Wisconsin Gov. Says He Wants Rick Snyder to Join the Fun

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is having so much fun busting unions and destroying the American middle class that he'd like to have more Republican governors join in. And he mentions Michigan's Rick Snyder by name.

Walker revealed that, and a whole lot more about his strategy in the union-busting fight going on in Wisconsin, during a 20-minute phone conversation with oil billionaire David Koch, one of the big money bags behind the Tea Party movement. The whole thing was recorded and is on youtube. You can listen to it here.

Why would Walker expose his entire strategy? Turns out, Walker only thought he was talking to his buddy Koch. He actually was talking to a blogger impersonating Koch, so he spilled his guts. Completely.

Walker has lots of plans to force the 14 Democratic senators back into the state so his union-busting bill can go forward -- withholding their pay, charging them with ethics violations, encouraging them to come back to "talk" but not "negotiate" so that there can be a quorum and then passing the bill even if they leave again.

Throughout the conversation, the Koch impersonator says some really outrageous things but they don't even seem to phase Walker. Bring in trouble-makers? We considered that, Walker said. Or, "Once you crush these bastards, I'll fly you out to Cali and really show you a good time." Walker's response, "All right. That would be outstanding."

But in the meantime, Walker would like more company. He says other Republican governors should follow his lead and names John Kasich in Ohio and Rick Scott in Florida. Then he brings up Snyder.

"I think Snyder if he got a little more support probably could do that in Michigan," Walker says.

Right now, Snyder appears to be busy driving jobs out of the state by eliminating the film industry tax credit while heaping taxes onto poor people and senior citizens to end taxes on business. There's only so much you can do at one time.

Big Loophole in Snyder's Plan to End Taxes for Business

Rick Snyder's plan to load down poor people and senior citizens with higher income taxes so businesses won't pay any at all is supposed to create all kinds of jobs. Exactly how, is unclear, since jobs are created when there is a demand for what is being produced and sold. And if poor people and senior citizens have less money in their pockets, they will be able to demand and buy less.

But one thing it will create is a big giant loophole for business owners. And here's the reason. Profits in the business they own will be untaxed. Salary that they pay themselves will be taxed. So it will be even more to their advantage to claim as many business expenses as they possibly can, and reduce their salary and personal income taxes.

The car that most people pay for out of their salary? That's a business expense, along with the license plate fee, insurance, gas, and maintenance. Cell phones? Gotta have one for the business. Home computer? The business just needed a new one so the "old" one can come home. Country club membership and monthly dues? That's essential for networking so it's paid by the business rather than with salary. If the business is a restaurant, the owner can bring home a couple steaks bought wholesale instead of running to the grocery store. There will be all sorts of additional creative accounting to keep money inside the business and not paid out in salary to the owner.

That income will never be taxed, no matter how many demands the business makes on public services -- university graduates educated at public expense, clean water, law enforcement, and so on. Senior citizens receiving pensions, though, have paid income taxes their entire lives. They're getting a break at the end, not a permanent free ride with a big loophole.

Yi-ha Turd Blossom!

So Karl Rove is coming to Livingston County to talk to Republicans. Welcome, Karl!

I'm glad to hear you are coming to remind Michigan of all the good times under George Bush. You know, how he read the memo about Al Qaeda planning to attack the U.S. and ignored it a month before 9/11. Yeah, those were the days. Then there was the U.S. Attorney scandal, when federal prosecutors were fired because they didn't prosecute Democrats with significant zeal. What a great moment in American democracy! Oh yes, then there was the Valerie Plame scandal. Who could forget that triumph over tyranny? Leaking the name of a CIA agent to the media so that her mission was destroyed and the lives of all her contacts put in jeopardy. Boy, we haven't seen leadership like that lately.

That's just the domestic side. My gosh, I hope Americans never forget The Bush-Rove administration's accomplishments in foreign affairs. Those phony claims about Iraq's WMD's were absolutely essential to starting an unnecessary, unfunded war in Iraq that we're still paying the price (read that "borrowing the money") for. And the way you guys turned Gen. Colin Powell into a pimp for the big lie, what great TV that is for future generations.

And saving the best for last, how about that September 2008 financial scandal? Absolutely fantastic! Not very many presidents can claim to have presided over the near collapse of the world's financial system. I'll bet you have some great "fly-on-the-wall" memories from those heady days that I hope you'll share with the audience. Be sure to remind everybody that the multi-billion-dollar Wall Street bailout that everybody is so upset about happened under Bush. Those tea-baggers have such short memories, don't they?

Wow, I almost forgot. One other thing I really hope you'll do, Karl, is remind everybody about how the deficit really exploded under George. A lot of people forget how he inherited a budget surplus from Democratic President Bill Clinton and then proceded to turn it into
a $5 trillion dollar deficit. Let's not give all the credit to that Kenyan in the White House.

With so much to talk about and so many great memories to re-live, I really think Michigan residents are going to need more than just a little after dinner speech. So I think it's great that they'll get a free copy of your book just for showing up. That way, you can claim phony book sale figures that are lots higher than if people had to actually shell out money for it.

I do hope you'll come back real soon! Like in October 2012, just so people won't forget how great things were in the Golden Age of George.

Did Snyder Mislead on Film Credits?

One of the disturbing things about Rick Snyder's budget for Michigan is his decision to gut the incentives for the film industry, allowing just $25 million this year.

Chasing thousands of jobs out of the state and ending hundreds of millions of dollars worth of economic activity would be bad enough, but now it appears Snyder wasn't honest about it.

That would be bad enough but two separate individuals have now said publicly that Snyder told them in advance of the budget's release that he was not planning to drastically cut the program.

Jeff Daniels, the Chelsea-based actor, was the first to go public. The Detroit Free Press on Thursday (Feb.17, 2011) reported:

"'It's really disheartening,' Daniels said of Snyder's budget plan. 'It's not what he told me privately, so to be honest, I guess he's a politician after all. Say one thing, do another.'"

Then on Sunday, Free Press columnist Mitch Albom reported a similar conversation with Snyder. Albom wrote:

"As a person who helped create the film credits program, I asked for months to meet with Snyder to show they could be tightened but kept going. I finally was granted that meeting two weeks ago. Snyder told me, to my face, he planned to honor the commitments already made and allocate $100 million annually to the program -- a drop in the bucket of a $47-billion state budget. While this new cap represented a slowdown, I thought, in desperate times, it was almost enough to keep the new studios and work force going.

"Then, on Thursday, he announced his actual allocation to the film program: $25 million."

Albom also reported hearing from several others who were also told by Snyder that he did not intend to kill the program.

Albom and Daniels probably aren't lying. Two people who have separate conversations with Snyder and come away with the same impression amounts to pretty reliable evidence.

So we are left wondering what happened. Did Snyder intend to do what he told Daniels and Albom and then get talked out of by his recruits from the Gov. John Engler administration? If so, who's really in charge? Did he just make a mistake and have his figures wrong when he talked to Albom and Daniels? If so, he's not as great with numbers as he wants us to believe. Or did he hide the truth because he didn't want to have the uncomfortable task of admitting he was killing thousands of jobs? If so, he lacks the ourage of his convictions.

None of these scenarios -- and there probably are more -- is very comforting. Snyder needs to explain what happened if people are going to ever trust his word again.

Mr. Numbers Guy Needs to Re-check His Figures

A lot has been made about Rick Snyder being a CPA and how great that was to have a CPA in charge of Michigan's budget. But it seems like this CPA doesn't understand either basic arithmetic or human behavior.

One of his great ideas for shifting the tax burden in this state from business to working people was to really sock it to the poorest working people he could find by ending the Earned Income Tax Credit. The credit supplements a federal Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor designed to keep them working and off welfare. It was such a good idea that even Ronald Reagan supported it. And it packs a strong economic punch. For every $1 the state spends on it, it generates $1.67 in economic activity. Nearly every cent is spent right in the state of Michigan. And it keeps about 25,000 people off welfare.

But in an interview with the Detroit Free Press, multi-millionaire Rick Snyder says that money doesn't matter to the working poor.

"It is really a federal program. You get $1 from the federal program and you got 20 cents more from the state. You stop and ask from a policy perspective, was anyone joining the EITC program to get those extra 20 cents? No. They were making the decision to get the dollar."

That extra 20 cents doesn't help people, doesn't motivate people? Maybe to help multi-millionaire Rick understand how the little people think, we should put it into business terms. Let's say some company, maybe one selling computers, say a 20 percent decline in sales of one of its products, like computer keyboards, would
the company CEO react? Wouldn't he or she want to know why? Or what if someone came to this CEO and said, I know how to increase our revenue on this particular piece of our business by 20 percent, wouldn't the smart CEO want to know how that could be done? Especially if the market was really, really tight and extra sales were hard to come by and the company needed every dime it could scrounge up?

But when it comes to working poor people, Snyder wants us to believe they don't need that extra 20 percent on one piece of their income. Why, they won't even notice it. Balderdash.

In Wisconsin, It's Not About the Money

Some of the media is missing the point about what's going on in our neighboring state of Wisconsin. They're still referring to Republican Governor Scott Walker's bid to bust every public employee union in the state as part of a plan to balance the state budget. But that's not true. Not even close.

That should be clear to everybody since employee unions said they would agree to wage and salary concessions needed to balance the budget. But Walker rejected their offer. What he wants to do is dismantle the unions entirely.

On top of that is the matter that Walker himself created the budget deficit in order to make the concessions necessary in the first place. The state's budget was balanced until Walker took office and immediately put through three tax cuts, throwing the budget out of balance and requiring the concessions.

The bottom line, then, it not about money. It's about treating people like indentured servants instead of human beings with dignity. The Republican philosophy is that workers should take what they're offered and shut up, and the fact that they haven't had to do that is the cause of all our economic problems in this country.

Workers didn't cause this recession. Greedy bankers did. But bankers rarely go to prison in this country so somebody else has to be blamed and public employees are always handy targets.

Where Is Business' Share of the Sacrifice?

Zero taxes. That's what all but a handful of Michigan businesses will pay under Rick Snyder's revised Michigan Business Tax. They'll get the benefit of $1.8 billion in tax cuts, paid for by increases on senior citizens and the poorest working people in the state. And they'll sacrifice nothing.

That's because they're the "job providers." Except we don't know that they actually will provide any more jobs. Nationally, corporations have had record profits and yet aren't hiring people, preferring to sit on piles of cash.

So what are we really getting for our higher taxes? Not better schools that will help our future workers compete in the global marketplace. They are taking millions of dollars in cuts, even though the special fund set up for schools has hundreds of millions of dollars in surplus. Not better universities. Their budgets are being cut 15 percent, not counting the private donations that will be lost because the tax credits for donating to universities is being taken away. Better roads? Nope. Improved public safety? Not with cuts to local government. A wonderful natural environment? No, we're cutting those programs, too.

Jobs? Well, not if the behavior of companies nationally is any indication. What business would want to come to a state that is racing to the bottom in quality of life? We will pay more for fewer services, as local governments slash away.

Which is not exactly what Snyder's lieutenant governor promised. Brian Calley told a group in Holland that Snyder was going to balance the budget and cut taxes on business with an "all cuts" solution.

Didn't work out that way, did it?