Wisconsin Reading

Club for Growth celebrates death to commuter rail

Desperate Milwaukee Journal

EPA finds 75 water deviations

Umemployment spikes under Walker

Sunday Reading

Infrastructure Crumbles

Race To The Bottom

Wisconsin Tax Avoiders

Turning Tax Exemptions Into Revenue For Government

Unemployment Compensation in Wisconsin

Who Does Not Pay Taxes?

Wisconsin Values Budget

Holiday Reading

All Work and No Pay: The Great Speedup

How State Are Rigging The 2012 Election

How The U.S. Detoured To Massive Debt

Mr. Keynes & The Moderns

Overworked America

7 Things About Debt, Deficits, & The Dollar

Supply-side Nonsense

Tax Cuts Don't Pay For Themselves

The Illusions of Psychiatry

The Truth About Wisconsin's Budget, Taxes & The Phony Crisis

Who Doesn't Pay Federal Income Taxes

The Walker Chronicles

Effects of Biennial Budget for Working Families

GOP Panel Votes For Corporate Tax Breaks

Seven Ways Walker is Trying to Screw Wisconsin's Poor

Walker Chooses Corporations Over Kids

Walker Eyes Raid on Employee Insurance Fund

Walker, GOP Reversing Green Initiatives

Removing Democratic Support

Good insight from Joel Rogers (via Doug Henwood):

"Rogers also sees Walker’s attack on the public employee unions as part of a nationally coordinated Republican strategy to remove the unions as major financial and organizational supports for Democratic candidates. Some of the wavering Republican legislators in Madison got calls from Karl Rove and people speaking on his behalf. Such is politics in the USA (and this is me speaking, not Rogers) that the unions have a choice only between supporting a party that does little for them when in office and one that would destroy them."

Take Your Business Elsewhere

Is this some kind of sick, cruel joke? Turning down $23 million for high-speed internet!? Maybe if Scott Walker put the money to work - manufacturing trains, laying rail, erecting turbines, and installing high-speed internet - we'd be creating jobs and igniting the economy, whilst improving our infrastructure, thus enhancing our ability to attract business. And, maybe we could stop punishing everyday workers and the poor.

Update:

$70 million more is at risk.

Untouchable Taxes

Lawmakers in four states want to make tax reform even more difficult. In Wisconsin, the idea being floated about is to require a supermajority (two-thirds) vote to raise taxes.

Thirsty Suburbs

A May 13 Journal-Sentinel editorial, Unwarranted, chastised Clean Wisconsin for intervening, on behalf of the environment, in Waukesha's attempt to obtain diverted water from Lake Michigan. The paper concedes Clean Wisconsin meant well, but their input was unnecessary. We don't need debate, "pressure politics," or public education when we're dealing with such a non-issue like water?

But [thinking about the bigger picture] why not - regarding these water-starved areas - make them institute growth boundaries, population or usage limits, as a prerequisite of any water diversion? Obviously mother nature never intended such intensive uses and such concentrations of people in these areas. Also, the price should be much, much higher. Water is a vital resource becoming more and more scarce for certain communities. Those located in unsustainable areas should pay the real cost of obtaining diverted water. Meaning, a huge amount, an amount that encourages conservation and development in more sustainable areas.