reveals the following:

Hmmm…not a lot of intellectual firepower there. And looks who pops up? Mike Jakus. We ran him out of the Brookfield Common Council a few years ago. But Mike just can’t stop raising taxes. Looks like Mike learned it’s better to be appointed rather than have to answer to those pesky voters.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 14, 2008

CONTACT: Rich Zipperer
OFFICE: (60 266-5120

HEADLINE: Rep. Zipperer Statement on Budget ‘Repair’ Bill
SUBHEADLINE: Bill contains raid on Transportation Fund, steals REAL ID
money, and Increases Taxes and Spending.

Madison-The state Assembly approved legislation today that is intended
to fix a $652 budget shortfall. The state is facing a budget deficit
because the budget signed into law last year is spending money faster
than tax revenues are coming into the state. Rep. Rich Zipperer
(R-Pewaukee) made the following statement after voting against today’s
so-called budget repair bill:

“The bill approved today is an attempt to hide the truth of our state
budget from the taxpayers of Wisconsin, and only makes a bad situation
worse. We are facing the current $652 million shortfall because of
irresponsible budgeting in the past, and continuing that trend will only
inflate the problem in the future.

The solution to the current mess is simple. Control spending. Instead,
the bill passed today raids from the Transportation Fund even while
consumers are facing $4 per gallon gasoline, uses accounting gimmick on
top of accounting gimmick, contains a new tax on businesses, actually
manages to increase spending by millions of dollars, and only pushes the
problem off to the next fiscal year.

With the state facing a $1.7 billion structural deficit, we can ill
afford to knowingly make the problem worse. Further, this bill contains
no veto guarantees from Governor Doyle, meaning that, despite the clear
will of the voters this past April that the Governor should not rewrite
budget documents with his veto pen, he will likely use vetoes to
increase the Transportation Fund raid and increase spending.

Also especially troubling to me is the irresponsible and dangerous raid
of REAL ID money. By failing to use this user fee money for
implementing REAL ID, we are turning our backs on safety measures called
for by the 9/11 Commission, approved by Congress, and approved by the
state Legislature in past sessions. For our safety and security, we
need to move forward with REAL ID now, and not back away from our
promise to Wisconsin drivers.”

###

John McCain has decided that we should pay more for our energy while we get less of it. From the article referenced above.

The latest stop on John McCain’s policy tour came at an Oregon wind-turbine manufacturer, where the topic was – what else? – the Senator’s plan to address climate change. This is one of those issues where Mr. McCain indulges his “maverick” tendencies, which usually means taking the liberal line. That was the case yesterday, no matter how frequently he claimed his approach was “market based.”

In fact, if “the market” is your favored mechanism, Mr. McCain’s endorsement of a “cap and trade” system is the worst choice for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. The Bush Administration has pursued one option, which combines voluntary measures with subsidies for “clean” alternatives. Since 2001 under this approach, U.S. net carbon emissions have fallen by 3% – that is, by more than all but four countries in cap-and-trade-bound Europe.

At the other end of the market spectrum is a straight carbon tax, which would at least distribute costs more efficiently. It would also force politicians to be honest about – and take responsibility for – the true price of their global-warming posturing.

Then there’s cap and trade, which Mr. McCain has backed for years and would, as he put it with some understatement, “change the dynamic of our energy economy.” He noted that Americans have a genius for problem-solving but continued, “The federal government can’t just summon these talents by command – only the free market can draw them out.” To translate: His plan is “market based” insofar as it requires an expensive, invasive government bureaucracy to interfere with the market.[...]

So, like Hillary and Obama, McCain has decided that not only can Washington determine what the optimal “carbon output” of every business in the United States, he’s going to create a massive bureaucracy to to track all of this. Huh? I can tell you right now that this agency will be more intrusive and nasty than the IRS. The WSJ covers it nicely.

The problem is that once government creates an artificial scarcity of carbon, how the credits are allocated creates a huge new venue for political rent-seeking and more subsidies for favored industries. Some businesses will benefit more than others, in proportion to their lobbying influence and how well they’re able to game the Beltway. Congress itself will probably take the largest revenue grab, offering itself a few more bites out of the economy and soaking politically unpopular businesses.

Then there’s the question of whether any of this will even reduce greenhouse gasses. The McCain plan would allow businesses unlimited use of domestic and international offsets to comply with the carbon cap. So a chemical manufacturer, say, would pay an industry not covered by the program – most notably, agriculture – to reduce its emissions. Or it could pay a coal plant in China for plucking low-hanging efficiency fruit, like installing smokestack scrubbers. In other words, U.S. consumers would be paying higher prices for energy in return for making Chinese industries more efficient and competitive. Europe is in the midst of that experience now under the Kyoto Protocol, and most of its reductions so far have been illusory.

Given the distance between Mr. McCain’s rhetoric and the policy reality, we wonder if he even knows what he’s proposing. This is of a piece with his approach to many domestic issues, where the policy contradictions and cul-de-sacs overwhelm his professed political convictions. The McCain campaign believes his global-warming plan will appeal to independents and young people, as well as separate the Senator from President Bush.

Here’s another question to ponder. What’s going to stop firms from speculating in the credits? As long as the credits have value, they will be traded, bought and sold and thus be under the same laws of supply and demand like any commodity. Do you honestly believe that if a company has to buy “credits” that they won’t pass along the price to consumers? So we get hit twice. Once by the taxes that will be needed to support this moronic proposal and the other by higher prices. Meanwhile, the rest of the world laughs at our absolute stupidity.

Oh yeah, one more thing. To the Republican National Committee. Stop bugging me for money for the presidential campaign. When we have a Republican running for president, I’ll donate.

Calls and email have asked me “what happened”?

Well, in the first place, I don’t fly choppers. So I don’t know that much about the aviation aspect.

What I have been able to discern from the news is that the helicopter in question, a Eurocopter EC 135 is a pretty good piece of equipment.

The TV news reports say that the bottom skid just barely scraped the hill where the chopper crashed. There’s another note by an eyewitness who said “it was a helicopter but it didn’t sound “right”.

Well, until the final report comes out, we will not know so it doesn’t make sense to speculate. Glass panels do fail. I know, I’ve been there.

OTOH, when stuff fails, you re-trace your steps (every aircraft I’ve ever flown has a regular compass) and you try and go back on the reverse course. You train on this stuff all the time.

Unions keep losing membership as a share of the national workforce, which explains why organized labor’s main political focus is changing the rules to force more workers into unions. Witness a bill that Senate Democrats are pushing this week to require that hundreds of thousands of local police and firemen submit to collective bargaining.

Under current law, every state has the ability to set policies that govern its public workforce. In some states, police, firefighters and paramedics belong to unions that collectively bargain for their contracts. In others, unions representing public-security workers can bargain over pay, but not over benefits or work rules. And in some others, these workers can choose not to belong to a union.

Democrats want to change this for the entire country. A bill that passed the House last year would make the top officials at local unions the exclusive bargaining agents for public safety officers in every town or city with more than 5,000 people. They would also have the authority to bargain for everything — pay, benefits and work rules. The goal is to give labor the whip hand with local governments, and further coerce nonunion members to join the dues-paying ranks.[...]

Do you honestly thing the tagline of my blog needs any more proof? You do? Well here it is from the same article. (Any emphasis mine.)

[...]As “unfunded” federal mandates go, this is also a doozy. Unions that organize private companies are at least subject to market competition. If they make their employers uncompetitive, the union workers lose their jobs. Public unions have far more clout because there is no competition for government services; they are by law a monopoly. This is especially true of police and firefighters, who can do great harm to public safety if they strike. Unionization gives them enormous clout that drives up costs and eventually the tax burden.

Even Democrats admit this, which is why the bill includes a strike ban. But such prohibitions have never worked. Union officials call strikes anyway, then negotiate amnesty as a condition of ending the work-stoppage. This is what happened in 2005 when New York transit workers broke the law by going on strike and shutting down the city. They paid no price and still got their raise.

The bill’s mandates would also complicate the task of post-9/11 public security. Federal emergency plans rely on the cooperation of local “first-responders,” who need the flexibility to adapt to local problems and circumstances. Work rules negotiated according to national union standards make no sense when the safety needs of New York City are so much different than those in Fargo.

Local officials nationwide are fighting the bill, and the Bush Administration has promised a veto. But the House passed it 314-97, and it may be veto proof. That leaves the Senate, where the bill has 11 Republican co-sponsors, most of whom are up for re-election this fall. Oregon’s Gordon Smith and Minnesota’s Norm Coleman seem to believe that the unions will go easier on them in November if they throw them this concession. Right. If Republicans can’t even oppose monopoly unionization, who needs Republicans?

Check out this article in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Last month, New York law enforcement authorities announced the arrest of Queens resident Rafea al-Nablisi for smuggling 12,000 cartons of cigarettes a week. It was not the first such arrest, and thanks to New York’s latest cigarette tax hike, it will not be the last.

On April 23, less than two weeks after Mr. Nablisi’s arrest was made public, Gov. David Paterson signed into law a $1.25 per-pack tax hike on top of the state’s $1.50 per-pack tax. That’s in addition to New York City’s own $1.50 per-pack tax. Come July 1, New York City’s smokers will be paying on average $9 a pack for legal cigarettes.

But if history is any guide, most cigarettes sold will actually be trucked up from Virginia, or shipped in from China, by “butt-leggers” who can make over $1 million on each tractor-trailer load of smuggled smokes. The blunt fact, which politicians of both political parties are determined to ignore, is that high cigarette taxes in New York have led to a bloody, decades-long smuggling epidemic.[...]

As you may recall, the first bust of Henry Hill in “Goodfellas” (the bio of Henry Hill, a mobster in New York) was for selling untaxed (smuggled or hijacked) cigarettes. How long will it be before the smugglers invade Wisconsin? I’m assuming they’re already here but have yet to establish an efficient sales network. Well so what? you say. Well, here’s what.

[...]As the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said in September 2002 of New York’s cigarette smuggling, “Traditional organized crime is involved, terrorist groups are involved, and street gangs are involved.” Rivalry among these groups has resulted in numerous shootings and homicides.

The connection to terrorism is no exaggeration. When New York police cracked another smuggling ring in 2005, they uncovered a multimillion dollar flow of funds from New York City to unknown individuals in the Middle East. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly gave voice to the obvious conclusion: Terrorists probably got the money.

Just a few weeks before that 2005 bust, Buffalo-area businessman Aref Ahmed had been sentenced to three years and a month for cigarette smuggling. The feds said he’d used the racket to fund “scholarships” at terrorist training camps in Afghanistan during the spring of 2001. Going back to 1993, counterfeit cigarette stamps were found in the apartment of the first World Trade Center bombers.[...]

Naturally, none of the above will stop Pol Pot from taxing smokes. After all, it’s for our own good.

Politicians continue to use the health of smokers as their excuse for higher cigarette taxes. This view is myopic. As Gov. Wilson argued three decades ago, high cigarette taxes are bad public policy because of their effect on the rest of us. In the 1960s and ’70s, organized crime exploited high cigarette taxes at our expense. Today we face an even deadlier adversary.

Here’s what’s really disturbing. According to the results of the poll, 61% (!!!) of the respondents favor a health care system that covers all Wisconsinites AND is run entirely by the Socialist Shithole State of Wisconsin!

This is one strange debate the candidates are having on energy policy. With gas prices close to $4 a gallon, Hillary Clinton and John McCain say they’ll bring relief with a moratorium on the 18.4-cent federal gas tax. Barack Obama opposes that but prefers a 1970s-style windfall profits tax (as does Mrs. Clinton).

Now it should come as no surprise that Hillary Diane Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama are in favor of a windfall profits tax; it’s completely in line with the true platform of the Democrats which is:

1) We have everything it takes to take everything you have; and,
2) Is what we’re doing good for America and Americans? We don’t care!

Mr. Obama is right to oppose the gas-tax gimmick, but his idea is even worse. Neither proposal addresses the problem of energy supply, especially the lack of domestic oil and gas thanks to decades of Congressional restrictions on U.S. production. Mr. Obama supports most of those “no drilling” rules, but that hasn’t stopped him from denouncing high gas prices on the campaign trail. He is running TV ads in North Carolina that show him walking through a gas station and declaring that he’ll slap a tax on the $40 billion in “excess profits” of Exxon Mobil.

The idea is catching on. Last week Pennsylvania Congressman Paul Kanjorski introduced a windfall profits tax as part of what he called the “Consumer Reasonable Energy Price Protection Act of 2008.” So now we have Congress threatening to help itself to business profits even though Washington already takes 35% right off the top with the corporate income tax.

You may also be wondering how a higher tax on energy will lower gas prices. Normally, when you tax something, you get less of it, but Mr. Obama seems to think he can repeal the laws of economics. We tried this windfall profits scheme in 1980. It backfired. The Congressional Research Service found in a 1990 analysis that the tax reduced domestic oil production by 3% to 6% and increased oil imports from OPEC by 8% to 16%. Mr. Obama nonetheless pledges to lessen our dependence on foreign oil, which he says “costs America $800 million a day.” Someone should tell him that oil imports would soar if his tax plan becomes law. The biggest beneficiaries would be OPEC oil ministers.

Sigh. Once again the tagline to my blog is proven to be 100% accurate. You have to wonder if either of the Democratic candidates could pass an Econ 101 quiz, much less an exam. As for Kanjorski, well, we already know the answer to that.

The final piece of advice for the two Democratic fucktards candidates is in the final paragraph of the editorial.

Late this week, a group of Senate Republicans led by Pete Domenici of New Mexico introduced the “American Energy Production Act of 2008″ to expand oil production off the U.S. coasts and in Alaska. It has the potential to increase domestic production enough to keep America running for five years with no foreign imports. With the world price of oil at $116 a barrel, if not now, when? No word yet if Senators Clinton and Obama will take time off from denouncing oil profits to vote for that.