Making the Bad Part of Human Nature Easy

One of the arguments against massive government databases is that the rank and file government bureaucrats will have the opportunity for personal mischief. Aside from the slippery slope argument that the presence of these databases will make it easier for future tyrants. But don’t underplay how much simple human curiosity will lead to systemic abuse:

A landlord snooped on tenants to find out information about their finances. A woman repeatedly accessed her ex-boyfriend’s account after a difficult breakup. Another obtained her child’s father’s address so she could serve him court papers.

All worked for Wisconsin’s largest utility, where employees routinely accessed confidential information about acquaintances, local celebrities and others from its massive customer database.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press in an employment case involving Milwaukee-based WE Energies shine a light on a common practice in the utilities, telecommunications and accounting industries, privacy experts say.

You think?

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No Word On Left Handed Hunter Accident Rates

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel finds a truth in statistics:

An estimated 650,000 hunters, many with high-powered rifles, will saturate the fields and forests of Wisconsin when deer-hunting season opens Saturday. They will track game at a time when hunting has never been safer in Wisconsin.

But a Journal Sentinel analysis shows the percentage of accidents caused by hunters 21 and younger in 2006 was the highest since 1999. And in the past five years, those young hunters were more than twice as likely to cause hunting accidents than all other hunters.

Fortunately, judicious use of a calculator has given the paper its needed anti-hunting trope.

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Obeying Tax Laws Not Fair, Say Tax Money Spenders

In Wisconsin, the state is going after Wal-Mart for using legal techniques to lower its tax obligations: Wal-Mart owes back taxes, state says: Paying rent to itself cuts millions off retailer’s tax bill:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has avoided millions of dollars in state taxes by paying rent on 87 Wisconsin properties in a way that the state Department of Revenue calls an “abuse and distortion of income.”

As a result, state tax auditors say, Wal-Mart owes more than $17.7 million in back corporate income taxes, interest and penalties for 1998, 1999 and 2000. More could be due for later years.

The cause for this? The state is imposing its own standard:

Revenue Department lawyer Mark Zimmer argues that the world’s largest retailer is not paying its fair share of taxes that support public schools, local police and fire departments and the highways it uses to transport what it sells in Wisconsin. [Emphasis added]

Essentially, Wal-Mart is setting up its own entity to own the land that it uses for its stores; Corporate Wal-Mart gets to deduct the rent from its gross income so that its taxable income subject to taxation is less. Then, Landlord Wal-Mart pays Corporate Wal-Mart the profits as dividends, which are taxed less than the same amount as straight income would have been taxed.

Two distinct companies with different ownership wouldn’t draw the ire of the tax seekers; that it is, and it’s Wal-Mart, makes it look like easy pickings for the state of Wisconsin.

Hopefully, Wal-Mart and its REIT will prevail. A fie upon “creative” unelected officials who think their position gives them license to determine when “legal” isn’t “fair” and to use the people’s resources to extract more resources from the people.

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Town Councilchair Quarterbacks Go Three And Out

Sometimes when a municipality decides that its ideas about how to design and run the business are better than the business owner’s, the business owner decides not to play:

Menards has dropped plans to build a warehouse store at the east end of Grafton near the I-43 / Highway 60 interchange, saying village officials insisted on too many changes in the company’s plans, a Menards official said Monday.

“We just went as far as we could go revising the plans, and finally we said it wasn’t worthwhile,” said Marv Prochaska, the company’s vice president of real estate. “At some point, you have to operate your business, and it was beyond the point where the deal made any sense.

“It was just numerous, numerous small things that all added up to way too much, and it just didn’t make any sense,” he said.

Look on the bright side, Grafton! That’s sales tax revenue you never had, so you won’t have to worry about what to do if the location started making less year over year.

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In Case Of Catastrophic Failure, An Alarm Will Sound

Wisconsin to install monitors on 15 bridges:

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation will install devices on 15 bridges to monitor unusual movements, officials announced Tuesday, six days after the fatal I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis.

The devices, called accelerometers, will be placed on the 15 bridges in Wisconsin that have support structures similar to the Minneapolis bridge.

Accelerometers work much like seismometers, which measure movements of the Earth, and will gauge horizontal and vertical movements in the bridge supports.

Kudos to the state government of Wisconsin for spending tax dollars making a public gesture that won’t actually fix anything.

Perhaps if they installed cameras, too, so they could have pictures of the actual collapse as well, kinda like security cameras favored by police departments don’t prevent but allow government officials to watch governmental failures in progress from the safety of their offices.

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I’m Not Paying For Waukesha Libraries

But thanks to a creative “funding proposal,” some people in communities not served by libraries will get the chance to do so:

A politically charged proposal to create a new funding source for public libraries in Waukesha County is coming back for a new debate.

Aimed at capital costs in the countywide network of 16 libraries, the proposal would raise property taxes in non-library communities to provide tax relief in communities with libraries.

While the county already collects taxes to offset each municipality’s cost to operate a library, no such funding mechanism exists to alleviate the costs of building and maintaining the facilities.

Advocates of the new arrangement contend that residents of non-library communities are not paying their fair share for having unrestricted access to any library in the county.

But opponents say the new proposal represents taxation without representation because it would affect people who have no influence over how a municipality spends its capital funding.

Those Wisconsin politicos are awfully clever at creating unaccountable authorities for extracting money from their marks citizens, aren’t they?

I was home in Wisconsin this month, and I remembered why I love the state; it’s cooler, it’s greener, and the air is cleaner.

But any news from Wisconsin government reminds me why I’m not moving back any time soon.

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Why Does Jim Doyle Hate Real Estate Investors?

Maybe he doesn’t hate them; maybe they’re just dogs whose blood he wants to suck:

Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle’s plan to double the fee paid by sellers of homes and other property – a fee increase that would cost sellers of property $142 million over the next two years – survived the first attempt by Republicans to kill it Thursday.

No doubt, Jim Doyle’s blue-ribbon BOHICA commission assume that this will not impede real estate investment and rehabbing, particularly in blighted areas in the throes of gentrification. No doubt the crony capitalists in charge of Wisconsin government will redistribute some wealth to favored developers to offset the new fee increases they’re saddling the honest men with.

But cause and effect aren’t tied together when effects are bad and the cause is “more taxes” or “more government.”

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Jim Doyle Embraces Precursor to Tourism Decline

Governor on-board for $13 rental tax:

Gov. Jim Doyle will back a $13 increase in the rental car tax to pay for new commuter trains connecting Milwaukee to its southern suburbs and to Racine and Kenosha, a Doyle spokesman said Wednesday.

The three-county increase was recommended Tuesday by the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Transit Authority. If the Legislature approves, the RTA’s portion of the rental car tax in Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha counties would rise from $2 to $15, in addition to other state and county taxes that total up to 22.6% of each car rental.

Local officials love to fleece the visitors to their fair locales. And when the tourists stop coming because they don’t want to be fleeced any more, local officials spring into action to expend tax dollars to promote tourism.

Because the source of all goodness is also the goal of all goodness. Tax money, thy symmetry is holy. Amen.

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Another Wisconsin Community Prepares For War

We hope the last minute diplomacy works:

In the season of good will, the Mukwonago village president has approached the town chairman with a new proposal for a town-village boundary agreement, attorneys say.

After years of failed negotiations, Mukwonago Village President James Wagner has met for breakfast in recent weeks with Vernon Town Chairman Alan Kunert to discuss a possible permanent boundary, Village Attorney Shawn Reilly said Wednesday.

We all know how disputes between small Wisconsin communities often turn out: War.

But at least it breaks up the long winters.

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In 360 Degree About Face, Wisconsin Governor Doyle Urges Higher Taxes

The headline: Doyle urges uniform sales tax rules: Governor, top aide say they will push national standards for third time. Sounds good, right? Why, the lead even makes it sound like he wants to level the playing field:

Gov. Jim Doyle and the top deputy he appointed Friday said Wisconsin must join the list of states that have agreed to uniform national standards for sales tax collections and promised to try a third time to get it through the Legislature.

Level-up the playing field, that is:

Doyle and Michael Morgan, whom the governor Friday named secretary of the state Department of Administration, said it is unfair that Wisconsin retailers have to charge 5% state sales tax to customers in their stores while those who buy over the Internet rarely have to pay the sales tax.

Wisconsin consumers don’t pay a sales tax on Internet purchases, and Doyle thinks that’s unfair to Wisconsin retailers.

Right. Doyle thinks that’s unfair to the Wisconsin state government which loses out on all that sweet, sweet tax revenue slush.

I mean, those commissions commissioned to recommending higher taxes don’t just pay for themselves.

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The First Thing To Do When You’re In A Hole

After blowing $26,000,000 on a software system it won’t even use, the executive vice president of the University of Wisconsin system offers a mea culpa. Or the bureaucratic, non mea culpa equivalent:

“We’re very sheepish,” Mash told the state Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities. “We couldn’t make this work. We’ve got to dig ourselves out of this hole.”

Dig themselves out of the hole? What the heck does that mean in the public sector? Oh, yeah, it means you’ll have to get more tax money to cover your mistakes.

In the real world, this fellow and/or one or two of his ill-informed cohorts would be out of jobs. But in the rarefied world of the public sector, no doubt a little sheepishness and an expression of desire to dig one’s self out of a hole will save him.

And maybe even make available another $26,000,000 in budget to spend.

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Creeping Federal Nanny-Statism Warning, Unheeded (As Usual)

Wisconsin has passed the legislation to make it illegal to convey an urchin in a car without a booster seat unless the child is 8 years old, or 80 pounds, or 4’9″ tall. I’m subject to plenty of PSAs when I listen to WISN every day, pointing at this government site promoting it.

Come on, peoples. This is the lesser Federal agency M.O.: Promote educationally, and then withhold Federal funds until your state legislatures make them law.

Now, parents, you will have to buy extra gear to keep your children safe until such time as the Federally-encourage state legislature determines that the law of diminishing returns no longer applies to your child. One assumes that if the Department of Transportation determines your child is safer when packed in Styrofoam peanuts in your back seat until the age of 18, your state legislatures will inconvenience you, under penalty of law, with damn sure packing them in peanuts as long as your state gets its two million dollars in highway funding.

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Rottweilers More Equal Than Poodles

Bill would give underage soldiers a break: Lawmaker wants fines for drinking reduced to $5:

Wisconsin soldiers who are 19 and 20 would be fined no more than $5 for underage drinking, under a bill lawmakers will likely consider this fall.

The effort by Rep. Mark Pettis (R-Hertel) to loosen underage drinking penalties for soldiers comes just six months after he wrote a bill that would allow 19- and 20-year-olds in the military to drink legally.

This is a wrong-minded attempt to “support the troops” and to reward soldiers by giving them additional rights that non-soldier citizens cannot enjoy or reducing sanction for criminal offenses for soldiers. It runs opposite to what this country stands for, or should stand for, to segregate rights and apportionate them differently to soldiers and non-soldiers. This is a republican democracy, not a platonic Republic.

Understand that this is not an incentive program or a veteran’s affairs allocation of money; it’s changing the law to apply differently to volunteers who passed muster than to those who would not or could not serve. That’s right. Flat feet, poor grades, childhood diseases, or poor eyes would physically prevent some youths from enjoying this privilege right that their more able brethren could enjoy. So a select few would be more equal than the others of the age group.

Also, once we start apportioning rights or diminished sanctions to soldiers, where do we stop? Drinking underage is a victimless crime, but so is soliciting prostitutes. So is using drugs. Keep in mind, gentle reader, I am not saying that our troops are all prostitute-soliciting, drug-abusing drunkards, but those who violate these laws, what’s the principle that would stop lowering the sanction for them? There’s none.

As a libertarianish, I think the 21-year-old drinking age is senseless, and I think that Federal withholding of funds for states who don’t impose state laws according to federal government dicta is unconscionable, but a new wrong won’t make it right.

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The Unspoken Words

A tavern closes down in Wisconsin to make room for a Walgreens. Which words are missing from this sepia-toned account?

Oh, yeah, eminent domain.

But its synonyms and sentiments abound:

The answer to his Walgreens question is “economic development,” something that seems much needed in an area with boarded-up Polish flats being stripped of their siding, wandering transients and a fair trade in drugs and prostitution.

“Just because something is old doesn’t mean it is historic,” said Ald. Bob Donovan, who represents the 8th District, within which the tavern sits, and who made an unusual parliamentary maneuver to get the development the City Hall green light earlier this year after its chances for passing had stalled over the previous two.

Donovan said he saw in the $5 million development a chance for the neighborhood to “get a shot in the arm.”

“What the neighborhood is getting is an investment in their community,” said Michael Polzin, a New Berlin native and spokesman for the suburban-Chicago-based chain, which has 31 stores in Milwaukee proper. He’s never been to the National Liquor Bar.

“Just because something is old doesn’t mean it is historic.” Replace the word old with yours and the word historic with not ours to dispose of as we wish if you want to get to the heart of the grabby little thought processes of small-time government power brokers.

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Wisconsin Lottery Discriminates Against The Poor, Journal-Sentinel Imagines

Apparently, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel wants to paint that picture. Poor get poorer in lottery land: Higher-poverty areas win less:

Nearly one-third of all state lottery tickets sold in southeastern Wisconsin last year were sold in poor neighborhoods, and players in these areas hoping to strike it rich have not seen as many big payoffs as the rest of the region, a Journal Sentinel analysis shows.

Longtime lottery player Tim Butler, who lives on Milwaukee’s west side, didn’t need to see the numbers to know that he and his neighbors are not exactly reaping big rewards from their investment in lottery tickets.

“I have never won any decent amount of money with tickets I bought in the inner city,” said Butler, a Milwaukee County bus driver, shortly after returning home with another $20 worth of Pick 3 and Pick 4 tickets.

He said in the seven years he has been buying lottery tickets – usually several every day – his biggest prize has been $500 won in the Super Cash game with a ticket, he makes a point of noting, that he purchased on the city’s south side.

By far the worst abuse of statistics to support a cracked hypothesis that I have seen in my lifetime.

Shame on the Journal-Sentinel. Analysis?

(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)

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Keeping Out the Undesireables — The Students

The mayor of Waukesha, Wisconsin, is against an expansion of the local University of Wisconsin (Mayor backs UW-Waukesha: Lombardi wants Doyle to veto UWM merger proposal):

Mayor Carol Lombardi has urged Gov. Jim Doyle to veto a plan for merging two college campuses in the Milwaukee area, saying that the move toward consolidation stems from “more politics than practical study.”

Lombardi also said that making the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha part of UW-Milwaukee would strain her city’s police force and other resources if the suburban campus must be expanded.

Gentle reader, what motivation for this position would be the least odious?

  • She doesn’t want the urban people who go to UWM to infect Waukesha. Since she brings up the cost of police protection, I think this is probably her motive.
  • She’s holding the state up for more money, grants, and so on for her fiefdom to spend.
  • She doesn’t think government consolidation and efficiency are worthwhile goals if they cut into her pork.
  • She fears the loss of prestige for Waukesha if there’s not a University of Wisconsin-Waukesha. Come to think of it, that’s all the prestige Waukesha might have. In the right light.

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State of Wisconsin Further Deters Businesses

The state of Wisconsin, or at least a set of bipartisan lawmakers, is ready to deter businesses from doing business and employing people:

A bipartisan pair of state lawmakers are recommending a radical change to the way health insurance is bought and sold in Wisconsin by proposing the creation of a statewide insurance purchasing pool.

The proposal is intended to help businesses cope with skyrocketing health care costs and stem the number of uninsured residents. The plan will be unveiled today to an Assembly committee studying reform of the state’s Medicaid health care program for the poor, elderly and disabled.

The proposal would essentially impose an 8% to 12% payroll tax on all employers to provide basic health insurance to everyone in Wisconsin younger than 65.

Let the nationalization begin. Oh, wait, it’s already started.

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The Showdown I’d Like To See

WISN radio, a conservative-leaning talk station in Milwaukee, is holding a reality-show style elimination competition for all comers to try to become its new morning show personality (now that Weber and Dolan are head to head with Charles Sykes).

You know what would be win/win? If it came down to:


Owen of Boots and Sabers vs. Sean of The American Mind

I mean, because I cannot participate. Not because I am out of the Milwaukee area; I have enough ties to the area to make my argument. No, I cannot participate because the auditions are the day of Atari Party 5.2, curse my pipes.

For more information, see Milwaukee Talk Star.com. Of course, if you’re like me, you listen to Weber and Dolan every day (for seven years running) via News Talk 1130.com and its streaming audio.

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Government and Developers

Over at Boots and Sabers, Owen’s done his homework to spell out the beginnings of a land grab wherein shady government officials working with developers and with local neighborhood associations will eventually run the middle class owners out of their neighborhood:

A Den of Thieves

The worst part of the whole story is the sense I get that it’s not a vast conspiracy of long-range plans to incrementally drive the homeowners out, but rather that the government officials have nothing else to do but try a variety of approaches to meet their goals of stripping citizens’ property rights. Patience and not having to live a freaking life while fighting city hall and its developer overlords tip the balance of power from the citizens to those who live only to rule them.

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