Welcome To The Circus

Show Me The Money

What Religion Makes People Do

Usurious Health Care

The Neverending Grift

How dare workers expect more than $7.25 per hour! Don't count on a decent retirement or health care plan from your employer either. Fix poisonous lead pipes? Gonna have to wait. Repair potholes and crumbling bridges? Not this decade. Strengthen Social Security and Medicare? Not a chance! Maybe we should phase them out. 

More money for private, billionaires' sport stadiums? No problem. There's always hundreds of millions in public dollars for private playgrounds and speculation.

Milwaukee's Miller Park (now American Family Field) baseball stadium (for the Milwaukee Brewers) opened in 2001. Total cost to taxpayers was estimated over a billion dollars. Already, twenty years later, the Brewers need nearly $300 million more from taxpayers.

The same old myth is playing out in this greed and grift saga, wrapped in the contrived cloak of economic development and jobs. As the fairy tale goes, sports have a significant economic impact, spurring other developments, and creating jobs. And, as always, there's the threat of leaving. The Brewers may find a new host city if Milwaukee and Wisconsin don't fork over the cash.

Thought experiment: Can a business (sport team) claim to be infinitely successful and astoundingly economically impactful if, every twenty years or so, said entity must bribe and blackmail to be able to afford, supposedly, needed upgrades for their place of work (the sport arena)? 

Or, sadly, is that just how this blackmail song-and-dance shakes out, each and every time, in city after city? [Spoiler - yes, this is how it plays out in city after city, year after year.]

The boondoggles march on.

For Further Reading:
Site Selection Shenanigans

Stadium Swindle

Bonds & Bondage: Indentured to the Sports Stadium Cabal

Screenshots of Wisdom

 

Corporate Profits and Inflation

For Further Reading:

Ignoring the role of profits makes inflation analyses a lot weaker

Corporate profits have contributed disproportionately to inflation. How should policymakers respond?

The future of work depends on stopping Amazon’s union busting

Screenshots of Wisdom

There Is No Labor Shortage!!!

Accomplices Reporters keep labeling shitty-paying jobs, that are supposedly going unfilled, as a labor shortage. Labor Shortage Transforming State Workforce

There is no labor shortage. This is about a living wage, health care, and a pension (retirement). Respectable pay for an honest day's work - the mantra America has been shoveling and selling for generations. 

Unions were the answer to the disparity between the Haves and the Have-Nots. Yet, for decades, Republicans have attacked government and the public sector, in general, along with unions. It's no coincidence that as unionization has declined so have the wages and benefits of workers. 

Business news bloviators talk about how CEOs have earned and must be paid millions - that's just the market working. At the same time, Republicans, along with the business news crowd, tell us how these same millionaires shouldn't pay taxes - that would be a disincentive to their genius.

But when everyday workers decide certain jobs (and the lack of pay and benefits associated with such) aren't worth it - you know, the market - Republicans and the business crowd declare these workers to be lazy and ungrateful. Workers don't deserve good pay and incentives will only make them lazier.

I guess when CEOs get to make policy and write the rules, there is a set of rules for them and a set of rules for workers. The market rules for millionaires are very different from the market rules for workers. 

So is it really a surprise that as workers have had to work harder for lower pay and less benefits, the workers have turned away from these lowest-paid and worst jobs? It's not a labor shortage, it's a pay shortage. The labor is here and willing to do the work, they just need to be paid a fair market wage.

Only The Little People Pay Taxes

Proposal Cuts Taxes for 1%

A group of big business lobbyists is pushing a radical change to Wisconsin’s tax structure — one that would give huge tax cuts to the wealthy and powerful while shifting the responsibility of paying taxes to people with lower incomes. The change would also require significant cuts to the critical services that Wisconsin businesses, schools, and communities need to thrive. This one-two punch would make it more difficult for Wisconsin families to get by, while funneling additional resources into the pockets of the top 1%.

Comeuppance

Sen. Rand Paul Told To ‘Get F**ked’ During Virtual Town Hall

Private Sector Parasites

An Extreme Indifference to Human Life

Republican Business As Usual: Do As They Say, Not As They Do

Legislators Who Opposed Pandemic Aid Grab Grants

Robin Vos and three other Republicans who opposed federal grants got at least $150,000.

McConnell's Wife's Family Business Appears on Trump Admin's List of Companies That Received Most PPP Money

A shipping business started by Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao's family received at least $350,000 in loans set aside for companies struggling as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to data published Monday by the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Stick To Manufacturing & Commerce

WMC Unveils It's Plan To Reopen Wisconsin Business

WMC Opposes Help for First Responders

Big business group gets legislative change so it's harder for police, fire fighters to get workers comp.

Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC) - the name says it all. WMC are not infectious disease experts. Why should anyone care what their pandemic-opinion is?

They're more worried about their bottom-line (which is understandable) than the people who help make that possible for them. The WMC is fighting to make it harder for police and fire fighters to get workers compensation. I've had my issues with the pay-structure of police and fire departments. But using a pandemic to suppress others while lobbying for your own pocket-book, that's pretty low.

WMC, stick to manufacturing and commerce. We'll let the scientists, doctors, nurses and experts handle the pandemic. We'll let them decide when things can get back to "normal".

Midweek Reading

Daily case increase more than doubles in Milwaukee County, fewer hospital beds in use for COVID cases statewide

Banks Made $10 Billion In Fees Processing PPP Loans

Steve Schmidt Says It Out Loud: These Are Just Campaign Rallies

Republicans Suppress Their Own Voters

Some Sheriffs, Police Question Evers’ Shutdown

The World’s Bad Actors See Coronavirus as an Opportunity

How many workers are employed in sectors directly affected by COVID-19 shutdowns, where do they work, and how much do they earn?

A disturbing new study suggests Sean Hannity helped spread the coronavirus

Our Pre-Corona Existence Was Not Normal

Republicans, You First

Conservative pundits, and other blowhards, are pushing the idea that those that may die from coronavirus should just die and we shouldn't really worry about it because the alternative is a depressed economy.

Here's an idea - Republicans, you first. Please start doing yourselves in. Just go out behind the barn, take one of those many guns you own that you cherish so much, and end it. That will be some that the rest of us won't have to worry about.

Rush Limbaugh and Ron Johnson, why don't you two start this off.

Rush Limbaugh: Economy Being Destroyed ‘Under The Guise’ Of Saving Lives

GOP senator calls on Trump to reopen parts of the coronavirus-stricken economy because 'death is an unavoidable part of life'

Bezos, And Others Of The Richest Among Us, Display Truly Despicable Greed

Amazon, Owned by World's Richest Man, Soliciting Public Donations To Pay Workers' Sick Leave

Know Your Billionaire: Jeff Bezos

Corporate America Fleeced Us Again

If Christian Siriano can sew 500 masks a day, why can't Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, find a way to have masks made for his warehouse workers?

Amazon soliciting public donations to pay workers' sick leave
Menards Accused of Price Gouging

Donald Trump, Republicans Trying To Profit Off Pandemic

As usual, Donald Trump and the Republicans are putting party before country. They are trying to profit from a global pandemic. They would also rather see people die than to have their cronies lose money. These are truly repugnant human beings. None of whom should be public servants.

DOJ Wants to Suspend Certain Constitutional Rights During Coronavirus Emergency

GOP leaders ask Tony Evers not to place further restrictions on businesses

Democrats Block Senate Coronavirus Bill, Calling It A ‘Corporate Bailout’

The Republican Corporate Bailout Is Obscene

Senate approves massive $2 trillion coronavirus emergency package

The McConnell Slush Fund — Size Matters

Coronavirus: US overtakes China with most cases
Trump Says COVID-19 Deaths May Be the Price We Pay For A Strong Economy — Just Like Traffic Deaths

Texas Lt. Governor: Old People Should Volunteer to Die to Save the Economy

No Thanks, I Will Not Immolate Myself on the Altar of Your Stock Portfolio
‘I would rather die than kill the country’: The conservative chorus pushing Trump to end social distancing

Kudlow says US will have to make 'difficult tradeoffs' on coronavirus: 'Cure can't be worse than disease'

Trump says he won’t comply with key transparency measures in the coronavirus stimulus bill
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly in the Two-Trillion-Dollar Stimulus

Corporate Socialism: Trump is Bailing Out Investors & Managers Not You